Images fro the Id – Stupid is as Stupid Does or Does it Take Brains?

Anybody who knows me knows that have great respect for other people and their attitudes and biases. In general, people can do what they want with in a certain number of boundaries set by  society. I even argue that the act of yelling fire in the crowded theater is not the problem but the damage it causes is. After all- there may be a fire.

Personally I dislike killing anything. Sometimes there is a necessity for food or  safety. Hunting does not usually fit those in my mind but I except I understand its value in population control and the perceived sport it involves. There were two incidences recently which convert acceptance to just plan calling it stupid. In the first an elk affectionately known as “Big Boy” was killed by a “stupid” policeman in Boulder. The animal was about as tame as bull elk can get and was totally accustomed to humans. Trophy hunt? Sport? Just plan stupidity.

Last Saturday, a bow hunter killed a moose all perfectly legally. The problem was it was in an area where the moose are perfectly accustomed to people. In fact, I have been too close to them myself there. The areas willows are usually frequented by 5-10 bull moose and they have no concern about people. I quit going there because I really didn’t like the concept of large, dangerous, wild animals becoming humanized and “stupid” people tempting the inevitable. There was always the excuse “I didn’t approach him, he approached me” to get around the rules. People including many photographers of all levels were getting to adapted to the situation.

The story goes like this. The Forest Service allows the “taking” of 2 moose in the area each year. It is a contest for the rights to kill. The archer came in with a ranger picked out the one with the largest “rack” (makes me think of a high school junior picking out a prom date) and in front of  a large number of spectators finished off the beast. There has been a huge response to the act. Most people defend the legality but condemn the location.

I have a different slant on both situations. First there was no “sport” involved in either unless killing just for the thrill of killing is sport. Second, There is no sport in killing almost tame and trusting wild animals. The raising of food animals has never been considered sport but a necessity and some have trouble with that. These are moral questions which dig in to the basic question of what the modern human believes. It is no longer, kill or be killed by our evolutionary cousins but let’s look to our selves if we need to feel threatened are plenty of threats. When killing fore killing sake is a sport, we lose the boundary between civilized and chaos.

This week’s photos are  some more elk and moose. Nothing special about shooting them (with a camera) just remember they are wild and respect them for that. These guys were very close and some important decisions were made as to how much “contact “ is ok.

Images from the Id – It’s Bound to Happen or How to Survive the Great Crash II

If you remember, a couple of weeks ago my MacBook crashed and thanks to Time Machine I was able to get everything up and running on the New MacBook Pro. Yeah, I chronicled the whole thing before, but now here’s the news and the magic of Mac. Disclaimer – I am very sure there are maybe similar ways to do this with Windows but I can’t even get Microsoft to reauthorize a copy of Windows 7 on a crashed Windows machine. They want me to buy another copy. I tried for an hour to get a human! Arg! I have (had) three Windows 7 machines. These were mostly to placate my curiosity to build a computer and run Quicken for business, Electric Quilt and Simulator. I have found OS X replacements for everything but the simulator.

So there I sat with a dead computer and a lot of curiosity. As I have sad before having this kind of curiosity is very expensive and very satisfying. Other people just can’t understand the huge “rush” I get when I solve a problem or make something work especially for other people. Well, here’s one for me.

A friend reminded me that I could connect two Macs with a Thunderbolt cable in tethered mode and “mount” the hard drives of one computer on the desktop of the other. Simple! The hard drives, one a SSD drive and the other mounted. I erased both drives, I had already transfer this “computer” to the new one with Time Machine (Previous Blog). Then Apple made it easy to install the newest OS X on the SSD drive of the “Dead” computer. After a little bit of restarting, about a half hour of time (these guys are fast through Thunderbolt!!), I have a brand new-old computer. Did a bunch of diagnostics and everything checks out. I now have two souped-up MacBook Pros. Anyone want a 2011 Top of the line 15”, Macbook Pro with a 500 Gb SSD and a 750 GB Hd 8 Gb Ram?

This week, we’ll look at shooting the Chihuly exhibit at The Denver Botanic Gardens. If you are not familiar with Chihuly take the time to look it up. These large, temporary, glass art installations are amazing. You may want shots of the whole pieces but I like to look for textures and shapes in the glass and its relationship to the gardens environment. The name are my names for the image not the art work. These were all done between 7 and 9 am using a special ticket to the exhibit. They were all done on a tripod. This allows control of all aspects of exposure under various conditions.

Medusa – 1/350 sec f/8, 0 EV, ISO 100, 50 mm. This is actually a composite of 5 images each 1 f-stop apart (HDR High Dynamic Range). Make sure you vary the time not the aperture so depth of field does not vary. Part of a large, 10′ diameter piece

Lilies – 1/4 sec, f/27, 0 EV, ISO 10, 150 mm/225 mm, Processed Lightroom 5. Keep the f-stop small for greater depth of field to get the lilies and the refection in focus. Remember to focus a refection it’s not the diastase to the water but to the object. Looked good out of focus too.

Lilies 2 – 1/10 sec f/22, 0 EV, ISO 100, 130 mm/195 mm, processed in Lightroom 5. Basically the same as the last one but fooled around with the wight balance.

A Little Black & White – 1/250 sec, f/13, -1 EV, ISO 100, 95 mm/142 mm, Processed Lightroom 5. The problem here is to get rid of the ugly wall in the background and keep the depth to the art in focus. A good lesson in using local adjustments in Lightroom.

Images from the Id – The Importance of Being…or Backup Backup, Backup

I entered the week with the sincere belief that things would be different this. The best plans of men and gods bend at the whims of fate. Sunday, the MacBook Pro crashed. It had served well for 4 years of extensive work, but the point really is, how well prepared are you for the worst computer meltdown? I back up all the time at least twice a week for the system and every shoot or Lightroom session. Have a plan and stick to it. Being an Apple product user this is all very easy. The Mac OSX has a function called “Time Machine” which is absolutely amazing with the ability to keep even hourly backups if needed . These are not just data backups but complete system backups. I do this about twice a week and before any major work session. I back up all of the image files at the conclusion of each session. I use backup software called Goodsync and have also used Chronosync. Both are good with not too steep learning curves. This means I have three up to date copies of all my images and Lightroom catalogs.

After catastrophe

Other than the pain of getting a new computer things have gone well. The initial setting up of the hard drive was completely automatic and Time Machine did it in two hours. I now have a computer setup exactly like the last one. Well almost. The “old” computer had to drives and setting up there single SSD drive on the new one was the easy part. Even reauthorizing the Adobe apps and, luckily, this was a big worry from past Microsoft experiences, I got MS Office up and running. Now how to get this year’s image files, which were on the second HD, on the new computer and link to Lightroom? I move the files to the system (SSD) drive and sync to Lightroom in the Library Module. They are still a little bit out of sync but in a few days I’ll get it how I want it. I am going to miss that 300 Gb of extra HD. In the meantime let’s look at a photo

Mueller State Park on the west side of Pike’s Peak is one of my favorite camping areas. It’s quiet. The hiking trails are shorter and easier than most. It has beautiful scenery but not a lot of wildlife action. Actual there is one thing that has become my favorite place to shoot. It’s a little pond called Dragonfly Pond and it is exactly that, a great concentration of dragonflies. These guys are extremely difficult to shoot but practice makes perfect, well almost in this case. Just try to track and focus on a fast flying 2-3 inch dragonfly.

Dragonfly 1/2000 se. f/6.7 ISO 800 400 mm/600 mm -1/2 EV