Jake's Backdoor Hippie-palooza, 2014 Edition

Lawrence

Senior Member
The snow melts faster in the rough because with the longer grass it is easier for air to circulate beneath, and hence melt, the snow. That's my theory anyway
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Looks like your golf course is much better maintained than the golf course photos I posted last night. The grass in mine looked lousy at best, but it is simply a small public golf course. Interesting about the snow melting faster on certain spots. :)

This is a private course built in our area about 12 years ago. I had the opportunity to play it once before it went private and it's an exceptional course that looks to have only gotten better. I believe membership bond is in the $20K range and yearly dues are far from trivial. I love golf, but not that much. :)

I was very careful, btw, when walking the course in the cold to stay off of any play surfaces (tees, green and fairways). Unlike urbex, here you don't even want to leave foot prints.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
2014-020:

Vibrations

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BackdoorArts

Senior Member
This is nice! I noticed the color match detail inside the screw heads. Nice touch! Nice guitar!

The color inside the screw heads was a bit of a surprise - a weird artifact from the light I used. It's got to have something to do with the lack of corrosion because I get the same type of effect on the "TV Jones" lettering on the pickup cover.

The guitar is a 10 year old Epiphone SG Custom copy that has more invested in the electronics than in the guitar itself, which wasn't that much. I replaced the 3 dreary humbuckers with 3 TV Jones Filtertrons and it's a twang monster, but you'd never know it looking at it.


LOL Screw head grooves aren't lined up though. :rolleyes:
In serious mode: Nice shot

Thanks. I'm not one of those who believe that screw heads on the pole pieces have a direct effect on tonality, but there are folks who will argue it for days. Mine are set for balance across the strings, which is something I can hear. LOL


Nice! :) Got any acoustics? :cool:

Acoustics, electrics, basses, ukeleles, mandolins, resonators... I've had or have just about anything with strings at some point. It was my habit before I picked up a camera, one I've had since I was aged in single digits.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
2014-021:

Well, in a 365 there are going to be bad weather days with weather you wish you could capture if the elements would just cooperate, so I woke up saying, "Yes!! It's going to be a snowflake day!!", only to have every snowflake I captured be nothing more than a bizarre little ice formation with nothing resembling a 'flake' outside of the photographer. So I set about trying to capture some birds landing on the snowy handrails of our deck, only to realize that 2 Dark Eyed Juncos getting nabbed by a Sharp-shinned Hawk in 2 days would be enough to keep them away. And given that ongoing blizzard conditions coinciding with a work day full of meetings (not to mention an issue with the NJ DMV that has my undies in a bunch) have me grounded, what you get at the end of my 3rd week of shooting this year-long experiment is this obvious throw-away of what I would have thought was a rather cool pattern of snow on a milk crate turned squirrel feeder on the deck had I still been in high school.

See y'all tomorrow. This is what one does for a $50 gift card.

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PS - if you want to know what I mean by "squirrel feeder", they're too smart to want to really come in when I have a D800 set up with a remote, but my wife will feed them peanuts but doesn't want the Blue Jays to grab them all, so they go into a container that is now protected by the crate, which must be navigated by going through a single entrance protected by strings and washers. Very Indiana Jones.

(note - photo from last year, making the one above necessary)

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BackdoorArts

Senior Member
2014-022:

Another day at the office. (LR edit)

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And if you're following along in the ISO thread, this one was at ISO 6400 (auto ISO), handheld while on a conference call.
 
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BackdoorArts

Senior Member
2014-023:

One of these days I'm going to figure out a way to keep the finger tips from going numb when shooting out here. This is from Easton, PA where the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers converge. There were so many photos worth taking, but alas, the cold got the best of me and I scurried back to the car where I (almost) screamed for 10 minutes as my finger tips went from shriveled and numb to on fire. If this was anything like what Washington's boys faced back in the day, it makes me shudder to think of the blood on which this country was built.

First, three Lightroom Only edits.

The Convergence of the Lehigh & Delaware Rivers
(5 second exposure)...

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A Gulls' Feast

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Ice On The Delaware

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And now one that I really, REALLY wanted to turn out, as the water and the ice on it were flowing very quickly. Alas, in the cold I never once thought to spring the eye piece cover on my D800 as I raised it to 7 feet on the tripod to see over the wall and I got some uncorrectable light leak. But in B&W, no such issues with overly magenta here, overly yellow there.

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Lesson learned. It's going to be -7 on Tuesday. I think I'll stick to bubbles. LOL

Oh, btw, I broke every personal rule to shoot through this 10-stop ND, because there was no way I was taking the gloves off to take the filter off and meter. It's pot luck whether I would have been better or worse off doing it since it took me four minutes to get a decent exposure and focus without being able to see through the lens (snow blindness made it impossible to see even the monitor at full brightness).
 

Mike D90

Senior Member
2014-023:




Ice On The Delaware




And now one that I really, REALLY wanted to turn out, as the water and the ice on it were flowing very quickly. Alas, in the cold I never once thought to spring the eye piece cover on my D800 as I raised it to 7 feet on the tripod to see over the wall and I got some uncorrectable light leak. But in B&W, no such issues with overly magenta here, overly yellow there.

View attachment 68620

I think that one is payment for the torture! I think this image is just breath taking.
 

Mike D90

Senior Member
Jake, what if you could use radio popper (transceiver style) that also act as remote shutter releases? You could keep your hands in your gloves, thicker winter gloves, and pop the shutter from gloved hands. This is considering camera on a tripod though unless you can figure a way to hold the camera, set up the shot and use the radio release at the same time.

Or if you have a shooting partner you could have them operate the shutter popper on command.

I used my radio poppers to do my self portrait firing the camera shutter and the flash with the radio popper. If set correctly it will even actuate the auto focus.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
You're killing me here! You keep raising the barre on your own ability--how do you expect others to achieve anything remotely close to these?! ;)

Yesterday while cleaning up 12" of the darned white stuff, I kept coming inside to run my fingers under warm water. Even though I was wearing gloves with thinsulate plus glove liners, my fingers couldn't get warm initially. Once my core got warmed up, it wasn't an issue.

I hope some of our Canadian and northern US members will weigh in with how they manage to keep their fingers warm while shooting. It's been unreal the past few days with temps being sooo cold! :eek:
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
Acoustics, electrics, basses, ukeleles, mandolins, resonators... I've had or have just about anything with strings at some point. It was my habit before I picked up a camera, one I've had since I was aged in single digits.

Mmmm...sounds like an awesome photo shoot for a rainy day (especially the ukes and mandolins--hint, hint!). ;)
 

nikonpup

Senior Member
you're killing me here! You keep raising the barre on your own ability--how do you expect others to achieve anything remotely close to these?! ;)

yesterday while cleaning up 12" of the darned white stuff, i kept coming inside to run my fingers under warm water. Even though i was wearing gloves with thinsulate plus glove liners, my fingers couldn't get warm initially. Once my core got warmed up, it wasn't an issue.

I hope some of our canadian and northern us members will weigh in with how they manage to keep their fingers warm while shooting. It's been unreal the past few days with temps being sooo cold! :eek:
mittens that you can pull back the tip - or woolen fingerless gloves
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Thanks folks. On my way out the door I realized I'd left the RF remotes on my worktable in the office. I had an infrared remote, but that doesn't work on the D800, and guess which camera the 16-35 was on? I set them both up in the car to work on a 5 sec delay in self-timer mode. Gloves were on the entire time, with the exception of a couple seconds to switch the tripod mount, which is all they needed to get shocked.

Truth is, sometimes it's too cold regardless of gloves. I've spoken to my brother, who has shot in this weather sitting on the ground outside the end zone in the Meadowlands for 3 hours during Giants and Jets games, and he says that there is nothing that works perfectly. He's had shoots where he's taken the gloves off to reveal blue fingertips. He's invested in a set of battery operated, heated gloves that he wears underneath the mittens mentioned (which work fine until you reveal the fingers and let the cold in - then they don't recover until they get some actual warmth). He invested $150 in them as anything cheaper didn't seem to work, but when you're in the cold as much as him it's worth it. I need to get to an outdoor store and try some hunting gloves as I hate to buy any gloves sight unseen.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
2014-024:

Got up and went downstairs to make coffee. I have a habit of not turning on lights until I get into the kitchen, just so I can see what the moon might look like out the back window. Today, I turned around, went upstairs, grabbed the D800 which thankfully was still mostly set up properly for long exposures, grabbed the tripod from the car, and went outside hoping to get a couple shots in before the Mrs. came downstairs and turned on the kitchen light. I was turning the door knob to come back inside just as she did.

Funny, but 3 degrees in pajamas, one coat, no gloves and no wind was a lot easier to handle than 17 degrees, fully layered up in a brisk wind and full sun yesterday. Only mistake is that I left it at ISO 100, which meant 30 seconds to get what I got. Thankful for that, though, as I managed to have 2 cars cooperate in the first shot to complete the red path up the hill. Shed in the second photo is lit by the street lamp across the street from our house.

Lightroom only edits.

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