Experiments in movement

I last wrote about the trigger kit that I assembled with a friend over a couple of weekends.

This weekend I finished a second trigger sensor - the one that reacts to sound.  Of course once I had done this I spent Friday evening trying to capture a balloon bursting.

Even with the shortest delay, the force of a balloon bursting is so great that I was not able to capture the balloon with no motion.

I also completed the soldering of a flash trigger so that now the kit allows me to use remote shutter or a flash trigger.

I used the flash trigger for the balloon photographs thinking that I'd get better speed from the flash of light than from the shutter speed.  This meant working in a dark room with a few second's exposure and  letting the duration of the flash light take care of freezing the action.

I read somewhere that the regular speedlite flashes produce a burst of light that can go up to 1/50 000th of a second which is considerably more than the fastest shutter speed of the camera (1/4000th of a second) but I guess I should have done more research on this because even when I reduced the power of my flashes they were not able to stop the balloon in motion.

The few times the balloon was caught in frame did create interesting effects but I am really looking to freeze the motion completely.  The web site that I bought the trigger kit from has a manual that I am going to have to read to get more information on this.

After (running out) giving up on balloons I went back to experimenting with the sound trigger/remote shutter release combination with light bulbs.

I remembered once seeing a bare light bulb get shattered in a storm when water was blown onto it and I imagined that the popping sound of a bulb breaking like that could be a worth exploring with the kit.

During the week I had bought a few small appliance light bulbs and experimented with breaking them with drops of water.

The first try resulted in little more than a fizzle and the bulb filling up with smoke as the air came into the vacuum through a crack.

I realized that I needed more than a few drops and had some success dropping a large spoonful of water from a cup onto the hot bulb.  Of course there are all sorts dangers inherent in using water near electricity like this so I don't recommend that you try this at home!

As the glass breaks, the air coming into the light bulb usually causes the bulb to flare and does give a loud enough pop to trigger the sensor.

I got a few really satisfying images from this experiment before giving up for the night.  It turns out that for these photographs the sensor and trigger are more of a convenience than a necessity.  It allows you to work alone setting things up and taking the images.  I think that you could as easily capture these with a willing assistant.

One thing that is key with the light bulb is getting the exposure right so that the camera is not overwhelmed by the light.  This is fairly simple - you just expose on the lit bulb as if that is all you are photographing.  In my case I also had flashes that fired to light up the bottom of the bulb.  The photograph below was taken without flash.

I was also frustrated during the balloon experiments because the "instant" trigger switch wasn't working on the gizmo.  I was only able to use the trigger that has a delay between the sensor activation and the camera or flash trigger being fired.  I opened up the box to see if I could figure out what was wrong in there.  After examining the photographs on the web site with instructions, I discovered that I (oops) had not soldered the wire from that switch to the board - in fact it was tucked in and not connected to anything!  Another demonstration of how miraculous it is that it worked at all!  Imagine if the loose wire was critical to the central components!

After fixing that this morning I was back using the photo gate trigger.  I was curious about the distance that the trigger can tolerate between the sensors.  As they are wired, they end up being pretty closed together but by making them parallel I was able to point them at a mirror and get a much wider area through which I could drop larger objects than the ice cube in my original experiments.

So I pulled out a rather uninteresting casserole disk (I guess I am going to have to find something a little more elegant) and brought an apple and an orange to the party

Sensors and photography

A few weeks ago a friend of mine suggested looking into a kit that is offered to allow you to trigger a camera or a flash.

A website called HiViz offers these multi-trigger kits that we heard could be bought pre-assembled (this turns out not to be true - at least not after considerable searching on their site).

So we each bought a kit and got together two weekends in a row to assemble them.

We opened them kits and saw with dismay that there were plenty of parts to assemble.  The instructions are very good but with a project this big there is huge scope for error.  Parts that have to be connected one way only (with two positions), wires labeled, cut and connected to numerous places on the board.  As we worked we cross checked each other and came across several errors that way - simple mistakes that could cost the entire project.

This isn't a bad business model.  The parts are all standard and they are offering a great service with little risk.  If you follow the instructions you will have a functioning piece - if you take one mistake the problem is on you and not on the provider of the parts.

By the end of the first day - after probably about 5 hours of soldering, checking and re-checking we got about half way through.

This week we completed the assembly only to discover that for some time we had been following the instructions intended for a different circuit board than the one we had!  I became convinced that it would be a miracle if it even turned on!

The instructions also included a nice warning about overheating some of the components (like the LEDs) that light up to tell you when things happen - only problem is that this instruction appeared quite a way into the instructions and we only read it after we had soldered the LEDs.  Putting these warnings earlier would have been helpful...

At the end of the afternoon we put it all together and assembled the trigger cables.  The kit comes with three triggers - the first is a motion sensor that has an emitting and receiving light sensor.  Breaking the light between these will trigger the camera or flash, the second trigger uses sound and the third, light (eg. lightning).

We assembled one cable each and tested the kit....

A miracle happened!

The assembly worked!

I was able to get my camera to work by clapping my hands and by moving something between the two light sensors.

Tonight when I got home I set up a quick arrangement with the camera and a flash and played a bit with it.

There are multiple "potentiometers" which are volume controls to adjust sensitivity for things like how long the trigger is on for and more importantly how long after the sensor is triggered to take the shot.

This allows you to make tiny adjustments to the trigger so that if, for example, you are dropping something into water you can get the splash early or late or even get the photograph in before the flash.

Here is the setup.  You can see the wires hanging down in front of the camera.  Those are fairly close together (although they need not be - they allow you to drop something between them and set off the flash.

After a few tries with focus and adjusting the delay on the box - here is a photo of ice falling into water.

More to come...

Point and Shoot

I mentioned recently that I smashed the back of my camera during a hike.

For a few years now I have insisted on taking my camera with me on these hikes and lugging large lenses along with them.

The price you pay is some bruising over a few days if you can’t find a way to secure the camera properly - and if you do, it is usually hard to reach and therefore not used enough.  The other price is that if you do use it, you could fall and smash it.

So after this latest catastrophe I decided that it was time to invest in a point and shoot camera to take along.

I did a little research before I picked the camera - first looking to see what professional photographers considered a good carry around point and shoot.  The Nikon and Canon variations on the point and shoot are prominently mentioned there along with the attributes of a good point and shoot from professional’s point of view.

I also remembered reading about a camera that Casio made that has a rather cool gimmick in that it can record low res film at 1000 frames per second.

So, considering that 90% of what I shoot on a hike is documentary and that I have always though high speed photography rather cool, I asked my wife to look into the Casio Exilim ZR100 as a birthday present for me.

Well it arrived yesterday and I have spent some time between meetings and over lunch playing with it.

High speed video is a gimmick but a lot of fun.  The camera can’t autofocus or change focus in video mode and the resolution for the high speed video is not good but I really had a lot of fun playing with it.

Some of the photographic features that are really cool include built in HDR processing both as in “artistic mode” and in more or less realistic mode.

HDR Realistic


HDR Artistic


And no HDR but with the camera’s fill-in flash


The next feature that was worth some experimenting was a built in panorama feature.  Since the camera is built around high speed it can do things like take 30frames in a second (of stills) so in the panorama mode you can set the direction (portrait or landscape orientation) and then move the camera in a sweeping motion and just hold the shutter down.  The camera sounds like an old time movie camera with these rapid-fire clicks.

Here is a panorama in landscape mode:


and the same scene in portrait mode


and yes, our living room is this cluttered.

The camera also has a good close macro function and since I had some trouble holding it still for the macro shot this in burst mode and ended up with 30 images of the same thing from which I could choose the sharpest.


…and finally some blurry but very satisfying video with some music courtesy of freemusicarchive.org



Exilim Games from tbouwer on Vimeo.

Red Rock Canyon

I would probably have preferred to visit this in the Winter.  The Red Rock Canyon is accessible via a scenic drive probably 20min West of Las Vegas and I was astonished to see people cycling the entire loop of the scenic drive in the mid-day sun.

The daily highs at this time of year are regularly above 100F (37C) and although the adage that a dry heat is more bearable is certainly true, there is a head-thumping sensation that goes with walking for long in this heat - even with a hat and plenty of water.

Bruce took me on a drive to Red Rock and then on to Mnt Charleston which is a ski area near Vegas (probably about a 40min drive away).

We started with a short side-trip to some homesteads/ranches on the Eastern side of the canyon.  These tracks of land were priced around $1 million in recent years.  The recession and housing crash has probably reduced these prices somewhat, but they are still on prime land.

A big billowing white cloud formed part of the backdrop for most of the day.  I was surprised to see thunderclouds like this, but the point of a desert isn't the absence of clouds, nor the occasional thunderstorm, just the rarity of it being widespread.

The scenic drive circles the valley surrounded by prominent rock features with bold lines of red and white rock. Along the drive are a number of parking lot pull-offs that give you access to around 19 different hikes into the mountains. The scenic drive is often referred to as the canyon, but the Red Rock Canyon itself is located in one of the hiking trails.

The first stop-off is alongside a prominent set of oval and egg-shaped rocks. They are deceptively large. Without the people in these pictures the rocks give the impression of being a lot smaller than they actually are. From the top looking down you will see a group of people standing on one of the rounded boulders just off to the right of center.

Looking back up from the bottom a round boulder split like an egg with some people standing before it.

At the second stop a beautiful outcrop of rock, again the scale is deceptive. There is a person standing on the slanted shelf on the right of the picture. He scrambled up there to photograph one of the plants.

The highest point of the scenic drive offers an outlook over the entire valley. Bruce told me that a developer had the rights to develop a large complex of houses along the slopes of the mountains directly across from this. I think those who love to ride and walk here are hoping that the recession discourages this development.

We stopped at a dry gulch. The infrequent rain brings flash floods that race into the valley through these dry riverbeds. I took a 15 image panorama of this scene to try to capture the spread of mountains and canyons that you can hike into.

Some of the cliffs inside this canyon rival Yosemite's great heights - some as high as 3000ft (over 900meters).

After the gulch we came across a family of the wild burros that live in the valley. The male was quite close to the road and didn't seem to be bothered by us.

As I crouched down to photograph him he put his ears back which warned me not to get any closer. Further off and slightly up a hill in the shade of a Joshua Tree stood the female and her foal.

After leaving the park we drove up into Mnt Charleston which was an amazing 20 degrees cooler than down in Las Vegas. This area features a few hikes and picnic areas as well as a ski resort that is a popular destination in the winter.

The drive offered some beautiful scenes of wooden lodges and churches and we stopped at a restaurant at near the top for a great American Barbecue lunch of corn, baked beans, chicken and ribs.

This side trip was a great way to escape the bustle of Las Vegas. I'd love to go back in winter with my climbing gear and a couple of climbing friends.

You can see a slide show of all the photographs from this outing here.

A trip to Vegas

South Africa has a couple of casino towns, Sun City being the most well known.  I had been there and to a couple of other of these towns back in the day.  The last one I visited was where the University of the North was located in Bophuthatswana.

It was a sad sight, seeing small, dirty children in threadbare clothing asleep on the stairs at the entrance to the casino while their parents played the slots and after losing some money of my own I had a pretty strong aversion to gambling.

This sets the stage for my recent trip to Vegas for a conference where I was to be available to assist in the booth for product demos.  I knew that I'd use the casino at least a little but wanted to also see what else there was on offer there.

Friends of mine moved to Vegas a few years ago.  I met one of them (Bruce) in 1979 when he spent a year studying in South Africa and we have kept in touch.  I met Gary, his partner, after I arrived in the USA in 2001.

I planned to leave for Vegas a couple of days early to spend a day with him seeing some of the natural attractions near the city.  It was lucky that I did because hurricane Irene wrecked havoc with travel on the East Coast on the day I should have left and would probably have prevented my trip.

I arrived in the afternoon and Bruce kindly agreed to drive me around in the evening in search of a good location to shoot the Strip as the sun set.  The Strip is a section of Las Vegas with tall beautifully lit buildings and is the main attraction for entertainment - certainly for tourists.  It turns out that there are casinos and attractions that the locals prefer out in the suburbs because the casinos in the Strip are a lot more expensive than these.

The city is spread over a pretty wide area in a large flat valley and it is hot!  We drove with the air conditioner on full blast and visited raised roads and some parking lots around the South West and West of the city before driving right into the strip.

I managed to get a few photographs but none of them were especially appealing.

Bruce had agreed to take a day trip with me on the next day leaving early (5:30am) to hike up some hills west of the city where there are some caves dug into the mountain (most likely from mining activity).  The dawn was beautiful and I got much better images of the Strip from there.  These caves are pretty big, but from a little googling it appears that there are larger caves that you can explore near Las Vegas in the Red Rock Canyon and elsewhere.

After the morning hike we went for a drive to Red Rock Canyon (more on this later) with a slight detour to look at some farmsteads on the eastern side of the canyon and then on a scenic drive through the canyon, stopping at several of the lookout points to take short walks and to photograph the amazing rock formations.

From there it was into the city to my hotel and an opportunity to visit some of the opulent hotels in the Las Vegas Strip.  Bruce and Gary both recommended the Belagio and Paris as two hotels worth visiting and they are both really close to the hotel I stayed in so after a shower I headed out to see them.

The hotels are something else.  They are massive!  Each of these hotels easily takes up the space of a large shopping mall in any big city and you have to look out when you walk through them because if you take a wrong turn down one of the corridors of shops you could end up with a mile long detour to get back to the main street of the Strip.

The first thing that I saw in the Belagio (I came in along one of the passages that is lined with designer shops) was the ceiling, festooned with inverted umbrellas of various colors and sizes.  The decor and attention to detail in the decoration is breathtaking and you can see that millions of dollars is spent on these amazing building architectures.  I have to say that having seen movies which feature these hotels, I was not prepared for the size or level of detail that I saw - I expected it to be more pre-fabricated, rather than brick and mortar and life-sized (in some cases larger than life) statues and decorations.

The Belagio is also famous for the fountains that are set to music and perform every 15minutes to the rapt attention of the people lined up along the road for the spectacle.

The Paris was similarly impressive with the large Eiffel tower structure straddling over the hotel.  I was very surprised to see how it came right into the building and I couldn't help snapping a shot of it as I came into the casino floor.

Out on the street, my amazement turned to dismay as I came across the grubby vendors with "Girls, girls" emblazoned on their Tee shirts handing out pamphlets advertizing the rent boys and college girls dying to come to my room (yeah, right!)  They slap the cards against their hand to get your attention and then shove them at you as you walk past.  A middle-aged single guy was of particular interest to them and after seeing what they were handing out I found myself shaking my head at them all the way down the street.

On the walkways between the buildings (did I mention that it is HOT - even at night) were a few dotted buskers who also seemed particularly sad to me - they, having not made it into the entertainment of the city shows, were sitting on the sidewalk trying to perform for money or simply begging with humorous signs that were somehow not amusing "I can't lie, I need a beer" and "Smile if you touch yourself".  One particularly poignant sign for me was "Too proud to prostitute" next to a young girl playing a keyboard.

A couple of these buskers also had animals with them.  One had a small kitten who looked pretty sick to me, lying in the music case of her violin and the other had a dog who looked pretty happy to be where we was.  His owner, when I asked if I could photograph offered to add interest to the shot with some actrobatics of his own.

I spent several days at the conference and took walks on my way back to the hotel each evening via some of the other hotels. You can see a slideshow of all the Vegas pictures here including some of the other hotels and street scenes and more pictures of the caves.

India Day 2011

I happened upon India Day in 2010 when a friend of mine mentioned that it was a free event at the Boston Hatch Shell on the Charles river.  Anne and I made our way into the city on the subway and spent a wonderful afternoon watching the colorful dancers and listing to the vibrant rhythms of the music from all over India.

Particularly enjoyable were the fusion sounds of traditional and modern Bollywood songs that had the crowds singing along.

This year I specifically looked out for the event on the Boston calendar.  The food, sounds and dance drawing me back for another feast.  We settled down with samosas and some curried chicken and, despite the intermittent rain, enjoyed the stories and songs of the event.

The atmosphere and general mood is so friendly and I love the movement and hand gestures of the dance.

Click on the link below for a slideshow.

India Day 2011

Lowell Music Festival

Touted as the largest free folk festival in the United States, the Lowell Music Festival hosts folk music and a rich variety of street vendors selling multi-national food and crafts over the last weekend of July every year.

This was the 25th anniversary of the first festival and my third visit since we arrived in Massachusetts in 2001.

It is a great opportunity to experiment with performance photography.  There are 6 stages and street performances so if you can get near the front you can photograph to your heart's content.

This year, following a tip from a friend who has been attending for years, we arrive mid-morning and set up chairs in a shady spot on the Boarding House Park lawn.  From there you can take excursions to the street vendors for food, or walk around and look at street performers.


A selection of scenes from the Festival from tbouwer on Vimeo.

There is a chance as the crowds grow in the afternoon, that your space will be invaded.  People don't quite disassemble your chairs, but they will sit right in front of them until you get back and politely ask them to move.  An old couple sitting in front of us nearly had a stand-up fight with some people who took over their towel while they were off looking for food.

The city of Lowell was a powerhouse of the textile industry in the 19th Century and is referred to as the cradle of the industrial revolution in America because it was one of the first industrial towns in the USA.  Ironically, the textile industry's move to the South and the eventual decline of these towns in the North was made possible by the advent of steam powered motors which replaced the water-powered mill in the South where there were fewer rivers and cheaper labor.

Lowell has recovered somewhat from the steep decline over the loss of textiles in the early 20th Century and has a great feel with the large brick buildings that once supported the industry.

The center of the city, almost encircled by the canals that drove the mills, is where the festival takes place.

This year we spent most of our time at the Boarding House Park stage.  The main artists make a circuit of the stages and we watched several really impressive acts.

First up were the Birmingham 6-man Quartet.  A four part harmony gospel quartet from Birmingham.  They were incredibly energetic - led by their music director James Alex Taylor, with his brothers and one nephew, along with two other singers.  A few very versatile vocalists!

I took a break from the performance to walk around the streets and visit a trolley museum.  Lowell operates some restored trolleys on a 1.2mile track that has been electrified for tourism.

There are street vendors plying their crafts and selling their art along many of the streets along the canal and in the city.

I arrived back in time to see an Argentinian group called "Hector del Curto's Tango Quartet".  He plays an accordion instrument called a bandoneon and they had an enchanting cellist and energetic bass and piano accompaniment.  Two dancers also gave a very taught and energetic performance of the Tango on stage.

The show went live on public radio with the next performance, an Irish group called Dervish.  They sang and played beautiful  melodies.  Their lead singer, Cathy Jordan has a beautiful voice.

Another break from the performance while the Quebe Sisters were singing and a visit back to the street vendors.

We stopped to watch a street performance of Chinese dance

and then back to the show for Shemekia Copeland, a renowned Blues singer with a powerful voice and a big stage presence.  Her show was a great way to end the day.

The festival is over two days, starting at noon each day and going into the night.  We had friends to visit in the evening so left before the night performances.

Parade

July the 4th is a big day in America and over the past several years I have enjoyed going to the annual parade at Manchester-by-the-sea - the nearest town that hosts one each year.  You have to get there about an hour or two before the parade starts and the spectators are often dressed in red, white and blue.

This first photograph is from 2008.  A collage of people waiting for the parade to start (including Anne - top left).  It rained and was unseasonably cold that day.   Usually the 4th is hot and humid here.

The parades are a big deal for children and in our town they always look and feel like the quaint parades depicted in American movies that I saw growing up in South Africa.

The minutemen have been a regular feature of the parade and my challenge each year is to try to take a photograph of them as they fire their muskets.

The minutemen are not always happy to be photographed.  In 2009 I took this photograph and was surprised afterwards to see the rather wary expression of one of the soldiers. Perhaps I was just a little too enthusiastic for him?

The parade usually starts with old cars followed by old and new ambulances with their sirens blaring.  A good number of old bicycles also make up a popular part of the parade - my favorite being the penny farthing (which may be called a high-wheeler in America).

Some years we have had real marching bands from colleges or high schools outside of the area who come to be part of the parade.  I imagine that it is expensive to bring bands in for these parades.  They are very polished and I have enjoyed the occasional interaction with them as they come past.  Last year was very hot but this band member was having a blast!

Veterans and active soldiers are a feature of the parades as well.  This is from the 2011 parade and is a Vietnam Veteran being driven by a soldier who has served in Iraq.

The minutemen were on parade again this year and although I didn't get a good shot of them firing their muskets, I had my wide angle lens with me and got some interesting angles on the drummers.

 

The rag-tag minutemen are also used during Patriot football games - they fire off their muskets after every touchdown.

One of the colorful characters in the town parade (at least on the periphery of the parade) is Uncle Sam, who hosts a breakfast at his home along the parade route.

The bands are also sometimes somewhat more ad-hoc.  There are brass bands and Dixie bands from the area and sometimes reggae and Jamaican Steel drum bands who bring their music to the parade.

...and each year we have the pipers who come with their haunting music.

The  more recent musical styles are also represented - belting out from the the back of flat-bed trucks.

Today was another great parade day.

Happy Independence Day.