I had fun photographing 'stuff' at the Steam Railroading Institute maintenance area. In the old and new stuff, lots of interesting shapes, forms and contrasts. There were so many targets of opportunity.
There were a number of older, naturally weathered cars that reside in the maintenance area. Some of the cars were recognizable such as tankers and box cars. Other cars were more of a single purpose maintenance vehicle with large pieces of machinery attached.
Other targets were lots of stores of spare and fabricated parts. In those areas there were many shapes and colors. Great stuff for 'artsy' images.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to go back at a different time of year when the trains are out of the shed and maybe some better light. But for now, this excursion was an excellent time.
This is part of a wheel assembly of the next railroad project for the SRI. When I entered the parking area I saw the bottom frame skeleton of a steam engine. I was instantly fascinated. Rust. It was outdoors and it looked it. Rust. On the other side was this placard with the rest of the story. So it is there for a reason.
This skeleton as it is now is just a mess of shapes, light and rust. This was soooo coool. Rust.
So the following is part of the (as you are looking at it) right side toward the front wheel. Looks a bit odd, but this part of the wheel has the offset weight. I wanted to get a number of seemingly unrelated shapes. Did I mention, I dig the rust?
This is definitely out of my comfort zone. Screams "Artsy"!
Of all the images I viewed when looking at airshow images, probably the most common of the Blue Angels was something along these lines. The aircraft streaking across the sky in formation with smoke. And all I can say is, I now have mine.
As I don't know a lot about the Blue Angel program, my host told me to watch for the maneuvers shortly after getting into the air. There is a transition from four in a straight line (for going down the runway at the same time) to a four ship diamond formation. This four ship diamond formation is the start of their program.
In order to do this, one aircraft must leave the straight line and take place (below) behind the lead aircraft. Thanks to my host, I was waiting for this to happen.
I wasn't disappointed. Half of me wanted to see the maneuver, and the other half wanted to see it through the camera. Guess which half won?
This image didn't need a lot of help. There is a little cropping for the frame but other than that, it all worked. By this time of day the sun moved into a better position and was not directly overhead. As it was also behind us, no shadows. Recipe for a good image.
The gear is coming up and the #4 is moving into position.
It always amazes me how light is captured through a lens and funneled to a sensor or film can get detail. In each aircraft, you can clearly see the pilot and the sky through the cockpit canopy.
One of the subjects I wanted to work on for this airshow was to get closer to the pilots in the cockpit. I've seen pictures of pilots close up with helmets on and visors down. Really impressive. This image was at the maximum extent of my lens, with all the math it is 600 mm. Plus a little cropping.
That being said, it is still a good image.
I had taken quite a few, but this is the best of the lot. I want a shot with both pilots looking at the crowd. If both were waving, that would be a bonus, but I'll take one wave.
This was an interesting image to work with. There are areas of sharpness, and some with blur. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. The blur didn't look 'natural' or camera initiated. The blur on the rear aircraft is caused by the engine exhaust from the pair in front of this pair. Issue resolved.
Unfortunately this is about as close as the aircraft got to us, just before taking a taxiway to the runway. But I'll take it.
Last fall I got hooked on the steam railroad engine, PM 1225. After the holiday run, the engine spends the winter going through maintenance at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owasso, MI.
Today, the Flint Photography club had the behind the scenes tour. As far as the tour goes, we were paired up with a few volunteers who had a wealth of knowledge, and made sure we didn't hurt ourselves. And although the trains and support cars were interesting, my end of the rainbow was all the unused/forgotten cars. What stories could they tell?
Some of the machines, I had no idea what they were for. But the colors and textures were too good to pass up. The rust, the cracked pain and metal, just can't find that anywhere.
So this is not a picture of a train, per se. It is on a train car, trust me. This appears to be a mobile maintenance tool.
I worked with a 35 mm prime lens for the day. I traveled light and if I had to do it over again I'd do the same. In later indoor shots, I could have used a flash, but I didn't, and that decision could use some review. But the outdoor shots were pretty good despite the bland sky. Or in shots with no sky, it all works out.
This could be a winch of some sort, but most of the internal mechanics are gone. But that is OK, the exterior is just fine. I like the layout of this, I usually don't get this lucky for everything to fall into place. And what would this look like in Paint?
No favorites here, I like both!
You go away for a few weeks, and.... The Eaglets arrive.
This morning I went to the nest early and caught a most interesting scene. Dad Eagle was sitting out of the nest, but keeping close. Mom Eagle was in the nest with what looks to be two Eaglets. This was so cool. I wasn't able to stay long, but will return soon.
Back to this morning. I've been lucky on previous trips that the sky has been a favorable blue. Today, not so much. Back to Michigan flat.
As always, this is the reach of my equipment - and a pretty aggressive crop. The subject is too good to not show. It is acceptable on the monitor test. And will look good on a tablet.
Maybe next time I can get a family portrait?
Taking a break from the airplanes, both on the trip and now.
My host and I decided to ditch the airshow on the second day as the images probably weren't going to get any better. And I wanted to see more of South Carolina than an airstrip. So the day was swamp critters and pelicans.
We started the day at Charleston County Park. The Caw Caw Interpretive Center is a wonderful place to see, in my case, a bunch of small critters. Didn't see any alligators.
But we did see plenty of these little green guys. Or gals. I don't get to see many of these types of critters. Unless I'm walking though the Pet Store.
By this time I change the metering mode to SPOT. Life is now much easier. Anyway, this little guy, or gal, was the first critter I saw that day. I was really happy. My host for the day wasn't too embarrassed with my excitation over a common lizard. Ha. Friends with a sense of humor, priceless.
Good way to start the day.
This might be the story of the only weapon system to be cancelled early because it was too good. Of the original 750 planned for, only 187 copies were built. Like anything the government does, there were lots of delays, cost overruns and bad luck. But when it is in the air, it is the baddest unit in the sector. For a few years, the Pentagon said this system outpaced the 'other guys'. So the program was whittled down bit by bit over the years. Now that the 'other guys' are catching up, it will cost too much to re-start the program again. Government.
As to the show at the Air Show, the demo was great. Lots of yanks and banks, and pretty much constant after burner. Loud and plenty of vibrations. If this doesn't inspire one to be part of air power - well nothing will.
Catching a little A/B in the day is pretty cool.
The day was dry, so no vapor trails or clouding. Too bad, that would have been icing on the cake.
The class of 45 Demo (http://classof45.com/) team tours many air shows every year. The team consists of two WWII era prop driven fighters, the P51D Mustang and the F4U-4 Corsair. Both aircraft have thousands of hours in restoration invested.
This is one of the acts that really excited me to go to this year's show. I've seen many P51s in flight and P51 kit planes as well. I've seen a static display of the F4U, but never heard one or seen on in flight. Bucket list item. Bucket list item now crossed off the list as completed.
I could listen to WWII aircraft engines all day.
The show was fun to watch, as both aircraft performed many maneuvers.
The photography part of this was challenging. First absolute sunshine. The blue reflection off the metal skin of the P51 had a blueish tone. And the P51 is at one end of the light spectrum and the F4U is at the other. And to capture the prop blur correctly, the shutter speed has to be slower. I took maybe 50-55 shots of the act and maybe only 5 came out to be usable - my standards. many would look good on smaller medium like a phone or table, but we march to the monitor test here.
This is at the furthest reach of my equipment, 450 mm. Just another argument to go shopping.
One of the new tricks I've picked up from this trip, from perfect blue skies is to use a graduated filter for the light level. If there is no definition in the sky, make some. Looks fairly natural to me.
Not that I'm an expert in four engine fixed wing heavy cargo aircraft, but I know more about the subject than I do fighter aircraft or helicopters. The C17 entered the inventory in 1993, just after I exited the inventory after flying eight years on the biggest of the big, the C5 Galaxy as a Flight Engineer. I remember news of the C17 testing. And I remember the news of no Flight Engineer station. As the wave of the future, that did not play any part in my decision to exit. The C5 will always be irreplaceable in my Air Force.
But this post is about the C17. I think I'm over not liking it now for purely personal reasons. And when I did see it fly up close, it is an awesome example of a heavy cargo aircraft acting like a fighter.
I did get on a C17 when out at Reno last year and had a chance to chat with the flight crew. I took some good natured ribbing about the FE being replaced by some box with a few switches in the pilot's overhead console. I didn't mention that pilots have been replaced for years by George, or Otto, or whatever the current name is for the auto-pilot. No sense getting tossed on the tarmac. Live to kid another day. Seriously, was a great conversation with the crew.
The C17 can haul a lot of cargo. It can load up with just over 170,000 pounds of cargo. Like the C5, it has multiple configuration for either cargo, troops or med-evac. There are very few places where the C17 can't operate.
When I watched the take off of this aircraft, it took me back to the days when I was on the other side of the crowd control barrier. For an air show take off, we'd sit at the end of the runway, run up the engines to peace time maximum, sit on the brakes for a while to build up as much energy we could. When the brakes were released, our empty aircraft would hurtle down the runway until the pilot would pull back on the column and that big cargo aircraft would leap off the runway and climb. And climb. And climb. Very few rides at an amusement park could match what we were doing.
And so this C17 did the same thing. The process to build up energy was the same, and the flight path was the same. For a ex-cargo hauler, it was awesome to watch.
Photographically speaking this is interesting as the sky almost matches the aircraft color scheme. Coincidence? Maybe a camo paint job would have been better?
That's a pretty good climb angle for a cargo aircraft.
I left this air show thinking that what I saw just wasn't fair. And like the fabled bumble bee, none of this stuff should fly. But these craft do fly, and more. And when the air show announcer starts off the F35B introduction saying that what you will see is not the full capability of the Lightning II because those capabilities not shown are still classified, that is way too cool. And a lot of what I saw should have been classified. What else can this do?
Still images can not do the F-35B justice. But I'll try.
In this image, I wanted to get the pilot. I tried to do this with a lot of the aircraft (when I remembered!).
There were no issues with this image. It is cropped for framing purposes. My interest when I saw this was the helmet. From what I see, the helmet itself is $400k. Wonder what the helmet bag looks like?
This isn't your daddy's fighter jet.
While in Charleston, one must see the pelican circus that is in continual performance. For the most part, I get to see only sea gulls locally. So I had a request to see pelicans when in Charleston. We spent some time on a waterway and I now have over 400 pelican pictures. At least one must be good, right?
I am always in awe of nature photographers that display their catches of a critter in action. And that action that is part if the image. With birds in water, wither the landing, take off or fish capture.
In this case, the pelican is in the process of (a crash) landing in the water. For me, there's lots going on. The bird, the bird's colors and the water.
This is at the full length of my lens reach, essentially 450 mm. And it is cropped a bit. That being said, it is pretty crisp and clear.
In my efforts to "fit a frame', this does it about as well as I can. In this image, the bigger the better, looks great on the monitors.
In the times we all have of wondering what other paths in life we could have taken, flying a heavy lift helicopter like the Jolly Green or Super Stallion was one for me. I was lucky to be part of the C5 cargo aircraft crew and would have been happy working on the helicopter heavies as well.
This is the CH-53E Super Stallion. At the airshow, the event was listed as MAGTF Demo. MAGTF is the Marine Air - Ground Task Force. The unit is designed to work together with Command, Ground Combat, Aviation Combat and Combat Service Support. As part of the demo, there were F/A18s, an Osprey and the Super Stallion.
This helicopter has been in service since the early 80's when 177 were built. The aircraft will lift just over 17 tons and fly at speeds up to 170 knots. The size is limited due to a requirement to operate from ships. Even with the limitation , the helicopter is the one of the largest in the world.
This one was coming in for a landing as part of the Demo.
The image was shot at 1.3 image size. The effective focal length is 320 mm. With the shutter speed at 1/200 sec, that is a recipe for disaster. But the target was large and slow allowing me to get a pretty good capture.
There are seven titanium - fiberglass composite main rotor blades and the flex can be seen here. That unit can move a lot of troops and equipment.
Until last week, I had very few shots of a pelican bird. That changed. I mentioned this to my host last week and as a great host would, he provided more pelican shot opportunities than I could hope for.
We spent a few hours in the Charleston Port area. Like any water area with fishing and shrimping as a way of life, there are many avian scavengers. And in this case, the avian part are the pelicans.
This pelican however is just cruising from one place to another.
This image however is more of a story about not screwing up with a good opportunity. And seeing the combo of the D500 and 70-300 lens getting a fast focus lock and keeping the lock.
There are many pelican shots that will probably make the blog, but I really like how this turned out. I like the green bokeh and the other flying critter. The subject bird is razor sharp all the way through. I think the frame is right, no need to crop any closer.
This image shows the difference between the normal image size and the 1.3 image size use with many of the aircraft shots. In my opinion, just a much better image quality-wise.
It could be a good birding season for me.
The AV-8B Harrier II is a decedent of Harrier jet I saw when stationed at Okinawa AB in the early '80s. The design is late 80's as an American version of a British Harrier. The purpose of the aircraft is V/STOL, Vertical Short Take Off and Landing. This design allows the craft to essentially hover and fly close to super sonic. Daniel Bernoulli is rolling in the grave. A fixed wing aircraft is supposed to use Mr. Bernoulli's principals to create lift over the fixed wing by moving forward at some speed. The makers of the Rolls-Royce Pegasus engines have overcome gravity.
The aircraft is multi-purpose. It has been used for close in air support, escort, fighter, and many other roles. It can be outfitted with missiles, bombs and has a 25 mm cannon. Gun at a knife fight sort of stuff. (I said this a lot at the show.)
This was taken in the 1.3 image size, which means instead of a 20 mega-pixel, it is about 12 MP. I get a bit more reach through the lens with this. it says the focal length is 210 mm, but is is closer to 420 mm by the time all the math is done.
The original image is very dark. I had to get a bit creative with creating duplicate images that were much lighter and then doing some blending magic. There will be a lot of that in my future with these images.
At this time the sun was almost directly overhead. Everything under the wings and undercarriage was dark. The trick was to get some light in the shadows. there was also some sun burn on the top of the aft section which needed some darkening. The reflection of the blue sky is visible on the cockpit canopy. There is a blue reflective haze everywhere. The trees might be a bit over-saturated, but what the heck, I was in South Carolina.
Back from the Air Show trip. In short, it was great. Weather was absolutely perfect, and perfect for the sun tan (burn). I thought the show was good. That being said, some veterans of the show said it has been much better in the past. What do I know, I'm only a rookie from north of the Mason-Dixon line that was happy to be in the sun for a few days, eh? The Blue Angel program was a bit on the short side due to some show environmental issues but they did their bit, and it was fantastic.
Photographically speaking, I'll start listing the errors.
The biggest error I made was to change metering. I went from spot to center weighted. What was I thinking? Who knows, but this is another example of what I do best - take a working process and break it. Most of the military craft shots taken with the sky as the background are very dark. The flat surface of the aircraft played games with the camera sensors. Stealth, right? When I did chimp the pictures, the histograms looked OK, but in the sunlight I had trouble with the back display to see the images. However, all that means is a few more steps in the RAW processing. I was also purposely shooting at a -1 EV because of the sunlight and trying to reduce the (sun) burns in the image. So erroring on the dark side is much better than the alternative. That was the biggest blunder.
As to what went right, I chose prop shot speeds at 1/160 of a second. That worked real well. The only aircraft that didn't play well with that speed was the Osprey. The blades are pretty much frozen in those shots. That's still a little fast for taxiing shots, but stuff was happening fast. No time to make changes. Or sometimes, all day to make changes. just the way it flows. All in all, this worked out much better than the previous shots in Reno. Progress.
All of the shots were taken in MANUAL with AUTO ISO. I believe that worked well. From what I can tell, only one shot creeped above ISO 400. I did get a lot of practice moving the command dials. I will say I missed only a few shots because of this practice, I shot some jets with prop speeds. OK, but really didn't miss anything. Aperture settings were all over the map. Due to the bright light, I had to go higher than f/11 and I usually don't like to go there. You gotsta do what you gotsta do.
Aside from the air show, I now have many pelican photos. We spent some time in the Charleston port. Along with the pelicans, there were lots of shrimp boats and shrimp boats taking a day off from the shrimping business and doing Sunday duty as a party boat. Scary to think some of those people might be driving home. Looked like pirate fun.
One of the non-advertised gems my host had up his sleeve was the Stono Church. This building is completely run down, in an old south way. However in the middle of the one room, there is an old piano that is passing in time away. And on this piano are a number of maybe fake flowers? This is the type of photo opportunity I see that comes along to others in my photo club, but not me. Until now. Hope I didn't blow it.
I spent some time in a southern wildlife area refuge. Roots, newts and a few snakes. I don't see this type of scenery locally, I was just like a kid at Christmas. I don't think I embarrassed my host. Much.
I had worked on a number of these images last week while traveling with my laptop. However. When I finally got back to viewing these on the home PC, it just wasn't the same. So much of the work done on the road will have to be re-done here.
Great trip and time. Already planning the 2020 version. Looks like the Charleston AB Air Show is next April. Getting that time cleared on my calendar. I'll be ready for some warmth, again.
Horse week was Fun! I learned a lot. I think a lot of my shots came out better than I expected, due to the subject. I stressed the cameras a bit, getting out of my normal comfort zone with speed and ISO settings. Looking forward to going out again later this year. However, it's now time to put away this subject for a while.
So now I'm in Air Show mode.
Next weekend I'll be in Beaufort, SC for the MCAS Beaufort Air Show.
I don't recall flying into MCAS Beaufort back in the day, but I'm sure we had plenty of flights out in the time of Desert Storm. With one runway over 12,000 ft we could have really loaded up. I do remember I had more flights out of Pope AFB, just up the road, that runway was relatively short at 7,500 ft and was always a challenge. Sorry, old man memory kicking in. Back to the present.
The big draw here will be the Blue Angles. There will be other military demos such as a F-22 Raptor and a F-35B (STOVL) Lightning II. When I was stationed at Okinawa in the early '80s, I saw the Harrier in action. ***Crap, another old man memory rabbit hole. I need to come up with a warning when those kick in.*** I thought that the Harrier was kinda neat? This Lightning II should be awesome!
One of the other performers is named the Class of 45. These are two WWII fighter aircraft, F4U-4 Corsair and P51-D Mustang. I saw a few Mustangs in Reno, and don't get me wrong, I'm in awe just thinking of wave after wave of these planes doing their thing in their time. However, I have never seen a Corsair in flight. Or on the ground with props turning and engine doing it's thing. I'm thinking the sound will be nothing short of amazing. Pity the fool that gets in my way of a money shot.
I'm sure the other performers will be fun to watch as well, but my head is in the military stuff. The show will be fun.
Weather information, five days out:
I see upper 70's in my future!
I will be going with a good friend from the Pelican days. (Maybe I'll get a Pelican shot?) He is a veteran of this show, I'm sure we'll be in great position.
I'm just trying to keep in mind my rules, below 1/180 for the props. Over 1/2000 for the Blue Angles, except Fat Albert. The rest will take care of itself.
And now for something a little different. All of the horse eventing images so far have lots of added scenery in the image. I wanted to try to get a bit closer to the horse, while still having the understanding there was a jump involved.
I came across this one and what caught me was the mane flying free. Once I saw this, I went back through the other images only to find many of the horses had shorter manes than I have hair. And those with longer manes were not jumping. Is there a correlation? Maybe?
The only problem in this image was this wasn't a close up to begin with and would require a pretty good crop. But you have to try.
I did some enlargement work through On One prior to the crop. It's not a foolproof process, but I think it helps a little.
This was shot at f/5.6, later in the day. There was some shadow fixin' that was required.
The horse is pretty much all white. I hate to say unfortunately, because it is a beautiful creature. So it is not unfortunate, but all that means is you have to look harder for definition. It is there. But the flying features are there. Ears froward. Mane in zero gravity. Both the rider and the horse looking for terra firma.
I think it framed out well. Looks good on the monitors. But note to self that I'll soon forget, don't be afraid to get in tight.
The paint version turned out really well. The white of the horse works here.
OK, the title is a bit odd. I often struggle with titles. Seems like a simple thing, but how do you come come up with multiple names for essentially the same action? I have Jump in the Sun, because for some reason the sunlight caught my name. There's pressure here.
In this image, the illusion to me is the jump is more for distance than height. The rider and the horse seem to be on the same page. This isn't their first jump.
This jump also has the flower pot accessory, how cool is that?
Photographically speaking, this jump has a flower pot accessory. How cool is that? That shade of red doesn't appear anywhere else that I can remember. This shot was in the almost overhead sun. It was baking the green grass and the jump wood. It was set for a -1 EV, and all that did was increase whatever shadow there was on the subjects. Nice challenge.
This image needed more than the usual amount of help. The grass was barely green. The jump was washed out. And the shadows needed a little boost.
I've gone from spot metering to center weighted for these shots. Tough to tell if it is really helping or not. Seems like it should. I'm happy with the lighting in the camera, or at least I have a good idea of what it's going to do. I've found on sunny days, all my Nikons respond well to a -1 EV setting. For most of my sheltered life, that would work. But with this horse event, there are more shadows than what I'm used to seeing. The JPG conversions in the camera handle them OK, but with RAW processing, I think I can do better.
The real winner, to me, in this is the grass. The green is there. The jump isn't blown out, there is some good definition in the wood. The subject works for me too.
In my somewhat humble, but ignorant, opinion about horse jumps, this jump was one of more difficult jumps on the course. The jump is about three feet high, to the untrained eye, and has a slope down landing. Could have been the best shots of the day, but rookie camera dude mistakes made the image what it is.
I heard from one of the riders that they were going to take this jump. Problem for me was I had the wrong camera/lens on me at the time. The lens was too long. I had to position myself too far away from the jump and not be in the landing area. And I ended up behind some low hanging branches. Not only did this image require a lot of tree branch removal editing, but for the second rider one of the branches caught the AF - and.... It didn't end well. But the branch looked good.
Lucky for me, I'm used to missing the money shot. I'll recover.
By this time in the day, I had opened my aperture to f/5. That created a pretty high speed. I was far enough away the DOF didn't kill the image.
Yea, that branch. Other than that, I really like this. If this was me on a quad, I'd be over the handle bars. The rider and horse are good.
Last weekend's adventure to the horse farm and the Eventing practice grossed over 500 images.
And I said I'd share them.
First step, get it a manageable number. Down to 100, check.
Next, apply the necessary basic edits. How to do basic edits for over 100 images? I shot JPGs, but I don't do any in camera effects and the images really don't come out so well. Not good enough to show. With my name on it.
For the RAW files I figured out how create a pre-set in ACR. The important part was to set the light levels levels to AUTO. It is doable. And I added my usual starting points. And I could do multiples. Like 30 at a time. Like in 3 minutes. There is a time saver.
From that point, I needed to save the altered RAW files to a JPG format. Found how to do that. From there I had to touch up about half of the images for things like leveling and some additional light leveling work.
In all, about two hours of work. Not bad. Better than the camera JPG route. At this pint, I can't see any reason to shoot JPG format any more.
Now for the dispersal. I like Dropbox. I have a few of the Club members doing a test of the page and download. I should be able to send out the notices tomorrow that the images are ready.
Not only was the adventure fun, but I backed into some learning as well.
I need to get out more.
Part of the Horse Event cross country course involves the horse and rider transiting through a shallow water obstacle about 30 yards in length. The depth is only a few inches and there is a solid bottom. It looks to be about then yards wide. There are shallow and steep entrances/exits. And there is a fairly high jump in the middle should one want to take it.
I hung around the water obstacle for a number of photographs. Just about every participant for the day went through it a few times. Get the horses ready for the cross country season. For the most part, this exercise was uneventful. Except. One rider wanted to take her horse in the water from the steeper step. And the horse wanted no part of that. Instead the horse stretched its neck down below its feet to drink the water. Almost pulled the rider right over. Would have been funny, but not flattering. No pictures.
I have a number of images of horses moving through the water at a quick pace. I like how the water is disturbed and somewhat flying around. Splashing.
While I was there, there were two riders who took the jump. This is one of them.
There is water flying everywhere. The only eye trick that gets to me is something I can't fix. The horse has shin guards that are black with a blue accent. Just looks odd (to me) in the image where it is. The sun is right, there are greens and blues. Did I say I liked the way the water was splashed?
I started the day shooting at a higher aperture, f/6.4. later in the day I opened up to f/5 to see if bokeh was going to be an issue at a later date. The evergreen trees just at the end of the water are OK. To me, this is acceptable DOF. The more open I can be, the better. The speed a a bit high, but I wasn't going for any motion effect. ISO 450 is right in the acceptable range.
This was a pretty simple edit. The environment was good. Lots of good light to work with. Or not work with 'cause it was there. No light compensations. One of the few times it hit it just right.
I spent most of today culling down the number of images from yesterday's adventure from just over 500 to about 110. Something I can work with. Since my philosophy is 'spray and pray', I have multiple shots around each image that I saved. I'm looking for the best image in the sequence. Not everyone agrees with that strategy, but it is my time to 'waste'.
What I found is I like the fairly head on jump shots, or at least fairly close to head on. This is my first time doing this, so don't tell me I'm missing most of the jump, that is the back half of the horse. I'll figure that out on my own.
Most of the saved images are of horses and riders in the initial sequence of the jump. And a lot look alike. There is also somewhat of a challenge of positioning. Can't always be where I want to be. Again, my first time. Go easy.
This image is one of the very few shots where I am perpendicular to the jump. On reflection, I won't shy away from these, I like it.
The challenge of the this shot was the top of the jump was reflecting the sunlight. I shot with 0EV, and am lucky to get away with it. There is a little definition, so the surface is a little blown. Also the jump behind the subject it too light - and distracts from the subject. Other than that, the image takes care of itself. There are some nice greens, natural. And the dull oranges of fallen leaves.
One of the problems with shooting in manual mode is when you move from shadows to sunlight and don't make the corrections necessary, you can wind up with some interesting numbers. Like a speed of 1/3200 second. And ISO 1250. probably could have dialed in some more realistic numbers. Ha.
This is the camera JPG:
The surface of the jumps move the eye away from the horse and rider. The dark of the horse's neck also plays games with me, so I'l like to lighten that up just a bit.
And this is what I came up with.
With those two changes, my eyes stay on the horse and rider, doing the jump thing.
And the paint effect:
So far, the paint effect is pretty good on these.
