Sunday, October 26, 2008

waiting for the sun



I had about five minutes before the sun disappeared to photograph this young man sitting at the edge of the south bluff at Fort Lawton looking across the water toward the southern end of the Olympic range, facing almost directly into the sun. Watching the sun is something people do here and probably everywhere else. I see something like this several times a week. Reminds me of my ancestors who gathered at Stonehenge.

Fisherman's Wharf - Ballard



Stopped by the wharf on my way home but it was too cold and windy for doing much night photography and working with a tripod isn't my normal way shooting anymore so I didn't do much. Took a few shots and then just decided it wasn't going anywhere and packed up the gear and came home.

Fun Dog










Went up to Fort Lawton today just to see the place. Took the cameras along just in case. These dog photos remind me a little of cave paintings. If judged by some mundane criteria for photographic quality like sharpness they don't pass the test. They were taken with an Olympus e510 + 70-300 ZD toward the long end 250-300mm at f8 1/250th IS mode one (not the panning mode, it didn't occur to me to switch to mode 2) , panning fast to keep up with the dog but not even an attempt to capture the movement of the dog. Mostly this was focusing practice on a fast moving object using auto-focus in mode one (shutter activated) with all three AF sensors active. This reminded me of the dispute a year or so ago about the Olympus E3 in Africa promo video where the cheetah was running and the camera was trying to grab something with one of the AF sensors and only when the cheetah was in the clear where there was no competition for a focus target did the AF lock on the animal. In view of the now notorious focusing problems with the E3 it is kind of humours to look back on the discussion of that video in which we were speculating about the capabilities of the E3 to track a moving subject.