More Trick Photography – the Smoking Hot Potato Effect!

January 21st, 2012 Thomasso

Actually, this photography trick falls under the category of creating fake smoke, or the illusion of smoke without using something that is smoking. You can use just about any object, as the example I seen on the Internet was an apple, but becuase I did not have any apples, I substituted the prop with a potato instead.  Also, string is the main part for the effect; I did not have any string handy, so I used a rubber band as a stand-in for the smoke effect. Lastly, the flashlight, which, if you can adjust the light beam to a narrow focus, then better the effect, but it is not necessary.

Make sure everything is focused up, then set your lens focus to manual (if you are using a zoom lens with “AF” switch on it), and of course, your camera has to be mounted on a tripod. Tape your string to the end of the flashlight, or in my case, a rubber band. Next, turn out the lights in the room, and set the exposure to about 5 seconds. Press the shutter button, with the flashlight on and wiggle and aim the flashlight over top of the potato until the five second exposure is finished.

The wiggling rubber band with the flashlight makes the effect of smoke, while having a black background. Looks like real smoke! Cool eh?

This took me five minutes to set up and about ten shots before I was happy with what I got. DSLR cameras are so much fun! Mine is a Sony A33, a beginner’s camera.

No potatoes were harmed, maimed, or killed during this exercise!

Source:

“Fake Smoke” by Jbphotography June 2011.

Posted in Art, General, Photographs | 2 Comments »

Fort Langley and Filming of Super Natural

January 20th, 2012 Thomasso

For the last couple of days, during the little freezing weather stint, the sleepy little town of Fort Langley has being the epicenter for the television science fiction/horror show, “Super Natural.” They have being filming here for most of all day and night over the last two days now, mostly taking up the down town area between Mavis Avenue and 96th Avenue along Glover Road.

I just found out that this was “Super Natural” being filming here from some of my Twitter friends a couple of hours ago. Thanks @DearHeartxoxo !

At first I thought they were nuts shooting in these frigged temperatures that we have been getting for the last week. But it appears that minus ten is nothing for these guys -  they can handle just about anything.

Today has ended the freeing period that I hated so much, marking the end of five solid days straight of minus degree weather. Now it is above freezing, but rain, or drizzle, is plaguing us, and all of this melting snow is just soaking everything. There is a storm warning, but I fear that that will hit us tomorrow as wind and rain will rule the day tomorrow. But it is warmer out, and that makes me mildly happy.

The filming normally does not bother me except for the odd traffic snarl; however, last night the flood lights that were lifted on top of two huge cranes, that bothered me as the light shown into my bedroom window. They were shut off around ten thirty last night, but I still had to force myself to sleep, with the curtains drawn, but it still looked light daylight outside. Tonight is more of the same. They have the same two cranes up, and again the light is shinning onto Glover Road, one block over form me. They are very bright, so the spill-off from them makes it look like the light is shining right at my windows.

You can see the tree on the left is lit up from the crane on 96th Avenue, and the light that you can see is over at Glover and Mavis Avenue – one block away. These are massive lights, and they are bright!

Fortunately, it is Friday, and staying up late tonight is an option.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Ice Box World

January 18th, 2012 Thomasso

Since we are on the topic of ice, I thought I would continue on with my photographic journey into Ice Photography. We seem to have a lot of it lately with the onset of a super cold snap that has hit the Metro Vancouver area. This is day three of freezing below zero Celsius weather, and tonight and tomorrow it is going to be worse yet as the daytime hight in Fort Langley only got up to -3C. So, tonight, we could see -11C! We are not used to this!

OK, ice. I was only outside for a short ten minute walk to the end of my driveway and back. This was as far as I dare go with only running shoes on. Not very winterly equip foot wear for this type of frigged weather either – but I managed to snap a few shoots off before I tip-toed back in side – running. So here is what I got:

I will add more text later when my fingers have blood circulating back in them again.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Diatribe, General, Photographs | No Comments »

An Icicle in Mid Drip

January 15th, 2012 Thomasso

It was such a picturesque day in wintery Fort Langley that I could not resist shooting an icicle melting away in the sun, as water dripped downwards from it like a leaky faucet in a down town crack-house. They were pretty, and neat, to watch becuase we do not get icicles that often here in the Metro Vancouver area, so it was a “stand and stare” moment for me.

Capturing the dripping action with a digital camera had its moment too. Close the aperture, shorten the shutter, up the ISO for that high speed catch. My only limitation was time becuase I was already freezing from my little walk around town. Dress for winter if you want to take outside photographs in winter. Lesson learned!

ADDED: I was going to go outside again after I warmed up to shoot some more, but ended up not going out becuase of other things popping up that needed to be dealt with–then it got too dark. So I just went through my photos again, and found another image that I think has some good qualities.

I guess now I have to master too the art of high speed photography. The ISO and shutter speed have to really be quick to catch these drips! Shooting with the camera set to Automatic, The drips would never be caught. I think two things were happening. First, my timing was lousy. Being so close into the subject, and waiting for the drip to happen, then pressing the shutter button, timing was everything – I had to be quick. Second, my shutter speed was just way too low for this type of capture. I needed a super fast shutter speed to catch the drip in mid flight after it left the icicle.

I know I tried a bunch of times, but everything I was doing was just too slow.

The image above I cropped to give it better positioning, but was shot at a wider angle as compared to the image at the top of this post.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | 3 Comments »

Stupid Says, “I’m Stuck.”

January 15th, 2012 Thomasso

Here we are in mid January, living in South Western Canada, at a time of year when snow sometimes falls, and stays on the ground, and creates these winter like environments that are talked about during Climate Change conferences. Although, over the last few years, snow has become a foreign concept to most, snow does fall, and blankets the ground every once in while. We are living in one such moment in time when snow has invaded our land, and it appears that it will stay for at least the next few days to come.

Even though we do not get snow often, we are responsible for keeping ourselves prepared for it.

We cannot depend on our governments to keep the roads the clear, as they themselves are mired in debt, resources shortages, and in some cases, exercising austerity measures through limited snow clearing operations, or just to clearing the main roads only. So it is up to each and everyone of us to have proper snow/winter equipment, and to be able to deal with these types of weather on our own. Hey, we all voted for this, so now we must deal with it.

It never ceases to amaze me at just how forgetful some people can be when dealing with snow. Take for example, my neighbour who drives a Honda Accord. He drives with summer tires on his vehicle all year round. He is currently stuck, in his own driveway. He is angry, upset, blaming everyone and anything at his own stupidity. He will only be satisfied when the snow melts and he can drive once again with his Honda Accord bearing summer tires.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, Events, General, Humour, Social economics, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

It Was Bound to Happen: It Snowed!

January 14th, 2012 Thomasso

It was bound to have happened sooner or later. The snow finally came last night with a muffled but consistent rate that when I looked outside this morning, there was about 5cm of it sitting on the ground. The snow was the wet, packey type, saturated with rain as the temperature was well above freezing. In the back of my mind I thought, “cool,’ becuase I own a 4 wheel drive vehicle that can easily take on snow on the road without getting stuck. This was always a problem in the past for me when owning small vehicles. So, I am happy with the change of scenery, and will embrace the snow knowing full well that by Monday it will all melt away – I hope?

I waited for the day to get brighter before I went outside. I wanted to desperately take photos before the rain washed all of the snow from the branches and bushes. By the time the light was good enough, the rain was just starting to change the snow, and it was melting away fast.

There was the snowplough too. “Why,” I thought, “did the park hire a snowplough today when no one had to go to work, and it was raining?” I had to get out first before the snowplough wrecked the natural scenery.

The snow was nothing in terms of the amount, but it pleasantly changed the world enough to make it look like a different world than the one we were use to. I used a lot of wide angle, close up, shots to express the little amount of snow we had on top of objects like branches and RV awnings.

Looking close up, the image looks like we had a huge dump of snow, but I was shooting, the above image, from behind a fence that was taller than me, and the tree was just behind it and was only a meter taller than the fence. Looks like a lot of snow, eh?

My wide angle shots looked cool too. Using my 55mm zoom lens, as the trees were just starting to loose all of the snow collected on the branches, I caught it just before most of the snow fell off. Yes, I should have set the white balance becuase the sky looked way too blue/gray, when really it was not. Hey, I am learning – this is a learning curve.

I will post these shots, and all the rest I took today in my photo gallery soon. For now, enjoy the snow if you live in the Vancouver, Fraser Valley area!

Added: one last one becuase the Sun came out, and it stopped raining.

I call this one, the above image, “Snow on my Pathfinder.” Yay, sunshine!

Posted in Bitching about weather, General, Photographs | 4 Comments »

Doing Some Night Photography in Fort Langley: Part 2

January 10th, 2012 Thomasso

It was a spur of the moment when I decided to grab the camera and stand out in the middle of the street while people were walking by staring at me as I was shooting my camera at night scenes. Also, there was a very awesome looking (almost) full Moon out too, and people were asking me If I was shooting that too. “No,” I replied, ” I do not have the right lens for that.” But people were out too shooting with their point-and-shoot pocket cameras at the Moon – too funny.

One young women even told me that this Moon was the Harvest Moon? I thought that was during the month of October, but I just agreed and looked enthusiastic.

ADDED – Jan 12 2012: If you want to see all the shots for this set, click here, GALLERY 18. 20 photos taken.

So I walked through town, armed with my camera on a tripod, taking long exposures of anything that reflected, or emitted light. It was great! Here are some of the twenty shots I took:

Above, is the famous Fort Langley Community Hall. I just missed the x-mass tree as it was taken down the day before: it had lights on it!

Above, looking South on Glover Road, at 96th Avenue. Yes, that is a Sushi Shop there on the right, “Iron chef,” or something, but that is what the sign says?

Above, North on Glover Road, at Mary Avenue. Many Movies have been shot here.

Above, looking North on Glover Road towards the old “Frontier” Hardware Store.

Later on in the week I will post the whole load of photos in my Gallery. For now I need some sleep, as I have a long day tomorrow.

Posted in Around Town, Diatribe, General, Photographs | No Comments »

Doing Some Night Photography in Fort Langley

January 9th, 2012 Thomasso

Being that we are well into weeks of overcast winter weather for lousy optimum daytime photography, and it stopped raining, and it is really warm out (for this time of year), I thought why not do some night shooting with the camera? See Gallery Shots here.

I was inspired when I was searching on the net photos of Fort Langley, BC, and came across a night time shot of the Glover Road bridge, that used to take people to the Albion Ferry a few years back, so, I had to take some photos of it too! If I can shoot stars up in the sky with my camera, then I can shoot down to Earth images, with no problems at all, at night too. I focused on (pardon the pun) wide aperture, and long exposures or shutter speeds, between 5 to 10 seconds long, while keeping the ISO low, around 400 for sharpness and less noise. It was an awesome night for shooting.

Playing around with just the exposure time (shutter speed), the clouds looked really awesome! I thought the water was a great setting too becuase the original photo that I looked at also used the river for the main part of the scene. I am standing about where the original photo I saw was as far as location and where the camera is pointed.

Water, lights and clouds make a really good combination for night time shoots like this.

I have twenty shoots posted in my Gallery that you can view here: Fort Langley Jan 9 2012. All of these are night shots that I took. Let me know what you think by posting your comment in the comment link below. I would love to read them.

Posted in Around Town, General, Photographs | 2 Comments »

Breaking News: Changed My Twitter Pic!

January 7th, 2012 Thomasso

Breaking: I just changed my Twitter image, the image that is used as your avatar when you use your Twitter account. After almost six weeks having the new camera, it dawned on me to shoot a better looking image for my Twitter Identity with it instead of the web-came one I had before. So keeping with the theme and tradition, I used the same pencil that I have always used.

I have kept the same general image because I find it is hard to follow when Tweeps (Twitter users) keep changing their images around, especially when they use obscure alphanumeric names as their handles which are almost impossible to keep track of. I am now at just over 800 followers, and I am following the same number on my Twitter Account. Keeping track of that many people with weird names, I need all the help I can get, so changing your photo throws the whole memory game out the window for me.

After having the new camera for almost six weeks, I finally just got around to taking a good quality image for my Twitter Account today. Below is the stock image that I cropped and edited my final image from.

Regrettably, using Twitter, you are limited to an image size of only 700k bits, so any edge on image quality is a boon once you start reducing your image size down to this small 76 x 76 px size area.

Posted in Art, Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Mind Maps: The Lost Thought

January 7th, 2012 Thomasso

Mind maps are an interesting tool becuase you either like to use them, or you do not, and when you do, you can do a lot with them when you are doing large writing, research or development projects. Or they just look pretty. This last week I was having coffee with a neighbour who brought up the topic of mind maps and her writing. This got me thinking about mind maps and there relationship to me in my little corner of the universe.

Back in the day, just over a year ago now, I used mind maps for my last research paper that involved a lot of statistical work. The paper in its finished product was only three quarters writing, and the rest was graphs and tables from the research data that I had collected. I employed the use of mind maps for mapping out my work so that I could follow the format of a academic research paper. So mind mapping really benefited me when I had all of my subject matter, ideas and thoughts and layout ready for the final edit. I should also add that mind mapping really does not help when typing out a blog post, or any short writing task for me.

Up until my days taking computer science, all of my essay planning took the form of either brain storming/free writing, cloud or mind mapping, or just winging a paper and editing it on the fly with the word processor. Most of my everyday writing is just me and the word processor, just simply becuase of ease and flexibility that a computer and word processing software bring. But I do have an attachment with mind mapping.

One of the best “free” mind mapping software out in the cyber universe is FreeMind. As far as I know it still works with Macs, possibly on Window$, but works perfect with Linux! If you have a super big writing project, and you hate hundreds of scrap pages piled all over the place, yet value fast and flexible means of spewing your thoughts down in text, then give this program a try.

Posted in General, Software | No Comments »