New BridgeQuest Recon

After our successful BridgQuest Meetup last year, I thought I would organize another one. I have been shooting a lot of Truss Bridges lately and they are relatively easy to find on Google Maps. Toan and I decided to get an early start and so had breakfast at Jimmy's Egg. When we walked in, we found Jim and Leona Jordan who were on their way back to Bosque del Apache New Mexico.

We went to a couple of bridges that we had been to before including one that is very close to a winery. How about a little tasting after the shoot?

There were a few I had listed that were inaccessible or just not very interesting. I was running down the interstate and caught a truss bridge out of the corner of my eye just after Stroud that I didn't have listed. I doubled back to look for it. Found it plus this giant spherical oilfield storage tank. Later, we went to Shamrock which is almost a ghost town. Very enjoyable day.

Wintertime shut-in blues

I've been somewhat busy during all the bad weather. I registered at Lynda.com and have taken a class in Premiere Elements 9, which I have downloaded. Now, I intend to shoot more video this year.

I also got my new Eye-Fi Pro X2 card to work with my new 60D and my laptop in an ad hoc network. Pretty cool to take a pic and have it show up about 20 seconds later in Lightroom.

I also have fiddled with my "Flash on a Stick", getting it to work very well with the "Commander" mode of the 60D.

Can't wait until Spring

TDPG HDR Workshop

We had a great turnout of 25 HDRistas at Stokely's Event Center shooting and learning about HDR photography. Stokely's, is a wonderful place, with many old neon signs that bring back wonderful memories. Neon is challenging to shoot, however, and is an excellent subject for HDR.

After shooting, we adjourned to Tally's Restaurant for Lunch and processing. Vlad and I went over the different programs that merge the bracketed images to an HDR image.

Many thanks to Brian for arranging the shoot with Stokely's and to Vlad and Brian for help with the teaching.

Toan and I went to the Cage Matches in Ft Smith last Saturday. We really had a great time. Very challenging shooting conditions. Shooting through the cage in really harsh light at 6400 ISO. Stopped off for a sunset shot of the old railroad bridge across the Arkansas River. Got a nice shot but it didn't show the bridge's best feature - a span that raised like a drawbridge.

Mitch and I met up and went to shoot an abandoned stone house he had seen from the Cimmaron Turnpike. It was pretty far gone but it had the remains of some living room furniture in it. An old open tub washing machine was in another room.I think we got some pretty good images. Then we went to look at the old Highway 18 bridge over the Arkansas river at Blackburn. This one lane bridge was made famous by Kevin in some of his model shots. The bridge has a 5 ton limit, which means it is in pretty bad shape. We went across and it felt pretty creepy.

All in all, a pretty nice afternoon. Now to charge up all my batteries for the club's Pot Luck Dinner and Still Life shoot tomorrow.

Rural Decay

One of my New Year's resolutios is to keep up with my blog. Last week Toan and I took off for a quick trip to look for rural HDR subjects. We found quite a few "victims".

We found an old Gymnasium in Winganon but the trees have grown up and blocked the good light lines. We revisited an old Euclid Coal Dump truck, found a beautiful old industrial building near New Alluwe, then went up to Elgin Kansas to shoot some derelict building downtown. We did ok, but I found many places I want to revisit. A few more at Rural Decay.

This weekend a trip to a place near Hallet, then a Tulsa Digital Photography potluck dinner and still life shoot.

Set your camera up to take HDR shots
Mount on tripod
use remote release or delay timer
AV mode
ISO 100
Set shooting mode to continuous (high speed)
For Canon:
Set bracketing for 2 stops under and 2 stops over. You are limited to 3 shots. Not to worry, this will be fine. If you need more there is a clunky way.
Nikon:
Set to one stop intervals and 5 shots. Nikon is limited to 1 stop but can handle 5 or 7 shots.

On many Canons you can save settings on C1, C2, or C3.