Kayak Camera Support

This week I modified my Kayak Camera support. I added a shelf to make it more stable and I lowered the support so that it is now right at eye level.
The support was built using a piece of 6 inch by 1/4 inch thick aluminum stock. I took the stock to a local metal fabricator and I had them bend it on their press. I then attached two four foot pieces of aluminum angle bracket as feet to support the stock piece by drilling and bolting the pieces together. I added the wood shelf to make it more rigid and add a little storage space for filters and lens cleaner etc. The support slides easily back and forth in front of me so I can push it forward when I want to paddle. It works great.

God's light and love,

chris

Changeable Perch Feeder

Recently I was creating some images of chickadees using small branches with bright red berries on them next to the feeder. I was having a problem with the angle of the branch and the fact that the birds were landing too close to the platform feeder I was using. There has got to be a better feeder I thought to myself. First I tried a tube feeder and that solved the distance the birds were landing away from the feeder. They moved out just far enough onto the branch to make it workable. There was still the problem of changing the angle of the branch. While traveling through the Dollar Tree Store (Hear that Dollar Tree Execs?) I stumbled upon some floral foam. With that stuff you can stick a stem into it and it will hold at any angle. Well it would be too hard to put it into a tube feeder I thought. What else could I put it into that would hold the foam block? When I got home I discovered two cookie tins that I had purchased from the Dollar Tree around Christmas time. Thank you Lord. One of those worked great. I drilled a couple of holes into the tin. Then I added the foam block with some black sunflower seed. I screwed it to a scrap of lumber and added the berry branch to it. It works perfectly with perching birds. I'm really excited about using it this spring for a wider variety of birds. I've got some ideas of modifying it further for a bluebird feeder.

What you will need.
cookie tin
floral foam block
two wood screws
1-1/2" spade bit
power drill
white or black spray paint optional


Step 1 Drill two holes into the lid of the tin. One hole towards the bottom and one roughly in the center. Putting it upside down on some scrap wood helps. Do this slowly to avoid crumpling the metal.


Step 2 Use the wood screws to fasten the bottom of the tin to a piece of scrap of wood to hold the feeder up.


Step 3 Spray paint it. I spray painted mine white as one of my earlier attempts with an unpainted one reflected a color cast onto the bird.


Step 4 Place the foam block into the bottom of the feeder. Line it up so the block will be behind the bottom hole. Fill with birdseed.


Step 5 Attach your feeder somewhere with bailing wire or wood screws. Stick a good looking perch into the foam and you are in business.





Good luck and God bless,

chris

A Predator Call for Pennies

I have known for some time that many photographers and hunters use predator calls to call in predators such as foxes, coyotes etc. I also know that some of them will use a squeaker from children's stuffed animals. Well today my dog Badger tore apart yet another dog toy from "Dollar Tree". Inside was a round plastic squeaker. He also tore that apart. The squeaker part was located in a tube that was about a half an inch long. On impulse I picked it up and blew through it. A squeal with a perfect imitation of a cottontail being killed emerged. As you can imagine an idea for a predator call immediately popped into my head.

I cut a short length of 3/4 inch pvc (1/2 inch would also do) about four inches long. I drilled a hole of about the same diameter as the tube from the squeaker about one inch from the end of the pvc. I took the squeaker tube pushed it into the hole and glued it into place with super glue. I'm sure some other glues might work as well.The final step was to spray paint it black. Make sure you stick some tape over the squeaker to keep it from being filled with paint.

Blowing the call is quite simple. You just place the flat of your hand over the end closest to the squeaker. Put your mouth on the other end and blow. You can flutter the flat of your hand against the call to vary the sounds coming from the call. It sounds great.

God's light and love and blessings to all,

chris

Those Magical Mushrooms or You Light Up My Life

Greetings to all,

Today the rain stopped so I could at least get out and stretch a bit. I did some indoor photography in the morning and then I just had to get out. After all this rain cabin fever was setting in. Those of you that live in places where it rains a lot can relate. Outside it was foggy and heavily overcast. The prefect conditions for doing some macro work. I decided to go out and wander about and see if I could find some mushrooms to photograph.

Before I went out I gathered the necessary items I would need to be comfortable while photographing. First on my list was a set of kneepads. Crawling around on your hands and knees on the forest floor can be tough on the knees so they are a big help. Second was a ground pad like the type used for back packing to lay on. This allows you to fully stretch out on the ground without getting very dirty. A major plus if it has just been raining and it allows you to get down and dirty for those really low shots. Think Mushrooms! The next item is one that I have found to be almost indispensable. A small LED flashlight. These are just perfect for lighting up underneath the crowns of mushrooms. I tape a short cylinder of tagboard about three inches long to the end of it with electricians tape to narrow the spread of the light a little. As always I brought a 100mm macro lens, ground pod and a shutter release as the majority of shots would have long exposures and very small f stops. See one of my older posts for a very simple ground pod and a nice poster of mushroom images.

http://diyphotocheapodepot.blogspot.com/2008/06/diy-ground-pod.html

After finding a mushroom I do a bit of selective gardening around the mushroom to clean things up a bit. Care must be taken not to go too deeply or it will disturb the mycelium and make it difficult for the mushroom to reproduce next year. Then I lay out the pad, lay down and work to get a good composition. The majority of fungi are best photographed from ground level and from the side. there are obviously exceptions to this however, the best angle typically is right at ground level. This means gettin' down on your belly. A right angle viewfinder is a plus for some folks that can't get that low. After getting the composition and focusing taken care of I start on the exposure.

Using an ISO of 100 or 200 will often give longer exposures in the six to eight second range if I use Aperature Priority and set the lens at f16 or F22.0. This allows me to paint using light from the flashlight on portions of the mushroom I would like to stand out. It also gives the most depth of field; something that is really needed when doing macro work. To paint using the flashlight I like to swirl the flashlight in a circular motion over the area that I am painting. By continually moving the flashlight you eliminate hot spots from showing up so easily. The distance you use the flashlight from the mushroom can vary. I typically hold it about 8 inches to a foot away. So much is going to be dependent upon the situation and the power of the flashlight.

I try to shoot a number of different compositions and exposures. It is critical to check your backgrounds for lingering little items and hot spots. I can't count the number of times I have caught myself thinking. I don't remember that being there. We get so focused on our subject that we miss the little things around it.

When you are done please be sure to replace any leaves or sticks back around the mushroom that you may have moved when you were setting up.

So get creative and make some great images,

God's light and love to all,

chris

Playing in the Sand Box

Greetings to All,

I have a friend named Joe Benoit that is a superb photographer. He and I have been photographing off and on together for a long time. The great thing about being around Joe is that you can learn some pretty cool things from him. For one thing he loves to experiment and try things that are out of the box so to speak.The other great thing is that he is extremely organized. He keeps all these neat articles in binders on photographing things in fun,unique and bizarre ways. So whenever I'm in a photographic slump so to speak I can always rely on Joe to spark my interest in shooting something in a new and different way so to speak.

Today was one of those days. A few days back Joe suggested we get together for a fun day of photography as he has a few things he wants to show me. Oh and by the way could I freeze a couple of cookie trays full of water for him. Ok, I can do that.
So when Joe showed up this morning we shot ice that was covered in food coloring and backlit with gelled flashes. Then we shot smoke from an incense stick. After that we shot a few things that I have been wanting to try. We shot an egg being hit with a hammer and the we did an old stand by of a lemon slice being dropped into a drink. Basically we had fun playing in the sand box so to speak.

Just before Joe left he gave me some polarized filter material. Then he showed me how to shoot plastic objects using polarized light. I'll hopefully get some time to play with that on some upcoming rainy day.

God's light and love to all,

chris

Going Slow for that Silky Flow of Water

Greetings to all,

It's old news to many and its almost or probably a cliche' but some people like to blur their waterfalls or water so it looks like flowing silk. It's not that difficult to do it just requires the right water, weather and equipment. For weather the best times are when it is overcast, cloudy or foggy. The other circumstance is when there just plain isn't a lot of bright light like early morning or late afternoon or being in a dark shaded area like a canyon. Equipment wise you can decrease the light to help this along by the use of a filter called a ND or neutral density filter. These are sold in varying powers that cut down on the amount of light reaching the light sensor in the camera. These typically come in one , two or three stop densities with some expensive ones even cutting out more light. So by placing one of these filters in front of your lens you need to increase your exposure time which is just what you need to do in order to blur water out to a silky flow.


To blur water typically you need to blur it with a shutter speed of 1/15 of a second or longer depending upon the water flow. This means you need to use a tripod or other camera support such as a ground pod or bean bag placed upon something. Usually in order to get such a slow shutter speed you are going to have to put your camera on Manual or Aperature Priority and choose an F stop that is closed down as much as possible for the lighting conditions. I start by making a check with the f stop at about f11 and keep closing down further and further until I get the look I like. Often times in the dark canyons I'm shooting in I will get an exposure of f22.0 at around thirty seconds. You really need a solid tripod for that.


When shooting look for interesting rocks, logs and stream flows to help you with your compositions. Try finding things that will work as anchors in your foreground of the image as well as diagonals that will lead the viewer into the image. Above all experiment and have some fun. Check your histogram often to see what kind of results you are getting. Personally I tend to like to underexpose my images just a little bit as the streams where I live have very dark rocks in them. Be careful of getting direct sunlight into your compositions as there is usually too much contrast for your camera to be able to handle.

I shot these images today as kind of a challenge to myself. I took only one lens a 28- 105 zoom my 50D a remote release to keep things steady and a ground pod. The conditions were perfect for what I wanted to do. It was cloudy and getting ready to rain. I slid down into the creek bottom and just had fun looking for interesting rocks, logs and riffles to shoot images of. By the time I had walked up stream awhile it was strarting to rain and I hightailed it out of there. Most of my exposures were taken at F22.0 from 3.2 to 10 seconds. There is only one shot that I did differently and that was the one cropped to a panorama. The exposure for that image was F3.5 @ 1/10th of a second.

The other thing you can do is to shoot multiple images of the same scene without moving the tripod and then later combine them so that you end up with a sliky smooth look combined with the fast stop action look of a faster shutter speed. Just be sure to not move your camera or tripod when changing the cameras settings.

So get out there and shoot some images of this glorious planet that God has created for us and above all have some fun.

chris

Getting Down and Dirty

Greetings to all,

Often times the best perspective to photograph wildlife is from the same height as their eye level. For a lot of critters this isn't much of a problem. Deer, elephants, bison etc. often times are at the same or a even higher level than we are. So for those types of critters getting to eye level isn't difficult. Besides these are just guidelines anyway which are meant to be broken once in awhile to be creative in the image making process. However, for today we are going to stick to the guidelines and discuss the job of taking the portraits of shorebirds. For this it means getting down and dirty. Smaller creatures like ground squirrels, lizards and shorebirds have an eye level of well let's just say it is below the knees. Please note that a lot of the things being covered here about shorebirds apply to many small ground dwelling creatures especially the perspective.

So how do you approach this kind of photography? Well if you are physically able enough from your belly. You have got to get down and slither and crawl. Put on some old clothes or some waterproof gear and get down on your belly and crawl. This can lead to some interesting locations and situations. Shorebirds inhabit a diverse range of habitats from grasslands and beaches to mudflats. Grasslands aren't so bad but mudflats. So how do you photograph in these less than desirable locations?

I guess it depends upon your dedication to the art of photography as well as your technique and the proper equipment to be used. Many photographers set aside clothing to be worn in the mudflats or on the beach. When they arrive at the scene they change into chest waders or rain gear or just plain old clothing they don't care much for anymore At the end of their photographic session they change back into the clothing they came in and stow their soiled clothing in a plastic bag or container to be washed off and dried later at home. There are many choices in clothing check with most any outdoor supply store or sporting goods store to see what is available in. There is also the Thrift Store if you decide upon wearing clothes that you don't care too much about.My personal preference is stocking foot neoprene chest waders and an old army jacket from a garage sale.

So what techniques are used? There are two main ones used along with a combination of them both. The first is progressive approximation. This involves finding a subject to be photographed and slowly crawling towards your intended subject very slowly. ( in mudflats this can be a grimy, smelly experience) Stopping frequently to allow your subject to adjust to your being close by. Every animal has its personal space and it will tend to move further away from you when that space is violated. With careful observation you can often observe an animals behavior to see when they are feeling comfortable or being stressed. Shorebirds for example will stop feeding, stand erect, turn their bodies away from you in preparation to fly. The second method is find your intended subject and observe its possible direction of travel . The goal here is to seek out a location ahead of it and wait to photograph your subject when it passes by.

While you are crawling along one of the key things of importance here is to keep your hands and equipment clean . Many photographers carry along a towel or two for that very purpose.So where is your camera during all this crawling about? In keeping your equipment clean one technique often used is to push your camera and tripod or ground pod along on the ground,mud or sand ahead of you. Using it as a brace to keep your hands and camera up out of the muck. Commercially there are many types of ground pods available. The best types for mud and sand are those that resemble frying pans. They work well because you can push them along the mud and keep your equipment clean and dry.

A back pack or fanny pack is a useful item to have along as well. You can store your dry towels and other needed equipment sealed up in a dry bag or other sealed container ready for your use. though some shooters keep things to a minimum and only bring a few needed items which they store in the pan of the ground pod.

So get out there and get down dirty and create some beautiful images in the process. Oh and don't foget you can use a low perspective for a lot of other things besides wildlife.

God's light and love to all,

chris


Because the ground pods above resemble frying pans it is relatively easy to make one using a frying pan from the thrift store and mounting a tripod head inside of it for your camera to sit on. First off I would suggest doing a search for camera ground pods to get an idea of what size pan might work for you. After that I would hit the thrift stores and find one that is similar in size to one you are interested in. Also, hit the hardware store for either a 3/8" or 5/8' bolt of the same size and length that is on the top of your tripod legs. You do have a tripod don't you? The next step is to drill a hole in the bottom center of the pan. Check your tripod head to see if it is either 3/8'' or 5/8' as these are the most common sizes.

After drilling the hole slide the bolt into the hole and mount your tripod head on it and you are ready to go. If the tripod head is too low you may have to add a wooden spacer between the tripod and the pan. A spacer can be easily cut out of exterior plywood of varying thicknesses or out of some other type of lumber. As a final step you may or may not want to spray paint your new Mud Scooter to give it a more polished look. go out and have some fun with it.