What ‘s going on in this pic­ture? And where was it tak­en? Hint, it’s part of an event hap­pen­ing this week­end. If you know, leave an indi­ca­tion but not the answer. I’ll pro­vide that on Mon­day.

Did you iden­ti­fy any­thing about the pic­ture? More infor­ma­tion below the pho­to.

This pic­ture was bor­rowed from the Light­house­’s web site.

Pigeon Point Light Sta­tion is a Cal­i­for­nia State His­toric Park about 30 miles south of Half Moon Bay. At 115 feet, it is one of the tallest light hous­es in the Unit­ed States and the tallest on the Cal­i­for­nia coast. It first went into oper­a­tion on Novem­ber 15, 1872 using a Fres­nel lens com­prised of 1008 prisms which projects light as in the above pho­to­graph. That lens is no longer in use and is only fired up for 2 hours each year on the Sat­ur­day clos­est to the aniver­sary date. On that night, hun­dreds (thou­sands?) of peo­ple show up to wit­ness the event and take pic­tures. The dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion of the light­house may stop the dis­play indef­i­nite­ly and you can no longer tour the light­house tow­er itself. The grounds and muse­um remain open and there is a work­ing hos­tel on site.

If all goes well, the next light­ing will be Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 13, from 6pm to 8pm. Some tips if you plan to pho­to­graph the next event. Wear warm clothes. Get there ear­ly, before sun­set, if you want to park close by. Take a tour of the grounds, the muse­um, the hos­tel and the local beach. After light­ing the lamp, the lens remains sta­tion­ary for 5 min­utes for pho­tog­ra­phers to cap­ture the star for­ma­tion and then it begins to rotate. Hope for some mois­ture in the air. Fog helps to define the rays of light. You will meet lots of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers with tripods. Con­sid­er using a red flash­light when adjust­ing your equip­ment. It’s kinder on the eyes and less chance of spoil­ing oth­er’s pho­tographs.

For long expo­sure cam­era set­tings, I start with an F/8 aper­ture. That is about the best qual­i­ty aper­ture for my D80 and gives a decent depth of field. Exper­i­ment from there. I use the low­est ISO, again for best qual­i­ty. Even though it is a low light sit­u­a­tion, the light­house is not mov­ing. You don’t need that wide open aper­ture or a high ISO. Go for bet­ter DOF and low noise instead and use a longer shut­ter­speed. Use a tri­pod. Turn off image sta­bi­liza­tion, at least on Nikon lens­es. Use a remote shut­ter release or time delay to reduce cam­era vibra­tion. Focus­ing is always tricky in the dark, but the light­house is pret­ty bright, so aut­o­fo­cus should work.  Be quick, the five minute grace peri­od when the lens does not rotate goes by fast.

I’ll prob­a­bly be there, either to take pic­tures or as a docent. I recent­ly vol­un­teered to work there and begin train­ing this Sat­ur­day.

Here is a link to their web site: The Pigeon Point Light Sta­tion State His­toric Park

Thanks for play­ing the Fri­day Foto Quiz.

How much can you tell me about this pic­ture? It is not a prod­uct of pho­to­shop except that I warmed it up a lit­tle. I pre­fer not to think about how cold I was when I took it. Please leave a fun­ny com­ment but, if you know, don’t reveal the answer. I’ll do that on Mon­day.

Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

Did you guess what this per­son is doing? Keep read­ing.

His name is Rob­bie Virus and, in this pho­to, he is play­ing a theremin with his San Fran­cis­co based lounge band, Project Pimen­to. They have a new CD out enti­tled “Space Age Love Songs”.

The theremin is an ear­ly elec­tron­ic instur­ment, “invent­ed in 1919 by the Russ­ian sci­en­tist Leon Theremin” and often used to cre­ate mood music in sci­ence fic­tion movies. This instru­ment is played with­out actu­al­ly touch­ing it. The loop on the side and the anten­na on top cre­ate an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field. Dis­turb­ing this field with your hands will cre­ate a tone. Mov­ing the hands clos­er and away from the met­al anten­na varies the pitch and vol­ume of that tone, not an easy instru­ment to play well.

Rob­bie is the best I’ve seen on this instru­ment, at least live. His band con­tin­ues to ride the tiki lounge wave play­ing all your favorite James Bond themes, a very cool and unique show. I also saw his name list­ed as a theremin musi­cian in the cred­its of the first Hell Boy movie.

Click here for the Project Pimen­to web site.

Click here for a Google search for theremin.

Thanks for play­ing!

What is going on here? You can make com­ments, but if you know, don’t reveal the answer which I will give on Mon­day. And it has noth­ing to do with my owl pre­sen­ta­tion on Sat­ur­day at the HMB Library. (See the next post down for more infor­ma­tion on that.) Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

This Sat­ur­day, at 2pm, I will present my slideshow and lec­ture about the owls that live near my home at the Half Moon Bay Library. I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch and pho­to­graph them over the last 11 months and wit­nessed a one year life cycle of courtship, nest­ing, hatch­ing 2 owlets and then watch­ing them fledge. The pre­sen­ta­tion fol­lows them in pic­tures with facts about owls along the way and a fun select­ed short sub­ject too.

And, there is a nice write-up about me in this week’s Half Moon Bay Review.

Remem­ber the date, Sat­ur­day August 28, 2pm at the Half Moon Bay Library.

Did you guess the loca­tion of this water fall? The answer is below the pic­ture.

Great Falls Park is along the Potomac Riv­er in McLean, Vir­ginia. It is main­tained by the Nation­al Park Ser­vice but is not an offi­cial Nation­al Park. In 1784, George Wash­ing­ton pro­posed one of the first canals in this coun­try to bypass the falls look­ing to improve com­merce and trav­el up to the Ohio riv­er val­ley. High­er engi­neer­ing result­ed in improved lock tech­nol­o­gy and ear­ly use of black pow­der blast­ing in the con­struc­tion. It took 17 years to build the canal, which did­n’t work very well. Most of the year the water is too low or too high. The area still floods today.

In 1906, they built the Great Falls Amus­ment Park which exist­ed until 1952. The coun­ty main­tained a carousel until 1972 which was destroyed by Hur­ri­cane Agnes.

Today, it’s a great place for hik­ing, kayak­ing and rock climb­ing. Read more here: http://www.nps.gov/grfa/index.htm

After your hike, check out The Old Brogue Irish Pub on George­town Pike in the town of Great Falls for good beer, food and music. http://www.oldbrogue.com/

Thanks for play­ing.

Anoth­er water­fall for the quiz. Know it? Say if you do but don’t post the answer. I will on Mon­day. Click the pic­ture for a not much larg­er view.

Crim­iny, it’s already Wednes­day and I am sup­posed to post on Mon­day! Well, the answer is that this is the glass work art of Dale Chi­hu­ly. His large scale sculp­tures are cre­at­ed by a team of glass blow­ers and are dis­played around the world. I have seen his dis­tinc­tive work hang­ing from the ceil­ing in Cae­sar’s Palace in Las Vegas and in the lob­by of the Palo Alto Med­ical Clin­ic in Moun­tain View.

There are excel­lent videos of his stu­dio work on his web site: http://www.chihuly.com/

These pic­tures were tak­en when his trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion stopped at the DeY­oung Muse­um in San Fran­cis­co. Click the pic­tures for a larg­er view. Thanks for play­ing.

Do you know what this is a pic­ture of? Say if you know but don’t reveal the answer. I’ll post more pic­tures over the week­end and give the answer on Mon­day. Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.