Lars Howlett, pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the Half Moon Bay Review, recent­ly trekked in Nepal and will present a slideshow of the jour­ney at the Enso Gallery, on Kel­ly Ave in Half Moon Bay on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 24, 5pm.

I enjoy Lars’ pho­tog­ra­phy and expect this to be an excep­tion­al show. Pho­tos are also on exhib­it in the gallery until Jan­u­ary 31. See links below for the gallery and arti­cles he has writ­ten about the trek.

Among Moun­tains, Monks and Sher­pas

An exhi­bi­tion by Ocean Stu­dio pho­tog­ra­phers
Michael Pow­ers and Lars Howlett

Doc­u­ment­ing the Kar­maQue­st expe­di­tion from the Coast­side to the Himalayas of Nepal

Jan­u­ary 1 — 31st, 2010

ENSO Gallery
131 Kel­ly Avenue in Half Moon Bay

Slideshow by Lars Howlett, Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 24th, 5pm
Shar­ing 200+ images telling the sto­ries of the jour­ney

Gallery open to the pub­lic dur­ing yoga stu­dio hours as well
as Sat­ur­day morn­ings, Mon­day evenings and by appoint­ment.

For more info see
http://www.ensohmb.com/
or call (650) 726‑1409

http://www.oceanstudio.org/
http://www.findlars.com/
http://www.karmaquest.org/

Links from a series writ­ten and pho­tographed by Lars for the Half Moon Bay Review :

Arti­cle 1 : The inspi­ra­tion and train­ing for the expe­di­tion with orga­niz­er Kar­ma Lama and adven­tur­er Michael Pow­ers
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2009/10/28/news/doc4ae8643d5c19d940114167.txt

Arti­cle 2 : A vis­it to the Teng­boche Monastery and a look at the spir­i­tu­al side of the jour­ney
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2009/11/25/news/doc4b0d679a7593e578643673.txt

Arti­cle 3 : Describ­ing the ascent of Kala Patthar and the phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence of the trekking
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2009/12/04/news/doc4b16ac7d194a0932695302.txt

Arti­cle 4 : Being one with the tribe on the coast with Michael Pow­ers and on the trail to Ever­est
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2009/12/09/news/doc4b1fec9001ca3373745242.txt

This is a tiny ver­sion of the video. Try click­ing the full screen but­ton for the best view.

From the notes on the YouTube video:

Bart Willems went for a ses­sion in 15ft surf at Mav­er­icks on 2010-01-10 and doc­u­ment­ed a ses­sion on GoPro HD cam­era. A 3 hour ses­sion is con­densed into 5 min­utes of high­lights.

Music by Jamie Shelly — Cher­ry­bub­blegum­c­i­ty (thanks for mak­ing good music Skulpie)

Pho­tos by Seth Migdail (thanks for shar­ing Seth)

Cam­era donat­ed by Vir­tu­alAfrica — virtualafrica.co.za

Thanks you to all the local Mav­er­icks surfers for shar­ing their Mag­nif­i­cent waves!

GoPro’s lat­est cam­era is a tiny high def­i­n­i­tion (720p), mount­able, wide angle, water­proof video cam­era for $269. I’ve seen these on skier’s hel­muts in Utah and I sure would like one.

Update: The wind knocked things down this past week but an even big­ger swell appears to be on the way (good for pic­tures) but rain is pre­dict­ed too (bad for cam­era equip­ment and com­fort).

A large swell is approach­ing the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line and is expect­ed to arrive on Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 13 set­ting up some pos­si­ble great pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties. Mav­er­icks could be big if the wind dies down. You might want to rent a big lens using the link below (wink, wink, say no more). The surf should be big­ger then nor­mal every­where so please be safe!

Check out this web page for links to wave activ­i­ty in the Pacif­ic and a web cam for Mav­er­icks.

Update: Strong souther­ly winds are mak­ing things pret­ty slop­py this morn­ing. I see a boat or a jet ski at Mav­er­icks but no rid­ers. Wind is for­cast to calm some­what and change more west­er­ly this after­noon.

For 10% off a rental until Jan­u­ary 31, 2010, click the Bor­rowLens­es icon in this post and use the code “2010” before check­out. Click­ing from here awards me some cred­it too. Thanks!

I decid­ed to catch a few Christ­mas light pic­tures before the sea­son ends and the full moon is a bonus. These pic­tures were tak­en before it was com­plete­ly dark, try­ing to catch some blue sky and clouds to con­trast the lights. The moon is a bit over­ex­posed in these shots which can be reme­died by merg­ing low­er exposed shots I took from the same posi­tion, in oth­er words, HDR. These are out of the cam­era with a lit­tle tweek­ing in Light­Room.

In addi­tion to vis­i­ble sky, I like the col­ors, the tree sil­hou­ettes and the reflec­tions in the auto­moibles and water in the street.

Just a quick update to sug­gest you check­out a bay area pho­tog­ra­ph­er, video­g­ra­ph­er and sound recorder spe­cial­iz­ing in “the San Fran­cis­co Live Jazz & Cre­ative Music Scene”. I aspire to his ded­i­ca­tion qual­i­ty work and tal­ent.

BayTaper.com

Have a fine hol­i­day!

I took over 1100 pic­tures of Lori mak­ing a pump­kin pie and cre­at­ed a stop action ani­ma­tion using the hum­ble Win­dows Movie Mak­er. It turns out that nei­ther of my Win­dows machines are pow­er­ful enough for Pho­to­shop to con­vert that many RAW files in one action or Win­dows Movie Mak­er to ren­der them into a video larg­er then for an iPod.

I over­came that prob­lem by con­vert­ing half of the RAW files at a time to 720x480 jpgs, com­press­ing them down to 5. In order to cre­ate an AVI file in Movie Mak­er, I had to cre­ate 12 dif­fer­ent videos of 100 pic­tures each and then com­bine them to make one com­plete video. For post­ing on Smug­Mug, I then saved the video in anoth­er small­er for­mat.

Look­ing back, I could have shot the orig­i­nal pic­tures in jpeg at the cor­rect res­o­lu­tion sav­ing a big step. And I need to fig­ure out the best for­mat to save it for the web. Still work­ing these things out.

It’s not too bad. Click the pic­ture below and check it out. And then read my own crit­i­cal review below.

More thoughts: I learned a few things here, after repeat­ed view­ings.

1 - I observe the expo­sure chang­ing near­ly every frame, as Lori moves her arms in and out of the pic­ture. The cause? I used aper­ture pri­or­i­ty mode. As things move around, espe­cial­ly the black sleeves of Lori’s shirt, the “cor­rect” expo­sure changes and the cam­era adjusts the shut­ter speed. While her arms are now cor­rect­ly exposed a change can be seen in sur­round­ing areas such as in the wood­en cab­i­nets.

Once I deter­mined the best expo­sure set­ting, I should have worked in man­u­al mode which will lock those set­tings in. Do not change them! Deter­min­ing that cor­rect expo­sure is the trick. Using man­u­al mode, chances are not every scene will be per­fect­ly exposed, (ie; the black shirt mov­ing in and out of the pic­ture and mov­ing to var­i­ous scenes with­in the kitchen). You need to exper­i­ment and find the set­tings that bal­ance expo­sure for the whole of the ani­ma­tion.

2 - I also see the focal length chang­ing, or at least appears to change. Watch the edges of the video as they dis­ap­pear and reap­pear. My guess is the aut­o­fo­cus is adjust­ing as arms and items move around the frame. The solu­tion again is to set the best focus for the scene and turn off the auto­mat­ic focus. I need to ver­i­fy this with the next ani­ma­tion.

3 - The col­or and bright­ness are dull. I filmed this at night under a mix of incan­des­cent and full spec­trum flu­o­res­cent light­ing. I set the white bal­ance to incan­des­cent and did not use a white or grey card. I thought the col­ors looked pret­ty accu­rate.

Maybe what this need­ed was more light. A faster lens would help too, enabling faster shut­ter speeds. It would also allow a small­er aper­ture and a greater depth of field, bring­ing more into focus.

To sum­ma­rize what I have learned, con­sid­er using man­u­al expo­sure set­tings and turn aut­o­fo­cus off. Bring in more light then you think you need, espe­cial­ly to com­pen­sate for low light lens­es you may not own. If the project is impor­tant, rent the equip­ment you need. Learn to use the soft­ware and know the capa­bil­i­ty of your com­put­er.

For soft­ware, I may look into Adobe Pre­mier Ele­ments. Sim­i­lar to Pho­to­shop Ele­ments, it appears that Pre­mier Ele­ments pro­vides all the basic tools need­ed to cre­ate and edit video for about a 1/5 of the price of the full blown pro­gram.

The con­tem­po­rary big band pro­gram at Foothill Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege appears to be end­ing it’s long run, falling vic­tim to the sad econ­o­my. Under the baton of John Gove, the bands attract­ed many of the bay area’s first call play­ers as well as pro­vid­ing a friend­ly envi­ron­ment for up and com­ing stu­dents. Con­tem­po­rary music was the key. From Jim McNeely to Maria Schnei­der to Thad Jones to obsure Duke Elling­ton pieces and also local com­posers such as Ray Brown. I lis­tened to my wife Lori prac­tice the most bizarre trom­bone and piano parts and picked up quite an edu­ca­tion by proxy. While oth­ers record­ed their end of semes­ter con­certs, I start­ed tak­ing pic­tures and have put togeth­er a col­lec­tion. Click here or any of the pic­tures below to go to the full gallery.

I just recent­ly learned of the Pro­fes­sion­al Pho­tog­ra­phers of the Greater Bay Area which appears to be anoth­er valu­able resource for pic­ture snap­pers, espe­cial­ly in the San Fran­cis­co bay area.

They are hold­ing their annu­al “Sus­tain­ing Mem­bers” meet­ing Thurs­day, Novem­ber 19, free and open to every­one. Guest speak­er Ed Pin­gol will dis­cuss light­ing. There will also be sev­er­al pho­to labs and oth­er ven­dors show­ing their wares.

Click here for more details.

Birds are great sub­jects. They are plen­ti­ful and col­or­ful. They are fleet­ing which make still pic­tures of them chal­leng­ing and all the more appre­ci­at­ed. A friend recent­ly showed me a pic­ture of a great horned owl tak­en just a short walk from my home and I real­ized I need­ed owl pic­tures of my own.

2 owls live in the euca­lyp­tus grove right down the street. I can hear them hoot­ing as I type this. They do not seem much afraid of us and often sit rather close to an access­able path. They also sit very still. This is an advan­tage as I am shoot­ing them in late evening light and in deep shad­ows. With the aper­ture wide open, I am using 1/10th of a sec­ond or slow­er shut­ter speed.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, we have a male and female. The male being the small­er of the two and with a low­er pitched song. All the hoot­ing may be courtship rit­u­als in progress. If so, they would build a nest and lit­tle owls would appear in the ear­ly spring. All in all, an excel­lent pho­to doc­u­men­tary oppor­tu­ni­ty and blog wor­thy too.

If I am cor­rect, in the pic­tures above, the first is the male. The sec­ond, the female, is not wink­ing at me. She appears to have lost her right eye.

I will be pho­tograph­ing them as often as I am able. I am using a Nikon D80 with a Nikkor 70–300 4.8/5.6 lens usu­al­ly cranked out to 300mm and still requir­ing some extreme crop­ping. Using a tri­pod and remote trig­ger helps. Focus­ing through the branch­es is anoth­er chal­lenge. I hope to score some great shots going for­ward and post­ing them here.

This was my first shot and hand held at that! He was sit­ting in a great loca­tion.