Category: Photography

Lake Jocassee Morning Paddle

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Lake Jocassee Morning Paddle
Paddling, Photography

Lake Jocassee

The weekend didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned. I had a meeting in Columbia on Friday, so Thursday night I loaded up the boat on top of my car. The plan was to drive down for the meeting, then continue southward to Lake Marion and Sparkleberry Swamp.  Unfortunately, our cat Percy decided to get his paw hurt, so I had to drive back from my meeting earlier than expected to get him to the vet.  He’s OK – just a small cut and possible sprain, but nothing broken.

I really didn’t want to drive back down I-26 again, but I still had the kayak on top of the car and still wanted to go paddling somewhere.  All of my paddling partners were otherwise occupied, so I was on my own.  I finally decided on Lake Jocassee as a reasonable target.

Last time I was here I had just gotten my Old Town Dirigo, and was wanting to see as many waterfalls as I could.  This time I had the Pungo, but wasn’t really sure where I wanted to paddle.  There was one waterfall from the last trip that I didn’t get to see because some bozo parked a pontoon boat right in front of it and showed no signs of moving.  I decided to make that my first target. From there I wasn’t sure where I’d wind up.

The air temperatures were OK, but the water was quite chilly as I unloaded the boat and got set to head out.  There was a little activity at the boat ramp, but nowhere near as much as my last visit.  A boy and his son were taking a canoe out, and one pontoon boat launched.  Another trio was spending lots of time fussing over a tandem rec boat.  I talked with them, and one man and his brother were planning to paddle the entire length of the Savannah River, but not all at once.  On today’s trip they were heading up to the North Carolina River.  I hated to tell them that they weren’t on the Savannah, and wouldn’t be for quite awhile.  However, I’m sure they knew that.

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Edistoing Perfection

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Edistoing Perfection
Paddling, Photography

Edisto Skies

Edistoing (verb) – kayaking down the river, fun, rope swings, lots of fun, owls, loads of fun, funny side up, fossils, funtatious, sun burn, funtastic,endless oxbows, a heapin good time of fun, firecrackers, funsational, swimming with the gators, having fun, cypress knees, funasoric, beer, too much fun, and the Lowcountry Unfiltered Guys. (reference, John Ring)

Edisto (noun) – a state of blissful near-perfection brought on by the act of Edistoing; also the name of a blackwater river in the lowcountry of South Carolina.

I had my choice of paddling venues today. I could have joined the throngs in Spartanburg County for the Tame the Tyger river race, or I could join the Lowcountry Unfiltered gang for another trek on the Edisto River. I chose the latter. It turned out to be of paddling nirvana, with incredibly blue skies, cypress cathedrals, and camaraderie all around.

I got up early Saturday morning and drove down to Clinton to pick up Bob Donnan.  By 6:30 we were on our way to the river.  I set up my Nikon S50 on the dashboard and had it taking 10 second time-lapse photos to produce the video below:

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The Saluda at Piedmont

Posted on By Tom 6 Comments on The Saluda at Piedmont
Paddling, Photography

Tim on the Saluda

The weather forecast was for unseasonably warm weather with clear skies – perfect weather for paddling. My friend Tim Taylor joined me, and we headed for a new paddling venue. This time we were headed to Piedmont, SC, and to the Saluda River.

I was aware of this stretch from creating my Paddling Guide, but I hadn’t scouted it. The Greenville Canoe and Kayak Meetup did a paddle along this stretch last November, so I had seen their photographs. Since it was close and a section I hadn’t paddled, I decided to give it a try.

Piedmont across the lake

Tim and I loaded up the boats and drove on down to Piedmont. The town is a mill village with a dam on the Saluda River. It’s possible to put in above the dam and paddle upstream against the slight current, then return. Most of the trek is lake-like flat water paddling.

The put-in was a rather steep dirt road that led down to a public river access. The road was rough, and I wouldn’t recommend it for nice cars. Unfortunately, the area was very trashy. There was the detritus that normally washes down rivers, but it looked like people had been using the area as a dumping ground. Both the river and especially the mud at the put-in absolutely stunk. I was starting to have second thoughts about this trip.

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Test-Driving the Eye-Fi Explore

Posted on By Tom 2 Comments on Test-Driving the Eye-Fi Explore
Gear, Geocaching and Maps, Photography

Eye-Fi

I’ve been interested in these little gizmos for some time now. The Eye-Fi Explore is an SD card that will automagically upload your photos to your online photo service of choice whenever it comes within range of an open wireless network. Not only that, it uses some strange alchemy to geotag your photos each time you click the shutter. It sounded like the perfect photographic tool, but also the promises seemed too good to be true. I was hesitant to make the investment until I saw that Woot.com had one for a dirt-cheap price. I decided to give it a shot. I found it both to be about as amazing as I expected, and about as frustrating as I imagined.

Eye-FiThe Eye-Fi comes with the SD card (2 GB in my case, but available up to 8 GB) and a USB card reader, as shown above. The management software comes on the card itself, and automatically launches when the device is first plugged into the computer. The first thing I discovered is that you must have wireless access to configure the device. Just being connected to a computer with Internet access isn’t enough.

There are lots of parameters that can be set with the device. You can choose your photo hosting service (Flickr, in my case) and even set up separate routing for videos, so your photos may go to Flickr, but your videos to YouTube. You can set the device to connect and upload automatically to any wifi hotspot, or only when it comes within range of specified hotspots. I always like to edit my photos before they go public, so I set the privacy settings so that I would be the only one to see them on Flickr. You can also enable/disable geotagging.

Eye-Fi-Screen-Two

The most amazing thing is that this device actually works. I tried it in both my Fuji WP33 and my Nikon S70. It took photos, and when I turned the camera on in the presence of a wireless network, it uploaded the photos to my Flickr account without any interaction from me.

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2010 Calendar

Posted on By Tom 3 Comments on 2010 Calendar
Miscellaneous, Photography

hood ornament with texture

The past couple of years I haven’t been very successful with my photo calendars. In 2007 the company I used made misprints, and replaced all of the calendars I ordered. Some folks thought the calendars looked OK even with the faulty printing, and took them anyway. Last year I didn’t even get around to making a calendar. I couldn’t decide on which photos to use and the time slipped by. This year I had a theme, but once again time was a factor.

I order my calendars through Qoop.com from photos that I’ve posted to my Flickr account.  Since I’ve been doing so much with antiquing and adding texture, I thought it might be nice to create a collection of processed photographs.  Specifically, I was including old and vanishing structures and objects from the South.  I placed the order on December 6, which should have been plenty of time for the order to be processed.  However, the calendars didn’t arrive until after we had already left for Florida for Christmas – too late to be used as Christmas presents as intended.  I complained to Qoop, and they were gracious enough to refund my shipping fees and give me a coupon for future purchases, but this is two orders that they have messed up.

As for the calendars themselves, they were waiting when we got back home.  I may still use them as Epiphany presents, but the overall effect of the calendars wasn’t exactly what I expected.  They turned out a bit darker, and a bit more Gothic than I had thought.  Here’s a brief month-by-month rundown…

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Antiquing Techniques for Photoshop

Posted on By Tom 4 Comments on Antiquing Techniques for Photoshop
Photography

Old Shiloh School Photomatix copy

Lately I’ve been very impressed with the work of Flickr photographer K. Deslandes. She has been capturing some unique images of our state, particularly old farm houses and images of the disappearing South. She has been applying some interesting post-processing techniques in Photoshop/LightRoom that I wanted to replicate. Here’s one photo of hers that had caught my eye…

There are several elements contributing to the antique feel here. First, the photo uses square framing instead of rectangular. There is also the desaturated sepia tonal palette. The sepia doesn’t look overdone, as I’ve seen in some processed photos, but looks like a natural fading from the original black and white.

While these two elements contribute to the antique look, there are two others that really make this shot stand out. Deslandes has used a selective blur to mimic lens abberations in an older camera. On top of that she has added other image defects, such as spotting and scratching. What’s nice about this shot is that the image defects are in sharp focus, even in the areas that have selective blur, such as can be seen in the top corners of the photo. This makes the defects look like they occurred over time, after years of abuse to the photo.

I’ve worked with antiquing before, following a tutorial on the Digital Photography School blog. The tutorial suggests using a Gaussian blur, but it also suggests introducing some noise into the background. That tends to detract from the blur effect a bit, so I hadn’t really focused on the blurring technique. Deslandes photo reminded me how effective a good selective blur can be.

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Exploring L. A. (Lower Anderson)

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Exploring L. A. (Lower Anderson)
Local, Photography

Old School ReDynamix HDR

I hadn’t been out on a photo ramble in a long time. So, Saturday morning I grabbed my cameras and headed out. I only had a vague target in mind (as usual). I knew I wanted rural scenery so I could capture some old farm houses. I wanted to try some new post-processing techniques. My route took me down across Southern Greenville County and finally into Lower Anderson.

This time of year the lighting is always oblique. You don’t have to wait until the “golden hours” just after sunrise or right before sunset to get some interesting shots. The day was clear and bright, and it looked like the lighting would produce some interesting shots.

My first stop was in Connestee at McBee Chapel (Map). I had photographed it many times before, but I thought I would see what other angles I could bring to it. I don’t think they are still having regular services here, but I would love to attend one when they have a special service.

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Published in Charleston Magazine

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Published in Charleston Magazine
Photography

Check it out! One of my photos has been published in the October 2009 issue of the Charleston Magazine! The photo is one from our August 2008 trip with Lowcountry Unfiltered down the Edisto River. It appears (albeit tiny) in an article about outdoor activities in and around Charleston. Here’s the scanned page. It’s #2 … Read More “Published in Charleston Magazine” »