Photography – Page 56 – Random Connections

Columbia Riverfront Park

March 22, 2009 Tom 1 Comment

Once, many years ago, I made the statement that while other cities like Austin and New Orleans had cool Riverwalk areas, Columbia had built a penitentiary on it’s riverfront. Fortunately, in the past couple of decades since that statement attitudes have changed, and both Greenville and Columbia have recognized the importance of their waterways and the potential for tourism. While in Columbia this past week I was able to spend an afternoon at the Columbia Riverfront Park, and it was quite a pleasant outing.

The park is located at the site of the Columbia Waterworks, and incorporates historical elements of the waterworks, the Columbia Canal, and the Congaree River. One enters the main portion of the part at the Waterworks entrance, with a path that leads past the portions of the water treatment plant that are still in operation.

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Problematic Panorama

March 15, 2009 Tom 3 Comments

Local, Photography

View the above image large

The photo above is a panorama of the Liberty Bridge, Falls Park, and Reedy Falls area in downtown Greenville. It consists of five images taken at a wide angle 18mm focal length, then stitched together in Photoshop. It turned out to be quite a learning process and experiment in adaptation.

The first thing I tried was to load up all five shots and try to use the automatic panorama tool in Photoshop. Some of the buildings were completely obliterated, and it simply rejected one image that it couldn’t get to fit. I’m still using version CS2 of Photoshop, so there may have been improvements in the automated tool, but the results with my version were disappointing. It was time to go to manual mode.

The problem with using wide-angle shots is that you get some unusual perspective distortion at the edges. If you look at each photo individually, each looks OK.

Falls Park and Downtown Photo Walk

March 14, 2009 Tom No Comments

Local, Photography

Thursday evening I met up with several of my Flickr photographer friends for a photo walk. Tracy (Wilhemina Lump Lump), Eric (RestedTraveler), and James (James Wellman) and I gathered at the entrance to Falls Park for a downtown expedition. It turned out to be a great gathering, and we really learned quite a bit from each other about various photographic techniques.

When we first planned this outing we had scheduled it for a couple of weeks ago, right as the snow storm hit. The intent was to go out and try to do some long exposure photography. When we reschedule, we failed to take into account the time change, so we still had more daylight than we had planned. Oops.

Super Simple Time Lapse

February 27, 2009 Tom 3 Comments

EdTech, General Technology, Photography

When we were in the Bahamas I tried my hand at some time-lapse video using my little Nikon S50 camera in movie mode. The results were pretty good, but I found myself battling the twin hurdles of battery life and patience (as well as lack of a tripod.) The result was a shorter-than-desired video clip that went by far too quickly.

Then a couple of weeks ago I read a good blog post on the Digital Urban blog with simple instructions on doing time-lapse photography with a webcam. While Digital Urban’s instructions look great, and I want to try those out, it occurred to me that there might be an even easier way to accomplish this – use someone else’s webcam! Here’s one that I created very quickly using some simple software and the webcam for Table Rock State Park…

All you need for this project is a computer (duh) that no one will need to use for a few hours, a good steady Internet connection, a website with an embedded webcam image, and the BSR Screen Recorder. Other screen recorder programs will probably work, but I like the BSR program because it’s very easy to set the record rate, and that is the lynch pin in this method.

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Traffic Trails Around Town

February 26, 2009 Tom 1 Comment

Local, Photography

Driving around town the past week or so I had been scouting for locations where I could get good shots of traffic trails. I wanted to avoid the Overbrook Overpass, where it seems everyone takes a photo, so something different was needed. Since I’d had dinner at The Clock, I decided to look for some … Read More “Traffic Trails Around Town” »

Fire Towers – Paris Mountain and Cleveland

February 17, 2009 Tom 10 Comments

History and Genealogy, Local, Photography

My first lookout tower adventure was actually Saturday afternoon, and I decided to hit a couple of local sites. That morning I had called my good friend Cathy Taylor (no relation) who is a park ranger at Paris Mountain State Park. It turns out that she has the same interest in fire towers, and was … Read More “Fire Towers – Paris Mountain and Cleveland” »

All Along the Watchtower

February 15, 2009 Tom 6 Comments

History and Genealogy, Local, Photography

This is going to be one of those multi-part posts. I’ve got tons of information on this subject, and it won’t be possible to put it all in one story.

I’ve always been fascinated by lookout towers. Near where I grew up in Laurens County there were two small monadnocks called the Little Knob and Big Knob. The Big Knob had a fire tower on it, and I longed to scale its steps and enjoy the view from the top. Some miles to the north is another prominent, larger monadnock with a fire tower – Paris Mountain. When I was around eight years old I did get to climb up the steps, but never made it into the cab at the top. I distinctly remember the trap door being padlocked when we got to the top.

I had forgotten all about the towers until just this past week. I had been looking for locations to do long-exposure photographs of I-85 for traffic trails when I spotted the Duncan lookout tower on the way home from work on Friday. At the intersection of Danzler and Victor Hill Roads it had a perfect view of the Interstate, so I went to explore. I found the tower in the front yard of a house on Victor Hill Road. The fence around its base now had a dog house within, and it was clear that the tower had not been used in years. I gave up on using this location as a photography platform, but now I wanted to learn more about the towers themselves, so a new quest was born.

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Hope and Copyright

February 11, 2009 Tom 1 Comment

Photography

I’ve been following with interest the news about artist Shepherd Fairey and the controversy surrounding his iconic HOPE poster used by the Obama campaign. The Associated Press is arguing that Fairey’s poster represents an illegal use of copyrighted work. The poster is based on a 2006 photograph by Mannie Garcia, a photographer for the AP. … Read More “Hope and Copyright” »

Kayaking and Caves in Lucayan National Park

January 24, 2009 Tom No Comments

Paddling, Photography, Travel

For our last full day in the Bahamas I had booked a kayaking tour and trip to the Lucayan National Park. Laura had been fighting a bad cough all week and didn’t feel like going, so I was on my own. After watching another stunning Bahamian sunrise, I began gathering my gear and headed down to meet the group.

I was the only one from our resort going on the tour, but there were nine others that had already been picked up, and we stopped for four more on the way out. Along with our guide, we had a party of fifteen.

Island Time

January 21, 2009 Tom No Comments

Photography, Travel

Things are more relaxed. Nothing is rushed. Everyone has a good time and things get done when they get done. That’s Island Time.

Even so, I was up at the crack of dawn, literally. Even on Island Time some habits are hard to break. However, I did have a purpose. I wanted to try some time-lapse videography with my little Nikon S50. The only problem was that I didn’t have a good tripod with me. My solution was to drag the floor lamp out onto the balcony and strap my little mini-pod to it with a Velcro strap. It looked weird…