Uploads from magnetic lobster

Tail Inspector

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 19:02:43 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Space Shuttle Endeavor on the slow trek to its new home at the California Science Center.

Shuttle Observers

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:42 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

A massive crowd gathered at the Griffith Observatory to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final flight.

Shuttle Skyline & Spectators

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:35 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

One of the three passes that the Space Shuttle Endeavor made over the Griffith Park observatory area as part of its final journey to Los Angeles.

Shuttle Over Hollywood

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:29 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

The shuttle makes a pass over the landmark Hollywood sign.

Piggyback

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:23 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

The Space Shuttle Endeavor hitches a ride for its final journey to Los Angeles.

Watching the Shuttle

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:17 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Some of the crowd that hiked up Griffith Park to observe the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final journey to Los Angeles.

Last Flight

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:10 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Some of the crowd that hiked up Griffith Park to observe the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final journey to Los Angeles.

Some Assembly Required

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:32:22 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Our friends have an annual pinewood derby for adults and kids. This is my entry this year, a three-dimensional 72-piece jigsaw puzzle-on-wheels that I made with the new scroll saw. (You know the expression "to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? Well, to a person with a scroll saw, everything looks like a puzzle.)

The fully-assembled car was over the weight limit, but that was easily solved by removing pieces from the top layer.

There is enough of a gap between pieces that the "belly" of the car sags enough to scrape against the ground. In this photo the car is resting on a thin block of wood that is just out of view -- the wheels are actually slightly off the ground. For racing purposes, this problem was solved by wrapping a rubber band around the car to prevent the sagging belly. (I guess that makes it a girdle.)

The flat sides provide a lot of surface area to rub agains the sides of the track, so the car loses a lot of energy with each bump of a side. And I didn't use any graphite on the wheels because I didn't want to get the car dirty. Consequently, the car was never quite able to reach the finish line in any of its heats, so it came in last place.

Wood Cutout Portraits

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 09:55:51 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

My latest project is these wood cutout portraits of the kids. I used a scroll saw to cut out each shape from half-inch medium density fiberboard. I separately painted each piece and then glued them together at slight offsets so that the faces have some depth. The faces are mounted to the background using dowels so that each face "hovers" about two inches in front of the background. The only black piece is the background, so where you see a black shape in a face, you're looking through a hole at the background. More in the first comment below.

What Do You Get When You Cross a Bumblebee and a Teddy Bear?

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:32:52 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

This is a male Valley Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa varipuncta), the largest bee in California -- approximately 2.5 cm. I had never seen one until a few days ago when I found this guy patrolling the native flowers that wife (Mrs. Lobster) planted in our front yard. I was fortunate that an expert (entomologist John S. Ascher, via bugguide.net) was kind enough to identify this bee.

The bee would hover for a couple of seconds before moving to a different spot about a half meter away. He cycled through several such spots, occasionally adding or dropping a spot in the circuit. I never saw him land.

To photograph him, I staked out one of the spots in his circuit and waited with my lens focused approximately where I thought he would return. When he appeared in view, I manually adjusted the focus as quickly as possible and fired a burst of shots. (Autofocus wasn't very useful -- it was much more likely to focus on a nearby flower instead of the bee, plus it's very slow for the macro lens I was using.) I took more than 300 shots over the course of about 30 minutes before he flew off. Fewer than 10 of those shots were worth keeping.

UC Davis has a nice web page about this bee. It turns out that the female looks very different -- she's completely black. When I told my 9 year old son Thomas about this the next day he remarked, "Oh yeah, there's one in the back yard" and then he took me right to her. In the first comment below is a shot I took the next day of a female sucking the nectar out of a Showy Penstemon flower.

Nikon D90, Tamron 90mm macro lens, f/13, 1/400 sec, ISO 640

Dodger Blue Hour -- Los Angeles, California

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:37:49 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

An hour of moving lights above and around Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California.

A composite from 995 exposures acquired over a one hour period. I've used 3-second exposures to catch the air traffic, a combination of longer and much shorter exposures (and some HDR) for the city and stadium.

I'm using a somewhat refined version of the technique I used in this shot.

Nikon D90, Sigma 18-50mm @ 27mm, f/4.5, ISO 200.

Light Painting at the Literaturhaus – Frankfurt, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:29:37 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Cars (and at least one bike) move past the MobiSpray work of MobiLenin (Dr. Jürgen Scheible), lighting up the Frankfurt Literaturhaus. One of nearly 200 exhibits comprising Luminale 2012 last week.

Stack of 11 six-second exposures. Distortion correction and perspective adjustment in PTLens. Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm @ 11 mm, f/9, ISO 200.

Under and Over Obermaumbrucke -- Berlin, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:27:18 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Moving lights from a U-bahn train above and a riverboat below Oberbaumbrucke (Oberbaum bridge) in Berlin, Germany.

Composite from a pair of 8 second exposures and a pair of 30 second exposures, taken 10 minutes apart. Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm @ 16mm, f/14, ISO 200.

Balloon Man

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:00:54 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

This is my buddy Michael Layefsky who takes amazing aerial photographs using the helium balloon shown here or one of his kites. I was very fortunate to get to tag along with him on a balloon session on his recent visit to Southern California.

Shiny Busy City - Los Angeles, California

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:27:26 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Downtown Los Angeles at night, as viewed from 16 miles northeast and one mile up on Mount Wilson.

HDR from a whole lot of exposures (135 seconds total), some dodging and burning plus blending with exposures developed using somewhat more conventional techniques.

[Photo-nerd discussion]: Nikon 300mm f/4 lens (not mine) at f/16. From some test photographs I took of objects about 100 ft away, I concluded that this lens is sharpest at about f/6.3, which was consistent with some resolution measurements I found online. But when I shot this, I shot it at several apertures, and f/16 (the smallest I used) was clearly sharpest, and I don't know why. My guess is that since the smaller aperture gives a bigger depth-of-field, it was less susceptible to slight focus errors (though I tried to be careful about focus), and at a focal length of 300mm, f/16 is nearly a 19mm diameter aperture, which is big enough that diffraction isn't much of an issue the way it would be at shorter focal lengths. But I don't really know. Let me know if you have an idea!

Flower Parts or Something

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:34:04 -0700

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Lit from below with an LED flashlight.

North Falls and Snow

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:03:28 -0800

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

A snowy day at the 136-foot tall North Falls in Silver Falls State Park, Oregon. Taken on the same day as my shot of South Falls. Both are part of the Trail of Ten Falls.

I separately "developed" a 0.6 sec exposure (for the snowy region), a combination of nine 1/6 sec exposures (added to get the smooth water without saturating the detector), and a 1.6 sec exposure (everything else). Then I manually blended the results.

Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm @ 13mm, f/14, ISO 200

Plane Trails & Palm Trees

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:09:43 -0800

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Airplanes departing from LAX, Los Angeles, California. Viewed from Vista Del Mar park.

Composite from 10 airplanes using 20 second exposures.

Nikon D90, Sigma 17-50mm @34mm, f/6.3, ISO 200.

Hollywood Sunrise

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:42:12 -0800

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, as seen from the Hollywood Bowl scenic overlook (officially, the Jerome C. Daniel overlook) at sunrise. After getting up early nearly a dozen times to visit this spot, finally a decent sunrise materialized.

Fun Fact: the blinking light on top of the Capitol Records building spells "Hollywood" in morse code.

Nikon D90, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 @ f/8, ISO 200. Nearly a minute of exposure to get the light streaks from the cars, sky @ 1/50 sec.

Maybe I should have taken this one out of the oven a little sooner.

Griffith and Cumulus

nobody@flickr.com (magnetic lobster) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:07:09 -0800

magnetic lobster posted a photo:

Cumulus clouds above Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.

It was actually very hazy when I took this shot -- in the first comment below you can see the image that came straight from the camera.

The haze tends to dramatically reduce contrast, in effect producing a low dynamic range source image. But the image is also somewhat noisy (assuming that what you're interested in seeing is what's behind the haze rather than the haze itself). In an attempt to increase signal-to-noise ratio, I combined 9 exposures, all taken at 1/25 sec. I didn't want the motion blur in the clouds that comes from combining multiple exposures, so for the sky I've used a single exposure, but with a significant amount of noise reduction applied.

Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-300 @ 300mm, f/8, 1/25 sec, ISO 200.