Tag: photography

Contest Theme: Lighthouses

~ Jesse Yow ~ 2 Comments

The theme of a recent “”Christian Photographers on Facebook” photo contest was Lighthouses. I usually enter one or two photos in each week’s contest, but the real value (for me) comes in learning from the other entries. I partly understand the technical side of photography, but have much more to learn when it comes to picture composition and the creative side of photography.

For your interest, here are two of the photos I submitted for the Lighthouses contest theme:

Point Reyes Lighthouse on a calm, sunny day. This is a great spot to look for Gray Whales during their annual migration along the Pacific coast. You can also sometimes see giant sunfish looking like round light patches just under the surface of the water. If you have visited this spot, you probably recall descending over 300 steps to get down to this view. Then you had to hike back up those steps to get back to the path to the parking lot.
Another view of the Point Reyes Lighthouse, taken from part way up the access path. The large building to the right of the lighthouse used to house machinery to power the foghorn. I think the original equipment may have used a steam engine (need to check my history on this), and this was replaced later by a diesel generator. In either case, fuel had to be brought down the path from up on top, so the operators built a track with rails on each side of the staircase so they could lower supplies on a wheeled cart. Nice as long as the cart didn’t get away from you on the steep slope.
Pigeon Point Lighthouse, south of Half Moon Bay and north of Monterey Bay. The two-chimneyed building at the foot of the lighthouse provided office space and workspace for the lighthouse operator. Like the Point Reyes Lighthouse, the original oil-burning and then electric bulb light sources were eventually replaced by automated electric lights designed to blink the same coded signals as used in the original designs. This is another good place to watch for marine wildlife.
Another view of Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I believe that this is now a state park, and the lighthouse is being refurbished so that visitors can climb the spiral staircase inside all the way to the top of the tower. I have been up there once, before it was closed for safety reasons, and the view was spectacular!
Lighthouse (I don’t know the name) on the north end of Kauai, in the Hawaiian Islands. The coded signal for this lighthouse was two quick flashes every 15 seconds, or something like that. You can see the huge Fresnel lens inside the top of the lighthouse; this lens focused the light into a strong beam that could be seen for perhaps 15-20 miles out to sea, and rotated to generate the flashes. The Point Reyes and Pigeon Point lighthouses had similar Fresnel lenses with rotation mechanisms, although theirs might have been slightly larger. Back in the 1920s, this lighthouse saved the first attempt to fly from Oakland, CA to Honolulu, Hawaii. A military plane took off from California bound for Honolulu, but their navigation systems failed part way through the flight, and it was too cloudy for celestial navigation. After at least twenty hours of flight, hoping to find Honolulu, they spotted the characteristic flash of this lighthouse to their south, and realized they were passing the north side of the Hawaiian Islands. Once they knew where they were, they changed course and made it to Honolulu before running out of fuel. Barely.

Views from the Air

~ Jesse Yow ~ Leave a comment

Earlier this year we were on a nonstop flight from Chicago to San Francisco, headed home after our grandson’s confirmation. Rather than taking a direct route west from O’Hare, our pilot flew southwest almost to the Texas panhandle before turning west. We were taking an end run around a line of intense thunderstorms, and the strategy gave us a smooth flight. The plane was relatively new, so the windows were clean and clear enough to be able to see some interesting views along the route. All of the photos below look out of the north side of the plane.

Canyons on the Colorado River and Green River in southeast Utah, well upstream from Grand Canyon.
Erosion patterns around some terrain that is high enough to pick up some moisture in winter (note the green forest).
Massive erosion pattern somewhere south of the San Rafael Swell.
Terrain similar to the previous photo, but note that the area to the left (west) has some vegetation, suggesting higher elevation and more rain.
Interesting outcrops of white sandstone or limestone.
Farmland (mostly on the left) and rugged terrain — I think this might be in the Bryce Canyon area but don’t know exactly where to look.
Nice snow-capped area north of Zion National Park and northeast from Cedar City, Utah. I spent six weeks in Cedar City for a geology field camp many years ago, and guess that this might be the Brian’s Head area (elevation of about 13000 feet if I recall correctly).
Not sure what these are. Solar panels plus some other things? If you look closely, you can see rows of massive wind turbines for scale.
Open pit mines (how many pits do you see?) in southern Nevada. Betting they mine gold, copper, or possibly iron.

Technical info: we were flying at 34,000 ft altitude and I shot these photos with an iPhone using the ProCamera app. Next time maybe I will try to bring a physiographic map along to help identify features.

During grad school many years ago I taught classes on remote sensing and air photo interpretation, and I usually enjoy taking in the views when flying across the US. Hope you enjoy these views, too!

Contest Theme: Garden Path

~ Jesse Yow ~ Leave a comment

The theme for this week’s Christian Photographers on Facebook contest was “Garden Path.” Again, this was a good opportunity to learn from what other photographers do with lighting, composition, and so on. The first photo below was my entry, which did not win, since other pictures were better. The other three photos are also from my personal photo library. God’s colors are the best, and these images capture some of His artwork.

Garden path to where Hobbits dwell. This and the next two photos are from the Hobbiton movie sets constructed in New Zealand for filming Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy.
Bench along the path in Hobbiton. Looks like someone was just there, and left their pipe as bookmark!
Tourists at Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ home in Hobbiton. Wonderful weather, and an enticing place to visit.
Shifting location from New Zealand back to the US, here are wildflowers in Olympic National Park in NW Washington state. The path is more of a hiking trail, and this is God’s gardening rather than Sam Gamgee’s efforts, but the colors are still nice.

Contest Theme: Silhouette

~ Jesse Yow ~ Leave a comment

Last spring my “Electrons are Cheap” post mentioned a weekly contest held by the Christian Photographers on Facebook group. The group hosts a weekly competition in which group admins announce a theme and members may submit a photo that they believe fits the theme. The theme last week was “Silhouette.” The winning photo showed two children in silhouette dancing and playing on a footbridge, and it was wonderful!

In my experience children, butterflies, and birds are some of the most challenging subjects to photograph. As soon as you have the picture composed and you are ready to take the shot, they move! And they often move quickly and in an unpredictable way. Kudos to anyone who can master the art of photographing children at play!

I did not have any silhouettes of children to enter in the contest, so I entered two other photos:

Texas sunset behind grass in the wind. You might deduce that the wind was out of the south, warm, and humid, and you would be mostly right.
Bridge over the Dardanelles, near sunset. This fairly new bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. It has been open to traffic for a few years, but construction cranes still sit atop each of the two towers, so I guess they are still adding finishing touches.

Testing a New Lens

~ Jesse Yow ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes life gets in the way, and there is no time for writing. It can be easier to find a minute or to for shooting a photo. At Christmas my wife gave me a 1.4x extender for my best telephoto lens, and here are a few handheld shots that I made to test the sharpness of the lens:

Closeup of American flag from about 20 feet away with 700mm lens, to see if I could bring the stitching into focus.
Oranges near the top of our Washington Navel orange tree, from maybe 30-40 ft away with 700mm lens.
Full moon in January, also known as the Wolf Moon, with 700mm lens
Crescent of the waxing moon, taken with 700mm lens, after the New Moon earlier this month (February).
Waxing moon with 700mm lens.
Nandina berries at about 20ft with 500mm lens.

All of these shots were handheld, which is a bit of a challenge with a long lens. The moon shots would be sharper if I used a monopod to steady the lens, sharper still with a tripod, and even sharper with a timed shutter release to avoid the vibration of pushing the shutter button. Would it make a difference on photos in a blog post? Probably not, but the difference would be noticeable with magnification. Maybe next time…