Gasp – An update
No I didnt die, or loose my internet, but this summer has seen a ton of stuff I’ve had to do and updating here wasnt there, plus I wasnt shooting much of my own stuff soooo.
I posted a few days (so far) of my trip to Acadia, so I’m putting my Acadia pics here too.
This is Day 1, the day we arrived in Acadia National Park. We drove up from Portland the morning before this, and from NJ to Portland the day before that, with Extremely done driver front brake pads, so at 7am, I sat in the AutoZone parking lot with new “tools” (they lend out $3K engine cranes, but a set of handtools, THOSE you’ll have to buy buddy) and replaced my pads. The tire shop I had put on my tires maybe 4 days before that TOLD me, after he VERIFIED with the tech that my fronts were at 1/4″.. yea, 1/4″ on the outside, the insides were down to the metal backing….
never listen to your “mechanic”
Raleigh, North Carolina
Went to Raleigh this past week for a tradeshow and had some free time, during daylight hours, much easier now with DST and staying light out till 7-8pm.
Walked around downtown, and found yet another great vantage point from an empty parking garage. There were 5 visible from my hotel window, and that didnt include the one I climbed, nor the other 2-3 I saw walking around.
Didnt get all the shots I wanted, as the clouds were in that day, and of course, working Monday afternoon after flying it did nothing to prevent us from leaving before 7pm on Tuesday, when it was Gorgeous out. 
Macro Work – MP-E 65mm be damned
Have not shot much recently, work and Granger have had me pretty busy. However, I did get a chance to fool around with the 100 macro and 50 1.4 the other day.
I realized that now that I have another 58mm filter thread lens, other than the 85mm, I could do some pretty good work with it reversed on my 100mm macro. Typical rule is that at infinity, a flipped lens will result in an mainlens:flipped lens magnification ratio. So with the macro, I would be at 2:1 from the get-go with this setup. Still waiting to find a 58-72mm reversing ring for the 35 1.4L =D
I took some pictures on the new focusing rail, which works much better after a complete tear down and retightening of the unit. Before the slide would tilt and the worm gear would fail to engage. Now I tightened it and no more issues.
I placed the 50mm on the camera, hit the DOF preview @ f4, and then unmounted the lens to increase the sharpness of the lens, to prevent abberations and falloff.
After playing around at ~2:1 with the 40D mounted for “extra” mag, I started going to 1:1 on the macro. This got me pretty close, but decided to go all out. Threw all 3 extension tubes at it, and the 2X extender. These are the results, with approximate magnifications. The 5X shots were about 4 seconds long at F2.8, so I hit it with some flash, 1/250th @ f11. Still no DOF, but F32 was worse, so much diffraction.
Black River Imaging Albums
These are some of the highest quality albums I’ve seen. Well made, well presented, well packed.
These will make brides happy, and photographers money 
International Boiler Works
So almost 2 months ago, Carl came to visit and on the day after New Years, we went to visit the International Boiler Works, in East Stroudsburg, PA. Luckily, our fears of problematic parking due to the use of 2 cars were unfounded, and we were able to make use of a local “prep” school parking lot literally across the street from the “entrance” to the boiler works.
The main building is absolutely huge and I cant imagine how large it was filled with machinery and tooling. We wondered around the facilities for a while, looking at the graphitti and destruction, from numerous visitors. Paintball games and hangout spots were clearly visible in almost every building.
The facilities have been basically torn up, with anything breakable, broken. The facilities are very damaged by mother nature as well, plants reclaiming the grounds, and most of the structure rusted and breaking up. The building is still in good shape considering, and we were not considered about safety, even climbing stairs or walking around any of the buildings.
Over all, it was very interesting, and worth while shooting site.
Ironton Rail Trail
having some down time allows you to find all sorts of fun places to visit
We found this one, from a friend from the camera store I used to work at. The Ironton Rail Trail offered a few things to photograph, and was fairly close by.
there were a few abandoned buildings, and one massive 3-4 story building with nothing but the 4 walls standing, and the iron beams that formed the roof. We wandered around, photographing along the way, but drove between 2 of the main sections, as there was about a 5 mile walk between them, and even then that wouldnt have covered the entirety of where we explored.
We did see a few kids building a fire in one of the buildings, next to a tent. Kristin and I wondered if they were run-aways or just hanging out for the weekend.
Now : Pictures!
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Rochester – Day 1 – Agway
So after we froze in the subway, we head over to DataTronics, which was in the midst of a cleanup. Relucantly, we turned away and headed back to Carl’s place to decide what to do.
We decided to head out to Lyons, and check out Agway Fertilizer. We parked across the street (for the most part) in some commercial parking lot, which was the only point of concern, since NJ is a lot different when it comes to parking for abandoned buildings. We trekked down the street and checked it out. The interior was very interesting because of the snow that had flown inside, but the bare concrete structure was very interesting.
Many of the large holes in the exterior gave me much concern exposure wise, and ended up doing a Number of bracketed shots, to convert to “HDRs” later. Exposure blending or fusion was another technique I tried to make the full range of details come alive in the images. After about 2 hours, the light was fading fast, and without lunch we were all getting very hungry, so we called it a day, and headed back to Henrietta to get some BWW!
Rochester Visit – Day 0.5 – Ashley PA, Huber Coal Breaker
As we planned our trip to Rochester, we found afew places to check out along the ride up. The best of the bunch, based on location, “coolness” factor, and approachability, was the Huber Coal breaker in Ashely, PA. The trip to it was fairly easy.
Finding a spot to part was a bit harder. The winter season is not exactly the time that people would be parking in the “public ballfield”, so we passed on that, and the side streets around were filled with houses with cars in the street.
Moving on we found no way to really access it, so we decided to throw a hail marry and ask the “Earth Conservency” that was basically directly in front of it along the main road.
They said they did not own it (but later reading says there is some dispute about that) and the construction company next door might be willing to let us in.
We went over there, parked and started to walk to the front door, when an older man in a pickup yelled at us, asking “what do you want?”
We explained we wanted to take pictures of the breaker, and were looking for the owner.
“Yea, just be careful” was what he responded with….
“Are you the owner?” was ours.
“I gotta teach You people how to talk! You dont answer a question with a question!”
Ok, thanks! Well be on our way. I was quiet taken aback with his attitude, but he was on the property and gave us permission so thats good with me!
We spent about an hour and a half, to 2 hours, walking around. Its a Huge factory, and has a ton of buildings, many of which are on the verge of unsafe.
Combining Powers!
I found out today that I could save a HDR file from PhotoMatix and open it in photoshop. This lets me use the better alignment tool for when i dont have a tripod, save it as a HDR, and open it in photoshop to work on the tone mapping curve there. This tends to give better results, usually, but the hardest part was always getting the files aligned properly. Now I can do both and get results like this.
High Dynamic Awesomeness!
Finally, a change I can agree with!
Well, this is a pretty significant change from my old 1280×1024 HUGE webpage i made just about 4 years ago now.
I remember it because at the time, my laptop was 1680×1050, and I figured soon, all browsers would have a standard larger than 800×600.
I created it in notepad. Yup, i was “hardcore” even though I barely knew any code.
I do have to credit carl for helping me set this up, I doubt I would have changed from editing and posting to flickr, and basically using my website as more than just a place to host my avatar.jpg on my many websites. http://www.thecolorblindphotographer.com/ is his website. Hopefully, this will be more fluid and exiting to use than my previous one, and I will be able to drop photos into here from when i go shooting and write about it.
