Happy Halloween…

Halloween is upon us, and the Great Pumpkin will rise from the pumpkin patch and shower all the gools, goblins, witches and vampires with candy riches.

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

While at Arata pumpkin patch in Half Moon Bay with my newest nephew and his mom and dad, I snapped this image of a few gourds just laying around in the afternoon sunlight.
Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

Samhainophobia is a fear of Halloween

Happy Halloween

Holy Fires…

Now that it has been over a week since the fires started in southern California, there seems to be very few left burning. It is not that the fires have nothing left to burn, which fires can always burn something. The fires have been put down, due to the tremendous efforts of the all the fire crews that worked tirelessly to extinguish the deadly flames.

According the Blog San Diego County Wildfires 2007 just a couple wild fires remain. To see all the statistics go to San Diego County Wildfires 2007 Blog. I included a couple images that I pulled from the SFGate.com website. Even in destruction and tragedy you can find some beauty.

Jay Tyrrell...

What’s in a name? Well I have been inspired and intrigued by one of my coworkers. He is an older gentleman that has been working for my company for a few years. I really have just met him.

One day while he was standing looking out one of the large plate glass windows, I approached him. I was just curious to inspect what had caught his eye on the San Francisco Bay. There was a large Norwegian flagged container ship passing in front of our office building. On this container ship were very large blades of those ginormous wind turbines that you would see stalking the windy hills and ridges of the East Bay.

It turns out that this co-worker is an avid photographer. He specializes in large format panoramic images. He is still shooting on film. He has been shooting with one particular camera for years. He says “It’s perfect for the type of shot I am trying to capture”. “The camera gives me more of a cinematographer feel of an elongated movie screen”.

He is working on a series called Wind Army. It is a compellation of Images that he has taken of wind turbines at various wind farms. He was interested in the ship carrying the blades from a turbine, because he said it would fit in his Wind Army series.

You can check out more of the images of Jays “Wind Army” series on his website. Plus you can check out some of his other work there as well. You can also check out Jay’s work on LensWork DVD: LensWork Extended - 72

Website: Jay Tyrrell
LensWork

Transonic...

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

Today is the last official day of Fleet Week in San Francisco. The planes are all gone, and are in route to their next shows. Most of them will be heading to the Miramar M.C.A.S. show in San Diego. The Blue Angels are heading to Hawaii for their next air show.

This was the first time I attended the Fleet Week Air Show in San Francisco. We purchased reserved seats to view all the flight demonstrations. Even though the stage was very scenic, our seats were located across for the Marina’s outer jetty. The jetty blocked our view from some of the low flying acrobats.

On Sunday I returned alone to take some more pictures. This time I walked out onto the Jetty and set up camp just in front of where we were sitting the previous day. This proved to be a much better location. Especially if you are trying to capture a low level high speed pass by a Blue Angels solo pilot as he edges his aircraft just past the sound barrier envelope at 751 knots also know as transonic speed mach 0.8~1.2.

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

Photo by: Kirk Howard Copyright© 2007

Looking Forward…

Based off the title of this entry. One would thing that I would have a deep inspiration forward looking thought in mind. Actually I don’t want disappoint, but I will. Looking forward, is just what it sounds like. I am really looking forward to this weekend. Why? Because it is fleet week here in San Francisco and that provides a million photography opportunities.

As I sat at my desk yesterday I was reminded that the U.S. Navy Blue Angels would be in town to perform their incredible in-air acrobatic ballet. It was like a bell went off at 12:15 PM in my head as an F/A-18B Hornet painted blue and gold went streaking past our office windows at mach speed. Our offices are on the top floor of the Ferry Building looking out onto the bay towards the Bay Bridge. This gave us a shoreline seat to watch the Blue Angles doing their practice runs and survey flights.

In the afternoon today the Blue Angels will continue to do practice runs in preparation for Saturday and Sundays shows. Today I brought my camera gear to catch some action outside our windows.

Have a great weekend, I know my wife and I will.

Dismissed…

If you plan on coming to the San Francisco Fleet week Air Show or any Air Show and plan on photographing some of the displays and acrobatic acts here is a article I think is a good read on Air Show Photography.

Nikons' Double D’s…

In early September Nikon Corp announced two new cameras to the DSLR line-up. The long awaited professional D3, and the next generation in pro-consumer line of DSLR cameras by Nikon, the D300.

D3 - The D3, the result of years of development and feedback from professional photographers, combines many innovative Nikon technologies. These include an exclusive 12.1 effective megapixel FX format (36.0x23.9mm) image sensor with 12-channel read out, a blazing-fast 9 fps frame rate, expandable ISO settings from 200-6400, a completely new 51-Point autofocus system, a 3-inch VGA LCD screen with Live View and a cutting-edge image processing system.

D300 - The D300 is loaded with the latest professional technologies designed to produce images of the highest quality. The high-resolution 12.3 MP DX format CMOS sensor generates image files suitable for almost every type of output, combined with a fast standard frame advance rate of 6fps (up to 8 fps with optional Multi Power Battery Pack). The D300 offers fast power-up, quick response and outstanding flexibility to meet the needs of a wide variety of photographic assignments. The D300 powers-up in just 0.13 seconds, with an almost imperceptible 45 millisecond shutter lag.

If you would like to read the complete reviews from Digital Photography Review here are the links:

Nikon D3 – DP Review, Nikon USA, Scott Kelby, PopPhoto
Nikon D300 – DP Review, Nikon USA, PopPhoto

What we remember…

Sometimes our memory is a fine tooled instrument, other times it’s a pile of rust. Yesterday I knew I had forgotten something and it bugged me to know end. It felt like I was going through my day missing something very important.

I the dawn of this new morning, I discovered what I had forgotten. It was nothing at all, but my subconscious had been plagued with the remembrance of an old friend’s birthday. This friend is someone that I haven’t spoken to in twenty years or longer.

My wife suspects that, I may be going through the early stages of a form of male menopause. I cannot remember things I need to, and remember the junk that should be long purged from the files.

Beach Ball Safety…

I thought this was an interesting story. I wanted it to pass it along since I am a strong proponent of Beach Ball Safety… Who was the first responder?

New House Rules...

We have some new rules in our house concerning the use of my camera. It turns out that my wife is tired of us going somewhere and I abandon her. I would say in my defense “I don’t abandon you; you choose not to participate in my fun.”

It turns out that I do abandon my wife. My wife and I like to spend a lot of time outdoors. In the years past we spent most of our free time on the beach. We used to live on the beach in Southern California. Now we live in Northern California and we hike the local hills around our home, or spend time in San Francisco off the beaten path.

However my wife had created a Pavlovian response, when I grabbed my camera bag she would break out in hives and foam at the mouth. She would do this because when my eye is in the view finder I forget about time and space. She says that I have been known to stay in one spot for hours. It wasn’t until she brought this to my attention did I realize that she was right.

The new rules:

1. Whenever we go out side to do something together, the camera and all my gear stays at home.

2. If I choose to take photography gear, I go alone.

3. Only special vacation trips will I be allowed to take my photography gear.