Title: Big Sky, Small Mountains

Location: Langley, Washington, USA, North America

Description: It was a beautiful, uncommonly sunny day in the Puget Sound yesterday until the cold front started moving in around sunset. But it actually helped the cause of adding drama to a photo, so I took advantage of the timing for this shot on Whidbey Island. The most prominent mountain with the most amount of snow is Three Fingers. The next snowy one to the left is Whitehorse.

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 28-300mm L lens with settings of ISO 100, 28mm, f/5.6, 1/500th of a second

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Up, Up And Away

Location: Portland, Oregon, USA, North America

Description: A 30 second long exposure of a flight taking off from PDX. Timing is key in shots like this if a remote control is not handy. I hope to take some more shots from a different angle Friday night. Anyone in PDX want to join me?

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 10-22mm EF lens with settings of ISO 100, 18mm, f/16, 30 seconds

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

They try to. And the Mukilteo-Clinton run I was waiting for happens to have the best on-time performance in the fleet.

So my curiosity was piqued when, at the normal time of seven minutes until departure, the ferry wasn’t loading. A big truck blocked my view of the boat so I thought not much of it and went back to chatting with my daughter.

At departure time we still hadn’t moved. And I could spot three police cars parked by the dock.

At seven minutes past departure time I was genuinely curious. A few more police cars were showing up and a Coast Guard rescue helicopter was now circling with its landing gear down, a sign that it wasn’t just passing by.

I snapped a few pictures of the activity.

Washington State Patrol K-9 officer (minus his dog) walking on the ferry in Mukilteo.

Coast Guard helicopter circling the scene.

Workers (I’m unsure if this gentleman is with WSP or WSF as a number of officers were not in uniform) check around the boat.

And then the big bomb truck from the Washington State Patrol showed up  (as the ferries are part of the Washington State Department of Transportation, the WSP has responsibility for their security).

And a dude or two started putting on protective gear.

All the while passengers were asked to leave their vehicles and stand near the back of the parking area. Some huddled by the toll booths for a good point of view. The wind was blowing a winter chill around and warmth was hard to find outside of our cars.

Meanwhile, Sabrina took her first bomb threat in stride.

Throwing rocks in a storm retention pool.

Walking to the side of the dock, the activity on the water was pretty obvious.

The Navy boat was just passing by but doesn’t it make things look more urgent?!? One of my friends said he saw a device, like a log standing straight out of the water with an antenna on top, float by, not bobbing with the waves as the multiple logs were, and head for the boat. Sabrina called this a UUFO (Unidentified Underwater Floating Object). We checked my friend’s breath for signs of alcohol but he seemed sober. I never saw this device but it’s cool to think the WSP or Coast Guard had a mini-sub there to check things out. Makes it more exciting.

We then heard, “Fire in the hole!” and a loud pop. I’d give it an M80 sound on the scale from Popits to Nuclear Warhead. Walking back to the bomb truck, there is now a spool of cord on the ground and more people talking.

Oh look! News cameras! They must know something.

Getting closer:

Now to work my way to the front of the pack for a better view.

It’s bomb dude with a black backpack. I’m guessing this is not his kid’s backpack even though it looks like the one Sabrina sometimes uses. He also decides to get his knife out and start cutting into the bag. This is certainly not his bag, I hope.

Movies? Let’s take a page out of Hollywood and, “Zoom in. Rotate. Enhance.”

Does anyone know what that is? It looks like a video game possibly. And the letters “..STROM” ?  A little help here?

Moving on, bomb dude keeps ripping apart stuff.

And then he finds something. Shows it to his buddies (at least I like to romanticize all bomb dudes are buddies, just like in the movies).

See the smile on his face. I think he wants to take it home.

After that, he opens and pours out a water container.

And that’s pretty much about it. The Coast Guard heads off…

Ferry workers reboard the boat…

Bomb dude undresses… (just the suit, ladies)

And puts away the bomb blowing up stuff…

Police stand over the remains of the pack. I’m sure some of them wanted to have a smoke, there was certainly some tension going on.

And the film crew turns to filming the boat loading.

We then sail off to Whidbey Island, about two hours later than anticipated.

I want to thank the Washington State Patrol and Coast Guard for doing their job well today. No panic. No beatings. No glamor and glitz as if Tango & Cash had showed up. They kept the passengers and crew safe and dealt with the situation professionally.

My daughter also experienced something I hope she never has to deal with again. You know how kids like anything cool and out of the ordinary? That was her morning and she was excited to tell al the kids at school about it.

In the end, according to news reports, there was no explosive device found. That thing bomb dude showed to his buddies, on second inspection, was likely just a bong.

I think this picture says it all.

Looking for something pretty to look at instead? Check out yesterday’s Photo Of The Day – Immersion Panorama Of Machu Picchu

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Light Trails take a bit of imagination to conceptualize and shoot. While not vital, it helps to be able to plot out how you want your image to appear to understand the camera settings for this type of photography.

Here’s the deal; light comes in to your camera and hits your sensor. As mentioned previously, your sensor’s pixels and little scales measuring the amount of light ‘weighing’ on them (‘striking’ them is another way to think of it and is more accurate). The more light that hits the sensor, the higher the scale reads. Most pixels have a scale from 0-255. 0 is black. 255 is all filled up with that particular pixel’s color (red, green, blue…if you need a diagram, check out the post on ISO).

All fine and well. What happens to create a light trail is light from a source moves across the scene in front of the camera and is emitting light (or reflecting it, but lets stick with an actual light sources here, like a lightbulb, or the glowing eyes of the Yeti which actually emit light, look it up). As it moves from left to right, let’s say, it essentially ‘paints’ the pixels in its path with something brighter than what was behind it. Often these shots are taken at night, so the background is really dark, maybe a 20 on that 0-255 scale. Now this bright light comes along and pushes the pixel ‘sensors’ up to 240 or even maxes them out to 255.

The pixels can’t go back down the scale and thus they show the bright 240 reading even though the light source has moved on to the pixels next to them. Confused?  I kinda am, so let’s look at a pretty picture.

In this Fourth Of July shot I had the kids stand completely still. I then took a lit sparkler and traced it around them. It’s one of the few times I could get my daughter to remain still, so I I tried it many times to get the above image. Because the sparkler (emitting light all over the place) was brighter than background, and the shutter was open for 30 seconds, I was able to trace and have that movement recorded on the sensor.

Another pretty picture.

Now over to Nepal with its mountains and chances to see stars. The exact same thing is happening here, believe it or not. Well, kinda. On a simple scale I am holding the camera still on planet Earth and it is rotating. The stars are (perceptively, but not actually) holding still. So when the camera moves and the light source holds still, the light appears to move. Which is cool! In this case, the shutter was left open for 445 seconds.

There are two basic ways to go about recording light trails, be they Earth bound or in the heavens.

Method 1 – Long Exposure

This is the method in the first image. I left the shutter open for 30 seconds in Shutter Priority mode. If you have a cable release or remote control for your camera, you can hold the shutter open even longer (or just hold down the shutter release when in Bulb mode, which might require switching to Manual mode). The long exposure method has its limits and challenges.

First of all, your subject needs to not move ideally, otherwise it will appear blurred while the light trail is painted. I’m talking here about the subject, not the light that is doing the trailing. Having kids stand still for 30 seconds is about the limits of this challenge according to the laws of physics. Even a relatively slow shutter speed can create light trails. Take a look at this .8 second long exposure of the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier in California.

.8 seconds might not be long on the back of a bull, but it is long enough to give just enough movement to the lights on the wheel. In this case, it was pretty easy to get the pier to not move (barring earthquakes).

Get a tripod. Or, if no tripod is handy (as in the picture above) use anything that you can that won’t move. In this case I set my backpack down on the sand, positioned the camera on the back of it and used a timed shot to help ensure I wasn’t moving the camera, burring the pier.

Another example. This shot is 20 seconds long and is taken in downtown Langley, Washington.

Method 2 – Stacking Multiple Images

The other main method is to stack multiple, shorter shutter length images into one final image. This takes a special program or Photoshop skills. I downloaded a simple program that costs $17 call Image Stacker. And it does just that. The method used to create light trails is called “Brightest”. Opps! Let me take a step back.

So step one would be to take the images. You would setup your camera on a sturdy surface or tripod. Something non-moving (which begs the question of why I attempted this demo in California). Using either your finger to keep pressing the shutter lease, or a handy product called an intervalometer, you take a series of images, one after the other, as close together as you can. This can lead to hundreds of images, or maybe just a dozen if you like.

In the computer, you would then throw these images (in JPEG or TIFF format) at Image Stacker, choosing the ‘Brightest’ option. The program then looks at the same pixel in each image and only uses the brightest one. It does this for how many ever millions of pixels you have. If you are shooting at a mainly black sky, for instance, it will see black in all of those pixels except for when a start moves across. Then it will just show that bight spot.

In this way you get trails, which may have spaces in them depending on the time between shots and how fast the objects are moving. By way of example, let me show you a test I did this week.

I shot 150 frames of the view from Santa Monica towards LAX airport to the south. Each frame was .8 seconds long and a shot was taken each second. The frames were then assembled the images using Lightroom and this cool plugin. The video it spit out looked like…

If I take those same images and stack them, I receive the image below:

Kinda cool. If I had taken one second exposures, the spaces in between lines would be gone.

I hope those two methods of creating light trails start you thinking about what you can create. Don’t look to the stars for all your inspiration, grab any type of light and see what you can create!

Next Up: How I Edited It

31+ Days To Better Photography is a series written by professional photographer Peter West Carey on The Carey Adventures.Com. The series is designed to unravel the mysteries of photography so you can take better pictures. Subscribe here to receive all the updates and bonus material. Your comments are always welcome.

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Crossing Ferry At Sunset

Location: Puget Sound, Just Shy Of Kingston, Washington, USA

Description: As Winter storms clear before dumping more snow, a Washington State Ferry heads for Edmonds as the sunset.

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 28-300mm L lens with settings of ISO 100, 170mm, f/5.6, 1/500th of a second

Photography Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Under The Weather

Location: Puget Sound, Washington, USA

Description: Whidbey Island is buried under a blanket of clouds which dumped an inch of snow in places. The storm then moved inland before crashing into the Cascade Mountains where it released another 6-12” of snow.

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 28-300mm L lens with settings of ISO 100, 28mm, f/7.1, 1/100th of a second

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Clearing Storm

Location: Puget Sound, Washington, USA

Description: A winter snow storm breaks over the Puget Sound just after sunset.

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 10-22mm EF lens and settings of ISO 3200, 10mm, f/3.2, 1/15th of a second

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Blue Skies

Location: Puget Sound

Description: A clearing storm passes over Puget Sound and heads inland. The blue in the clouds was an odd occurrence as the sun was setting behind me.

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 28-300mm L lens and settings of ISO 100, 40mm, f/4.0, 1/400th of a second. Edited with Lightroom 4.0 Beta.

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Three Elements

Location: Half way to Whidbey Island, Washington, USA

Description: As the sun came up during the ferry crossing today, the slight haze and blandness led to my mind breaking things down into the simplest of simple. Water, Earth, Air (with appropriate Puget Sound clouds).

Shot with a Canon 7D and Canon 28-300mm L lens with settings of ISO 100, 210mm, f/6.3, 1/250th of a second. Converted to black and white using Silver Shadows 2

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.

Title: Clearing Storm, Puget Sound

Location: Puget Sound, Washington, between Clinton and Mukilteo

Description: Driving under the cloud bank last night I was excited to get to the dock and head over the water. I could look straight up from the dock and see the edge of the storm and feel the stiff 15 knot wind would push it inland quickly. The sun had set and I was hoping to catch some light before it went dark.

I shot this in portrait orientation and stitched the 22 images together using hugin. The moon is visible at the very top. I had to work quick as the ship was running late and heading about 20 knots into the wind, making standing still and getting enough overlap difficult.

Shot with a Canon 7D, Canon 10-22mm EF lens with settings: ISO 250, 10mm, f/5.6 and 1/20th of a second.

Photograph Creative Commons Copyright Peter West Carey

©2012 The Carey Adventures. All Rights Reserved.