The Sky is Still Blue

So, before I would bore you with sunset after sunset from my deck.

Now it looks to be storm shot after storm shot from the patio.

Rained off and on, so I tried my luck again.

Now, the trick here is that there is a lot of light around. It's an apartment complex and there's a giant airport a couple miles south of me, so there's local light plus lots in the atmosphere.

How do you expose these then?

My first thought was to go for long exposures, the lightning would fill itself in sharply. Well, with the heaty, bulby lightning here I had plenty of shots overexposed. Just too much light from the lightning. So you dial down the speed, but then it's harder to catch.

In the end I tried a bunch of different things.
The part that was weird was how blue the sky still was. Like there would be flashes way off, I'd shoot and you'd get these painty blue swaths through the sky.

You forget that when the sun isn't out, it's there just covered by clouds.

You forget that when it's night the sky is still blue, you just can't see it.

Under the sky

The other day I was driving home and the sky got all dark and ominous.

I wasn't too concerned though, so off I went. Idling at the first stop sign someone threw a rock at my car. I looked around to see who had done it, but there was no one around. Thwing! Whap! Two more and I realize that they didn't come off the car in from of me or prankish kids: this is hail.

At first I'm amused as hail is fairly rare where I'm from and I dont pay it much mind. Then at the next stop the sloppy rain drops start. Calling them "drops" seems inapt and miserly. These were the size of sausage patties. Each intermittent drop glopping a large area of the windshield like batter for pancakes.

I keep going and then the rain hits hard. Now, I was here for the big snow storm week they had and that was nothing, but I got a little wigged out driving in this. Wipers on high, hail and rain battering the car, it was intense and very loud with the hail strikes. But let's be realistic: it was still just a rain storm.

On the long straight-away of my drive I was about 4-6 feet behind the car in front of me. I was in the middle lane, he in the right. His car was throwing up a solid wall of water on the far side- away from me. Apparently the water was just pooling on the side of the road and not draining and now it was throwing up a rooster tail wall for the last quarter mile.

This is all fine and good until we pass a cross street.

As we go through the intersection, the car in front of me hits a dip in the road and sends a gigantic amount of water directly onto my windshield.

This completely blinds me. For the first second I'm amazed, because the color of the water on the windshield is bright green- like pool water. Like I was dunked in the deep end. But as the pounding wipers struggle and fail to clear it I'm aware that I am sliding through a busy intersection completely blind. What if the guy to my right finally decided to get out of the puddle lane and changed over? This is a big road and I'm going 35 or 40. I slow down a tick and the wipers finally clear them out.

It reminded me of a time when I was surfing and the waves held me under. You're in this beautiful green space, and it only really lasts a couple seconds but time stands still as you wonder if you're getting out of this ok.

So anyway. The point is, it's crazy weather season. We had another banger last night so I set up my rig and spent some time watching it come in. I set up long exposures figuring the lightning was bright and fast enough that it would just illuminate itself. Drank a beer with my thumb on the bulb release thing and actually got one.

Too pooped to party

I've had a headache off and on for three days.

I'm just tired, too. I suppose working the hours I do takes it's toll, but it's distressing that I spend my time off recovering from work. And that taking a day off means that you're just going to have to work harder next week to make up for it.

Oh, well. Enough complaining. I am very grateful for what I have, and that's no lie.

Here's a shot mixing longer exposure with lighting. It's a three second exposure

Deconstructing Baseball

Sun Sick

Went to the ballgame Sunday and got a sunburn that is totally making me run down and a bit sick. I'm tired, too, so apologies up front.

Okay, so off to the ballgame. First thing is the GPS gets lost with all the construction and drives me through the airport. Drat. But no worries- I've accidentally driven through the airport before and even though the sign says $2 drive through fee, they've always waved it off. Not this time, Mr Mass Plates (I gotta change those), this time it's $3 por favor. She even asked me where my plates were from before charging me. I protest, but her English isn't very good so I pay and move forward.

Next I realize that you can't pick up the parking pass I payed for at Will Call without parking the car. So, that goes well and I dump another $20 on parking, plus the $10 I already paid on-line. Starting to drift into Red Sox outing prices.

Anyhoo- find my seat, right down front. Here we go.

First fun bit of Texas: the Anthem is sung by the Redneck Tenors. That's them up there. Amazing mullets. I thought they were fake at first, but they seemed real enough. Everybody around is drawling: "Them Redneck Tenners is good! I seen them at the Hootin' Holler back apiece."

I am not making that dialog up. And the tenors were good. I thought they would play it for laughs, but they sang it straight and it was pleasant enough.

Speaking of singing, they damn straight had us sing Deep in The Heart of Texas half way through the game. It was like that scene from Pee Wee's Big Adventure where everybody does the the clapclapclap clap on cue. Oh, they love Texas here.
So I take my snaps and discover that this close it is very hard to focus through the mesh. I have to switch to manual focus so that it doesn't hunt the whole time and it gives me a new appreciation for pro sports shooters. It's hard to watch the game through a camera lens- especially a long one. I end up with a bunch of crap shots like these and miss the only real action (long balls and two rundowns)
Which takes us to the best part of the day for me: the Running of the Giant Headed Famous Texans.

When the announcer comes on to start the race even before he tells it the people behind me with the Hootin' Holler history know what's coming. "Ah git Day-vee Crockitt this time!" the boy interjects hurriedly. Apparently he had been gypped out of picking the famous frontiersman in a previous big-headed race and wanted to get his dibs in right away. The father makes a disgusted sucking sound to indicate his assent but doesn't orally pin his hopes on either of the other contestants.

As they race around home from third towards the finish at first base, they are on their feet behind me making jumping motions without leaving the ground. "C'mon Davey!" he brays.

The drunkish 20-something men to my right shake their heads in appreciation. "That Davey sure can run!" one of them says without a trace of irony.
I cut out in the seventh.

So, the game here is balancing ambient. I'm shooting f5.6 at 1/60.

I'm doing that to capture the room in the back. Subject is lit with flash. I'm goofing around with the Gary Fong Whale Tails. I bought them a few years ago and never really did much with them. The hope was to produce a diffuse light that fell off quickly.

I'm ok with the results. My initial idea was try out all the different options for opening the gates and such on the tails. Of course I became distracted with goofing around and never really did that. I dont use the tails much because they are bulky and odd-shaped. Thus, difficult to cary around in a backpack with other gear. I dont know that I'm really using the right, either.

Seems okay. I may try them again with a still subject, which is a lot easier to handle. Then I can try to get the options down on those gates.