We can’t say we have traveled to all places in the world but we have been to many cities on most of the continents. We remember visiting Beijing, China and seeing all the bikes there. We rode bikes in the busy streets of Tokyo, but that may not compare with what we saw in Amsterdam. This is a city that really does have the infrastructure setup to support biking as a way of getting around.

There were dedicated bike lanes, often separated from the street by more than just a painted line. At some of the intersections these bike roads had their own traffic signals. You had to be careful walking in the city to make sure you were on the pedestrian walkway and not in the bike lane.

We saw bikes being ridden by all types of people, kids, the elderly, business men and women, college students. The bikes were quite different than what you see in the US. These were not bikes made for racing, but more of a utility nature. They were kind of heavy and clunky, similar to what we used to see when we lived in Japan. But these bikes were often setup to carry things, including multiple people. Some had two passenger seats behind the drivers seat. Or as in this one, a small child up front and another behind. No one was wearing a helmet, however. Not sure how safe this type of riding is.

Here is something that we first thought was a bike truck.

But this type of bike was often used to haul kids that were placed upfront.

There are so many bikes in the city that they had this multilevel parking garage at the main train station, just for bikes.

And people were riding the bikes both day and night. It was truly an amazing bicycle city.

Categories: Photography, Travel
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I installed the Yet Another Photo Blog (YAPB) plugin for Word Press and have used it to upload this photo of Crater Lake. If you click on the photo it should enlarge to fill the width of this blog.

I also setup a seperate blog with a theme that is YAPB ready. So far I only have a few images up there. When you are importing a file with the EXIF data there, it will use the date taken to set the published date for the blog entry.

The theme supports a mosaic of the photos as shown below. If you go to this Photoblog, you will see the latest image uploaded. Click on it to cycle through other images. Select Mosaic and you will get thumbnails of all the photos, from which you can select which image to view. Click the image below to go to this PhotoBlog to test it out.

Categories: Photography, Web Development
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Our daughter, Sara, has started a new new photoblog called “Sara’s 100 Days of Photos”. Every day she posts a new photo with information on how it was taken and the camera settings. I love the idea but am not sure I would have the discipline to post a new photo every day. Wonder if I could just collect 100 photos and then post one of them each day. It is a great idea to get more involved with photography.

Here is just one example of her work that I really like. With the blurred background and the composition of the photo, tipping the camera at an angle changes this from a good photo to a great photo.

Photo was taken with a Nikon D80, f/5.6, 1/60 sec., ISO-100, 175 mm

Categories: Projects
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Our daughter wrote recently in her blog entry called PHOTOholic “So now I take pictures whenever I can of my family. I am known in my family as the picture nazi.” It reminded me so much of myself. When we had a young family I would constantly be taking pictures. Since it was the days of film I didn’t take nearly as many as I would today with a digital camera, but still enough that people would complain. Ann’s mother would often say “I hate it when you take my picture”. And yet those pictures over the years are one of the main links with the past and each year they increase in worth.

As many, I moved into taking video. But video is a very different animal. It takes a lot more time to edit and it is more difficult to share, more difficult to sort through and throw out way you don’t want. The video tapes sit on the shelf and are almost rarely used, while the still images are viewed frequently. I came to the conclusion that video was a diversion and for the most part stopped using that format so I could focus on still images. The videos I do create are mostly done with still images anyway.

So Sara, keep on taking those photographs. You can never recover what you did not capture. Your children will grow so fast that you only have one fleeting moment to capture each of them at this stage of their life.

Here are some images from our daughter’s blog which clearly demonstrate she has far greater talent than we do in capturing those precious moments:

GRANDPARENTS

SISTERS

SIBLINGS

Categories: Photography
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Crater Lake was formed by a volcano and is the deepest lake in the United States. It has not water inflow or outflow so the water in the lake is only from the local snow fall. It is one of the clearest water bodies anywhere and the deep blue from the depth of the water. The picture above is a merge of 3 photos. Click on it to see it enlarged.

This was our first time to visit this National Park. It was less than a two hour drive from Medford. We arrived in the morning and took some pictures from the area near the Crater Lake Lodge. Ann was shooting with her Nikon D70 with 18-70 mm Nikon lens and Franz with his Nikon D300, using both a 18-200 mm Nikor lens as well as some Nikkor prime lenses.

All the photographs were processed through Adobe Lightroom. Little changes were needed however. Only Photoshop CS3 was used for the photomerge at the top.

Nikon D300, 22 mm lens, ISO 200

Nikon D300, 24 mm prime lens, ISO 200

Nikon D300, 18 mm, ISO 200

Nikon D70, 70 mm, ISO 400

To see how well the Nikon 18-200 mm lens did compared with the 24 mm prime, I have added two photos of each into one image. Click on the image below to view enlarge so you can compare.

This may not be a good way to evaluate since the scene is different and each had a different post processing. In any case when I do a 1:1 image, the both look equally good. If you need a highly enlarged and identical images to see a difference, maybe that difference is not so important in the first place.

We then got on our bikes and started to bike around the lake. Franz carried the Nikon D70 on a backpack so we could take some photos from different locations. He started out trying to take it in a simple case but that did not work since it would swing to the front when leaning over to pedal so he returned to the car and took his LowePro Sling 200. That bag is a bit large to carry a single camera but it worked, but not ideally. To carry a DSLR on a bike, a back pack is best, preferable one made for biking such as the Camel Bak bags.

The LowePro Sling 200 has the stability strap (you can see hanging in the photo below) to keep it from swinging to the front but it was still too much on one side to cycle easily with.

We ended up going half way around the lake but had to turn back because the rim drive road was closed at some point due to snow. Can you believe, snow in July!

On the drive back to Medford we stopped at the Rouge gorge to take a few more pictures. It is hard to capture water falls. Franz put on a 24 mm prime lens that would stop down to f22 and he set the D300 to shoot at the lowest ISO setting. Setting the camera to shoot in Aperature Priority mode still resulted in a shutter speed that was too fast to blur the water. A neutral density filter would be needed. Also brining more than a table top tripod would certainly have helped. But since that was all he had, he proped the table top tripod on the top of the fence as you can see below.

Ann just balanced her Nikon D70 on the fence post.

We had a great time and hope to visit Crater Lake National Park again. You can see all our pictures at our SmugMug Gallery by clicking here .

Categories: Landscape Photography
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Ann and I stopped in Zion National Park for a 3 day adventure.

Equipment Used:

• Nikon D300 with Nikon 18-200 mm lens
• Nikon D70 with Nikon 18-70 mm lens
• Canon PowerShot A700
• Nikon 50 mm 1.4 MF lens
• LowePro Sling 200 bag

Software Used

• Adobe Lightroom (Mac) to import and organize files
• Photoshop CS3 (Mac)
• Nikon Capture NX (Mac) for post processing for printing
• Photoshop Elements 6 (Mac) for photomerge

I was shooting with my new Nikon D300 and Ann was shooting with the Nikon D70. I had purchased the LowePro bag before leaving home. That bag proved very valuable with all the hiking we did. Most of the pictures below are as shot from the camera, except where noted. Click on any image to see an enlarged view but not the original. The originals are all posted on our account at Smugmug.

On the first day we started out hiking up Angles Landing. We wanted to get a shot of the two of us together but there was no one around, so we took a picture of each other so I could later merge into this one.

I was wondering what she was taking a picture of until I later looked saw this image on the computer.

Hiking the upper portion of Angles Landing was difficult carrying the DSLRs since we had to use chains. But we managed and benefits from using the wide range zooms. I found I used the entire range of 18 to 200 mm during the day. Many pictures, as expected, were taken using 18 mm. At times I wish I had even a wider range. I was carrying a couple of prime lenses with me but frankly rarely used them. Since we were primarily hiking, taking photographs along the way, it just didn’t make sense to do a lot of lens swapping.

Our second day was biking so we only took a point and shoot Canon camera. We biked up Kolob Canyon, which has some beautiful views, with the road winding in and out of the national park. With the rain we ran into we didn’t take many pictures. Just getting back to the hotel with the rain and cold temperatures was all we could manage. Ann did take this one picture from the back of the tandem just before the rain started.

After drying out and warming up we drove up to see the Museum of Photography. I put on my fast 50 mm f1.4 manual focus lens before we entered. There we viewed some beautiful large prints of photographs. Many were taken by Michael Fatali using an 8×10 film camera and printed himself using the Cibachrome process. He takes pride in “No Filters, No Computers, Simply God’s Light”. I found myself dumbfounded viewing his images that he could capture such beauty with that approach. They didn’t let use take any pictures inside so I took these picture outside in the courtyard.

On our last and third day, we started out with a tandem ride, again carrying the Canon Powershot. Ann took this picture from the back of the tandem, while we were racing down the road from the Zion tunnel. Not bad for a point and shoot!

In the afternoon we hiked up Hidden Canyon and also Observation Point. With the sunny weather and beautiful clouds, along with the topography, made it an idea day to get some pictures

I took this one of Ann using the 120 mm setting on the lens (equivalent of 180 mm on a 35 mm film camera). The vibration reduction worked great.

We then make our way up the long hike to Observation Point. We came upon a slotted canyon that was most fascinating.

We took some more photos from high above Zion Canyon, but I don’t consider these to be that good because they try to cover too much from afar. Here is one example.

After returning to the canyon floor, we took a few more pictures. I particularly like this one and later made a 11×17 in print to frame. Here is the image as taken.

Here is the same image after I enhanced for printing. For this one I used Nikon Capture NX. It reads the “Vivid” setting I had used in the Nikon D300 and also I enhanced using Active D-Light. Notice how it brighted up the rocky mountain.

Categories: Landscape Photography
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The local paper, visited us a couple of weeks ago to do a feature story that would run in conjunction with the ACTC annual Tierra Bella Century ride. They ended up running the story a few days before the event and included a couple pictures they had their staff photographer take.

In the article they talked about our plan to take pictures of the Tierra Bella rides FROM our tandem. Most sporting events have pictures taken by someone who is in one place, capturing the riders as they come by. All this allows the best use of photographic skills, better framing, best lighting angle, etc., it makes for a lot of individual pictures that all have the same background and look pretty much the same.

Our idea was to actually ride the event and take pictures along they way. Franz had his Nikon D70 Digital SLR (DSLR) in a harness and would use one hand to shoot from the hip, while using the other hand to keep control of the bike. Controlling a tandem requires more effort than a single bike. Ann had a Canon compact digital camera she would use from the back of the tandem. She was able in many places to use both hands to operate the camera and her shots turned out better framed and in focus. For the DSLR, the setting of the zoom lens was too wide and it required considerable cropping to get a usable picture. Occasionally the lens would bump the handlebar, pushing it back to the very wide angle position (18 mm). The harness system would loosen form time to time and I had to keep tigthening it. It would have been better if the camera could have been held up even higher on the chest area because it made it difficult to stand and pedal on the bike without it buming into my knees or the handlebar.

We had a great opportunity taking pictures as we were going up Henry Coe, a 12 mile climb with over 3,000 feet of climbing. We often need to stand on the tandem so that required some coordination since Ann would need to put the camera away to hold on the bike. Franz could just just drop the DSLR and let the hang with the harness.

We ended up with over 300 photos of the riders, most all taken while we were moving. I used iPhoto to quickly process the photos, croppoing most of them. When you are taking pictures while riding you have to have the focal length set on the wide angle side so you get the shot you want. Some of the photos were out of focus or blurred because it was too dark in the early morning. The photos we kept were posted on the club’s photo website. Here are a sample of some of the photos we posted.

Categories: Sports Photography
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