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Thursday, May 3, 2007
A Few More Road Photos
You'd be surprised how many times the camera goes off when you actually want it to. Of course, there are a lot of times
when it doesn't. That's the problem with an intervalometer. You just can't control it. Plus, the camera has to sort of spin
up, so to speak. It turns on, adjusts the lens, then recalls all the setting and takes the photo. It's probably five seconds
that feels like a half minute when there's something you want a picture of. In this case, I saw the camera snap a photo as
we crested a hill about a mile away from the West Rock tunnel on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. I figured I'd got the shot, but then I was stunned when the camera turned on again right in front of the
tunnels.
One last photo and then I'll cool it until I actually figure out how to take and process infrared photos - I'm just feeling
my way along here for now. This is just a shot with a lot of perspective. This is also from Connecticut, I believe.
OK, if you are still with me, you get to hear the joke. So I just took a quick road trip, right? Location undisclosed,
but let's just say I was pretty close to Manhattan. Anyway, I knew I was back in the sway of the big apple when I pulled into
a CVS to get some band-aids. As I was walking towards the store, a guy called out to my back.
"Hey, you! Your trunk is open."
Bear in mind I had just driven almost 200 miles with a number of pit stops and I hadn't touched the trunk since Arlington.
If it was open now, it was open the entire ride. So I stopped for a moment and said back, "really? My trunk?"
The guy starts yelling at me.
"Yes, YOUR trunk. You might want to CLOSE it."
And I sheepishly did and thanked him too, although frankly I think that last phrase was thrown out over his shoulder
as he drove away. Only in New York can someone get pissed off at you whilst spontaneously doing you a favor.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Road Trip
On the road again. Dum dah dum dum da dee dum tee dum.
Yes, I took an infrared drive alright. Now now, I have a very safe way to do this. But before I get to that, let
me point out that this is another infrared shot. You can see the tree effects here, but you can also see how the clouds and
sky look. The sky tends to have a flat, darkish tone. Water tends to be black.
OK, so I took these whilst driving along towards New York City with an two ingeneous devices: a Pod and an intervalometer. The pod is a small beanbag platform with a 1/4-20 tripod socket on top. Screw your little camera in, slap it on the dashboard,
clean the glass and you are good to go.
The intervalometers is built into the camera. I set it to take a photo every two minutes. Then I set the exposure
settings and let it go. When I got to my hotel I just loaded up all the photos and threw away the garbage.
Oh, but I took my regular camera too. You never know what you'll find in a welcome center. Trucks maybe?
After I took a bunch of shots of these trucks, I started wandering around and I noticed this sign. I guess if you
are putting stickers on a road sign you more like vandalising as opposed to loitering. Still.
I had one of those zone-out moments, though. I noticed someone coming, so I looked up and realised I was standing between
two cars in the parking lot and one belongs to the women now tentatively approaching. So I excused myself and got back on
the road before I lost the sun completely.
Dave Hacks His Camera
Yes, this was the scene on my kitchen table about 24 hours ago as I prepared to convert my old Canon G3 prosumer digital camera into a permanent infrared camera. Warning, this is not for the faint of heart. I knew what I was
doing. Well, mostly. Some of those connectors are really amazingly hard to work with.
So the payoff is over here to the right - the actual imaging chip.  Most people call this the ' CCD', but there is not actually a CCD in the Canon G3. It's a CMOS chip. Anyway, the principle is the same. When I bought the camera, I did actually buy it because of this imaging chip, but
not because it was CMOS. I got it because I saw photos that most represented the saturated qualities of Fuji Velvia - the slide film of choice for landscape photography.
OK, so this is going to take some explaining. The imaging chip in a digital camera is sensitive to all kinds of waves - visibile light as well as ultraviolet and infrared. Regular old film is designed to be not sensitive to much outside of the visible spectrum. But you can't do that with an
imaging chip. Instead, they install a special glass filter called a ' hot mirror' in the camera in front of the chip. It's called the 'hot-mirror' because infrared energy is heat energy and this filter
reflects infrared (IR) while letting visible light pass.
So a few weeks ago, I ordered a ' cold-mirror' for my G3 from a company called Life Pixel. This company is great - they even have the detailed instructions online. A cold mirror will not let most visible light pass, but is transparent to infrared. Thus the sensor in my camera
will now only record infrared images. The only hitch to this process is that this filter is buried about as far down into
the chassis of the camera as you can get. I had to buy a special set of precision tools just to unscrew the CMOS, which required
a #3 Torx screwdriver (the star pattern, well, a really really tiny one).
But I managed to get it all the way open as you can see, replace the hot mirror and zip it all back up without damaging
anything and now my camera produces pictures like this one:
OK, you are saying, what's the big deal? Well, I chose this as the first one to show to illustrate a few things.
Infrared is not like visible light. In a sense it is, since it reflects and transmits and stuff. So you will see detail in
the wall and tree trunks and stuff. But look at the leaves - they are bright white. This is because leaves naturally emit
a high signature in IR. IR can also see through certain kinds of fog. So as I start to get into this, you will see all kinds
of wierd black and white pictures that are just a bit different than you are used to.
Monday, April 30, 2007
A Trip Downtown
I had lunch with a mate downtown today and that was great because we met in Faneuil Hall. This put me right on top of one of the things in Boston I've most wanted to photograph - the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (the Zakim Bridge for short). Now, to really do this thing justice would require a whole different setup. Today's opportunity
was to get the grab shot - that is, a basic, well executed photo of the bridge. OK, it's a bit more than a grab shot.
I brought my tripod and stuff.
Here it is, the Zakim Bridge:
One of the cool things about this bridge, and this perspective shows it well, is the use of the third set
of lanes to the right of the bridge-proper. I believe the central span of these lanes is supported by a cantilever from the
main bridge. This makes the Zakim the world's first asymetrical cantilevered cable-stayed bridge, or something like that.
You may recall recently I blogged from downtown and showed a picture of Vent Building 5? Well, here's Vent Building 4:
Actually, this is just the chimney part of the vents, cleverly disguised. This is the top of the building.
The bottom part is basically a parking lot or something.
Moving along, we get to another Boston landmark, wonderfully rendered from this perspective, about which I
will shortly enlighten you.
OK, I've talked about this previously -- I'm talking these photographs from the top story (seventh floor) of
a parking garage in Faneuil Hall. I know this particular garage well because it is located right next to where
the elevated highway used to run through the center of Boston. The Zakim bridge and the Big Dig project submerged that roadway. So I had a pretty good idea that the view from the top would get me a good shot at the bridge.
And it did, as you can see. But since I was up there, I took the time to walk around the periphery of the
garage to see what other shots I could find. I only noticed a single object that could be a CCTV after I finished shooting
the bridge and walked around the top. Sure enough, shortly after I entered its field of view a security guard appeared across
the lot walking towards me. I noticed him, but I had just set up and taken a shot, so I continued the bracket and then turned
around to greet him and have the inevitable conversation.
But when I turned around, he had turned back. I guess by that point he realised it was just a camera and tripod
and decided to leave me alone. That was really nice.
Looking over the top of the roof, I saw a guy on a Harley and I had to take it. With the weather warming up
a bit, everyone with a Harley has shined it up and taken it out on the road. That's a big change from London. There are a
lot of motorcycles in London, but there are not a lot of Harley's by comparison. That's a really American thing and it's just
awesome.
OK, so to sum it up, here's the Zakim bridge again, from a slightly different point on top of the garage.
I was able to actually get a foreground in this shot, which is amazing because I was using a telephoto zoom lens. This photo
reveals an incredible amount of detail about the changing landscape of Boston.
One thing that jumps out at you is the flower beds in the foreground. Still fenced off due to ongoing construction,
this is the emergent 'open-space' corridor in central Boston. This part of the project was to repurpose the work sites of
the big dig into recreational and open space. In the mid-ground, you can see roads and tunnels that form the connections to
the Zakim bridge. The bridge is really interesting in that you are shot down under the city the moment you cross to the other
side. You can see that here. The traffic from the bridge basically disappears because it's going underground (I'm in the background
now).
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