Barn Fun

I have a lot of fun photographing old barns and sometimes I go out on a rampage and get all that I can at one time. The following images were taken on a cloudy day but with a filter on my lens that had vaseline applied to it. It was a technique employed with my old film cameras but one I have not used since learning photoshop. It is so much easier to control in photoshop that I have even discarded the vaseline from my camera bag. It was always pretty darn messy and hard to clean off the filter. 

A tale of patience and repeated Visits

Today I tell a tale of patience.

I was on a church camp with a group of Young Women as an adult priesthood supervisor. Of course I didn't have much to do other than occasional classes that I taught in compass and fire building and helping to cook and cleanup but that wasn't my purpose for being there anyway, I was there to be of assistance when needed for anything.  I like to get up early though when camping and thus I had a lot of time to do what I love to do in such circumstances while the youth and other leaders would still be sleeping and that is to photograph nature. Well we happened to be in a family cabin in a canyon that we got to by going up Diamond Fork Canyon near Provo, Utah.  ( yes, very tough camping and I agree but, hey, I didn't plan where, I only went along to help supervise and be there in case of an emergency.) 

As I explored the area shortly after getting settled the first day I happened to find a wood pile and noticed some quick movement in the pile. I was able to focus on the movement just fast enough to see a wood chuck dart behind the stack and vanish out of site. Well I knew at that point that I had a neat challenge on my hands for the rest of the week as time would permit. So I frequented the wood pile several times a day learning just how fast this little creature was when I approached.  One time on probably my third or fourth visit I was ready with the camera up to my eye as I rounded the corner near the pile and was able to get a shot off just before he vanished. The resulting image is just below.

The real payoff came though a couple of days later as I slowly learned how to approach the area so that it would not be as readily alerted to my coming. There was a boat parked in the open sided garage next to the pile of wood that presented the greatest challenge. The wood chuck could see my approaching feet under the boat and thus have a chance to leave before I could see him very well. He did have sufficient curiosity though that he would stay long enough to see my face before he darted out of site and thus the challenge remained with me to photograph him because I knew he lived there for sure by that time and it wasn't just a stroke of luck that I happened to see him that first day. I did end up seeing him away from the pile of wood once as I was descending the stairs from the road above the garage next to where the wood was stacked and got off a couple of quick shots as he darted into a culvert and disappeared. 

Then after about four days of trying during different parts of the day and using extreme caution and very slow speed of approach my stealth and patience finally paid off, (I am such a great hunter) . I had been quiet enough to get around the corner of the boat while he was sunning himself on the logs and sleeping in the warmth of the sunny afternoon sunlight and had not awakened him before I had my camera ready and firing. Luckily enough there is response time in digital SLR cameras that allows for rapid firing of the shutter because once I spotted him I only had enough time to get off these two shots  and a couple of others before he was awake and gone. 
These images make it look like he was aware and could care less about my approach but believe me it was only a split second after this second image before he ducked out of site again. 

My repeated efforts and patience had paid off though and I had some images that I have really enjoyed ever since. I hope you do also.

Just a piece of history

This is just a little history of mine presented with the help of photos. 

As a young boy I was asked by a cousin to go down into this Well House. (I guess that's what it could be called. We actually just always referred to it as the Well.) He said he would give me a quarter for doing it and before I continue the story you should probably know that he did give me the quarter and in the early 60's that was pretty good money. Back then they still had penny candy at Kohl's our local grocery store. No it wasn't the Kohl's you see all over the country now but did have that original name long before this big chain of store came out.
So as you can tell from the pictures that this well, which was our water supply all during my childhood, was covered with a wooden lid. It was a heavy lid and not nearly as good as the one in this image. But it was a lid that still kept most of the light out of the hole where the water tank and pump were kept.
The lid did let a small stream of light into the hole that made it somewhat bearable I suppose and I know because after l I went down the old wooden ladder into the hole he promptly put the lid onto the well .
I can't remember my reaction to the incident other than I was pretty scared because there were enough Black Widow spiders in that well to eat a kid my age totally up before the lid could again be removed, or at least that was how I pictured it at the time as I clung to the ladder in hopes that they couldn't see any better than I.

Well he finally took the rock off of the lid and let me out. In this last image and an earlier one you can see the rock that is kept on the lid now to prevent children from accidentally falling into the well and the rock that Jack put on the lid to keep me in was probably not that big but as far as I was concerned it was far bigger than the well cause I couldn't budge that lid from underneath at all. Besides that lid had years of spider webs on it too. He and I have both laughed about that little trick a lot of times since then but at the time I wasn't laughing I was probably crying. (The person in this photo is my brother Lynn who later helped another cousin pull other pranks on me. It was a tough life being the youngest brother.)

These images make it look like there is a lot of room in that little cement cavity but there really wasn't. It took some doing to move around in it after you got down the ladder to the floor and I often wondered when I would get bit by spiders when down there trying to prime the pump in the spring as it became quite hard to keep water pumping until our canal was again filled with water and the water underground was again restocked after a long dry winter.

Have you ever thought about using pictures to illustrate your journal? With electronic formats now in this digital age and all of the thousands of blogs it is a smart way to record your history. Having the picture of the well helps me to remember just how big that hole was that I was trapped in for those few minutes which at the time felt like hours. The only other thing that would need to be done is to keep a paper record of your blogs and your history becomes alive for others to read and laugh at (unless they had similar prank pulling cousins and the history brings back painful memories). Remember though I said that we now laugh at it but I still hate Black Widow Spiders.

A point of View

Today I have decided to post a point of view perspective. Actually all three of these images are taken in the same spot but because of the camera setting have a different outcome. It is called depth of field and is easy to do.

This may be hard to see in such a small image but in this first image posted above the sunflower is in focus and the barn is out of focus. This is accomplished by setting a wide aperture such as a 3.5 or 4.6 and then adjusting the shutter speed to get a good image for light. That shutter speed will usually be fairly fast. Then you focus on the sunflower.

In the image posted above you will notice that the barn is now in focus and the sunflower somewhat blurred. This is accomplished the same was as before only now you will focus on the barn rather than the flower. Remember to set a wide aperture such as a 3.5 or 4.6 and then adjusting the shutter speed to get a good image for light.

This image is totally in focus and is always fun to do when you have a landscape that you want to be able to see everything in focus. Actually this is the image that you will automatically get from a small camera where you have no control over the aperture and speed settings. This is accomplished by setting the aperture for as small as your lens can allow, usually around a  "22". This changes the speed at which the sensor receives light and thus changes the overall sharpness of the image. 

The last thing that will make a difference on whether this works or not is your ISO setting on the camera and whether you have it on a tripod or not. Usually an ISO of 100 or 200 are slow enough to take a picture and get good results for the last image where everything is in focus. If your ISO is up around 400 or 800 then the sensor will in a effect record the image so quickly that you will find it easier to get pictures that are in focus near the camera or away from the camera whichever you want but will be harder to get settings that will get the entire image in focus.  It can be accomplished without a tripod but is just easier if you do use one since most of us are not naturally steady holding a camera and will have more of a blurring affect over the entire image. The tripod will make the biggest difference with the lower ISO speeds since that is where camera shake will be seen more easily as the light is being seen by the sensor in effect more slowly.

Now one final note: The best way to get the perfect results that you want is to practice. This is much easier now than it use to be since the cost of film was a major obstacle to taking lots of pictures. Now with digital cameras shoot and shoot some more each time being followed by a careful inspection of your image and preceded by recording what the settings were. Then change and record the settings and try again. You might not want to save all of the images and the delete functions in your computers make that pretty easy to do as well so don't be afraid to practice.

A view from above.

I came across these photos when looking for the clouds from my trip to Texas via Arizona. Due to a storm between SLC and Phoenix AZ we had to fly around it to get there which took me over very familiar territory from my youth. Below are two images I took out of a series that were taken from the jet as we basically flew along US Highway 40 from Heber to Vernal before turning southwest to go to AZ.

This first is of of Starvation Reservoir near Duchesne, Utah where I grew up. My Father's family owned some of the property just below where the dam was built and my Father-in-law was involved in helping to build the dam.

This image is of Duchesne and also our family farm. You have to know where to look but from the plane I could see our farm that was to the east of Duchesne as well as all of the country that I use to hike in and run across as a youth. This image isn't a large enough resolution to really see our farm but it is located in an almost straight line down the top edge of the wing and about a third of the distance to the other side of the image following that line. The large flat area comprising most of the middle to lower part of the picture is called Blue Bench. It looks pretty dry and in this case looks really are not deceiving.