Lloyd K. Barnes Photography

In the previous post, I showed some photographs of plastic waste from a local Vancouver park. This time I went to Spanish Banks, a beautiful natural beach on English Bay. Here's a photo that I took while I was there:

At first it was difficult to spot any plastic - the beach looked pristine. However, after a few minutes, I spotted many pieces of plastic waste. The tide was going out, and I found most of the plastic in the high tide line, mixed in with seaweed and driftwood. I found plastic bags, wrappers, bottles, a cap from a ballpoint pen, styrofoam, food containers and coffee lids. I even found some AstroTurf!

The most interesting waste plastic that I found was a package labeled North Star Brand Wieners by Intercontinental Packers, Vancouver.  Although it was made in Canada, it had no French labeling and the weight was in Imperial Units (one pound). Canada introduced bilingual packaging in 1974 and metric weights in the mid-seventies. After a little research, I learned that the company existed in Vancouver from 1964-1994. Incredibly, this package dates from c.1964 - 1974, showing how long plastic persists in the environment. After 40 to 50 years it is still around! It will remain in the environment for another 50 years or much longer, along with all other plastic waste. Unfortunately, much of this waste gets into the ocean, where it is eaten by marine life, often injuring and killing fish, birds, turtles and dolphins. Check out the documentary "Addicted to Plastic" for more information about the problems caused by plastic waste in the environment, along with solutions that will need to be implemented to correct the problem. In the meantime, if you care about the environment, don't litter with plastic waste!

Here's another photo from beautiful Spanish Banks:

In the previous post, I showed some photographs of plastic waste from a local Vancouver park. This time I went to Spanish Banks, a beautiful natural beach on English Bay. Here's a photo that I took while I was there:

At first it was difficult to spot any plastic - the beach looked pristine. However, after a few minutes, I spotted many pieces of plastic waste. The tide was going out, and I found most of the plastic in the high tide line, mixed in with seaweed and driftwood. I found plastic bags, wrappers, bottles, a cap from a ballpoint pen, styrofoam, food containers and coffee lids. I even found some AstroTurf!

The most interesting waste plastic that I found was a package labeled North Star Brand Wieners by Intercontinental Packers, Vancouver.  Although it was made in Canada, it had no French labeling and the weight was in Imperial Units (one pound). Canada introduced bilingual packaging in 1974 and metric weights in the mid-seventies. After a little research, I learned that the company existed in Vancouver from 1964-1994. Incredibly, this package dates from c.1964 - 1974, showing how long plastic persists in the environment. After 40 to 50 years it is still around! It will remain in the environment for another 50 years or much longer, along with all other plastic waste. Unfortunately, much of this waste gets into the ocean, where it is eaten by marine life, often injuring and killing fish, birds, turtles and dolphins. Check out the documentary "Addicted to Plastic" for more information about the problems caused by plastic waste in the environment, along with solutions that will need to be implemented to correct the problem. In the meantime, if you care about the environment, don't litter with plastic waste!

Here's another photo from beautiful Spanish Banks:

Here are some of my favourite night photographs that I have taken over the last few years. Click on the thumbnails to expand to large size and enjoy!

 

 

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I'm looking forward to the total lunar eclipse that will be visible from North America on the night of December 20-21, 2010.  The moon will travel through the earth's shadow, and during the total eclipse it will become very dim, taking on a beautiful coppery red to orange colour depending on the atmospheric conditions. It's pretty easy to get some great photos of the lunar eclipse as long as the weather cooperates and it's not too cloudy. I'm hoping for a clear winter night!

Here are some tips and advice for photographing the lunar eclipse. The advice applies mainly to DSLR cameras, but the more advanced digital compact cameras should work well too.

Exposure settings

The brightness of the moon during the total eclipse can vary quite a lot, so it's best to let the camera's built-in light meter determine the exposure for you. Use the point metering mode (instead of an average reading), pointing the camera at the moon.

Use manual mode to set the aperture and shutter speed to give the correct exposure for the moon, which typically, will be 2 to 4 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 100.

If you prefer to use aperture priority mode instead of manual mode, choose the maximum aperture for your lens to give you the fastest shutter speed at ISO 100. I don't recommend a longer shutter speed than 2-4 seconds because the moon will become blurry due to the movement caused by the earth's rotation. I was surprised how much movement takes place in a few seconds! Another way to further reduce the blurring caused by the long exposure is to increase the ISO. For most modern DSLR's you should be able to go to ISO 400 with no problem, and some will be fine at ISO 800 and higher, depending on the camera.

Tripod

Use a tripod because the exposures will be a few seconds, make it impossible to hand-hold the camera without blurring the image. If you do not have a tripod, you can find a stable place to set the camera, although it will be trickier to frame the moon in the viewfinder. For maximum flexibility, you could use a telescope mount that slowly moves the camera to compensate for the earth's rotation, allowing you to have much longer exposure times.

Cable release

To prevent camera shake, use a cable release instead of pressing the shutter release by hand. If you do not have a cable release, you can use the self-timer so that the shutter will activate a few seconds after you press the button.

Turn off image stabilization

Image stabilization is not necessary https://www.rossitchpediatricdentistry.com/buy-ativan-online/ when using a tripod. I use an Olympus E-510, which has image stabilization in the camera body, but for long exposures, the gyro mechanism actually increases the motion blur.

Turn off noise reduction

I usually turn it off and use Adobe Lightroom's noise reduction feature. Noise reduction increases the time for the camera to process and save images to the memory card, so I prefer to turn it off.

Lenses

One of the amazing things about the total lunar eclipse is the beautiful three dimensional spherical appearance of the moon. It is much more apparent than during the full moon, when it looks more like a two dimensional disk. I prefer to use the longest lens that I have in order to get as much detail at the highest resolution I can. Even with my 200 mm lens and 1.4x teleconverter, there's still a lot of empty space in the frame! If you have a longer lens, congratulations, and I hope you get some great shots!

If you are in a location with some interesting foreground or landscape features, then you might want to use a wide angle lens to capture everything in one shot. In this case, you will have the additional complication of setting the exposure for the moon as well as the other parts of the photograph. For the foreground, you could use the on-camera flash (or an external flash if you have one). For the background landscape, it may not be feasible to use the same exposure for both the eclipse and the background. Also, the moon will look disappointingly small when you use a wide angle lens. For the Vancouver lunar eclipse shown above, I used Photoshop to combine the lunar eclipse photo with the cityscape shot the same night. You could also do a double exposure if your camera has the capability. One of the nice things about the double exposure method (or Photoshop) is that you can use the large moon image (shot with the the longer lens) to create a more dramatic looking photo.

Time lapse

Some of the most beautiful lunar eclipse images that I have seen show the moon going through the entire eclipse by using time lapse photography. The images can then be combined in Photoshop, or they can be made into a video. I have not tried doing a time lapse, and I'm planning do this for the Dec 20-21 lunar eclipse!

Bring a flashlight and gloves

It will be dark and probably very cold!

Good luck with you photos and feel free to share your results by posting a link in the comments section.

Related links

How to Photograph a Lunar Eclipse

Double Exposure Photography of the Moon