I brought my camera to the range yesterday with the intent to capture some muzzle blasts from pistol rounds. The idea was originally inspired by my friend who has a Bersa Thunder in .45 and some +P rounds. The results were amazing, to say the least.

The process is fairly straightforward provided you have solo access to an indoor range or can find a safe place outside to shoot with low lighting conditions. You’ll need a good SLR camera with support for bulb exposure, a solid tripod and some patience. Follow the tips below:

1. Choose a location where you have control of the light. Ideally this would be access to a private indoor range. In order to get a good exposure, the shutter of the camera must be depressed with ambient light at a minimum. Obviously it would be unwise to shoot in complete darkness, so dim the light just enough that you won’t overexpose but are still able to see the target. Always observe the four rules of gun safety, especially rule number 4: “be sure of your target and what lies behind it.”
2. Set up the tripod and camera near but slightly behind the shooter. Adjust the focal length to frame the photograph how you want. If you instruct the shooter to keep the firearm in an invisible box, you can try zooming in to fill the frame with more of the blast.
3. With the lights on, instruct the shooter to take position and take aim, but not fire. Set the focus to manual and adjust until the firearm is in focus. In cameras that have a live-view mode, this is a simple task since the LCD display can be zoomed in while the focus ring is tweaked appropriately. Mark the position of the shooter’s feet, so he can return to that position for subsequent shots.
4. Set the camera to the lowest ISO speed to reduce grain and light sensitivity.
5. Set the camera for manual bulb exposure and adjust the aperture to an fstop that darkens the background without reducing the muzzle flash. I found that f/5.6 to f/8 works the best in very dim light.
6. With the shooter in position, turn down the lights and instruct the shooter to fire after depressing the shutter button. A bulb exposure holds the shutter open as long as the button is pressed, so when the shooter is done firing the button may be released and the muzzle flash will be captured.
7. Adjust aperture as needed to brighten or darken the blast.

Here are the results:

LRH and I attended a photography workshop in Portland focusing on using wireless flash for creative lighting. We had a fun and learned a ton. Here are some results.

This last weekend was interesting, to say the least. I originally planned a two hour solo flight for Saturday – a quick trip to Goldendale for some practice landings on their narrow strip and maybe some VOR tracking en route. However, upon arriving at the airport, they asked me to grab my camera and instead photograph the new addition to the FBO’s flight school, a beautiful Cessna 182: N34SR. I returned home in a hurry, ignoring Siena’s enthusiastic “Daddy!!!” as I walked in the door and grabbed my Nikon D700 with portrait lens and my Canon Digital Rebel with a 300mm zoom. Batteries? Check. Memory Cards? Check. Memory Cards and Batteries installed in camera? Check! After that it was back to the airport.

We departed as a flight of two and flew formation across the Cascades, passing Mt. Hood, Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Adams for a total of one hour. I sat in the left seat of the lead plane (a Cessna 172) and shot N34SR while my flight instructor had the controls. The windows of the Cessna open to the outside and when released will swing all the way open and stay there due to the force of the slipstream, making this particular airplane ideal for aerial photography. With one hand on the shutter button and one on the comm I verbally guided N34SR in the frame of my camera and shot away. The FBO needed photos of their new airplane to promote their scenic flights and flight school – I’m hoping they’ll be happily impressed with these:

After returning from the air-to-air shoot, I took the Cessna up for a solo flight around Mt. Hood. Pleasant, calm and uneventful described my one hour flight, that is, until I decided to land. I was at 3000 feet MSL, inbound for a 45 degree entry to the left downwind leg of the pattern for runway 25 when I noticed a shiny metallic object in an ascending trajectory directly in front of me. At first I thought it was a helicopter that had just departed from the airport, but I didn’t hear any radio calls announcing the departure prior to seeing this thing. As I approached it, I couldn’t see wings or rotors so it definitely wasn’t a manned craft. The sun was glinting off its metallic surface, which further obscured it from view. I immediately rolled to the left and the object passed by me. Whatever it was, it was fast, circular and almost hit me. I have a feeling that it was a large balloon of some kind – definitely not a party balloon. Either way, I couldn’t identify this flying object, so I can safely say that I’ve seen my first UFO.

While I was flying, one of my coworkers was entertaining guests at her housewarming party. They have a beautiful custom home right next to the runway, so I landed in front of my entire company, their spouses and significants others, and a bunch of people I didn’t know. Of course my landing was graded, as everyone knew I was the pilot of the Cessna that just touched down. I made the mistake of grabbing a beer before telling people about the UFO I spotted above the valley. After one glance at my drink, the conversation quickly transitioned into, “So, you fly drunk, huh?” or “How many beers is this for you tonight?”. Hey, at least I wasn’t trying to convince them it was a spaceship!

While my Saturday was fun, my Sunday was miserable, for myself, my wife and nugget. We all came down with the stomach flu, putting an abrupt end to our plans for post processing the pictures from the air-to-air shoot. I had forgotten what stomach flu was like, having last experienced it in Venice ten years ago. It was intense but fortunately short lived. I am finally starting to feel better and can’t wait to get up there again, maybe with a tin foil hat this time.

Living on Mercer Island provided a great opportunity to take photographs of Lake Washington and Seattle. My west deck looked out over the lake with Seattle and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. My east deck also looked out over the lake with Bellevue in the distance. Following are some photographs taken from my two decks.

LRH’s uncle is an incredibly talented Montana photographer. Today he captured this image of a hawk sitting on a fence in the snow. Take a look at his online gallery for more great shots: http://bconnor.smugmug.com

LRH, Siena and I went to Portland this year for Christmas. We made the journey before the snow storms hit and made it safely. Her parents’ deck was host to a bunch of little critters this morning as they were scurrying about looking for food. Instead, they found my camera. Here are two shots I snapped earlier:

We hope you have a merry Christmas this year. Be safe out there.

Now that we’ve brought Siena home from the hospital, it’s time to show some of the maternity photos we took the week prior to delivery. We set up a simple home studio. For a backdrop, we hung a bedspread from a closet clothing rod placed between a cabinet and a tall lamp. We opened our French doors so that natural light was bathing the photo space, and then shot all of the pictures using the overcast-filtered sunlight and a tripod when necessary. I absolutely love photographing my gorgeous wife!

Theresa and I have been exploring the Pacific Northwest since the day we started dating. We’ve seen much of Washington and Oregon and will probably drive to Idaho and Montana this summer. This particular weekend, we spontaneously decided to explore the Olympic Peninsula and venture into the Olympic National Forest in an effort to photograph some of regions immense beauty. My friend Adam suggested we also spend some time in Port Townsend, a little artsy community on the northeastern tip of the peninsula. I spent Friday planning the trip with Google Maps and the Washington State Parks and Olympic National Forest homepages. We also bought a pair of coolers, important gear missing from our camping supplies. I grabbed my old boy scout dome tent, packed the jeep and headed west.

Our first stop was the Dosewallips State Park, which we found almost empty except for a few hardy campers willing to brave the cold nights of early spring. We arrived after dark and quickly set up our campsite. Our neighbors from a nearby campsite were friendly and came over to introduce themselves. We quickly established that we has some similar hobbies, including photography and they invited us to their campsite to share some home-brewed beer and good conversation. They also had a fire that put ours to shame. In the morning T and I packed up our campsite and headed north to Port Townsend. We would return to Dosewallips State Park that evening to stay in a comfortable platform tent that I reserved on Friday. The drive to Port Townsend was full of breathtaking scenery and we stopped frequently to photograph it. We planned to attend mass in Port Townsend at eleven and so each stop made us feel a little guilty about prolonging our trip.

While driving to Port Townsend, I had two little birds fly out and hit my jeep about twenty minutes apart. Both of them were killed and that almost ruined my day. I have always loved birds and I never expected them to fly toward a moving vehicle. I’ve hit opossums and raccoons before but never birds – it was a bizarre event. We finally arrived in Port Townsend only to find that were late for mass. Our Lady Star of the Sea, the town’s Catholic parish, had scheduled mass fifteen minutes before the time listed on the website, so we sighed and entered the church. We spend the morning and part of the afternoon exploring Port Townsend and browsing the art galleries and shops on Water Street. I highly recommend the Stepping Stone Gallery at 1017 Water St. The artist is incredibly talented and produces oil-on-canvas paintings showcasing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. He takes his art a step further and designs frames to accent each painting by utilizing textured materials such as embedded wood or glass. When we were finished browsing shops, we headed to the northern tip of the town and drove through Fort Worden State Park. The Park takes its name from the commander of the USS Monitor, the first ironclad warship that saw action for the north during the Civil War.

Later in the afternoon we decided to head south toward Dosewallips State Park stopping at Lake Leland and the Rocky Brook Waterfall. While photography was the main motivation for our trip, I also used it to scout out some great fishing spots. Lake Leland was a perfect fishing hole. It has a campground, a beautiful setting at the base of the Olympic Mountains and is apparently full of fish. We spent some time taking in the picturesque scenery, snapped a few photos and headed south again to reach the Rocky Brook Falls before dusk. Fortunately, the falls were just a short drive from our campsite.

Rocky Brook Falls is a hidden gem, which is ironic since its incredibly easy to access. Water cascades from a height of 168 feet in a single 25 foot-wide fan. A little over twenty years ago, a micro hydroelectric plant was installed at the falls to help power the nearby town of Brinnon. The buildings of this plant hide the trail that leads to the base of the waterfall and if we hadn’t had precise directions we would have never found it!

We returned to Dosewallips State Park just before dark and claimed our platform tent. The park has three of these tents, designed to provide visitors with a bit of a historical context. Raised up on a wooden platform, the tent consisted of a set of canvas walls and a triangular canvas roof with a waterproof tarp for rain protection. Early loggers, pioneers and miners in the Hood Canal region traditionally used platform tents as they offered good protection from the elements. As night fell a rainstorm started to dump buckets of water adding to the coziness of our canvas castle as we fell asleep basking in the warmth of our space heater while listening to the melody of a thousand raindrops.

Not wanting to leave our comfortable platform tent, we slept in as long as we could. After packing up our campsite we headed east into the Olympic National Forest – our destination being the Murhut Falls trailhead. While driving on unpaved forest roads we saw plenty of wildlife, including a herd of shy mule deer. As we reached higher elevation, the ground began to show signs of thicker snow cover. We quickly realized that our trek to the falls would involve a lengthy snowshoe hike. The hike itself was a workout but well worth it for the waterfall was a real prize. I have to applaud T’s effort since she is in her first trimester of pregnancy and suffering from intense nausea. We stopped on the trail as necessary for photographs and nausea control, eventually reaching the falls. Before arriving at the Olympic Peninsula, we stopped by a camera shop and picked up a neutral density filter. For some reason, they are incredibly difficult to find, perhaps because they have limited applications. ND filters are used to reduce light intensity entering the camera, allowing longer exposures without overexposing the subject. They are essential for photographing streams and waterfalls and we put ours to good use when we reached Murhut Falls. In fact the picture you see here is a pair of images that I stitched together in Photoshop.

We had an amazing time and I’m already planning another trip to explore the northern and western side of the Peninsula. We also intend to enter the Olympic National Park and possibly backpack into some of the more remote campgrounds. I’ll be bringing my dad here as well for some great fishing. Regardless of what we decide to do, I’ll blog it here.

What a sight it was. I also shot all of the volcanoes – had to adjust for the airplane window in photoshop though. Crater Lake was once a giant volcano named Mount Mazama and reached 11,000 feet! Then it blew up :) Wikipedia has some good information on the formation of the lake here. Apparently crater lakes are a geological feature with the subject of this post being one of the most well known in the US. There are other crater lakes in North America and around the world.

So I’m in Washington again and this time I went back to Snoqualmie Falls and the Snoqualmie pass for a snowshoeing excursion. Now that I can cross snowshoeing off my list of things to do, I have to recommend it to all of you! Talk about fun – I’m definitely going back when I move up here next month. Snow might be melted by then but next year is just around the corner. Snowshoe rentals are not super-expensive, costing only $17 for the day. The State of Washington creates ‘sno-parks’ which are nothing more then parking lots plowed out of the snow cover and maintained for the duration of the winter. You have to pay a $10.00 fee to access these parks but they offer a pristine snow scape, ripe for the exploring.

We arrived at our destination, strapped on our shows and started to hike into the wilderness. The air temp was around 33 degrees F and the trees were dusted with a light covering of frost. Could cover was sporadic with occasional snow that varied in intensity.

So we hiked for about a mile along the main trail and then ventured into the woods a little ways. Our path through the alpine forest eventually led to another clearing with a stream carving its way though the white fields. The snow at this point had intensified and and the mountains were once again enveloped by the shadow of the oncoming clouds. The landscape was breathtaking and almost surreal.

Theresa is also really into photography and we both couldn’t figure out what exposure to use for this environment. My camera doesn’t have a pair of Oakleys so we just had to guess. With the stream in front of us we decided to take a break and sit in the snow while photographing our surroundings.

Eventually we continued on and Theresa was kind enough to take point and start trailblazing.

As we hiked back on the trail we came to another clearing with a few wooden structures. One of them was a bathroom with a very sharp inverted-V shaped roof. The snow had covered it partially so we began a rugged mountaineering expedition to summit this impressive landmark. The journey was so difficult that we couldn’t contain our outburst of triumph at the top!

What goes up must come down. With this in mind we decided that the best way to come back down was slide! It made for some humorous chain-photography as we each took turns shooting the other sliding down the V and crashing into the bank below.

At the parking lot, on our way back, we couldn’t help but notice the fire hydrants, well protected from the crushing weight of the snow above.

On the way down from the pass we stopped at the town of Snoqualmie and took some night shots of the falls. This waterfall is just as remarkable for its natural beauty as its hidden, and well-blended hydroelectric generator. Truly an engineering marvel considering the time it was built.

It was a great day and I’m looking forward to many more adventures in the Pacific Northwest!