Collective Shoot: Crouse Hospital’s Clock Tower

Crouse Hospital's clock tower as seen from the Syracuse University campus, Syracuse, New York.

It’s not often we get a blue sky around Syracuse during the month of January so, when I was walking back from a recent Syracuse University Men’s basketball game, I just had to take some photos of the landmarks you can see from the SU hill which overlooks most of the city of Syracuse, New York.

When looking for a suitable landmark for my submission to the Collective Shoot assignment I presented on this blog, I smiled when I came upon the clock tower of the Crouse part of the Crouse-Irving Hospital complex.  My personal history with this hospital includes the birth of both my daughters, a sister who was a nurse for years and a close friend who worked in the offices of the hospital.  The hospital itself has quite the history (click for more information). Not only can you see the clock tower from the university but, if you look east from Interstate Route 81 when traveling through Syracuse, you can’t miss  this distinctive tower amongst the other hospital and medical buidings which surround it.

During December, the clock tower is lighted with the Lights of Love which is a fund raiser each year for a selected medical charity group.  This 20 plus year tradition has been very successful and has raised thousands of dollars for medical research and patient care for the hospital.

View 57: Winter at the Zoo

Red Fox curled up for warmth at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

The thermometer was reading 12 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill at -18F last Saturday and, of course, I choose to go to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York. The zoo is running their annual winter photography contest with free admission for people who show a coupon and their camera. I figured since it was a typical central New York winter’s day, it was a good day to get winter photos at the zoo.

I took over 300 photos during the day but can only submit 2 for the contest. After culling out the days take, I looked at what was left and the Red Fox (above) and Caribou (below) photos kept catching my eye. Though both needed cropping to tell the story I wanted to convey, I think both photos show what winter life is like for these animals at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo.

A camera shy Caribou at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

Assignment 1: Collective Shoot

Back on January 1st, I said I’ll like to try some interactive activities this year. This month has gone by fast and I didn’t want to start off the year by forgetting what I had said.

I decided to call these activities assignments. Now, don’t worry. You will not be graded or anything like that. This is for fun and to learn about photography and each other. Sound good so far? Okay, let’s get started…

One of my favorite photography communities is NikonCafe.com. Each week a member of the forum hosts a Collective Shoot based on a theme of their choosing. The object is to then go out and photograph something to post in a set time frame and not to use old photos. The time frame is usually about a week and includes a weekend.

The theme for our Collective Shoot is to photograph a Local Area Landmark in your hometown and tell us about it. Landmarks can be buildings, geographical formations, natural areas, or historic places. The landmark does not have to be world famous but known to your community. The time of this shoot runs from now until midnight (your local time) next Wednesday, January 28, 2009.

Here’s the fun part. First, do not send me your photos. What I would like you to do is post them on your blog, flickr or other photo sharing site, personal website or any other place on the Internet where you can place a link to it here by making a comment to this blog entry. Then we can visit these sites and enjoy all the great photography and learn about some interesting places, too. Please, have your photos posted by Friday, January 30, 2009. Don’t have a place to post? Might be a good time to start up a blog or join a photo sharing community.

If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I will be happy to answer them. By the way, I would really appreciate it if you would help spread the word about this so we can get lots of people to participate. Thanks!

View 56: Jonny Flynn

Jonny Flynn warming up before his nationally ranked Syracuse University Orange Men's Basketball team played the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in a Big East conference game on Saturday, January 17, 2008. SU won the game 93-74 with Jonny Flynn contributing with 17 points and 9 assists.

You know when SU’s nationally ranked Men’s basketball team is playing well when Jonny Flynn is going down the court after an SU basket with a huge smile on his face celebrating with his teammates. One of the best point guards in college and the Big East conference, Jonny Flynn makes the Orange go. Scoring and distributing the basketball with confidence, grace and a love of the game not always seen these days in big time college sports. It is as much fun to watch him play as he has playing it.

Attending the SU-Notre Dame game gave me another opportunity to use the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S VR Zoom Lens and it did not disappoint. Under bright television lights, I was able to use shutter speeds from 1/320 to 1/640 at f/2.8 and ISO ratings from 400 to 800. Last year I barely could muster 1/125 at f/5.6 using an ISO of 1600 when I blogged about Jonny Flynn’s teammate, Paul Harris under the same lighting conditions at the same 200mm focal length.

The above photo is a crop from the original vertical composition which I have included here for comparison.

Original Vertical Composition.

Broken Egg

“Probably the most private thing in the world is an egg until it is broken.”

- M. F. K. Fisher (Writer, 1908-1992)

I take many photowalks around my town.  I came upon this scene late on a Spring day when the angle of the sunlight naturally separated the egg from its dark background.  This photo cried out for a quote to go with it.  M. F. K. Fisher’s is very appropiate.

This photo, like all art, tells a story.  Each one of us will see a different story.  The quote is one.  There is mystery here.  Where did the egg come from?  What kind of egg?  Who kept it warm?  How did it get to this place? Who did it?

View 55: Disney’s Animal Kingdom

In 1998, a wannabe wildlife photographer’s dream came true when Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened. You can find all kinds of animals at every turn within the park and learn about them. There were three specific locations at Animal Kingdom I wanted to try my super zoom lens, the Nikon 80-400VR, on during my trip last December to Walt Disney World. They were the Kilimanjaro Safari, Pangani Forest Exploration Trail and Maharajah Jungle Trek.

Kilimanjaro Safari is a ride on large vehicles which are designed to give a bumpy ride. In the past, I’ve used 200mm zoom lenses with much success. The Nikon 80-400VR is much heavier at 3 pounds than those shorter lenses.  I was a little worried about being able to steady it even with Nikon’s vibration reduction (VR) technology. This proved to be a problem and, when the ride vehicle was in motion, I found it nearly impossible to get any non-blurred photos at 400mm.

White Rhino taken on the Kilimanjaro Safari at 80mm focal length.

The lens did allow me to get a photo I’ve never been able to get on all my previous safari trips. The cheetahs are very far from the road the safari jeeps use and, being cats, are either not in view or sleeping. On this day, they were in full view and posing! Using the lens at it’s full 400mm focal length (which is 600mm on my Nikon D70 1.5x cropped body), I was able to get the following photo which is cropped from the original.

A pair of cheetahs on the Kilimanjaro Safari at 400mm.

The Pangani Forest Exploration Trail is a walking trail featuring African wildlife from Naked Mole Rats to the mighty Silverback Gorillas. One of the highlights for me on the trail is the colony of Meerkats. Like North America’s Prairie Dogs, Meerkats have a sentinel member keeping watch of the surroundings when other members are out of their protective burrows. This Meerkat portrait shows the nice bokeh (out of focus background) of the Nikon 80-400VR lens shooting wide open at f/5.6 and 400mm focal length.

Meerkat sentinel on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail.

The trail features a family troop of gorillas in a large compound with great viewing locations for people to see and photograph these magnificent animals. Here is a picture of the leader who reminds me of the gorilla, Kerchak, in Disney’s Tarzan animated movie. Normally, I would discard a photo like this but his eyes make this one a keeper.

Alpha male gorilla as seen on the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail.

Another walking trail, the Maharajah Jungle Trek features wildlife from the continent of Asia. I was fortunate to catch the Komodo Dragon alert and the Nikon 80-400VR gave me the reach to capture this portrait of a species you wouldn’t want to be this close to in the wild.

Komodo Dragon on the Maharajah Jungle Trek.

The Asian Tigers are in a compound themed as ruins of a jungle palace. The residents act as royalty often lounging and sleeping as big cats often do. I try to be there in the late afternoon when they are more likely to be active as they are feed about a half hour before park closing. I have gotten many sleeping and resting tiger photos so I was thrilled to get a few on this trip as they moved about.

An Asian Tiger stalking as seen from the Maharajah Jungle Trek.

View 54: Right Lens for the Job

Last year I attended and photographed a couple games of the American Hockey League’s (AHL) Syracuse Crunch. I used the Nikon 18-200VR lens which is not what I’d call a sports lens. My best shots were of the goalies as they are rather stationary and don’t move as fast as the forwards and defensemen. I ended up with underexposed photos which required a lot of post-processing. Not bad but I was using the wrong tool (i.e.., lens).

In late 2008, I purchased a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom lens which is legendary for its sharpness and speed in focusing. At f/2.8 throughout it’s zoom range, it brings in the most light of any lens I own at these focal lengths. Using it on my Nikon D70 dSLR camera, with a crop factor of 1.5, the lens is the 35mm equivalent of a 105-300mm zoom.

So, it was with much anticipation, when I attended the AHL game between the Hamilton Bulldogs and Syracuse Crunch a couple of weekends ago. I set my camera to shutter priority mode, took a custom white balance off the ice surface and, like photographing snow, moved the exposure compensation to +1.0. I was able to get apertures ranging from f/2.8 to f/4 at a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second at ISOs of 800 and 1600. I was thrilled as the lighting in the Onondaga County War Memorial is far from ideal.

Hamilton Bulldogs forward Greg Stewart skates in the Onondaga County War Memorial against the Syracuse Crunch in a late December game.

My seat was second row from the ice and gave me a great view of the end the Syracuse Crunch attack for periods 1 and 3. I still concentrated on the goalies but, as the game went on, I got braver and started taking pictures of other players skating, hitting and shooting. As much as I love my 18-200VR lens, the 70-200VR is not called the premier sports lens for Nikon cameras for nothing and was the right tool for the job.

Hamilton Bulldogs forward Adam Pineault (15), on his toes, deflects the puck into the Syracuse Crunch goal.

For more hockey pictures, click here.

Blog Reset

Before going forward into 2009, I want to take a few minutes to reset the blog so I will remember where the blog finished in 2008.

Some quick stats:

Total views for 2008 came in at 10,643. Not bad considering I started the blog in February and got less than 10 hits a day for the first 3 months. For any new bloggers reading this, here are some tips: visit other blogs, leave comments, add links to your email and forum signatures, build a network using a blogroll and, as Michaela of The Daily Click reminded me, make sure your blog is visible to Search Engines. You’ll see your blog’s popularity grow as a result.

I posted 70 entries and received over 350 comments from visitors.

The most interesting statistic was reviewing the top 5 posts for 2008. I think you will get a kick out of the number one post, I did.

5. View 22: Sunrise, Sunset

Over the 2008 Memorial Day weekend, I wanted and got both a sunrise and sunset. For the sunset photo, a young couple was posing for their parent’s camera and made a lovely silhouetted foreground subject for the sunset part of the view. This entry garnered 150 views.

View 22: Sunrise, Sunset

4. View 32: Ocean City (NJ) Beach

Last summer, I vacationed with my family on the south New Jersey shore. While we stayed in Atlantic City, I much preferred the atmosphere of the Ocean City beach and boardwalk. 155 hits makes this the 4th popular view in 2008.

View 32: Ocean City (NJ) Beach

3. View 20: Central New York Regional Market

This was a surprising one for me at first. Then I realized many people were looking for information to be a vendor at the Regional Market or find directions to get there. For some reason, the CNY Regional Market does not have it’s own website. This blog entry made the first page of many a Google search and contributed 190 hits to the blog’s 2008 total.

View 20: Central New York Regional Market

2. View 45: November Sunset

This early November sunset over Onondaga Lake near Syracuse, New York got 208 hits. Over 100 hits occurred within a couple of days of me linking this entry in a comment to an article on the popular This Week In Photography (TWIP) blog (see link in the right sidebar).

View 45: November Sunset

1. View 34: Why do Birds stand on one Leg?

Rarely a day goes by when I don’t see a hit to this entry featuring a Snowy Egret standing on one leg. In the article I found a couple of reasons why many birds stand on one leg. Little did I know that 313 other people would be just as interested in which is impressive as the post appeared on August 18, 2008. Making this Snowy Egret the most viewed photo on my blog last year.

View 34: Why do Birds stand on one Leg?

I’ll be back on Monday with the first View for 2009. Have a great weekend!

A New Year!

Today starts a new year for this blog and a new name, Views Infinitum. The URL stays the same. You don’t have to worry about updating links if you have been so kind as to add this blog to your blogs and/or websites.

A new WordPress theme which should make it easier to navigate around this blog and visit those I have linked to. I am still in the process of tweaking the final appearence. I should have it finalized in a few days.

The new name is hyperfocal, if you don’t mind me using a photographic term. 52 Views of 2008 was a good working name to see if I could stick with my goal of posting a unique photograph each week for a year. At first it seemed a chore. After about six weeks, I found a groove of looking ahead for interesting things to photograph around upstate New York or on planned travels. Sometimes I would pick up my camera, walk out my door and find the photo. Sometimes the photo found me. While the name does change, the original posts remain and can easily be reviewed by clicking on the archive links in the right sidebar. You can have twelve of them for your very own if you would like to purchase a calendar I produced (click here for calendar information).

The word infinitum means boundlessness. Instead of this blog being bound to only 52 views, it is now released to encompass an endless number of them. With that in mind, the views will continue to increment each week. That doesn’t change as I will continue to post a weekly view captured with my camera and stable of lenses each Monday morning. It also allows me to add views more than once a week if I want.

I have seen other blog authors do some interactive things with their readers and really liked how people got into it. I will be doing an interactive exercise each month and I hope some of you will jump in which, in turn, will encourage others. For all the 365 day or 52 week photobloggers out there, these exercises will give you some creative ideas for your projects. Look for January’s interactive blog entry in about two weeks. I might even come up with a prize or two, one never knows. If any of you would like to promote a product, leave me a comment so I can get in touch with you.

Friday postings will be Pot Luck. Could be a short photo essay, a link to an interesting blog, website, book, video or neat stuff I come across or anything else I might wish to share.

What will not change…

I will continue to add relevant links to my postings to encourage further research for those so inclined. It is something I like to do when visiting blogs and websites.

I will continue to visit other blogs and flickr photostreams and leave comments I hope are encouraging and helpful to the blog authors and photographers.

I still do not mind people using my photos on their blogs or websites. All I ask is for you to give credit and a link back to this blog. If you want to use any of my photos for commercial purposes, please, contact me.

Photo Essays. I will continue to put together photo essays as I enjoy doing them and, by looking at my logs, you all enjoy reading them. Some of you have liked them so much you’ve purchased a few of the photos featured in the essays. For that I thank you.

Tomorrow, being a Friday, I will use it to look back upon 2008 and share with you some interesting facts about this blog. To all of you…have a Happy New Year! To my fellow bloggers and photographers….keep it going!

Sincerely,

Scott Thomas