View 101: Spaceship Earth in HDR

Missed my normal Monday posting.  Hope this makes up for it.  I hear it’s snowing back home.  Warm and sunny down here!

Late night HDR image of Epcot's Spaceship Earth in Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida.

View 100: A Day at a Museum

For my 100th View, I went to the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, to see the Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection from the National Museum of Wales.  This collection featured works from Turner, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Cezzane.  Photography was not permitted for the Davies Collection.  However, if you enjoy photography and are looking to improve, I encourage you to study artists who work in different mediums from canvas to stone.  How they used color, composition and, yes, even light, will help you when looking through the viewfinder or LCD.

The Everson does allow photography for their permanent collection which includes a large collection of ceramics from pre-Columbian to today.  I found these works fascinating and historic.  The Onondaga Pottery Company which you may know as Syracuse China had several pieces in the collection.  Including this casserole dish, a very colorful and ornate piece of dinnerware.

Syracuse China casserole dish on exhibit at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.

Later I found this bust of Charles Lindberg done in porcelain by modeler Bertram L. Wakin working for the Onondaga Pottery Company (Syracuse China) in 1927. An historic figure captured in a fragile and beautiful medium.

A porcelain bust of Charles Lindberg in the Ceramic collection at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York.

I had a good laugh at this next piece.  Done by Canadian artist, Wayne B. McClean, titled The Statue of Man’s Liberty to Do It Yourself. It’s good to be able to laugh at ourselves and to see it depicted in such fine a place as the Everson Museum.

The Statue of Man's Liberty to Do It Yourself by Canadian artist Wayne B. McClean in the Ceramic collection of the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York.

To my fellow Do It Yourselfers, this one’s for you, guys!

Photographing in a museum is challenging. The rules at the Everson allow it only if no flash or tripods are used.  With that in mind, I took my Nifty-Fifty, Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens, and set my base ISO at 640.  You have to watch out for how the pieces on exhibit are lighted.  Some were under incandescent while others were under fluorescent lighting and I had to change my camera’s white balance accordingly.

View 99: November Pumpkins

Pumpkins sitting in a field in November near Baldwinsville, New York.

Not all pumpkins end up as Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns.  Some are left in the fields to rot and be plowed under like the ones pictured above and below.  I didn’t expect to show you these on such a clear and sunny morning.  November is normally the cloudiest month of the year in upstate New York.  So, this is an atypical look at November for my assignment on November.  However, November does mean the end of the harvest and decay of what’s left behind and these photos definitely reflect that.

Rotting pumpkins left in a field near Baldwinsville, New York in November.

I used my new filter to take these photos.  The Tiffen 77mm Color Graduated Neutral Density 0.6 filter worked to perfection to cut down the bright sky by 2 stops and helped to balance out the exposure.  This allowed me to expose for the pumpkins without blowing out the sky.  The filter worked very well with the Tokina 11-16mm ultra wide angle lens.

View 98: We are the Champions!

Celebrating 100 years of Baldwinsville High School football, the B’ville Bees varsity football team ran over the Christian Brothers Academy (CBA) by a score of 30-12 in the Carrier Dome on the Syracuse University campus to claim the New York State Section III Football Championship.

B'ville (Baldwinsville) Bees Football team celebrates the New York State Section III Championship in the Carrier Dome.

Running behind a dominating offensive line, Malik Burks (1) ran for 243 yards on 43 rushing attempts and scored 3 touchdowns.  The Bees defense shut down the CBA passing attack in the second half who lead at halftime 12-8.  As an alum of Baldwinsville, I was proud of the team and how they came from behind to win.

Click Here for More Photos from the Baldwinsville vs. CBA NYS Section III Championship Game.

Malik Burks (1) is interviewed by local television after being named Most Valuable Player for Baldwinsville. Baldwinsville defeated CBA to claim the New York State Section III High School Football Championship.

Since this game ended, I have found out the Syracuse University Football program is NOT interested in Malik Burks.  Malik is a senior and is being actively recruited by three other Big East football schools.  This astounded me.  The current SU Football coach is on record as saying he would do his best to recruit the most talented New York high school players.  Yet, here’s the number 3 running back in high school football in the entire nation right in SU’s backyard and they are not interested?  If I was the SU coach, I would not only recruit Malik Burks, I would offer to take the number 44 out of retirement to do so.

View 97: Enchanted Pumpkins

Major League Baseball's 2009 World Series teams depicted in pumpkins at the Enchanted Beaver Lake event in the Beaver Lake Nature Center near Baldwinsville, New York.

Attended the Enchanted Beaver Lake annual event and walked past some 500 lighted pumpkins carved with traditional Halloween favorites like Jack-O-Lanterns, witches, ghouls and ghosts to sports teams and movie characters.  The trails were dark with only the lighted pumpkins available which added to the enjoyment of the event.  The hot cider and fresh donuts helped, too!

The night was cold so Beaver Lake had a special campfire going to keep people warmed up.

I used the same technique I use for photographing Christmas lights which I wrote about on my Disney photo blog to photograph these pumpkins.

The largest pumpkin had a place of honor overlooking the festivities. He seemed a bit of a joker type to me.

View 96: New York Waterfalls in HDR

New York Waterfalls in HDR Photo Essay.

I did warn you about seeing more HDR images here.  My recent Waterfall Safari gave me an opportunity to create some HDR images I decided to share with you as a Photo Essay.  Click here or the title image above to see it.  I hope you like it.

View 95: Falling Water

Water falls 215 feet over the Taughannock Falls near Ithaca, New York.

Taughannock Falls, with a plunge of 215 feet, is 33 feet higher than Niagara Falls and it the highest waterfall in the northeastern United States. Water falls with such force, the plunge pool is more than 30 feet deep. Taughannock Falls State Park is a beautiful, well-maintained park with easy access to the falls along a nearly level 3/4 mile trail to a viewing area. There is a Falls Overlook situated 400 feet above the gorge floor people can drive to so anyone can enjoy seeing this natural wonder.

Falls Overlook view of the Taughannock Falls.

Just a note to say this is NOT my submission to my Assignment 3: Water. I will post it tomorrow.

View 94: Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed at the LaFayette Apple Festival in LaFayette, New York.

When it comes to fall festivals in my area, the biggest is the LaFayette Apple Festival. In two days, 50,000 people attend the festival to enjoy all kinds of apple goodies, carnival rides, craft tents and entertainment. All of this happens under the watchful eye of Johnny Appleseed. Whose legend of planting apple trees makes him a very suitable mascot for the popular festival.

View 93: St. Lawrence River Panorama

View from 150 feet above the St. Lawrence River from the US span of the 1000 Islands Bridge in New York state. Click photo to see larger version.

I mentioned I recently attended a workshop on Landscape photography. Besides learning how to do HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, I learned how to create panoramas from multiple photographs by stitching them together via software. Now, that sounds easy but there’s lots to keep in mind when photographing panoramas which I wrote about on my Disney blog (click here).

I did everything you were supposed to do for this panoramic of the St. Lawrence River from the 1000 Islands Bridge except use a tripod. Oh, I had one with me but there is not a lot of room on the bridge’s walkway and the bridge moves so a tripod would not have been of much use. I did pretty good hand holding as the software didn’t have much trouble stitching the photos together with very little cropping needed. You’ll probably be seeing more panoramic images in the future around here. They are fun to do and give a new prospective to my photography.

View 92: Autumn

A red Sugar Maple leaf on the Bog trail of Beaver Lake Nature Center, Baldwinsville, New York.

Now that the Autumnal Equinox has passed, I went out looking for signs of autumn at the Beaver Lake Nature Center near my hometown of Baldwinsville, New York. I headed to the Bog Trail because I knew I’d find the first signs there as trees and shrubs on a bog are very stressed. Stressed because the bog environment is very acidic as nature proceeds to transform the stagnate wetland to terra firma using Sphagnum mosses as her main architect.

Another sign of autumn is the flocks of migrating Canadian Geese using Beaver Lake as a stop off on their way to points south for the winter months.

Canadian Geese flying over Beaver Lake near Baldwinsville, New York.