Vito Paratore Photography » howell

Manasquan Reservoir: Foggy Trail (canon 400D rain gear)

Vito Paratore — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:21:59 +0000

Last Friday, I was able to leave work earlier than usual. It was raining, but this glorious fog was appearing because of the rain. I decided to go to the reservoir to take some fog shots. My camera, the Canon 400D, is not weather-sealed, so I had to find a way to keep it dry. I prepared a garbage bag for the job like so:

1) Placed the garbage bag over the camera, judging where the lens would be on the bag.

2) Cut out a lens-sized hole in the bag, and positioned the bag just over the lens.

3) Having the bag slightly overlap the filter I had on the lens (circular polarizer), I put the lens hood on, catching the garbage bag and pulling it into the hood slots for a better ‘seal.’

This way definitely is not perfect, but it sure is cheap. As long as the garbage bag stays tight in the lens hood slots, no water touches the lens or camera. Unfortunately, this prohibits me from changing lenses, therefore I must decide more specifically what I want to shoot before I go.

If any of you readers have a different or better way to keep your camera dry, let me know and I will try it out and post the results.

Featured: Loch Ness Driftwood

Vito Paratore — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:28:58 +0000

This is one of my favorite photos from the Manasquan Reservoir. When I showed this to one of my friends, they mentioned that the largest piece of driftwood looks like the Loch Ness monster. I had not noticed it before then, but I see it every time I look at the photo. It took quite a while after sunrise for the sun to finally burn off the thick fog. I have been hoping for fog this thick again ever since.

Manasquan Reservoir: Ice Abstract

Vito Paratore — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:31:43 +0000

Last Friday evening, I was able to go out to photograph the ice that was potentially forming at the reservoir. The ice was still thin, so the small waves of water moving underneath the ice made interesting sounds. Sounds that would have made a star trail trip later that night very creepy (it was overcast, so star trails were not possible that night). When I saw this area of ice, I decided to try some more abstract compositions and play with small depth of field ideas. The late afternoon sunlight gives definition to the texture of the ice and color to the reflections.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 4.1

Vito Paratore — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:03:03 +0000

Yesterday, I found time to remove the airplane trails from the image. It was interesting to see how many airplanes flew by during one of the thirteen three-minute exposures.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 4

Vito Paratore — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:00:17 +0000

As mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I was able to take two trips to the reservoir: Last night and Wednesday night. Last night, I was more successful in lighting the foreground. I used a Maglite flashlight to “paint” the foreground with light. I used the stacking technique in both attempts, which gave me a bit of flexibility with the foreground. I used the flashlight on the first and last exposures I took; that way if one was too bright or two dark, I had the other one as a backup. It turned out I exposed too much light on the first frame, so I used the last frame for the foreground.

For this photo, I was facing a few degrees west of south, so my trails were longer. I got to the spot earlier as well, so my total, stacked exposure was twice as long as Wednesday night’s (approx. 42 minutes). I was amazed at the number of airplanes that flew over during that 42 minutes. Most of them did not expose on the image, but you can see a few there now. For any prints I may make of this shot, I will probably clone them out.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 3

Vito Paratore — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:46:04 +0000

Last night, I rode my bike 4 miles in the dark to shoot star trails in 16 degree weather, with around 25mph wind gusts. I was prepared for the cold and was warm enough. Other than the issue of ambient light in New Jersey, I have come up with two main things I could do next time to make this shot better: First, the foreground is barely visible (on my monitor, at least) and could do for more detail. Second, I should have used ISO 400 instead of 200, so the stars would be brighter while potentially having more stars visible. My next blog entry will include tonight’s photo, which takes both points into account, leading to a better result. Tonight’s photo, however, has much less wind, so the reflections aren’t as soft and nice as this one.

Manasquan Reservoir: Orange Grass

Vito Paratore — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 02:22:01 +0000

Going back through my reservoir shots from Saturday, I found this one. As Fall turns to Winter, the grasses along the water are all dying and turning a brilliant orange color. I liked the transition from orange to brown in this one, but wish I had more interesting clouds that day.

Manasquan Reservoir: Leaves & Sand Patterns

Vito Paratore — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:58:08 +0000

Having no previous plans for today, I decided to get up for sunrise to shoot at the reservoir. Once I parked the car and got my gear together, I noticed the clouds were not going to let the sun come through this morning. It had rained the day before and a few times this past week, so the water level was much higher than it has been lately. Unfortunately, the tree stump shown in my post a few days ago is now a few yards into the water. The overcast sky did not work out too well for any landscape ideas I had, so I changed gears to small detail shots. The rain from the day before made fascinating patterns in the sand, uncovering spots of different colored sand. The grass that grew during the summer and early fall is now dying, making for a carpet of brilliant orange color. For much of the morning, I scoured the ground for any potential subjects I could find in the orange grass or red sand. Posted below are two leaves I found: One on this awesome red sand and the other covered in pine needles.

Featured: Driftwood Stump in Fog

Vito Paratore — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:58:59 +0000

Here is the first blog post of my ‘Featured Photographs’ category. This category will include photos that I have grown particularly fond of for one reason or another. The photos could be from the last trip I took or from a few years ago. I will include any special techniques I used in making each featured photograph.

This photo was taken at the Manasquan Reservoir in Howell, New Jersey. This man-made lake has a very interesting landscape. Large numbers of dead trees reach into the water, making for many unique compositions. With little rain over the past few months, the water level has dropped creating a strip of land that reaches out in to the water amongst these trees. The receding water uncovers the stumps and root systems of many of these trees.

The dead trees and fog give this photo a desolate feel. I like the variations in the coloring of the trees and how they fade into the fog. The roots of the foreground tree creates many leading lines, guiding your eye around the photo. I usually do not like a pure white sky, but I think it fits well into the feel of this photo. I hope you enjoy it.

Star Trails: New Technique

Vito Paratore — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:26:24 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I tried out a new technique for star trails. For normal star trail images, you use a tripod and lock your shutter open for long periods of time. This new technique makes use of Photoshop’s blending mode, lighten, to stack many shorter exposures. The upside to this is much less noise, more control over foreground exposure, and more visible star trails. The main downside I have found with it so far is the milliseconds between the exposures leaves gaps in the final image. These gaps are minuscule and only visible if you are looking for them, but could impact a large print.

The images I posted below shows a major advantage and disadvantage of stacking. Clouds rolled in during the exposure, blocking off the stars for portions of the exposures. This led to the easily visible gaps in the trails. How the clouds end up in the final merged image shows why stacking has incredible potential. The blending mode in Photoshop called “lighten,” when used with the top layer of two or more layers, shows only the pixels of the layer its used on that are brighter than the layer below. It is a hard concept to write out, but you will see it’s effects once you try it. Because it only shows the brighter pixels, the clouds cover everywhere they were in the frame, but do not get brighter or fuller in areas where there are clouds in more than one of the exposures.

I haven’t had the opportunity to try this on a completely clear night, but I will post my results from future trips during which I have a clear sky. If you have any questions about this technique, please comment, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.