Tourmeister's Random Walkabout Photo Thread

[Tourmeister]

So I am not disciplined enough... yet... maybe ever... to do a pic-a-day thread. However, I do occasionally grab the camera and just shoot random pics that don't have much to do with... well... anything. So I thought I would start this thread to have a place to just share random photos when the mood hits me.

So some of you might already know that I recently had to send my Nikon D7000 back to Nikon because it had a MONSTER back focus issue. I'd lock the focus on a spot, shoot, and the image would consistently be focused pretty far behind the intended focal point. Well, I got the camera back a few days ago. They gave it a general check up and tune up in addition to fixing the focus issue. The following shots are from the D7000. I mounted up the 35mm f/1.8 for these

Daniel and Sarah both wanted to try their little hands at holding and shooting the D7000

I forgot to tell Daniel to recompose after focusing on my left eye.

At first glance, it seems that the focus issue has been fixed

Our office dogs captured as I was leaving work. I had the 18-200mm mounted.

Pepper the Zombie Dog. She's just not right in the head sometimes...

Griffin, he's sweet heart but a total coward. The camera pointing at him freaks him out a bit.

Sassy, full of energy, smart but also incredibly dumb sometimes

When I got home from work, the kids were goofing off in the back yard. I took advantage of the moment to get some shots of them in action. This first set is Sarah. Trying to lock focus on a moving target, even with the AF-C running, was a challenge. I thought I was in spot focus but I was really using the d9 and sometimes the outer focus points were targeting the hands/chain instead of the face. I did not realize this until I was looking at them inside later.

This one is my favorite

Rachel was in a slight shy mood so only one shot of her

Daniel is NEVER shy!

He wanted me to get some shots of him leaping and back flipping off the swing

He spun with his back to me

So I moved to the other side... and he spun the other way

After a few more tires, he finally got it

Then the back flip dismounts

And some general monkey business

Followed by more serious monkey business

Daniel LOVES climbing trees, which I can appreciate having been a monkey in my day. However, he has NO concept of too high or branches too small to support his weight. He's also a bit over confident of his abilities. So watching him climb can be a bit stressful at times

Moments after this, he has his full weight on that tiny string and is about 20 feet up in the air

He was higher and left of this in the first few shots, still climbing when I hollered at him to stop going higher.

It soon started getting dark and we went inside to look at the pictures. While I was messing around in Lightroom, he grabbed my new D750 and starting shooting pics. "Hey Dad, can I take A picture...?" "Sure."

Click!...

Click!... Click!...

Click!... Click!... Click!... Click!... Click!... Click!... Click!... Click!...

I deleted a mess of shots, but a few were worth keeping.

and I snuck in one of him

Me giving him the stink eye after the 50th shot of the side of my head

So proud of himself

The TWT nerve center...

 

[jhansen]

Nice work. Daniel "The Stuntman".

 

[Duke]

These are fun Scott.

Glad you got your 7k back. One day we need to get together and shoot something.

 

[Tourmeister]

So I had some time this evening and needed to entertain Daniel and Rachel for a bit... They just happened to get little LED flashlights this evening. So... I grabbed some string and my tripod.

Rachel went first

You might notice a few of those streaks stop at her head...

Then it was Daniel's turn

I did a spot edit in LR and cranked up the exposure just on his face

For the first five seconds of this exposure, he just held the light under his chin

This time, he held it out away from his face a bit, which worked better

And this is Rachel getting impatient for her next turn...

I tried painting Daniel with a flash light as he did the cart wheel, but the light wasn't strong enough. So I had to crank up the exposure in LR which brought up all the back ground and fore ground as well. I was trying to keep that all dark and just have him showing.

Me

Both kids just running nuts...

We also tried our light penmanship...

I was having trouble getting Daniel to grasp that I wanted him on the far left of the shot so that his name would not run out of the right side of the shot.

Rachel gets another turn and whacks her head a few more times.

And Daniel

I tried shooting a few star pictures while we were out there, but they were horrible. I need to look into what settings to use and also use the exposure delay mode to give the body time to stop vibrating after the mirror flips up.

Now that Sarah has seen these pics, she wants me to do pics with her tomorrow night. She has some of those little glow sticks that glow when you bend them.

 

[Tourmeister]

These are fun Scott.

Glad you got your 7k back. One day we need to get together and shoot something.

I enjoyed the shooting Saturday, but when I got home and looked at the images on my computer, I was really disappointed with many of them. Like Scott said, the focus was just off that little bit... However, I did manage to get some good ones. I just need to remember to run a faster shutter speed next time.

 

[Duke]

I enjoyed the shooting Saturday, but when I got home and looked at the images on my computer, I was really disappointed with many of them. Like Scott said, the focus was just off that little bit... However, I did manage to get some good ones. I just need to remember to run a faster shutter speed next time.

It was a fun day of shooting. I culled down to 1900 images, I think Scott culled down to 2400. The "Boss" should not want for more this time I think.

I wager that some of the focus issues are going to come down to technique more so than equipment (if there is doubt). From what little I saw, I thought you were doing pretty good. I really liked the looks from that 80-200.

Also, here are you and that other Scott...

 

[Gravel Guy]

I like the led shots in particular....need to show these to spf.....

 

[Tourmeister]

After Sarah saw Rachel and Daniel's flashlight pics, she wanted in on the action too. So the following night we setup in the back yard again.

Daniel=green Rachel=blue Sarah=red

I had them hold the lights out front for the first five seconds

They held them high and out front for five seconds on this one

I was trying to make spirals by changing the length of string between my hand and the light. I whacked myself a few times trying to change the plane of rotation.

Sarah

Sarah tries to write her name

The other two went inside after Daniel whacked himself on the eyebrow pretty hard... He doesn't do ANYTHING halfway...

He finally came back out with an ice pack, but couldn't resist getting back in on the action

This is a 15 second exposure. Daniel covered a lot of ground. Most of the legs you can see here are his. I cranked this one up a bit in LR so the legs would show.

Sarah

 

[Tourmeister]

So here in East Texas, Spring is Springing already... We'll probably get one or two more cold snaps, but the trees are all budding and already getting all that pollen ready to turn everything yellow. We were kind of slow near the end of the day at work, so I grabbed the D7000 with the 18-200mm lens and wandered around the property. My folks have their home and our office on the same property out in the woods.

The twisted Oak and the straight Pine

The Pines are LOADED with pine cones!

Mom has a whole bed of these blooming like crazy

The chickens are enjoying the warm sunny weather. These ladies lay some really nice tasting eggs!!

Red Bellied Woodpecker. We have a ton of them, babies included. This is a massive crop because he was far away and I was maxed out on the 200mm zoom. They are good at watching me and scooting to the backside of the trees where I can't see them. We have quite a few varieties of woodpeckers, including the huge Pileated Woodpecker (think Woody Woodpecker) which are REALLY hard to get near enough to get a shot!!

These are both massively cropped as well and at max zoom.

I am not real happy with the sharpness in most of these images. I suspect that is because I was shooting the lens wide open most of the time. It starts at f/3.5 at 18mm and as it zooms out to 200mm it quickly goes to a max of f/5.6. I should probably be shooting it around f/8-f/11 and letting the ISO float so I can shoot slightly faster shutter speeds. Trying to shoot birds really makes me appreciate those people that do it and get REALLY sharp awesome shots, especially when they are in flight.

 

[SweetPotatoFries]

Really enjoyed these pictures and the stories that go with them. Especially like the ones of the kids on the swings because they are having so much fun.

 

[RacerJohn]

Wow, Scott Friday! You gave us a LOT of awesocome pics! Fun pics!!

The best imo, were the pics of your son Daniel! Great Pics!!!

More to come?

 

[Tourmeister]

More to come?

Sure. Maybe not more light writing pics, but just more random stuff that catches my eye here and there as I explore what the camera can do.

 

[Tourmeister]

As I was on the way out the door this morning I noticed that there was a place setting on the table. This is odd. Sarah has been working on an "Etiquette" badge with the American Heritage Girls. Apparently she got up and made breakfast for everyone. I am a late riser and don't eat breakfast. They were all gone by the time I was heading out for the day. I can only assume this is related to the badge thing...

The last hour of work was kind of slow so I wandered again outside again. I had a companion the whole time. Pepper just followed me everywhere, stopping when I stopped, taking two steps when I took two steps, and basically just being my shadow. I call her the Zombie dog because sometimes she just slips into Thousand Yard Stare mode and there is no distracting her. I think she sees things that aren't there. Apparently, her previous owner used to get her to chase a laser pointer A LOT as a puppy and they think it messed with her head Every morning when I get to work, I use my iPhone to reflect the sun along the front of our office and she chases that spot back and forth from one end of the building to the other. She loves it Anyway, here are some random wandering pics,

These flowers are really hard to get decent shots of because they are just so white. It is hard to get any detail even if I play around with them in LR.

I need a Macro lens

Mom and Dad live on 10 acres. The back 7 acres have never really been cleared other than the trails I have cut for the kids to ride their motorcycles and ATVs. The drought a few years ago took a heavy toll on their trees and there are dead and fallen trees everywhere. The remains of this stump caught my eye because Pines are normally so straight.

Pepper sat and watched me take several pictures of that stump without ever moving. She's a really calm dog, unless you get out a pointer or reflect sunlight anywhere near her I like calm dogs.

We have an office cat. Technically, it belongs to my older brother's daughter. They could not have a cat where they live so they brought it down to my folk's place. We have a lady that works with Dad and myself. She's totally a cat person. Way back when we had about five or six office cats, she had them trained to sit in a semi circle around her desk while she ate lunch. They would patiently wait without fighting with each other as she handed out bits of her lunch. Nutmeg is spoiled because she has the cat lady all to herself. All the other cats have long since died off or gone missing. Nutmeg spends her days sitting in the lap of the cat lady or lounging on her desk while she works. She's kind of odd. The front and back doors of the office are 24 feet apart with nothing in between them. Nutmeg will ONLY go out the back door, which is where her food is. However, even if the back door is WIDE OPEN (like on recent beautiful days), she will walk all the way around the building to the front door and sit there whining to be let in if it is closed If the front door is WIDE OPEN and she wants outside, she will sit and whine at the back door if it is not open... We have three dogs at work. She takes no crap from any of them! She tolerates me

She kind of, unofficially, likes Pepper because Pepper leaves her alone

Since we are out in the woods, we see a LOT of deer. They follow a creek that flows through my parent's property from a nearby lake. It was near the lake that I hit a deer on my KLR 650 a few years ago and broke my ankle. There is a large pasture on the property next to my parent's. Often when I leave work, I will see anywhere from 10-20 deer grazing in that pasture. They are everywhere... So it is not uncommon to see them walking through the yard around the office and my parent's home. As I was walking out the door today, I spotted four of them across the yard on the far side of the house. I walked back into the office to grab my camera off my desk. When I leaned over the end of the desk, it hit my truck's key fob, which was in my pocket, and set off the panic alarm... The deer freaked and ran

But... they only ran across the road into the woods and soon came cautiously back into the yard. I could not get very close and the only lens I currently have for the D750 is the 24-70mm. So the following images are once again massive crops from the originals. There were four total. After the first couple of shots, the sound of the camera mirror flipping up spooked them and they took off again.

So I headed to the truck to get on home. Sassy was lazing around and was trying to be subtle about wanting me to come over and give her some belly rubbing... Sassy is NOT calm. I still like her though. Nutmeg does NOT. Sassy likes to try herding Nutmeg whenever she wants to walk from point A to point B. Nutmeg is NOT amused by this

When I pulled into the driveway, there were monkeys all over the place. Daniel has been grounded for the last two weeks and has not been able to play with the two boys next door, Rylen and Christian. It has been as hard on them as it has on him. They were all counting down the days until today when he was finally able to play with them again. They like to climb trees as well, but don't have quite the lack of fear that Daniel seems to have.

Daniel went up this tree without any help. Rylen and Christian had to get a boost up from Sarah. She was standing around "supervising" the younger children...

As I wander around, I am noticing a distinct lack of colors in the places where I am everyday. There is a LOT of brown... a LOT! On a positive note, I noticed that the Red Bud trees have started blooming today! This means many other trees and flowers will soon be doing the same. Maybe that will help with the color drought...

 

[Tourmeister]

So even though it got cold and nasty today, Spring will not be deterred! I snapped these at work and on the way home.

It's hard to see here, but many of the Oak trees are already putting on new leaves. The pines are pumping out the pollen. The grass is starting to grow faster than it can be mowed. We did get a good deal of rain in the last 24 hours.

This is heading up the road from our office which is a few hundred yards behind me. I see deer here almost daily. Occasionally it is one or two. Other times, like today, I see 20-25 at a time!

How many do you see?

This is the pasture where they like to graze. There are many more here that you can't see because they were behind the trees on either side of the image.

You can 12 here, but there are actually 19-20 of them present.

I was out of the truck and hiding behind an overgrown fence row. I whistled to get them freaked and they headed for the woods, ALL of them trying to cram into one tiny spot at the same time

Directly across the street, where they were coming from in the first picture, there is a piece of property about 10 acres in size. The owners cleared the interior and left a "wall" of trees and growth around the perimeter. The interior is like a little park with gardens, benches, and some landscaping. The deer LOVE it. I see them here pretty much every evening as I leave work.

The 24-70 lens really just doesn't do so well for these critter shots because it doesn't have the reach. All of these deer images are heavy crops from the original image. Still, the end result looks pretty decent I think. In a few days I should have a little something on hand that will help with that reach issue

 

[Duke]

The 24-70 lens really just doesn't do so well for these critter shots because it doesn't have the reach. All of these deer images are heavy crops from the original image. Still, the end result looks pretty decent I think. In a few days I should have a little something on hand that will help with that reach issue

Its an addiction!

Looking forward to see what you decided on.

 

[klb1122]

Its an addiction!

Sure is!!!

Hoping to see some nice deer portraits soon.

 

[Tourmeister]

When I was leaving work today, they were walking around behind our office and toward the back yard at my parent's house. I am sure it is the same herd. As I pulled out of the driveway, there were 4-5 more crossing the street and heading toward the area behind the office. Back in the Fall, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of an nice 8 point buck in our area, but he's pretty elusive. The doe's and babies are all over the place though.

 

[achesley]

Looking at those animals still makes my shoulder hurt. Good shot.

 

[Tourmeister]

Hoping to see some nice deer portraits soon.

Well... as luck would have it, not a deer to be seen today when leaving work The BBT came around 2:00pm and we weren't real busy at work, so... I wandered about with my new toy, a 70-200mm 2.8 VRII. All I can say is SWEET!!

More signs that Spring is upon us!

Pepper wasn't around, so Nutmeg decided to be my shadow while I wandered

There were four Red Bellied Woodpeckers squawking like crazy in front of the office. There was a mama and a few somewhat mature babies. The mamas like to fly form tree to tree calling to the babies to get them to follow. I tried to keep my distance while still getting close enough for a few shots, but they are crafty little critters! They were watching me the whole time and would constantly move to the backside of the tree away from me. Every time I would try to reposition to get a shot, they would just move around again. So I finally gave up and wandered over to the house where Sarah and Mom where hanging out watching The Sound of Music. Sarah came to work with me today and did her school work at the office, then went to hang out with my mom after she finished.

There are three LARGE windows in my parent's dining room that give them a great view of the back yard and woods behind their house from their table. Just beyond the deck is a nice Oak tree with a bird feeder hanging in it and a bird bath underneath. It gets pretty BUSY most days. The birds completely ignore any movement inside the house.

Looking out the back window in the dining room

My ever ready poser

A crop of the eyes from the above shot

Although she had to rest the camera/lens on the pillow on the couch because it was too heavy for her to hold steady, she wanted to get a shot of my gorgeous mug

Last shot before heading home, a nice Cardinal in the Oak outside the dining room window

The D750 has a focus mode AF-C or AF-S Auto that is selected in the same manner as d5, d9, d21, d51, 3-D, etc,... In this mode, the camera uses face detection software to look for the closest eye of any face it finds. Once it finds it, if you are in AF-C mode, it will track that eye so long as you keep it within the range of the whole 51 point focus area. It finds the eye pretty quick too! I was using it for all those shots above. I don't know if it works on critters or just human faces. Anyway, I wanted to play around with it with the kids in the backyard to see how it does with faster moving subjects. But first, a few spot focus shots while waiting for the kids.

This is a MASSIVE crop. I had to be about 4 feet from it to get the lens to focus and that meant a big field of view. Still, pretty amazing detail!

The original

Not quite as massive a crop as the above shot, but still pretty hefty.

The original

So Sarah finally came out of the house and was ready to do some swinging. I switched back to the face detection focus mode and went for it...

The majority of the shots got trashed. I don't know for sure if this was because the focus was having trouble finding the face on a fast moving subject so much as it might have been me shooting at too slow of a shutter speed. I will have to play with this when I am paying more attention to the shutter speed and keep it faster, like 1/1000 or better. I was in Aperture mode and was letting the ISO float to make the exposures work, so I kind of forgot to pay close attention to the shutter speed, which was set at a min of 1/125 I think. Still, I did get some fun shots. Rachel eventually came out to join us.

Woman of the WILD hair! She HATES having it brushed... The struggle is REAL

Eyes closed, so maybe that threw off the camera But you can see the blur in the hair even though the body is not blurred.

Near the bottom of the swing arc at max speed. Still, if you look at the hair in the upper left... It just looks like the camera missed the face because she was moving so fast. I WISH this one had been focused properly on her face. It is a pretty good capture of her attitude

Right at the top of the arc just as she is dropping down but her speed/distance relative to the camera is still pretty constant.

Same thing for Sarah here

Like I said... WILD hair... I wish I could say this was only because she has been swinging, but unless I make her brush it, she will often look this way if it hasn't been put up in a pony tail by Beth.

It took Daniel a bit longer to get outside. We homeschool and lately he's been having a few "motivation" issues with getting his work done. It helped knowing I was outside taking pictures of the girls and he was missing out on it. Like Sarah, he loves having his picture taken Of course, by the time I was ready to start shooting... Where do you think I found him?

Even WAY up in a tree, the face detection worked well, as did the pop up flash

Yeah... neck breaking high... Note the lack of any ladder... He's sitting on the lowest branch on that tree. I don't know how he does it

That rope is his "Zip Line"

See those pants...? They are BRAND SPANKING NEW and were bought so he'd have a nice pair without stains, rips, and holes in them to wear to church and other places where we'd like him to look presentable. I tried to REALLY stress to him that these were NOT pants to go out and play in because we want to keep them nice for at least a while... I believe this is the first time he has worn them We were getting ready to head into town to meet Snoopster for dinner so I made him get down. Of course, I had to bite my tongue and hold my breath as he did so...

Yeah, when he flung himself over, I thought for sure his little hands would lose grip on that FAT branch with crumbly pine bark on it

Somehow he went into Special Forces mode and kept himself balanced on the rope until he was low enough to drop

I thought for sure there would be some rope burn involved here, but he made it without any issues

Amazingly, the pants were still clean and free of dirt stains and pine sap. We rounded up Beth and the girls and headed for town. Dinner was great.

This lens is awesome. I can't wait to try it out on the D7000 where it's effective focal length will be about 105-300mm because of the crop factor effect. It should be great for shooting critters.

 

[Duke]

YAY! You are going to love that lens. it is arguably the sharpest lens I own. You are now 2/3rds of the way there for the trinity!

There is something special that the long lens has in generating subject separation from the background.

These are my favorites in this set:

 

[Tourmeister]

Well... the 14-24 will have to wait a long while. I've spent a good bit on the body and lenses in the last few months. Time to let things settle down Besides, the 24-70 and this 70-200 pretty much cover all the shooting I've been doing the last few years. So unless I get a sudden itch to do indoor architecture shots or something... I think I'm good for a while If anything, I might grab a macro lens down the line because I've always liked that kind of stuff.

 

[klb1122]

Congrats on the new lens!!! It's a beast for sure. Nice shots with your first time out with it. I must say though, seeing all these pics of Daniel scares the crud out of me!

 

[Tourmeister]

Congrats on the new lens!!! It's a beast for sure. Nice shots with your first time out with it. I must say though, seeing all these pics of Daniel scares the crud out of me!

Yeah, we always thought for sure he'd be the one keeping us on a first name basis with the ER staff. Shockingly, he has yet to break or even sprain anything. On the other hand, Rachel broke her left collar bone when she was about 2-1/2. She was sitting on one of those little coin op cars in the Sonic playground and fell off onto the concrete. It wasn't even going at the time

When Daniel rides his motorcycle, I have learned to just watch and pray... So far, so good... I have a buddy here in town with two boys slightly younger than Daniel. I've heard him do some serious wind sucking a few times when we've all been together and he sees Daniel in action

 

[M38A1]

Regarding your swingset shot and saying most got trashed.... I'm not surprised.

The C focus mode does a REALLY good job of locking in movement coming towards the camera. But up and down locking seems to be hit or miss, and when subjects are moving AWAY, again a less locking percentage. Also keep in mind you were moving your camera basically up and down (ie: panning) while trying to stay on her, so unless your shutterspeed was quite high, the percentage of keepers would drop considerably.

 

[Tourmeister]

Actually, what I was trying to do was to avoid panning completely. I would pick a spot in the arc where I wanted to get the shot, do a few test focuses as they got to that spot to try to set the lens pretty close to where it would be for the actual shot. The aim was to eliminate the time to lock focus and prevent hunting. So I was not following them through the arc. I think it would probably work better with the spot focus because it doesn't have to wait for the face recognition to do its thing and decide where to focus.