Chicago Flower and Garden Show - 3.06.11 - Post 1

So I got another press pass to an event at Navy Pier.  Well, not actually a press pass, more like a press sticker.

I think I could have done this on my computer.

Yes, that's a picture of my knee.  They handed me the sticker with no backing and I got the definite impression that it wouldn't stick again if I moved it.  I've never been a fan of having nametags/labels on my shirt and I knew I'd be aggravating it (and it would be aggravating me) all day if it was up near my camera strap.  So it went on my jeans.

I'm glad I didn't pay to get in, because it wasn't a great event.  Now, having said that, I suspect if you're actually there to get ideas for landscaping it may have been just fine.  But as a photography event it was very, very poorly designed.  And there were an insane number of photographers around.  Not just "Oh, I should get a picture of this container garden so I can do something like it at home" photographers.  I don't think I've seen so many fully kitted-out dSLR photographers in one place since... well, possibly ever.  Lots of people who, like me, weren't afraid to get on the floor to shoot at a better angle or spend the time monkeying with lenses and tripods and filters and all the stuff that goes with them.

And yet... this was a photographer's nightmare in a lot of ways.  There were two ends of this large exhibit hall.  For reasons I don't understand at all, the end that had all the display gardens and the show plants contest was horribly, horribly underlit.  The bulbs appeared to be incandescent, but my white balance was being completely thrown off by them.  "Auto WB" wasn't working and in various places throughout the hall I had to change to different settings.  I have no idea how they could make the temperature of the light so radically different in about twenty feet, but they were managing.  The other end, where they had the vendors?  Very brightly lit.  Go figure.  The only good thing about this lighting was that there wasn't enough of it to make harsh shadows a concern.

To give you an idea, though not the point of this shot, you can see how much brighter the hallway was.  That bright spot behind the tree on the right hand side is the entrance/exit to the exhibit hall.  Look how much brighter the hall is than the lighting on the bench and 'plants'.

Due to the low lighting I had to spend a lot of time putting the camera on the tripod and bringing the apature down to about 22 or smaller (I played with 45 in some areas) and run a crazy long shutter to get a reasonable shot.  Having just gotten my camera cleaned (more about that later) I wanted to keep my ISO at 100 as often as possible, so I decided to take the time getting the long exposure shots.  Which can be pretty flipping difficult when there are a lot of people milling about in non-intuitive paths.  I think I've decided that I need to start going to some of these events armed with a stack of postcards or flyers that explain to people a little bit of photography etiquette.  Things like, if you hear the shutter click once, but not the second time, the photographer is taking a long shot.  DON'T WALK IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA!  An exceptionally long exposure is thirty seconds.  Unless you're chasing your errant toddler or you are on fire, thirty seconds is not that long for you to hold it for just a bit.  Most photographers try very hard not to set up in obtrusive places or where their tripod will be a trip-hazard.  Please show them the same consideration by waiting to go past their lens.  Oy.  I know there are always people who don't realize they're walking into your shot, but this place seemed to have an inordinate number of people who would walk through going, "Oh gee are you shooting?  Sorry."  Or one person in their party would stop and wait and someone else would say to them, "Oh, it's fine, you can go past, she isn't shooting," without asking if it was actually okay for them to go past or if I was shooting.

The show had a few other problems that were more relative to how the show is billed and promoted around Chicago vs. what you actually get...  The show is all over every local news channel.  They run the free Navy Pier trolleys for the event, even though they're generally shut down in the winter.  It's made out to be a Very Big Deal. And some of it is obviously very cool.  There were some really interesting garden and patio/porch displays by people from all over the country.  But then there were some really odd things too...

Between the show gardens and the vendors' area there are these 'rooms' set up by various sponsors. 

 

This is clearly a picnic set up done by a local community college's level two floral design class.  I've never done anything like this, but this doesn't look like a level two of much of anything.  Honestly, it reminded me more of "Quick Fire" challenge for an art Reality Show. (I can't think of the name of the one Bravo did last year, but it seemed like to should come from there.)  "You have 3000 carnations and a budget of $50 at Michaels.  Make a 'room' from this in the sixty-seven mintues."  It just screamed amateur to me.  Sticking red carnations in hot dog buns to make flower hot dogs?  I don't even know what the orange ones in blue bowls were supposed to be.  Or why there's construction fencing hanging from the walls.

Like I said, it may be harder than I think it is; I've never done it, but I was very very underwhelmed to see something like this at an event that is theoretically this Big of a Deal.

Another huge annoyance for me is that at best, 25% of the plants being used were labeled.  You would think that at a show where you're supposed to be giving people ideas, you might want to let them know what it is they were looking at.  And very few of the gardens had people attending them to tell you if you wanted to know.

Oh, and that picture above with the bench and the orange and yellow painted trees?  I have no earthly idea why they would bring those to a show that is primarily about living plants.  They're supposed to represent a park along Lake Shore Drive near Lincoln Park Zoo.  A number of trees down there died a few years back and for some truly incomprehensible reason, instead of removing them, the park district decided to paint them orange and yellow and a few green and blue.  We're living in a budget crisis in this city, but they somehow had the materials and the people to go paint dead trees.  I do. not. understand, but there it is.  And why would you want to showcase that at a flower and garden show?

Anyway, I got a lot of shots that will actually make for some great teaching moments.  I always wanted this to be a place where we could discuss technique and methods, but it's mostly been, "Look!  I took a picture of a thing!"  I've been reading a 'bookazine', as they call it, and they're breaking down both the basic and more specific concepts in photography and it's been helping me a lot.

So, while showing off the pictures I took (because, hey, I need to do that too. :) I want to talk about some basic concepts that new photographers might not be overly familiar with or that more seasoned folks haven't thought about.

To wit, I'll be posting on:
• ISO, so what?
• White balance: what color is your environmental light?
• You probably bathe your dog more often than you clean your camera.  You may want to do something about that.

But before I go... just a few of the good shots that I was pretty pleased with.

Another Anther

As you may have noticed, now that the snow's gone, I needed to change my banner photo at the top of the blog.  I'm going to do an entire post on the tulips - the huge tulip garden was one of the few places they did everything pretty much right.  This was my favorite shot from the entire day.  It looks great even at full size.  The peach and yellow make a really pretty background and the three brown anthers give the shot a great focal point.  For anyone keeping score at home this was taken at ISO 100, F36 and a shutter speed of 13 seconds.  I also used a two second timer to trip the shutter so I wouldn't bump the camera by pressing the button.  I did no post production edition of this, not even cropping (obviously it was scaled), but it came out of the camera like this, and I was pretty excited.

Wouldn't Look out of Place on Canvas

I've never been a huge fan of those old school nineteenth century oil paintings that are all in dark greens and browns with a little yellow or dark red in them.  And yet, these roses would fit in perfectly in one of those shots and I love them.

A Rose of Fire

Here's that top, center one blown up.  I don't know what they were called, but the colors make me think of what would happen if you made a rose out of fire.

Standing Out

This was in a windowbox display that actually had a key put up on the wall so I can go and look to see what it is, but I haven't checked yet.  I'm fairly sure it's some kind of daisy.  I did a metric ton of color-correction on this shot and I'm still not 100% thrilled with it.  But at least it's not pink any more.  These are really awesome flowers with bright purple centers and white petals with light green edges.  My favorite color combination ever.  I also like that I played with the aperture setting enough that I got the background to be just fuzzy enough that the flower stands out, but not so fuzzy that you can't tell what is behind the focus.

Okay, the next post will actually be a discussion of white balance and why it's worth fighting with. :)

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 7 (North Pier Fireworks)

Last post for the Chicago Tall Ships event!  These are the fireworks from the north side of the Pier. 

Many cameras have built in fireworks settings.  Mine doesn't, but it's a quick Google or trip through your owner's manual to figure out the best settings.

For my camera, the best images come from an ISO of 800  the Tv setting running about a 2.5 - 3.2 second shutter. When I'm on Tv the camera sets the aperture setting, which usually runs somewhere around f4 or f5 for something like this.

A tripod is a must.  When you have a 3 second shutter on something moving, you can't breathe, blink, or sneeze or you will have a lot of wiggle.  I forgot the foot to my quick release tripod on the 4th of July and got a whole lot of garbage trying to balance the camera on the tripod.  It just won't work.

Second Set

 These fireworks went off in the last trails of one of those huge 'weeping willow' looking fireworks.  There's just a little wiggle at the end of this one, which makes me think I may have bumped the tripod while getting ready to hit the shutter again.

Purple Over Yellow

 I love the colors on this one.  But then again, anything purple gets my attention. :)    I also like how very straight the purple light trails are.

Traffic Light Go Boom

They had a bit of a red/yellow/green thing going on.  There was on in the post about the Red Witch, where I captured how that looks on the water.

Color, Color Everywhere

A bit of the finale.  I wish I could have gotten a good shot of just the one on the far left.  I love the pink inside, purple middle and green outside edge.

Perforated Fireworks

I didn't do anything but crop this.  It looks like I somehow managed to stop and start the shutter, but it's actually the effect of the firework. 

Pink Over Yellow

 Pinks and yellows. 

Sun and Four Moons

There's some fantastic timing here.  Five fireworks that essentially went off at the same time and at fairly close velocities.  The red one is a little more intense, but the four purple ones are pretty close to identical.

White at Night

At one point they filled my entire lens with white light.  I love how the two on the sides clearly went off a few seconds after the one the middle, so I caught the explosion in the centers of them both.




Okay, I've finally finished Tall Ships.  Now I need to start sorting and cropping the last three hikes I've been on. *checks harddrive*  Wow, that's a lot of photos I need to sort.

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 6 (Shipboard Life)

Okay, last post about the ships.

Boom Today, Boom Tomorrow

This is a 32-pound cannon.  Which means that it can fire a 32-pound cannonball.  The cannon itself weighs, literally, tons more.  While I was on the next ship over they fired a 'blank' from this cannon.  The charge they set off was 2 pounds of gunpowder.  I was a whole ship (roughly 100 yards) away from this and the sound was deafening.  I cannot imagine how anyone who actually served during wartime on a vessel like this had *any* useful hearing left after a couple of battles.

Guiding the Ship

This is the figurehead of the Bounty. There was a sign out in front of the ship that explained that the figureheads looked good and brought good luck and all that, but they had another more important purpose.  Illiterate sailors would identify their ships by the figurehead since they couldn't actually read the names on the sides of the hull.  It gave me flashbacks to when I was a kid and our school buses had Disney figures on the side of the bus.  That way little kids who didn't know their numbers yet would get on the right bus.  Most of my life I was on bus 54 - Cinderella.  But occasionally I was on 36 - Dumbo.  I'm going to be 38 years old at the end of this month, so I guess the fact that I can remember that more than 25 years later is proof that it works. :)

Lighting the Way

Three lanterns.  I was always a little freaked out by the idea of lighting a fire on a wooden ship.  These are in glass cases, but still...

Mind the Gap

A shot down the very deep stairs.  Some ships had the below decks open, others didn't.

Very, Very Low Clearance

This one did, obviously.  This is the crew's sleeping quarters.  Those bags are their personal belongings.  That's all they get to bring for the duration of the trip.  This is a rare self-portrait (done with a tripod and timer), as I'd much rather be behind the camera than in front of it.  But I did it this time to illustrate a point.  I'm 4 foot 10 and I couldn't stand up straight.  I'm guessing the headroom was about 4 feet.  It wasn't too bad for me, but can you imagine being, say, a six-foot tall guy?  If you look to the right of my head, there are two little white marks on the rail at the ceiling.  One is the place for one crew member to hang the foot end of his cot (hammock) and the other is where the next person over puts the head end of his.  Sometimes people could be so crammed in they only had fifteen inches across to sleep.  I'm 4 foot 10 and my shoulders are about 15 or 16 inches across when I lay on my back.  Talk about living in a sardine can.

That's a LONG Way Up

One last shot of the ropes, sails and rigging.  That's a LONG way up.  These days people climbing up to fix things wear a harness, but back in the day they didn't.  Think about climbing up to fix that top sail while that boat is out at sea.  I'm not usually someone who's afraid of heights, but I'm not sure I'd be so quick to volunteer for that duty!

Growing Up Pierside

And for something totally random... a juvenile male red-winged blackbird who's starting to go from brown to black and get his red shoulder patches in.  He was eating popcorn tossed to him by a couple of kids and he's got crumbs on his beak.  :)







Okay!  That's it for the ships.  Next?  Fireworks. :)

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 5 (Showing You the Ropes)

Okay, so I have this post and one more about the ships themselves and then one or two posts of the fireworks I took on the north side of the Pier. Overall, I took roughly 15 gigs of pictures.  Which, according to some quick math, turned out to be about 1200 pictures.  Now, this isn't *wholly* accurate because when I'm shooting in Av or Tv I'm getting both RAW and .JPG files, so when I add the number of files in the folders, I get 1200 but some of them are duplicates.  But lets say that even half are original images.  That's 600 pictures.  For those of us who are old enough to remember when film was our only option, can you imagine the cost of shooting and developing 600 shots for one day?  I really do believe that digital photography is the best invention of the last 100 years (regular photography being invented in the 100 years before that).  Not to mention the control you get from one shot to the next. When I was above decks I could shoot in ISOs of 100 and 200.  When I went below and it got quite dark, I pushed a button and was in 800.  Not an option when you're shooting with film.

So anyway... on with the show.  I was struck by the ubiquitousness of rope on a ship.  It's *everywhere*, and there's tons and tons of it and there are so many different kinds.  I think that anyone who doesn't work a Tall Ship for a living thinks of rope as a general 'one size fits all' thing. 

Not so much with that...

Lake Michigan through the Ropes

Thick black ropes hold up the ladder, thinner black ropes are the rungs.  Gray ropes cross and hang from the ladder.

All the Rope in the World

This was downstairs on the Bounty - yes the one used to film "Mutiny on the Bounty" back in the sixties.  Again, I was struck by all the different kinds and colors of ropes.

So Where Does This Rope Go?

I am honestly amazed that any one person can learn what all these different halyards do.  That they can unknot the one right rope to whatever job it is they need to do and fasten it off again when they've got where they want it, seems a little superhuman to me.

View Through the Ship

There's even rope on the outside.  I was shooting through an oar port (Can you imagine rowing a ship with a mast like the one in the shot above?) and there was a rope going across it. 

Ropes: Coiled and Bundled

Thick and thin ropes coiled and ready for use. 

Bounty's Bell

Even when there weren't ropes right in the shot, there were rope shadows, like these on both the bell and the housing.  (And technically there's ropes in the shot too... holding up the bell.)









Okay, I have one more post about things I found pretty interesting about the ships and shipboard life, then the fireworks and I'll finally have gotten done with this one outing. (Aren't you glad I didn't subject you to even half of those 600 images? :)

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 2 (Tall Ship Windy, Post Beta)

Okay, these are the shots I took from the Windy.  I think we've all dealt with the problems of standing still while trying to shoot something moving.  Your kid, your dog, a dragonfly... whatever.  There are times it isn't easy.

Let me just say, for the record, if you think that's hard, try reversing it.  Your subject is standing still, but you aren't.  And you have no warning for when the 'ground' beneath your feet will pitch and roll.

I can't tell you the number of shots I had all lined up and ready just to find that as I hit the shutter we'd hit a swell and I'd get a whole different shot than I planned for.  Not to mention, you'll almost never get your horizon right.  I spent more time correcting the horizon on these shots than anything else I needed to do to make them blog-able.

This trip wasn't too bad because even though the sun was setting, I still had enough light to use reasonably quick shutters.  That wouldn't be the case when I got on the Red Witch, but I'll talk about that when I get there.

Anyway, Chicago sure is pretty at sundown...

Here's an example of one shot before I corrected the horizon.  It's off just enough for me to notice it and be bothered by it. 

 I literally corrected it by 1 degree (which meant I had to recrop, due to the way my editing program works), but it makes a noticeable difference.  So here's a shot of Chicago through the ropes.  I was trying to get enough back-light that I'd get absolutely black silhouette of the city, but it didn't quite black out enough.  I could probably play with it in post and get the effect I wanted, but it's still a pretty cool shot of the city.

Sun Seen Through the Ropes

Chicago in Silhouette

This one was closer to giving me that 'cut out' effect, but I got the weird sun rays.  I have no idea how or why those happened.  I do love the way the light bounces off the water.

Light Powered Lighthouse

This is the lighthouse on the way out from the pier. If you look on the far right side of the platform you can see the solar panels that power it.

Lighthouse as the Light Disappears

Same place on the way back in.  Look at that gorgeous sunset behind it.

Roseway Behind the Rocks

This being Tall Ships Week, there were a number of, you know, tall ships out there.  This is the Roseway.  It stood out for quite a ways with those dark brown sails.

End of the Day - Chicago Style

 I may need to get a print of this one.  I've got the rigging in the foreground, the city behind and the sun is *right* on the horizon.  Though before I do, I may have to futz with the horizon just a little bit more.

Chicago in Light and Shadow

 
A few minutes later (and with a telephoto lens this time) The light and shadows are doing whole different things.







I'll do the Red Witch shots next.  That trip didn't even leave until 10:15 p.m. and there were fireworks, so it was a whole different shooting experience.

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 2 (Tall Ship Windy, Post Alpha)

Okay, it's going to take two posts for me to cover just the hour I spent on the Windy.

The Tall Ship Windy is a local ship.  If you read these posts and see these pictures and you want to try this, you can!  Windy is at Navy Pier through, I think, September or October.  Check their Facebook (linked above, because it's harder to find than it should be) or their website.

Anyway, the crew was great and we got great weather so we really moved.  It was very cool to learn the basics of how the ship works.  I'd highly recommend this trip to anyone interested in sailing or Great Lakes history.  They normally do a whole pirate thing, but for the Tall Ships event, they were just doing quick cruises so they could accommodate as many people as possible.  There was a cute little moment where a kid on board got to 'fire the canon' at some 'pirates' we found 'at sea'.  This was very, very loud.  If you go specifically to shoot (and I'll talk about the interesting issues associated with that in the next post) I strongly suggest you try and get the cruise going out at sunset.  It really is gorgeous out there as the sun goes down.

These are the pictures I took of the ship.  You'll notice an absence of shots of the hull... I was kind of hurried on and then it was dark when we docked.  So these are taken from on the boat.  Ship?  Is this one of those things where people get uppity on whether or not the thing is called a 'boat' or a 'ship'?  And on that note, I tried to pay attention to what things were called and such, but I couldn't exactly take notes, so if I get any of the nautical terminology wrong, PLEASE feel free to correct me. :)

Anyway..  I started off on the main deck, but eventually realized I could sit on the top deck, in the middle, all but under the boom.  Actually, as much as I was scooting around up there, I'm sure I was under the boom several times.  Which was fine with the crew, until I stood up.  Then they were afraid I'd get hit with the boom and go... yeah, you get it. :)

It's also interesting to watch the sky change from light blue to dark blue as the sun went down.

Mast and Mizzen

 The mast and the mizzen sail.  I got to help hoist the mizzen.  Which is very cool.

Windy's Rigging

Throughout the Chicago Tall Ships event I found myself fascinated by the rigging.  I'm sure people who do this understand it completely, but I look at all the ropes and go, "I'd have knots where they don't belong in about two minutes flat."  Not to mention, "You want me to climb up where?"

The View Through the Ropes

 I did a lot of shooting through the ropes, I thought it gave the shots an interesting context.  I love that this one has ropes in the foreground in sharp focus, ropes in the middle ground in weak focus and the ship behind (which most people would have made the focus) is blurred.  It being sunset certainly didn't hurt the shot either.

Sheets Unfurled

  The mizzen sail with the next one over being raised.

Unclimbable Ladder

Time of day is everything.  I love the light and shadows in this.  You can see the shadow of the ladder and the shadows of the lines.  And the sail seems to glow.

Basic Geometry

Sails and lines.  A rope going vertically, a rope going on an angle and seems in the sail going horizontally. Reminds me of the math problems we'd get in 10th grade geometry.

Topsail Between Masts

Topsail and masts.  This all looks so complicated to me.  And yet, this technology (the basics of it anyway) are at least a thousand years old.

Come Sail Away

Sails near and far and a rope ladder to go with it.









Okay, I have to say, my favorite shots will go in the next post.  These will be the ones I took from the ship.  Chicago at sunset is really, really gorgeous.

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 1

There won't be many pictures in this post, but there will be many posts about this event to follow that will more than make up for that. :)

This post is about the fact that it's amazing what you can get if you ask nicely.

I decided to spend the $20 on a viewing and boarding pass for the Tall Ships event at Chicago's Navy Pier.  I figured it would make for a good day of shooting.

When I got there, it looked like the entirety of the Midwest had dumped onto the Navy Pier grounds.  The people were so thick you couldn't move.

I was slowly shuffling through the crowd towards the ticket booth when I saw a poster like this one:

See that top middle one?

So I figured, hey, I have a blog.  Blogs are considered media.  It can't hurt to ask, the worst they can do is say 'no', right?

It took some time to figure out where to go and who to talk to.

I went to one desk, who sent me to a tent who sent me to the other end of Navy Pier.  Ever been to Navy Pier?  The other end is *way* down there.  Google tells me the pier is 1.5 miles long.  I believe it.  I took that trip about 7 times over the course of the day - and those were just the "I'm at this end and I need to be at that end" direct trips.  Never mind the wander-around trips.

So anyway, I walk the mile and a half to the media desk and... No one's there.
But there's a phone number to call. I call and say "I'm a blogger. Any
chance I can get a media pass?"

Guy on the phone says, "Sure, I'll bring you one."

He comes down, has me leave name, email and phone, blog name and my I.D. They wanted the lanyard back.


That was all it took for me to officially be recognized as a member of the fourth estate.

This thing was the magic key to the Whole Wide World!

A.) Priority Boarding. I didn't have to stand in one line all day. That was very handy when the line for the Bounty was pushing 4 hours.  Now, I didn't ask what all kind of access this thing gave me, which was a huge mistake.  I'd find out through trial and error, but I'm definitely asking what it lets me do in the future so I don't lose time.  I only found out about the Priority Boarding when I asked a volunteer where a particular line started.  She noticed my Media badge and said, "Oh, you're media.  You don't stand in lines."  And she pointed me up the exit path and hollered to the gatekeeper to let me in.  Excellent.

B.) This was an almost. One of the smaller ships was done up as a
pirate ship, but it was for observation only - no boarding. But
following my new mantra of "all they can do is say no" I showed on of
the crew my magic pass and asked if I could board to shoot. He went to
go ask the captain. Before he could come back the effing COAST GUARD
showed up and boarded. So yeah, that was out. But it was close.

C.) Free Sailing Trips.  These tickets started at $44. They'd been officially sold out for three days. But I was walking past the boarding area and someone official-looking was yelling that they had stand by tickets for the cruise on the Tall Ship Windy leaving Right. Now. I show her the magic pass and say (and I was sure I was pushing my luck) "This doesn't get me on the sail-aways, does it?" And she says, "Actually it does, go down there." And then hollers to the crew that she's sending down one media person.

1. Free freaking sold-out tour!
2. I got to hoist the mizzen sail.
3. Timing is everything. It was a sunset tour! I really do live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
4. The crew wants me to post my stuff to my blog and drop the link on their Facebook page. Yay exposure!

D.) Second free tour.  I wanted to see (now that I knew of the potential) if I could get on another ship. But it was time to turn in my badge. So I hiked the mile and a half to the PR Room and asked if there was any way to keep my badge for a while and not only did the head guy say "yes" he took me down to the dock to try and get me on The Red Witch himself. (Which meant about a one mile hike back down to the boat.) There were some overbooking issues and they couldn't possibly have gotten me on the 8:30 sail, but they squeezed me on the 10:15.  And in the mean time I got to go shoot the 9:00 fireworks on the north side of the pier.

While the PR guy (I believe his name was John, but I'm not sure any more) and I were walking he asked if I was shooting "for anyone in particular".  I said I had a blog and he said that "blogs are important" and that it was a good way to get the word out about things like this.

And as a minor thing... there were snacks for us up in the Media Room. :)

I got about $115 worth of free admission because I had the Magic Media Pass.  The $20 general admission, and roughly $44 for each sail-away ticket.

So I'm going to go through the roughly 15 gigs of photos I took yesterday now.  I'm going to post in order of interest, not necessarily in chronological order of my day as I usually do for events like this.  The Windy wants me to post my shots from that trip and link into their Facebook page, so I'll probably start there.

And let me just say, I am asking for a Media/Press Pass anywhere I go that might have one from now on.  The worst they can do is tell me 'no'.  And the perks when they say 'yes', can be outstanding!