Zombie March Chicago 2012 - Post 3, The Zombie is in the Details - June 16, 2012

I missed more shots on this topic than I got, but one of the things I adore about the Zombie March is some people's attention to the details.

 So it's a Zombie in a hat... cute, right?  Then you read his shirt.  And crack up.  Well, at least I did.  Dude, you just got turned into a zombie... not so lucky, I'd say.  But no one asked me, right? :)

 A lot of people have plain t-shirts that they don't mind tearing and bloodying up so I didn't pay a lot of attention to the t-shirts until I happened to be walking behind this girl.  This as a zombie shirt is an awesome piece of cognitive dissonance.

Photo fail in a big way. :(

If you can't piece together what her shirt says under her hair, it's "LA [something] Work Release".  But the awesome detail is in her left hand.  She's got the hand of the person she was handcuffed to before she 'broke away from the chain gang'.







There were lots of awesome make up effects - I showed you Zipper Face in the first post and Snow White's eyes and Wraith Girl's eyes in the second and first post respectively, but sometimes it's just a little thing that you might not ever see unless you get behind the right Zombie.

Zombie March Chicago 2012 - Post 2, Zomb-ody You Might Recognize - June 16, 2012

NOTE to the regular readers who are used to cute, fluffy squirrels and happy little song birds...  These zombie posts contain exactly what you'd think of when you hear "zombie".  A lot of stage make-up gray faces and latex flesh wounds and currant-juice fake blood.  If this is not what you signed on for, please feel free to look away now.  Personally, I found it all to be a lot of "Hey look someone in make up", but some people on the street were legitimately startled by some of the participants.

One of the big schticks for Zombie March is to be a famous, infamous or at least recognizable zombie.  These were the ones that I could recognize.

 I posted this one the other night.  This is Amy Winehouse and her (apparent) husband, someone named Blake.

There was a tiny part of me that asked 'is it a bit too early for the dead Amy Winehouse bits', but I'm not sure what the etiquette is when deciding who's Zombie Fair Game.

 Then there was Zomb-ama.  This guy liked working the crowd.  And before you ask, I'm not 100% sure what the red thing at the split in his pants is supposed to be.

 The Scoobie-Doo Crew finally lost their battle with the guy in the mask!  Poor Scoobie *really* got the raw end of the deal.

This was pretty funny.  I mean, to go to the trouble to get coordinated but not matching t-shirts and the make the box and then bloody it.  I love that it's finger-smears across the 'face' and then there's a heart of blood on the zombie on the left.

 Then there was the Disney Zombie Crew.  Snow White, Pocahontas (I think) Rapunzel, Tinkerbell with Peter Pan behind her, Belle, Cinderella, the Prince from Little Mermaid and Ariel herself.

This crew did some nice details in the make up.  Like look how "Ariel" used make up to really accent her ribs and make her look all emaciated and sunken.

I isolated a few of them to make the details easier to see.  Snow White didn't carry an apple - she had a bloody brain.  And also contacts.  The contacts are still the one thing that will totally throw me when I don't expect to see weird eyes.

And while these aren't people whose names you would know, I'm sure we're all familiar with the ubiquitous Wal-Mart Greeter.


Well if you look closely (or click on to blow up) the little yellow tags under their names, you'll see that these are "Wal-Mart People Grrrrr-eaters."


Very, very clever!


Speaking of details, tomorrow I'll put up the post where the little things in a costume or make-up make all the difference.

Someone Needs to Move the Sun - about your subject being backlit

Okay, I'm interrupting the fun shots of zombies to illustrate a photography point.

You may have heard about a subject being 'backlit' and how bad it is without knowing what it is.  Basically it means that the only source of light in the shot is behind whatever it is you're taking a picture of.

Most of the time when I'm shooting, I'm stuck with whatever it is being where it wants to be and it not caring much if that means I'm shooting directly into the sun.  Butterflies won't move to the flowers on the other side of the path for you just because it would mean keeping the sun behind you.  Birds won't come down out of the tree so that you don't have to aim up into the bright summer sky.

People, on the other hand, will typically be gracious enough to let you stage the shot better.

To wit, these two crossdressing zombies...

The first shot I got of them:

 

Let me show you the set up for this shot.  (And at the same time show you why I'm a photographer, not a sketch artist! :)

 Okay, the big gray blob on the left is The Bean.  I was standing almost under it, the Zombies were facing it, the sun was right behind them.

Look where the rays of the sun hit.  They hit me, they hit The Bean and they hit the BACK of the Zombies' heads.  This makes the whole shot turn dark because the subject of the photo is actually blocking the light from getting to the lens.

So I asked the zombies to move.  We basically switched places - the Zombies in front of The Bean, and me with my back to the light source (sun).  Now I have this configuration:

Look where the light is now.  Hitting the Zombie on the face and in the scope of my lens.

Which gives me this shot:

Pretty amazing difference, isn't it?

So, the short version is, don't shoot with the brightest spot of light BEHIND the subject when you can avoid it.  Don't stand people indoors in front of windows.  Or if you do, shoot from the side if you can.

But you don't always have a choice about where your subject is and where the light source is.  In those cases you have a few options.

1.) Try a fill flash.  Even most point and shoots give you the option of forcing the camera to use the flash even when the internal sensor says the room is bright enough.  This will throw light onto the front of your subject to fight the shadows.

2.) Some cameras have a setting called "Spot Metering" and/or "Partial Metering".  In these settings you line up a particular focus point with the subject you're shooting and the camera will read that item as the part of the frame to try to keep the light as true to the real conditions as possible.  This often has the consequence of overexposing and washing out the background.  The camera basically says, "We need to keep *this* part as bright as we can, but everything has to be relative, so we'll brighten the heck out of the bright area back there."  I occasionally do this on purpose when I'm shooting products for my Etsy, because I *want* the background to be bright white and washed out while my product is the right colors.

Partial metering weighs a lot more of the frame than spot metering.  Partial metering is typically what's used in backlit portraits where you want the whole face to be accounted for.  Spot metering works well when you really want one small area to be well-defined.

So that's my quick and dirty lesson on backlighting and why it's typically bad.  I mean, sure, some people do it for effect.  A creepy silhouette or mood piece can benefit from backlighting.  But most of us want the light on our subject.


Speaking of my Etsy... looking for some fun soap?  Recycled crayons?  Lotion bars?  Some of my photos?

Zombie March Chicago 2012 - Post 1 - June 16, 2012

I'm interrupting our cute little swallows and pretty butterflies and whatnot to bring you Zombie March 2012!

NOTE to the regular readers who are used to cute, fluffy squirrels and happy little song birds...  These zombie posts contain exactly what you'd think of when you hear "zombie".  A lot of stage make-up gray faces and latex flesh wounds and currant-juice fake blood.  If this is not what you signed on for, please feel free to look away now.  Personally, I found it all to be a lot of "Hey look someone in make up", but some people on the street were legitimately startled by some of the participants.


Last year I posted on Zombie March 2011 and how much fun it was, so I went back this year.


One major thing I noticed right off the bat was that we had to be a good 20 degrees hotter today.  Blergh.  We took a different route and had a fair number fewer zombies.  Not that there weren't A LOT of Zombies, but not as many as last year.  I suspect the heat kept some people home.  Some of the costumes and make-up jobs are pretty intense.


Anyway... I still had fun.  Here's a few random shots to start the posting off with.  Just some of the ones I liked best. :)

 The contacts were out in force again.  I played some with isolating parts of the make-up jobs.  This one is probably one of my favorites.

 And of course, the thing about portraits of people, versus what I usually shoot, is that I can say, "Hey over here where the light is better, okay now turn, like that, move here..."  Seriously, I'm so used to shooting wild animals that I almost forget that I can have people move to where the shot will work the best.

Zipper 'embedded' in the skin was the hot new make-up trend this year.  This was one of two really awesome examples I saw of this.  Unfortunately I couldn't get a shot of the other one.

 As usual, there were a fair number of people and characters you might have known when they were alive.  I recognized Amy Winehouse right away, but someone had to explain to me who Blake on the left was. :)

This was a total accidental shot.  She's coming up the stairs as we went down Michigan and I either caught her blinking or looking down as she came up.  But there's something about her colors and make up job that combine with that expression and... you get the most serene zombie ever!

And of course, there are always the cute-kid zombies.  I should have asked if she was celebrating how many years she'd been alive or how many she'd been undead. ;)




























Okay, more tomorrow.  If you are in any of these shots and you'd like them removed, just let me know.  Or if you'd simply like to put your name with the shot, you can let me know that too.  I can be emailed at kymberleericke [at] gmail dot com. :)

Volo Bog - May 27, 2012 - Birds Post #1

So I've been doing a crazy amount of shooting.  And working a full time 'day job'.  Which means that I have a massive backlog of pictures to edit and post.  So I'm going to try to make shorter, more frequent posts to get caught up.

Memorial Day weekend I shot more than 2000 pictures.  Of course, half of them were utter garbage, but that's still a lot of pictures to sort and organize and edit and.. whatever!

That Saturday I went to all three Lincoln Park ponds.  It was about nine hours of shooting.  It wanted to rain on me just a little in the morning, but it cleared up about 8:30 and I was good.

On Sunday I drove out to Volo Bog since I hadn't been there in ages.  We'd been warned all weekend that it would be warm - hot, really - on Sunday, so I planned accordingly.  I had a liter of Gatoraide, a liter of water, pickles, sandwiches, sunscreen, the whole nine yards.

I still don't think that prepared me for a 5 mile hike in 100 degree (F) weather.  I made both loops that I wanted to, but I didn't spend nearly the time I wanted to chasing butterflies and things like that.  It was just too hot.  In fact there were times when I'd just find a place where a tree made a little shade and plop down on the grassy path and rest and hydrate.

The kinds of flowers I was used to seeing there weren't out yet.  I guess most of them are late summer/early fall bloomers.  There was no mammal activity, which was disappointing.  There were a bunch of butterflies and dragonflies, but it was so warm that they were so energized and never sat still long enough to get a good shot of many of them.

That said, it was still a good hike and I did get quite a few good shots.

Tree Swallow(42 - 2012)

 This was one of my favorites from the whole day.  This is a Tree Swallow.  Clearly he wasn't too concerned with me getting reasonably close.  He was just singing his little heart out up there on his nesting box.

This is him form further back.  He kind of looks menacing from here, but clearly he really wasn't. :)

Eastern Kingbird (043 - 2012)

 This is one of the first sites that greeted me when I got there.  This is an Eastern Kingbird.  He's most easily recognized from the back by the white band on his tail.  Apparently, according to one of the posters in the Visitor's Center, these are very common birds in Illinois.  I'm pretty certain I've never seen one before.

 He was nice enough to turn and show me his head after a minute.

 And then he showed me the other side too!

So those were two of the most major spottings for the trip.  There were other birds that were more significant that I'll get to soon, but those shots, unfortunately didn't come out as well.

Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 43
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 25

Tree Swallow*
Eastern Kingbird*

Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve - 4.15.12 - Post 5

Alrighty then.  Last post for this new place.

Dandelion (039 - 2012)

So I talked the other day about being more conscious of shooting the common birds.  There are also a few common plants I need to think about too.

One of the more ubiquitous wildflowers out here is the dandelion.  In fact, it's so ubiquitous, it's considered a weed.  But let's face it, all a weed is is a wild plant that's growing somewhere you don't want it.  I love that these are growing inside an old tree stump.

Celandine Poppy (040 - 2012)

I'm getting better with the flowers.  This is a Celandine Poppy.  I find it interesting because I'm not used to seeing flowers with only four petals.  It's the same reasons I find the Trilliums interesting.  They have three.

Nobody new here, just another Blue Jay.  Still working at a *good* Blue Jay shot.  But the reason I'm including this guy is that as I was walking I heard this incredibly loud screech.  I was sure there had to be hawk or an owl or other large predator bird doing it.  I had seen something that looked vaguely hawkish off in the distance over the river.  But when I finally got close, I realized it was this guy.  I could not believe a body this small could make a noise that loud!

He actually moved from tree to tree quite a bit as another photographer and I tracked him, but he stayed pretty well in view despite all that moving.

Bellwort (041 - 2012)

For some reason I got it in my head that I'd already blogged these at some point, but if I did, I can't find it now.  So I'm guessing I didn't.

These are bellwort.  An interesting little yellow flower that hangs upside down.

No actual species here, I'm not even sure what the tree is, but I love the evidence of beavers here.  I'm also slightly amazed that the tree hasn't fallen yet.







So that's Fullersburg!  I want to go back out there in May when migration is more thoroughly underway.  It was a nice park with a lot to see and not an insane amount of people to compete with.


Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 41
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 23

Dandelion*
Celandine Poppy*
Bellwort

Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve - 4.15.12 - Post 4

Here we go again! :)  More Fullersburg Woods spottings.

One of the real stories of the day was the sheer flocks of Red Admiral butterflies.  I mean, I could stand on the path and look at some of the nearby flowers and there would be six or seven of these guys floating around.  I'd walk 20 feet down the path, look at some flowers and see six or seven more.  And the whole place was like that.

Red Admiral Butterfly (035 - 2012)

Red Admirals aren't uncommon in the area, but we tend to get a lot more Monarchs and Painted Ladies and smaller butterflies in the Whites and Sulphur families.  So the large number of these guys was notable.  And they aren't just hanging out in forest preserves - which is the only places I've seen them before - they're around the block I live on!  I've seen them in really busy Chicago neighborhoods.  The news is even covering the abundance of these guys, there's so many.

Now one of the nicer things about being in 'the middle of nowhere' in the middle of Northern Illinois, is that I can still get cell phone reception out there.  So I googled Red Admiral caterpillars, to know what I was looking for, but even then I didn't see any. :(  I'll keep looking though.

There were also herds of little white butterflies that didn't, from what I could see, have the black spot that marks a Cabbage White.  But not one of them would land for more than half a second.  Not one.  So maybe if I go back out there next month I'll have better luck with those.

This is another flower that was tricky to research.  Turns out it's a Wild Geranium.  It's about an inch across, so it's a pretty small flower. 

Wild Geranium (036 - 2012)

I love the clarity of this shot.  The clear dark veins in the petals, the anthers that are bright yellow with pollen.

Great Black Wasp (037 - 2012)

The bees and wasps are slowly making their way out.  This Great Black Wasp was hanging out near the Red Admiral Butterflies

I need to start working on using a fill flash when I'm outside just to let the camera move a little faster.  This could have bee a really cool shot if the ISO were lower and the shutter was a bit faster.  You can see the hairs on the wasp's feet, but where his wings were moving a bit and his antennae were clearly moving, there's too much blur.

 And this is where I wish I had my tripod.  This Great Blue Heron was just hanging out on this downed tree on the other side of the river for a very, very long time.

I would have loved to have been able to use a narrower aperture to get this guy, because clearly there's too much light here and there's still blur, which means the shutter was open too long to be done well hand-held.

The heron was itching and moving and ducking around to stretch as I was watching.  Here you can see the length of his neck, even if it is all folded up under his head.

Great Blue Heron (038 - 2012)

Here you can see him scratching an itch on his head.  It made his white crown pop up.

On a photography note, you can really tell the difference between the shooting modes I was using.  In the first two I was on 'action' mode and let the camera make the decisions for me.  It chose f5.6 at 1/200th of a second.  It also clearly changed the setting of the white balance and it upped the ISO to 200.

On this one, you can see that it looks much greener.  This was done on Av (aperture priority mode, meaning I set the ISO, the white balance and the f-stop, the camera chose the shutter speed).  I had it on ISO 100, the white balance was set for a cloudy day and the f-stop was 5.6 here also.  The shutter speed was a much slower 1/50th.  You can clearly see what the difference is between the two white-balance settings.  The first one has a lot more blue and this one is a lot more yellow.  Honestly, I think the true light values were somewhere in between.

Okay, one more post on this walk then I need to double back around and do the North Pond walk that I actually did between the last Magic Hedge trip and this trip.

Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 38
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 20

Red Admiral Butterfly
Wild Geranium*
Great Black Wasp
Great Blue Heron