Blues Turn to Golds

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I wanted to paint the scene for you, when this photo was taken because parts of it are a little humorous.   The plan for the outing was there were a couple of motion sequences I needed for a video project.    Basically, I was looking for golden hour light with some low and fast passes along the surf and a pull up and away to reveal the Bayway in the distance, the Mobile Skyline if possible.

I parked at Bayfront and made the walk through the Village Point Park Preserve with the Inspire suitcase in tow.   This thing really needs rollers.

I noticed some cars at the event haul near the main park but didn't think much of these until I got to the Village Point pier.    A small wedding party was hanging around near the pier, getting their photos taken by a photographer person.   

One thing that I know for sure about most women, is that flying robots have no place in their special day.  Armed with this life truth, I walked a comfortable distance away from them, in fact I kept going until I could no longer see the white of the Bride's gown.  

I made one of the eagle-scout-project benches my home.

Listening to tunes on my iPhone, in a few minutes I was able to get the Inspire deployed within a few minutes and began filming.    It was hot, it was sticky, there are creatures biting.  Typical southern Alabama coastal moments.

I was able to get a battery of filming done between crowds and passer bys.   Eventually, though - the session was cut somewhat short by some curious wildlife.

Normally, I wouldn't take photos of the kids that stop and ask questions about Drones.   But these two kids were cracking me up for a number of reasons. 

The boy had no reservations whatsoever to get entirely too close to the quad, even when flying.   Chasing it, trying to grab it out of the air - all seemed like a great idea in his little mind.

I didn't see their parents around, so I cut my session short. 

The moral of this story is, beware of wildlife during your drone adventures.  If a wild one gets clipped by a spinning propeller, it would certainly be my fault, parents or none.   If you are flying a drone and feel the situation is no longer safe - stop.  

There are always more sunsets out there to enjoy. :)

Lagoon and the Gulf

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The area around Johnson beach, looking back towards Fort Mcree.    I think as beaches go, this area of the Gulf Islands National Seashore is about perfect.   I unfortunately don't get down there as much as I'd like and never get down there in good light.    

I would imagine around 2 AM the Milky Way starts to become visible this time of year - something I hope to go down and try to photograph at some point...

On the south side, you have the Gulf.  It isn't cluttered with Jetski rentals, chairs, condos and swimmer buoys.  You have sand, surf and whatever you carry with you.

On the North side is the Lagoon.   It bends around enough to give you a sense of privacy.   Hermit crabs, shells and sand dollars scatter amongst the gentler surf.

Comical Origins of Serious Passions

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Have you ever stopped to consider the origin of some of your interests and passions? 
I was pondering on this the other day while playing Indiana Jones Pinball with some friends.

Personally, I'm heavily drawn to the general idea of exploration.  Exploration of foreign lands, exploration of space, exploration of knowledge.   Ironically, much of this as at odds with my chosen career of a person who gets paid literally to sit at a desk all day long.

As the knight in the Last Crusade might say, "He chose, poorly."

But where did I get those notions?   The plane pictured here is one of two on Disney's cruise-ship island in The Bahamas.   The story goes that at least one of them was a derelict, left behind when this island (with a runway!) was used for drug smuggling.

What this plane really reminds me of is LaunchPad McQuack's plane from Duck Tales!   I would come home from school and plop down in front of the TV to catch Scrooge McDuck's adventures with his nephews nearly every day.   It had adventure, it had travel, the mystique of treasure hunting and clear plots around the virtues of working smartly.

With these visuals and those of Indiana Jones, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and similar movies it really is no wonder why I'm fixated on the idea of exploration and anxious to go out and see the world.   Even when chained to a desk! :)

So my question is this.  Does popular media form our children's later inclinations or does it inform them?  Are my kids destined to be obsessed with mining and building things? :)

Duck Tales is scheduled to be rebooted in 2017.  I wonder if Scrooge McDuck's money bin has been affected by inflation or diminished in any way by bad derivative investments in the sub-prime lending crisis.   I guess we will have to wait and see!

Just out of Reach

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All too often, lately when I'm out for a leisure photo walk, the leisure is somewhat removed because of the presence of a camera drone.   The leisure photo walk usually turns into a Drone Q&A with spectators and the whole bit.   I don't mind this but I do miss opportunities for shots when there is a crowd of onlookers with questioners.

It was considerably more relaxing recently to just throw on some sneakers and earbuds for a walk / run.  No suitcase-full-of-drones, just a mirrorless camera and an okay sunset.  

Need to do that more often for both mental and physical health! 

Working Late @ Austal

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Chasing down a sunset, these crazy summer clouds make for interesting drama in the skies.     I am thankful that the armed gentlemen around the port @ Austal didn't decide I was a foreign spy and start shooting at the stationary blinky light in the sky.

I've heard tales of a few jet-skiers getting a good scare from men on megaphones as they approached too closely.   The Inspire-1's no fly zone indicator didn't complain, so I'm going to assume this was kosher. :)

Looks like quite a few folks were working late on this particular dreary Wednesday evening.

Where the Trolls Live

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If trolls live under bridges, what lives under piers?   I know there's a joke in here somewhere.  

Speaking of Trolls..   Over the weekend I posted this photo of the City of Mobile taken from across the port.   The sky was boring, so I used another photo from my personal stock of sky photos to make the sky a bit more interesting. 

The same night, I stayed up really quite late doing some much-needed site update work.  The next morning, I got up pretty late to find this gem in my inbox:

Dear "Photographer",
Your image called Port City Nights showed up on my feed this evening.    I have family in the area and clicked the thumbnail to see more.  

The Gulf Coast must be a forgiving place to live and call yourself a photographer.   This photo and many others I see on your pages have blatant and tasteless processing.  Don't quit your day job.

<Name Omitted>

PS, Drones r the biggest nusance and waist of time of the decade. You thank your being creative but your really just being a jerk.   Just stop.

I don't get messages like this often but when I do, they do entertain me.  This one, might be the all-time winner given the awesome grammar - which was honestly hard to even copy and paste  - chrome wanted to correct it!   

At any rate, I hope Mr. Pleasant stops by the site again to read this and other posts.  I do read the emails but I don't get too worked up about this stuff.  The internet isn't going to Troll itself. :)

Seriously, normally I wouldn't even share these but I'm feeling playful, trolling the trolls.  A veritable TrollPocalypse!  :)  

Wishing everyone, trolls included, a great week ahead..

Port City Nights

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It can be very surprising how quiet Mobile, Alabama can be at night.   Looking at my iPad screen on this scene from above there was surprisingly little movement in the City from this perspective.

On a Saturday night I drove into town, looking for a place near the port to take photos or to launch a drone.   I ran into this extremely poorly lit abandoned industrial park area.    It was totally the sort of location you would see in a movie, where some epic super hero battle might take place destroying derelict buildings and overturning industrial trucks.

There wasn't a marked trespassing sign, per-se but I limited the session to 15 minutes to be on the safe side.

Aside from mosquitos and / or mutant sand fleas and more wind than is helpful for aerial long-exposure photography the quick session was pretty uneventful.   I guess the superheroes have the night off.

The USS Alabama in Film

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When I first moved to the Gulf Coast, we were in a sort of .. homeless.. situation.   Not quite 'under-the-overpass' homeless but 'living-in-a-hotel' homeless.   

The USS Alabama is sort of like the first friend I made as a teen relocating to Alabama.  We lived at the now-gone Ramada Inn on the causeway.  2 adults, a teen and a couple doberman pinchers.    We stayed there because mom was a dog person and they allowed the dobermans.

The room would get crowded so I would spend my time making mischief around the hotel, swimming in the pool or walking down to the Battleship park, looking for vacationers my age to hang out with.

In my 30's, I regard the USS Alabama as an old-friend.   Now living a couple miles down the road, I like to see her on the horizon and I like to use her for photography.   

One thing I find profoundly cool is that this museum ship gets tapped as a locale for movies on occasion.  That's awesome!

Steven Seagal kicked lots of butt in the 1992 film Under Siege, much of which was filmed here.

As was War and Remembrance, Rapid Fire.    This summer, she'll get some action again as a film locale for the movie, USS Indianapolis.

Exciting times for Mobile this trusty icon!

On the day when I spent some time at the USS Alabama Park (I was actually waiting to see what the sunset was going to do) I shot some drone footage around her as well.  It is here:  

http://www.eyedyllic.com/aerial-tour-of-the-uss-alabama/

-The video is somewhat sped up because the pan around was pretty slow.

Dragon Boat Festival

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The 2nd Annual Dragon Boat Festival at the 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center in Spanish Fort, was a success!   The event benefited The Fuse Project and funs raised, exceeded goals by mid-day.

20 paddlers.. well.. paddle.   A drummer keeps a cadence on.. well.. a drum. :)

At the rear of the boat, someone drags an oar, serving as a rudder.

It was fun to watch, I'm guessing it was VERY fun to do!

A friend asked if I could capture some Drone video of the event, I was more than happy to do so.   The free music choices on youtube were pretty limited but I think it still fits, more or less.   As usual, tons of folks stopped by to ask questions about drone photography.  If you were one of them it was great to meet you, the info I mentioned to get you started can be found here.

Some of the frames are dropped in the video above compared to the original source material (in order to sync to the soundtrack).   If you are from the event and would like the download links to the original 4k files (10 files, around 30 gb) - just shoot me an email to bill.dodd@eyedyllic.com.

..and at around 12 minutes, 9 seconds there is another drone :)

Drive Time Rays

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One of the awesome things about the typical gulf coast summer is that cloud formations around with scattered showers make for some awesomely dramatic skies.   I found the rays on this afternoon to be pretty interesting.  The fronts did bring with them some decent wind gusts, combined with sketchy light over Mobile made this a more of a challenge than usual in terms of aerial work.

Details

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I think I've mentioned this before but it is topical to the photo.

Each time we run irrigation system in our lawn I think of it as a sort of peace offering to the armies of Tardigrades and other tiny amazing animals that dwell amongst the droplets that settle on the blades of grass and flower pedals.

Drink up, little guys, your life is short!

Some Time in the Surf

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I'm aware that I've been wearing out the concept of Panoramic lately.  I think I'm missing my Nikon 14-24mm.  Lately I've been shooting with these 24mm utility lenses, either on my Sony A7r or with this Leica bridge camera that my wife has adopted as hers..  I'm super happy with the sharpness and color but that Nikon 14-24mm was something super-special.

I have a Rokinon A-Mount 14mm f.2.8 manual focus prime that's pretty darned good but the fixed 14mm and heavy distortion make it landscape-architecture only lens.  I've been flirting with the idea of picking up the Zeiss Vario-Tessar 16-35mm f4.   Anyone out there care to share their experiences with this lens?

Reflectiness!!

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As a kid I remember being a little obsessed with reflections. Facing two mirrors at each other and looking into the infinite repetition of light sort of short-circuited my brain! :)

It always seemed like all of that light bouncing back and fourth would eventually amplify and just rip some hole in the fabric of spacetime.

Then, there was laser tag. Laser tag + mirrors equalled awesome. I'd put the little target around the house and try to find ways to mirror-bounce into it for a point.

It wasn't a particularly awesome sunset when I took this pano but the reflections and stillness made for a special awesomeness despite the drab sunset colors.

A May Moon

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A May Moon

An Uncharacteristically clear May night for the deep south.   Not used to getting this sort of clarity here in the warmer months, usually our humidity is insane by now.
I shot this w/ a Celestron 8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.  Normally, it is 2032mm @ f10, using a focal reducer drops the aperture to f/6.3 (which aides clarity and brightness) but at the cost of reducing the magnification to 1280mm.    This was shot with an iPhone 6 in eyepiece projection.

Reaching Skyward

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I was talking with a friend the other day about some upcoming local and national photography shows of various ilk.  It came up from the conversation he had entered some of his works into some events that are juried for entry and of his 3 entries, only 1 made it into the event.   He was pretty discouraged by the experience.

Now, I'm going to get on a soapbox. :)

I hate almost everything about the idea of 'peer critique.'  Here's why. 

Your peers [usually] aren't your audience. 

We, human animals do not have a natural ability to process constructive criticism.  The idea behind photography critique is to learn from an outside party ways that your photograph might have been improved.  

But, really what you are doing when seeking critique is seeking confirmation of your own opinions on the quality of something.   If your peers show your work admiration then you enjoy a small ego boost and healthy levels of encouragement.  However, if your peers admonish your work the negative encourage almost always carries more weight than the positive.  

Simply put, if you are seeking encouragement through critique you have much more to lose than to gain.

This isn't to say that a person's photography can't benefit technically from the input of a more experienced peer.  But let's explore that word: experience.

We develop through experience.  Physically our brains develop neural paths based on sensory input.  Put another way, our experiences work to define who we are and how we see.   The application of another person's experience to your art might technically improve the work in terms of conformity (to what is largely an arbitrary set of rules) but in doing so, your work becomes democratized..

To wrap up, I'm not suggesting that a person should never submit work for critique or jury.   I am suggesting however that our increasingly connected world-wide-network of award winning photography 'experts' should serve you more as a source of inspiration than as a reference for quality.

This is why, whenever someone shows me something for critique, I will only comment on those aspects of a work that I find appealing. 

Don't let other people's opinions of your work discourage you.   Just keep doing your thing and the pieces will fall into place.

..drops mic.. steps down from soapbox. :)