Rochelle, Illinois

Wandering through my photo archives yesterday in search of a photo and came across this forgotten gem taken last August. An electric generating facility and water tower in Rochelle, Illinois at twilight. The last light of the day cast rose colored hues as the sky darkened into a deep blue. The moon doesn't hurt things, either.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Firmaments

This is a worm's eye view of the moonrise -- if you're a worm in a boat on the shore of Lake Michigan, anyway. A nice combination of elements -- the earth, water, sky and the realms beyond.

The technique is pretty simple. Stand on a slippery rock and hold an expensive piece of electronic and optical equipment an inch off the surface of the water. Point it in the general direction of your subject. Click, chimp the image on the LCD and try again until satisfied with the image.

While I'm usually a fan of level horizon lines, this seemed tilted enough to look like it was done on purpose for effect. Yeah, that's it. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was nearly standing on my head and barely able to stay on the rock I was on with all that blood rushing to my head, let alone hold the camera level.

That's the ticket.

Location: Cana Island, Door County, Wisconsin. Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

The moon moved me so I moved it

Some double exposures of the moon and the goings on around the Sturgeon Bay lighthouse. As I packed up to leave, a couple of gentlemen arrived to do some fishing. I was nearly back to my car when I looked out to see them at work (good work if you can get it) on the pier. I zoomed in on them and got a shot or two, then added the moon in post.



While the telephoto zoom compresses and flattens perspective, I like how the waters on the shore side of the pier are calm while the open water beyond tosses and churns. I also like how one guy chose to anchor his net on the pier. It was pretty windy that night.

Photoshop tip: If you have a good shot of the moon in the semi-dark sky, you can select it with the elliptical selection tool, copy then paste it into another photo. This automatically places the moon on its own layer. It will have the dark ring around it from your selection, but not to worry. Select "Lighten" from the layer options menu. Voila. The moon is now seamlessly blended into the picture. You can then adjust the opacity (which will control the brightness of the moon) to your taste. Flatten the image and save.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

... and the moon came up

The not-quite-full moon rises above the north pier lighthouse in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. This shot was one of those mad scramble type deals that happen to me occasionally. The lighthouse sits at the end of one of two piers that flank the Sturgeon Bay ship canal, which technically turns most of the Door County Wisconsin peninsula into an island. While the two piers are just a hundred yards or so apart, to get from one pier to the other requires mad swimming skills, a boat, or a ten minute drive to the nearest bridge and ten minutes back to the lakeshore.

I started out on the pier that the lighthouse sits on and waited for the moon to rise, hoping that the position would allow for a good juxtaposition of moon and lighthouse. Not being sure of exactly where the moon would appear made it a 50-50 choice. (Note to self: as the sun nears the horizon, shadows will point roughly to the point from which the moon will rise -- not exactly, depending on time of year or your location on the planet, but it gets you in the ballpark.)

As it turned out, I decided that being on the same pier as the lighthouse was a) not a good position from which to get the shot I was after and b) too close to the lighthouse to easily get both it and the moon in focus. Sooooo ... Hop in car. Begin the drive to the opposite pier. Make a wrong turn. Waste time backtracking to locate correct road to other pier. Park car. Grab equipment and begin rapid hike to the pier. Forget some equipment. Decide not to go back for it. Run like crazy up the beach to the pier, stopping to shoot along the way. Finally get to opposite pier. See that the moon is now much higher in the sky than I had originally wanted. Set up for the best shot under the circumstances. Take it. Rest. Relax. Enjoy the evening.

What's that about good judgement being the result of experience and experience being the result of bad judgement?

Similar-but-different tale from a guy who spent three decades as a shooter for Life, Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Nightfall

When I was little, I thought of Good Friday as the day the light went out and the world sat in darkness. Easter was the day the sun came out again.

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. - Luke 23:44-46

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:6-8

Shades of night

More artistic than photographic. Or is it using photography to create art? I photographed the birds in the trees fully intending to place the moon behind them from another photograph I had taken earlier.

I've written about axis mundi before and I've noticed that many of my photographs fall into that category of imagery. Maybe that's why I like doing this.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Embrace

Happy Moon Day. The full moon - the Snow Moon - makes its appearance today. I went for a photowalk with Roger last evening to try to catch the full moon rising. Hazy clouds hid the lunar disk for a while, but it did manage to peek through once or twice, though never really at full strength.

A quick set up when it did show itself enabled me to make one picture of the moon with a lone tree making a friendly gesture toward it. Other than a couple of levels adjustments in post processing, this is how the shot came out of the camera.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Going for it

I'm making the jump from a serious hobbyist photographer who occasionally sells a photo or lands a picture taking gig to hanging out my shingle that I am open for business. My shingle has been hung out in the online marketplace - you can check out my new Web site, which displays photographic samples in various categories.

The nifty Flash interface was built by a friend (who was downsized out of his job at the same time I was - if you need Web design work done, he's your man.)

The web site also features a new blog that covers various aspects of the world of professional photography.

So ... I'm available for assignments in portrait photography, event photography, product photography and stock photography in and around the Chicago suburbs. I'll be featuring those assignments on the new blog and occasionally here. But this place is still home to my personal photography efforts.

We'll see what the new year holds. Onward and forward.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Moon over half dome

So I figure this post's title alone will get me a bunch of Google hits from people looking for the Ansel Adams photograph of the same name. It's all part of my plot to take over the world. Mwahahahah! A bunch of outbound links should help my cause, too.

Actually, this is a shot of the moonrise over the silo of a barn near Batavia, Illinois. Not anywhere near as technically brilliant as Adams' work nor as stunning a backdrop. That's the Midwest for you.

Bad photo tip of the day: I subscribe to a number of Google Alerts to help me keep up with the world of photography. As such, I get links to a number of Web sites that offer photo tips, many of which either don't know what they're talking about, or don't know how to say what they're thinking. So here's today's bad tip from Web Photo Storage, which offers nine more obvious or ambiguous suggestions:

Employ lighting suitably and merge them appropriately.

I'm heading right out to work on that one. Oh, and according to tip number three, if you don't have the sky, a treeline and a fence in your picture, forgedaboudit.

Click on this post's title for image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Moon over the meadow

Night settles. The moon rises. The world is at rest.

Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Mirror image

When water stands still, it has the ability to capture the sky.

Taken near Huntley, Illinois last week during the rise of the full moon. I had gone out that evening intending to capture the sunset, which promised to be spectacular following a day of stormy skies and billowing clouds. The sunset did not deliver as expected as the skies quieted ahead of the disappearance of the sun. One final glance around as I decided to leave revealed that I had missed the memo about the time of the moonrise that evening. I quickly reset and got into position to make a couple of moon shots.

So instead of colorful turbulence, I got deep tranquility. Not a bad trade-off.

The other moonrise pic will be posted tomorrow.

Side note: This is post number 1,000 at Points of Light. Thanks for coming along with me on this ride.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Goodnight moon

At the close of a day filled with thunder, lightning, wind and rain, the clouds, having spent their anger, withdrew, leaving the crescent moon to preside over the quieting twilight.

EXIF: ¼ second @ f13.6. 64ISO. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

The moon above

Is the moon tired? She looks so pale

Within her misty veil:

She scales the sky from east to west,

And takes no rest.

Before the coming of the night

The moon shows papery white;

Before the dawning of the day

She fades away.

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph© 2008 James Jordan.

Moon shadow

A little PhotoShop work combined two photos into the composite, above. Moon shadow just seemed like an appropriate title. Of course, I’ve had that song stuck in my head since I posted this.

I stumbled onto a forum that discussed the meaning behind Cat Steven’s song Moonshadow. Some ideas were hilarious. They include:

1. The effects of post-traumatic stress (losings eyes, hands and legs can do that to you I guess).

2. Moonshadow was the name of a military helicopter in Vietnam (if you were the enemy, you wouldn’t want to be followed by Moonshadow)

3. A cancerous x-ray and the devastating effects of the disease.

4. Being tailed by members of the Unification church (shadowed by Moonies) looking for handouts and converts.

I think it was just a simple, silly song that Cat made up to keep us guessing.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Things change

Ever see or hear something that shoots you back ten, twenty or even thirty years into the past? That happened to me this weekend, when I saw my wife playing with a toddler. Our kids are grown and in various stages of making a life for themselves. But seeing her make that little boy laugh out loud shot me back to the days when she did that for our oldest son. "Man, things sure change," I told myself.

Steve Wick captured that feeling for me in a musical composition entitled Things Change. I rounded up some photographs of the ever-changing face of the moon and combined them into a video slideshow.

The video is hosted on Flickr, which launched video uploading capabilities last week. My early tests have led me to conclude that the quality level of their video blows a couple of well-known video-hosting sites completely out of the water.

Give it a couple of seconds to buffer up, then let it rip. Enjoy.

Digital camera update

I’m approaching the third anniversary of this photography blog, which I think provides a good record of my development as a photographer. Up until Christmas of last year, nearly every photo on this blog was taken with completely manual film SLRs. No automatic nothin’. Doing so has taught me to be able to very accurately see and evaluate the lighting in a scene prior to setting up for the photo. No letting the camera do my thinking for me.

Since Christmas, nearly every photo on this blog was taken with a digital camera. Going digital has added a new dimension to my picture taking. As an avid filmmaking buff in my teen years, I was fascinated by the concept of shooting “day for night” – where movie makers would film nighttime scenes in broad daylight, and use filters and underexposure to create the impression of night. I tried doing that a few times with my film cameras without much success – since there is a time factor between the press of the shutter and the development of the film, it took time to evaluate how I did, and if I needed to redo a picture, the opportunity had long passed. Digital gives me on the spot feedback and an opportunity to adjust quickly and try again immediately.

All that to say that this photo was shot “day for night.” The crescent moon had risen over the rooftops in my neighborhood and it was about 20 minutes before sunrise – not very dark out at all. In fact, the moon had all but disappeared because of the increasing brightness of the morning sky. I set the digital camera manually for a three-stop underexposure and got the result you see above. The rooftops of the house turned stark black and the sky turned a deep indigo. Actually, the result I got was posted a couple of days ago.

After I had posted that photo, I thought how neat it would be to be able to see a light on in the house as a counterpoint to the moon. I knew that the sky conditions would not be the same the next day, so I took a photo of a window on my house at night from the same angle and added it to the rooftop and moon picture in Photoshop. Oh, well, you can’t do everything in-camera.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Spring moon

This was taken a few days ago just after sunrise. The long night of winter is coming to a close and the earth is stirring to the call of Spring.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.

Suburban landscape

A slender crescent moon rose over the rooftops of my suburban subdivision this morning.

Some must-see landscape photography. Not the suburban kind. Actual, outdoors nothing-manmade-around photography. Discovered it this morning via a Google alert. Beautiful stuff.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Moon beam

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:3-4

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Reach

My earliest recollection of the U.S. space program was in 1965 when Ed White became the first man to walk in space. I was 6 years old at the time. From that time forward I was a space fan, reading everything I could about the nation's push to land a man on the moon. I remember sitting in my living room on July 20, 1968 watching fuzzy pictures broadcast from the moon's surface on the family TV as Neil Armstrong took the first tentative steps on our nearest space neighbor a quarter million miles away.

It's good to have a goal. It's also good to have a plan for once you reach that goal. After we landed a few people on the moon (with time out to rescue 3 astronauts on a crippled spacecraft), the space program went adrift. A large spacecraft called Skylab was launched, a few experiments were conducted on a few missions, then the whole thing came crashing to earth over the Australian outback. I'm still not convinced we have hit our stride yet with the space shuttle program. After all, the basic design of the shuttle itself has not changed in the last 20 years or so. Are they trying to tell us that 1985 technology is going to win the day in space? Okayyyyy.

Many the one-hit wonder have found themselves finally on the brink of achieving their dreams when the gut wrenching realization hit - we're expected to do this again, and quick! Some poeple have what it takes to endure, some don't.

So what got me going on this riff? On a much smaller scale, I've achieved a level of photography that I once dreamed about ten years ago. I think I'm at the point where I produce consistently good images with the occasional stunner. The question now is, what's next? Coast for a long time or push to the next thing?

I'm going for push.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.