18 March

This morning going into work...   she was thinking about crossing the road.  We sat a looked at one another for a moment or two.  Yup - she was thinking about it . . .   her little friend in the background though was like "...  uhhhh....  I don't know - we should turn back.... "

They turned back.  :)  This was near Morrisville, N.Y.

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I saw this on my way home.  I like blue.  I really.like.blue.  And the sun.  I've always been a self proclaimed sun god worshipper.  Hot good, cold bad.  It's just that simple.  :)  This one was up on the ridge just above and slightly north of Munnsville, N.Y. dropping down onto route 46.

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Fuji X-T1

Yeah ...  I got one.  :)  I was, and am, so intrigued with all of the old school style analog, manual controls on this thing - plus it has leapt to the top of the heap in the photo crowd for it's class of camera (mirrorless) as a top contender - I had to get my paws on one.

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It's different than my Nikon's.  Quite a bit different.  Singularly the thing that I find myself having the toughest time adjusting to is, actually, the size of the thing.  It's so damned small... !!  I'm so used to my big ole Nikon's which just "fall" into my hands and fit them like a glove.  I can get to every control, every button, every dial, etc on either of the Nikon's without even having to look at them - I just know where they are and what each one does.  This one ... no so much just yet.  ( I keep over reaching and missing actually....  ) I'm trying to be being patient and learning how to remap / reassign buttons and controls to get more comfortable with it.

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The little thing produces some seriously cool images though - even jpg's straight out of camera.  Like these. These are literally SOOC to use the photo geek acronym.  Straight Out Of Camera.  They were shot as jpg's (as opposed to raw) and then just pulled off of the memory card into lightroom (no post processing done on the import).  I looked 'em over and didn't even crop 'em - just exported 'em slapping my little watermark on them.

Bam.  It's a neat little camera - much to learn.  Can't wait for the warmer spring weather to arrive....

Broome Tioga Round #7 2013-14 Winter Series

There was kind of a light turnout for the races today that, actually, wasn't unexpected.  GNCC's series kicks off this weekend in Florida and NEOC's series is also underway in Jersey.  Facebook chatter from the past week had indications that a number of locals were headed to one or the other and that's pretty much how it played out.  There was still some good racing to be had by those who did show up to play though!  :)

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For me, today became sort of an experimental day.  First time using my new 24-85mm lens that I picked up in place of the 24-70 that I had killed.  I picked it up as a factory refurb - $400.  ( that's chump change for camera stuff ).  I loved that 24-70 - that thing was absolutely killer and a beautifully crafted piece of equipment but ....  I had to kick the can around some and really evaluate it - what do I use it for (mostly)? Shooting around f4 - f7'ish at the races grabbing wide angle shots . . .  I really didn't use it wide open at 2.8 a whole lot for that really nice blown out of focus background.  I do that quite a bit with my other lens - the 70-200 2.8 - not so much with the wide angle though.  $1800 vs $400.  $400 wins for what I'm using it for.  {shrug shoulders}

So the new lens got mud splattered and dirty -- it's "broken in" now and I think I managed to get a couple of keepers with it.  ( none going into this post - haven't really looked at those ones yet )

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I also toyed around with an idea that I have seen before from an online class that I took where you throttle the white balance in camera down to give everything a "blue'ish" tone (make it cool), and then offset the cool blue tones by using orange (warming) gels on the flashes against your targets as they come into shooting range.  Initially I took the white balance down a bit to far - around 3200k or so - and indeed everything wound up being VERY blue!  I wound up running around 4800k or so which didn't seem to bad.  The shots in this post were done using this setup.

I was also trying to play with  / work on my composition - ie; get shots with more than just a singular rider in them.  Those can be, and are nice but, it becomes a photo of a racer (as in singular) on a bike or quad.  Is there a race happening or is it just some person on a machine?  I want to learn how to better have my photo's tell a story... does that make sense?

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Anyway -- I have a number of images to go through so that I can get the keepers post up to the galleries.

More later....

-=- jd -=-

Days are getting longer . . .

. . . now if only the temperature would start to move thermometers in an upward direction.

5:30 pm - this is on the Maine side of Newark Valley-Maine Rd.  ( aka Rock Rd )
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March 3 '14 - route 215 near Virgil, NY

It was colder than all hell but I liked the light at the end of the day.  An old'ish looking barn along the road not far from the intersection of routes 215 and 392 - sort of near Greek Peak in Virgil, N.Y.

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*Or* --> click here to view it really large.  :)