Windmill Smoke Pall Sunset
On the border of Wyoming/Montana, a lowly Windmill Spins with the winds…
Windmill Smoke Pall Sunset
Windmill Smoke Pall Sunset
Tag: Blur
Backcountry Windmill Cutting Cheese
Backcountry Windmill Cutting Cheese
Ol’ “Sneaky Pete” the windmill is up to his old tricks again. I find he is more than willing to try to interfere with the clock work universe. Here he is trying to slice and dice up the moon again. I’ve caught him several times attempting what must surely be a crime anywhere but Wyotana.
Windmill Weekend (Windmill Junkies Unite) 🤘
“Sneaky’s” full time job is to pump air into a small pond that has barnyard ducks on it. This de-stratifies the pond and makes it more able to deal with the extra poop load from the ducks. It also keeps a pretty good hole open in the ice during most of the winter. Well, with the help of the aforementioned water fowl helping. He has been very good at pumping air over his career. I can’t even imagine how many times it has turned around over a couple of decades.
Photographic Musings: (Long but instructive)
More angles in this thing…didn’t have a clue what to use as a level horizon lololol.
Fellow students, what to do you have to do to get this kind of shot?
OK, Full Moon up during the day (maybe 2 chances a month IF the weather cooperates). Then the moon about 2 times a year lines up just so with the topography. (Topography is my master). It has to be somewhat windy.
Where to set this up, you have to be at least 300 yards away from the close object (windmill) with a 400mm lens. That puts the windmill in the same focal depth of field as the moon at infinity. I work up to 1200 mm this way for some distance perspectives. The further back you go with a larger lens will give you a relatively bigger moon in the image.
THEN with all that conveniently arranged, you have to Set your camera to the dreaded M – mode. I know, it’s scary in there. Set your priority that you need most. Blurred windmill…… OK, 1/15th of a second exposure to allow the blur. That’s pretty much set in stone so adjust the camera shutter to 1/15th. Balancing the exposure now is easy now.
That leaves only two other things to adjust, ISO (camera sensitivity) and F-stop (aperture/iris size in your lens.) F-stop controls your depth of field which you want very deep. So a high enough F-stop number to focus both is required. I used f-22 for this. Lower f stop settings will thin your depth of field. You would have to move back too far to fill the frame.
One setting left. Turn your camera sensitivity to what is required to give you the proper image in “live view” or in your mirrorless camera. In a mirrorless camera, what you see in the eyepiece is what you get. You get to watch your settings change live real time in the eyepiece. What ever it takes. Rule number one of photography is to get the picture. Damn the high ISO if it is needed. Fortunately this is still some daylight in the frame. 📷
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Backcountry Windmill Cutting Cheese
Windmill Hot Feet
Windmill Hot Feet
There are lots of characters (years long narratives) around this ranch. Here is a continuing theme… 😀
I’ve seen “Sneaky Pete” the photobombing windmill with cold feet before but I suspect it feels like hot coals. Actually I’ve observed this behavior by him before with Sneaky jumping over the solar disc with the intent to trap him. (I have no control over his action). Sneaky learns pretty slowly. After all he is a windmill.
The sun of course has been around a LOOOOONG time and is a observer of all things. Sometimes the activities of humans and their machinations amuse it. Other times like this, not so much. Of course being wise in all things, he just slipped out the bottom as the horizon rose behind Sneaky. (Back to my normal prograamming).
Photographic Musings:
Blurred Windmill with a Bright sun…….. F36, 1/15th sec, ISO 100 with a 200mm focal length. Two opposing settings. High fstop for the light reduction PLUS the deeper focal field for the close/far perspective. LOOOONG shutter at 1/15th. You have to at least rest a 200-400mm lens on something to hold it still at 1/15 and that is hard. The long shutter allows the blur. A tripod is better. Your ISO is your final setting (camera sensitivity). Just adjust it until you can get the exposure you want. This is a razor edge/ paper cut edge of the envelope kind of capture. I had nothing left in the camera I could do to eliminate more light and still blur the windmill.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming / Montana borderlands.
Title: Windmill Hot Feet
Heron Fencing Practice
Heron Fencing Practice
It took me about 10 minutes to drive up this close once I crested the nearby hill exposing my self. . When I approach this area, I slowly encroach in steps. It’s comparable to imitating a grazing animal. The Raptor is pretty quiet. Particularly when compared to my previous clinking rattleing Jeep Grand Cherokee. This new rig is also very Black, dark and stealthy in it’s appearance. Lots of black animals walking around the hills (angus cattle). So my new rig is working very well to integrate into the scheme of things up here.
The various creatures on ranch will become accustomed to that new Ford F-150 Raptor with time. I also worked a herd of deer this same evening getting very close for this early in the season.
The return of the Great Blue Herons signifies the start of nesting season. I have only seen 8 Herons actively nesting so far. There may be some others to straggle in as they work their way back from winter haunts south. There are 7 nests in the trees across the lake from where this guy stands here. (one newly built this year) The male here did just fly up to the nest greeting it’s mate with a 3 Musketeers sword/beak swish caught here. They didn’t care about my approach and were fine in my rear view mirror when I backed up and away to change the scene. (got enough photos lolol).
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Heron Fencing Practice
Wednesday Windmill Twilight Play
Wednesday Windmill Twilight Play
WOW, I see a lot of lit up skies. This was a good one…A real color scheme as I experienced the scene. My photographic technique is to properly expose the highlights and worry about the shadow details later. I wasn’t so concerned with the landscape on this capture. The skies gradient from yellow to red is amazing to experience live thusly stealing my total attention.
I never know for sure how a twilight show is going to turn out. Overcast skies tend to be the best shows but there has to be a window from the sun to the under deck of the cloud layers. No window due to clouds blocking light equals no color. The reds and oranges you see here are the result of only those long wavelengths making it through the hundreds of miles of atmosphere. Smoke or moisture in the air can increase the effect. I’ve seen these skies so red that the color cast from the sky makes the snow purple. I have several photographic timelines of even more intense skies. This one ranks right up there with the some of the best full coverage skies.
“Sneaky Pete” the Windmill and his big Brother “Re Pete” are both living here on ranch. Of course they are hard core publicity seekers often managing to zip into my frames. In full disclosure I have no control over their actions. The only place I can get away from them is in the timber where they can’t follow 😜😜😜📷. (This is a years long narrative if your new to my world) Satire and all that.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).
Title: Wednesday Windmill Twilight Play
Windmill Twilight Play
Blue Heron Launch Paddy
Blue Heron Launch Paddy
Well, sort of a Paddy lol.
The Great Blue Heron is also know as Ardea herodias by hobbiests and professionals alike. This gal was shore wading out 150 yards out, the sun was setting. You know, a classic wetland scene. Really not common up in this high dry ridge country….. Seeing a Heron out on the ranch is rare unless you go to where they hang out. They are not known for hanging out on the high dry ridges of the grasslands. Fortunately we have several small lakes on the ranch. This lake is a spring fed OLD man made lake dammed up around the turn of the century. Early cattle drives watered here even before the dam was built.
These are BIG birds weighing in at 4.5 – 5.5 pounds, stand 5 foot tall with a 5 foot wingspan….. They are AMAZING circus performers. Being total masters of their environment, they have superpowers!📸 I observed this one through a 1200mm 28 inch long lenses while I was on an adjacent shore across the lake. Watched it for about 20 minutes, finally it took off tired of watching me I suspect lol. The light was fading fast, I’m trying to get detailed shots of a still bird so the camera settings were not quite fast enough to totally freeze in ice the wing tips. Getting at lake level while a spooky bird watches but doesn’t fly way is a good thing :). The rules of Physics and technological limitations again demonstrate they are my masters. (along with topography if you follow my narratives 😜. )
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).
Title: Blue Heron Launch Paddy
Morning Windmill With a View
Morning Windmill With a View
Windmill Weekend!!! Windmill Junkies Unite: 🤘
We do get some wind up here now and again. One breezy morning with the wind over my left shoulder, the sun was rising over my right shoulder. Emitted from the sun, my back was bathed with un-impeded infra-red heat. The wind was certainly not moderated by any but that on my back.
In case any of you have never tried photography under high country wind conditions, consider the weight of your tripod. My Ford F-150 Raptor weighs around 6000 pounds and isn’t that terribly large so it is a pretty good tripod. Better pointed into the breeze lol. Working from inside your vehicle free handed if you have the light to perform such stability magic. Resting the long lens I’m using for this on the truck window. If you use a window mount, I’m thinking it’s a matter of WHEN you break your tempered window with the leverage of the system. You have to not jostle them. 🤔📷
10 miles out are the “Prairie Dog Hills” and looking across the Wyoming/Montana border are the Red Hills off in the distance. The border is where the line of trees in the center running right to left. All the grassy area this side of those trees is is corner of our place. Past that mark is as I say, another state. I own land in Montana but not that particular direction. More over my right shoulder lol. Most of my photos have both states landscape or sky in them somewhere.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.
Title: Morning Windmill With a View
Backcountry Windy Day Windmill
Backcountry Windy Day Windmill (A little summer storm off in the distance, might be some wind )..
Windmill Weekend: Windmill Junkies Unite: 🤘🤘📸 Kids, don’t let it out that you look at images like this, it might get back to your mom and dad. If your parents find out, your likely to get grounded.
Soooo, that is actually the red gravel backroad curve all landscape photographers love to have in their green spring image. The storm to the south darkening the horizon. Delineated by a spot lit stripe of full sun. Those hills are about 8 miles distant from my camera’s lens. The row of trees is 3 miles out.
Photographic Musings:
Telephotos Crush perspective and bring things otherwise separated objects into the same focus if you use the aperture correctly. This Windmill is about 200 yards out. This is far enough from the camera to be in it’s infinite focus zone as is the sky in the distance. In manual mode you have to use a high f-stop number for this. Close far focus perspectives from me are ALL f22 or higher depending on the lens. Really long telephotos might go f74 which is a pin point hole in the lens to let in light. ). You get some diffraction effects at high fstop if looking at bright point light sources like a starred sun. High F-stop use will also reduce the amount of light into the camera. You have to compensate by using a longer exposure or a higher camera sensitivity, or both.
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Backcountry Windy Day Windmill
Windmill Cheese Trimming
Windmill Cheese Trimming (just a little off the whiskers please)
MOONDAY Monday, 2nd moon photo today….
“Sneaky Pete”the Windmill here provides a perspective regardless of his intent to photo-bomb this moon capture. I have no control over his actions. He just likes the attention. He and his bigger older brother “Re Pete” live and work here on ranch. They seem to work their way into my landscapes way higher than the statistical average compared to other ranch creatures. 😜😜😀
Photographic Musings:
Manual Mode Phobia: (You know who you are) ….
Close / Far perspectives are a complex photographic challenge for all of you. An automatic setting on your camera is not going to do this image.
I’ve gone through the basics a few times and will entertain questions below for photographic solutions to your working on manual mode aversion. (Kind of like fear of swimming). You just have to jump in and turn that top dial to M. Then you figure out which control wheel controls each of the three settings you change in manual mode. ISO (Camera Sensitivity), f-stop (size of the aperture/pupil in the lens), finally Shutter Speed.
You only need to understand those three things to run on Manual mode. Their relationship to each other and how messing with one, requires you to mess with the others a tad to compensate the amount of light coming into the camera. Your riding a three way light teeter totter trying to balance those settings.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Windmill Cheese Trimming
Whirling Windmill Cutting Cheese
Whirling Windmill Cutting Cheese
Narrowly avoiding disaster, I talked the Windmill from cutting into that cheese… Save it yet again. 👀
“Sneaky Pete”the Windmill here provides a perspective regardless of his intent to photo-bomb this moon capture. I have no control over his actions. He just likes the attention. He and his bigger older brother “Re Pete” live and work here on ranch. They seem to work their way into my landscapes way higher than the statistical average compared to other ranch creatures. 😜😜😀 Windmill Wednesday, Windmill Junkies Unite : 🤘
Photographic Musings:
Manual Mode Phobia: (You know who you are) ….📸
Close / Far perspectives are a complex photographic challenge for all of you. An automatic setting on your camera is not going to do this image.
I’ve gone through the basics a few times and will entertain questions below for photographic solutions to your working on manual mode aversion. (Kind of like fear of swimming). You just have to jump in and turn that top dial to M. Then you figure out which control wheel controls each of the three settings you change in manual mode. ISO (Camera Sensitivity), f-stop (size of the aperture/pupil in the lens), finally Shutter Speed.
You only need to understand those three things to run on Manual mode. Their relationship to each other and how messing with one, requires you to mess with the others a tad to compensate the amount of light coming into the camera. Your riding a three way light teeter totter trying to balance those settings.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Whirling Windmill Cutting Cheese
White Windmill Winter Wonderland
White Windmill Winter Wonderland
Windmill Wednesday: Windmill Junkies Unite 🤘 I’m aware of your addiction so I am working diligently to support your habit. Please don’t let your mother know you look at stuff like this….. 😜
Here “Sneaky Pete” took the full force of a sticky winter snow. He was operating blind with the cover of his sail covered. All the while spinning in the wind overnight.
Mustings on Mid-Winter:
As I type this there is a 5 degree windchill after the current coldest day of the year. It has NOT been a cold year so far here in “Little Siberia”. That “Moniker” was handed down to us. Thee previous owners of the ranch had generations of observations. . They were describing the tendency of this high ridgeline dry ranch. It always has more snow than the surrounding lower ground. Based on 20 years of observation living here, I would whole heartedly agree with their name and statement. It is colder and wetter up here than the surrounding ground in the winter. In the summer it’s a crap shoot as precipitation is usually from spotty mesocyclones moving over. Somebody gets the rain, others don’t. But in the winter, snow systems are usually pretty broadly spread around the region.
Winter ends in May up here. This year it pushed into late late may. Every season has been offset later this year by the current Solar Minimum.. We are just about dead center of the sunspot cycle low. Turn down the furnace and it get’s colder. Go figure 🤔📷
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana).
Title: White Windmill Winter Wonderland
Big Sky Windmill
Big Sky Windmill
Windmill Weekday: Windmill Junkies Unite 🤘
“Sneaky Pete” the Windmill has positioned himself dead center of this BIG twilight borderlands twilight sky show. Habitual Photo-bombers like Sneaky are incorrigible. I have no control over their actions.
I never know for sure how a twilight show is going to turn out. Overcast skies tend to be the best shows but there has to be a window from the sun to the under deck of the cloud layers. No window due to clouds blocking light equals no color.
The reds and oranges you see here are the result of only those long wavelengths making it through the hundreds of miles of atmosphere. Smoke or moisture in the air can increase the effect. I’ve seen these skies so red that the color cast from the sky makes the snow purple. I have several photographic timelines of even more intense skies. This one ranks right up there with the some of the best full coverage skies. This is a pretty wide and tall image out of a 24mm lens.
Commentary on the weather:
We have way more snow than this at the moment. Winter has been very early this year. There is a lot of snow in the backcountry now and it’s not Christmas yet. IT has been a very moist year with every season being a month off. Spring was late and fall was REALLY EARLY on a Tuesday. Oct 1 Winter began this year. In the past I’ve driven down empty roads through Yellowstone in October before. I’ve never seen as cool/moist as year as this in my 30 years of living in Wyoming. It’s going to be a very long winter I’m afraid.. Starting winter early is bad.😫
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands
Title: Big Sky Windmill
Perspective: BigHorns Blurred Windmill
Perspective: BigHorns Blurred Windmill
Here “Sneaky Pete” the Windmill is doing what he does best, get into my landscapes. I have no control over his actions…..😎 (years old narrative).🤣
The window to the Big Horn Mountains from my ranch has 130 miles of atmosphere between my high ridge location and those 13,000 foot high peaks… I see them maybe once a week. It was windy but this is still a 1/15th second time exposure in order to blur the windmill sail.
This was a missed post so I manually posted this this AM. I’m not sure how I screwed it up but here I am working live and not a week out lolol.
Have a great Friday and be safe in all you do.
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)
Title: Perspective: BigHorns Blurred Windmill
Bee Wing Blur
Bee’s wings Blur because they beat at 230 per second through a 90 degree arc. If you set your camera around 1/200th of a second and catch a shaft of light just right….. You’ll get a nice wing blur. You have to pick a flower at right angles to shafts of light from the sun. Then as the bee rises off the flower and into the light, it will light his blurred wings. if your timing is right. (at 12 frames a second I had one come out). Kind of a tough shot to get again I’m thinking lolol.
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.
Red Late Day Rainbow Backing a Windmill
When there is only Red Light Late in the sunset, this resultant Red Rainbow backs up “Sneaky Pete” the windmill. I have no control over his actions. He and his brother “Re Pete” the windmill photobomb my landscapes all the time. I have no control over their actions…😂
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.
Windmill Filter in Front of a Crescent Moon
THe Crescent moon was very bright versus the Nautical Twilight illuminated Windmill. (VERY DARK). I needed a handy filter, fortunately, “Sneaky Pete” the windmill jumped in and did the deed to moderate that light. That let me pick up the subtle hues in this capture of over 40 minutes before sunrise the other morning. This image will print a yard tall with resolution to spare. :).
Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands…