169/365: Coyote Whisper.

There's a thing about Coyote that you should know. It's not just pranks with him. That's small stuff. He can get in your head, convince you to do things, for his gain, or just entertainment. And you know that's what he's doing, you know you should be smarter by now, but there's something about that Coyote Whisper. It was Coyote's idea, this blog. He got me jacked, convinced me I was good enough to do it, that people would dig it and I would become a overnight success and the world would know my name. Vanity, his favorite sin.

Thing is, he never mentioned how hard it would be to come up with a new picture to post everyday. He never mentioned the obsession. The time spent thinking about it, not wanting to think about it, the time spent in front of the computer, a life in front of screens, though I like spending a lot of in front of paper too, photography books and prints. He tricked me into more than I bargained for, and I'm pretty sure it was just so he could get his mug on the internet. Or to watch me suffer. Considering recent research on the subject, he may in fact be some sort of a pusherman. Gimme more Dopamine.

But Coyote is smarter than you think. Sometimes he does something to teach you a lesson, or give you a gift, albeit often in disguise. This project, though disjointed, is teaching me a lot, and giving me a chance to really explore different visual styles, which is important to me as an artist. As time-consuming and challenging as this thing can be, I think it's important try to challenge yourself no matter what level you think you're at.

Is that what Coyote wanted me to learn? He'll probably be leaving me an Upper Decker tomorrow, so, you know, your guess is as good as mine.

-llg

163/365: Plowin' Weather.

Pardon the interruption. Sometimes doing this 365 Project is a bit of a P.I.T.A., and I don't mean with falafel and hummus. It's tremendously helpful in terms of the commitment to craft and keeping the vision muscle exercised, but life can get in the way and before I know it, I'm way behind. Like, six days behind...more pics after the jump.

So please forgive the brief interlude to the Story of Coyote, and allow me to share a small set of photos that I took yesterday. The weather was descending on Mebane, NC, with a dramatic flare normally reserved for method actors. I wanted to see how much drama I could milk out of single exposures, so while these pictures may look like they've received an HDR treatment, that's not really the case, at least, not in the sense of combining three separate exposures and tonemapping to generate contrast. Rather, these are all single frames that I then processed and reprocessed and burned and dodged and sharpened and all the fun stuff that people used to do in the darkroom before Photoshop. I hope you like.

164/365: Lowes on the Last Day.

165/365: All those Tanks.

166/365: Summer Comes.

167/365: Summer Keeps Coming.

168/365: Exit Weather.

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162/365: Flaming Bag of...

I don't know. Don't ask me. I mean, you've heard of the prank I'm sure. Someone comes out to stomp the bag after you ring the doorbell and haul ass...not only do they have to suppress a fire with their feet, but there's a surprise in the bag too...

All I know is that Joe's foot smelled like shit-fire afterward. Yes, it's poop. In the bag.

I told you Coyote could be brutal.

-llg

161/365: Sign Stealer.

When I was a teenager, my friends and I got on a little bit of a street sign stealing kick. It started one night when we were all gathered at the house of one of our crew, and staying up all night, carrying on like kids who are not quite old enough to drive are wont to do. Hit the jump for more...

This friend, who shall remain anonymous until he chimes in with a comment, lived out in the country, and we slept in his most awesome barn, which meant we were free of the house and the parents, so of course we roamed...and at one point we decided it would be a good idea to pull up street signs and collect them. This  took place sporadically in random spots till the one night we uprooted pretty much every street sign within a square mile, plus the stop sign next to his house. Turns out the stop sign is bigger game for the Law.

T'was all in good fun, till the evening I arrived at my home to find my parents seated in the living room with the police officer. Our concentrated crime spree and our boastful tongues had combined to bring the heat down on us. Now, mind you, I was GOOD kid. Never got into trouble, and until these shenanigans, never did anything that would have gotten me IN trouble. Boy, the look on my parents' faces when the officer read me my rights scared me straighter than a Buddhist monk. Some community service and a slap on the wrist, and we were none the worse, but I told Coyote, you don't wanna mess with the street signs. Even if you decide you want 'Beaver Valley' and 'Possum Walk' adorning your cozy cave walls, I've only known one person who pull out a sign all by himself, and you aren't that guy.

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160/365: Carving Knife.

Coyote has a creative streak, apparently. That looks dangerous...hang on, that's not even my chainsaw. I don't OWN a chainsaw...that's my neighbor's I think. Jesus, Coyote, just put it back when you're done with it, whatever you're doing with it...Oh. My shed.

Setup for the first shot:

-llg

159/365: Wild Coyote.

Did I tell you? Saw Coyote in Yosemite too. Wasn't in his more mischievous anthropomorphic state...but he  was still getting the drop on people, walking right up the road and nearly causing all worlds of traffic accidents as they stopped their cars to take pictures. I was lucky enough to be on foot too, but he gave me a look, like, "Farking Tourist." Yeah Coyote, I can see you own the place. Don't let ME bother you.

-llg

158/365: Garden Thief.

I thought someone had been nibblin' on the swiss chard at night...tonight, caught him red handed. I guess it's ok, it's not a whole lot. The garden is bountiful so far this year. When the tomatoes come in you can bet the rascal will be taking then nightly. If you ever see that Coyote's taken some of your basil, let him. He makes a killer pesto. It's F'ing ridiculous.

One Bowens Monoblock (studio strobe) with white reflector on the porch. Corner house light hitting the greenhouse.

-llg

157/365: Milk Wash.

Coyote can just be so cold. I mean, it's damned inconvenient to go to wash your windows...and then have to stop at a gas station to flush off what you thought was going to be windshield wiper fluid.  It's almost enough to make you lactose-intolerant.

-llg

156/365: The Salt Shaker.

Damned Coyote. You get the hunger that comes from mowing the entire yard for three and a half hours, and you only want to shovel fresh salad and leftover Indian food down your gullet, and then...

Coyote leaves his mark, all over your bowl of lentil marsala.

Setup: For general fill light I had one Bowens studio light in a large octa softbox, camera left, low power. The main lights came from opposite directions, one behind the subjects in a doorway camera right, one outside, directly opposite the other, pointing inside. These provided the dramatic highlights on either side, while the octabank pulled up the details in the areas not lit by the other two lights.

- llg

155/365: Meet Coyote.

Mayhap you've met the Trickster before. They say he goes by many names, or has, over the years: Loki, Maui, Anansi, Eshu, Legba. But I know better. He taught all THOSE tricksters HOW to trick. He showed Prometheus how to light a Zippo with one hand, right off the jeans. Rather more elegant than how the old Titan passed the buck onto us, that is, tossing a flaming sock into a den of slumbering cavemen. Kept the lighter for himself, he did. But Coyote still got the joke on him — never told him where to get lighter fluid. And then of course, Prometheus got fingered for the sock job, and they stuck him with the whole eagle-eating-out-his-entrails-daily punishment for eternity...that's pretty much classic Coyote for you.

So yeah, if you meet him, just...be aware. Sometimes he'll be hanging out and the worst that happens is he drinks half your good scotch and bums cigarettes all night. Coyote has been known to go thru periods of boredom? Depression? Laziness? Whatever it is, sometimes he just lays low. But Coyote is a trickster at heart, THE Trickster, and eventually he's going to take you for a ride on the Prank Wagon. And generally speaking, you won't see it coming. Or know what hit you.

I've been on the receiving end of Coyote's...um...talent, more than once. I'll tell you all about it, in time, but for now, you should know that most of his antics are all in good fun. HIS fun, mind you. He's got any number of harmless pranks and jokes that he may play, but also some rather nasty ones too. Let's just say he can have a misplaced sense of humor. I like poop jokes as much as the next person, but there's some things that are just plain sick...

And the mind games! It's not always just hot sauce in the coffee or hair removal cream in your shampoo; if he really wants some shit to go down, he will trick you into doing whatever pleases him. A penchant for fecal humor doesn't mean he's a simpleton; quite the opposite actually. Coyote's been around. Like, forever.

-llg

154/365: The Yosemite Valley

If you've been following along, you'll know I recently spent three days in the valley. We were there to shoot an interview with Ken Burn's favorite ranger, Shelton Johnson, this one for our own upcoming film about the John Muir Trail... The film is the brain-child of one Peter Bell, who shot the bulk of the footage in '08 while hiking the JMT with my business partner and friend Brian Burnham. The story of how it got to that point is a long one, but let's just say it's been in planning for some time. Peter shot the entire thing in HD, and Brian shot stills the entire time, so it looks incredible. We needed a bit more for the final cut, so we headed to the Valley to get the interview with Johnson, but also some supplemental footage. Using the 5Dmk2 and 7D, we shot a bit of BROLL video, but I concentrated my efforts on timelapse.

I'm relatively new to the timelapse game, but I see even the seasoned professionals are still trying to work out certain approaches using the power of the current generation of DSLRs, so I guess we're all on the same curve, just different places. I'm pretty happy with how most of these turned out, and I learned a bit from my mistakes as the days went by, then forgot the lessons and repeated mistakes.

I have to get a nice little TL rig figured out, since this year, the wife and I are taking our turn on the JMT. No roads and no battery charging or card dumping for 20 days, or 218 miles. I have this crazy desire to be shooting TL while I'm out there, especially the pristine night sky...but that's gonna be a lot of extra batteries and cards. More than you know. Any suggestions?

The music is by the Felice Brothers. They are a band out of New York. If you don't know them, you damn well should.

-llg

153/365: Enter the Yosemite Valley.

The day we rolled into the Valley, we stopped at the Tunnel View overlook that stands on the outer edge of the park, looking in. We were anxious to whip out the cameras and shoot some timelapse, but first we had to bundle up. A bit colder than muggy North Carolina was that morning...

Sufficiently wrapped, we joined the HORDES of photographers at the rim of the overlook and started snapping. The last light of day was creeping up the valley and El Capitan. Good time for a few minutes of timelapse. I was also out for stills in general, and though I believe a single frame of a timelapse should completely stand on its own as a single photograph, sometimes you can't get the same effect in still form, and vice versa. For instance, the weather wasn't anything too special. Some clouds hovering over Half Dome. Looks great in motion, but pretty boring for a still. It would be a BEAR to have to add more clouds to every frame of the timelapse, so I just did the one.

Believe nothing that you see. But click the pic above for a bigger version.

-llg

PS - There may or may not be some pundits that will cry foul at the use of photoshop to sweeten a picture like this. And if I was working for a news pub, or Nat Geo, it would be a foul indeed. By Ansel Adams spent YEARS in Yosemite, waiting for the right weather and light to come together when he was ready with his camera. I had four days. What, you want me to come back with crap, just cause the clouds sucked? If it means anything to you, the clouds did come from another moment during this trip. What, it doesn't matter to you? Well shut up, you're lucky I didn't lie to you and say it was shot straight up on a Hasselblad.

152/365: Basketball Jones and the Captain.

This guy here can do things most men cannot. In addition to smoking Camel filterless while hiking up a mountain (any mountain) much faster that you, he can drink a gallon of whole milk in under an hour and then get up and play frisbee...I've seen both, filmed the latter. The man has been in more knife fights than  Crocodile Dundee. When he looks at your VAL (Voice Activated Light Stand) like that, you may want to tell the person to back away a bit.

In all seriousness, Basketball Jones (aka Sean) was one of the people I had the great misfortune to meet while hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2001, and he is a good friend still. I see him somewhat regularly, as he lives not too far away, but not enough. Just like with any of my buds from that hike though, when we get together, it's like no time has past at all. When he heard we were making a quick jaunt out to Yosemite, he was all in (he hiked the John Muir Trail two years ago with my other two travel partners below, more on that in a future post).

Strobist info: This is Classic Joe McNally lighting technique. Off-camera Canon 580ex2 in wireless E-TTL mode, handheld and aimed thru a popup diffuser (not a Tri-grip, but similar), triggered by on-camera 580ex2 set as commander. A down-and-dirty setup that's quick and easily controlled from behind the camera. Even if the automatic functionality is getting confused, you can simply switch it over to manual and dial it in. Grabbed a few such pics as we shot the last light of day in a meadow opposite the Great El Capitan.

Brian at work. And Pete contemplates the legacy of John Muir...

And a final shot, camera on a timer and flash set down on my camera bag.

-llg

151/365: Power Hill.

On our way back to San Francisco International, we crossed the great fertile valley between the Sierras and the coastal mountain ranges of California. Lots of farms, grapes, cherries, apples. Nearing the coast we began to enter some foothill country just as the sun was setting in front of us. Had to roll down the massive back window of our rental van and shoot with a really fast shutter to freeze the scene above, as the car was shaking hard and the view was fleeting.

-llg

150/365: Paint Me a Meadow Tree.

The night we got to Yosemite we pounded a couple beers then set off for a meadow near our cabin to film a night timelapse.  That went swimmingly for about 30 minutes, then I turned the camera toward this tree in the meadow and told my comrades to walk over to it and 'paint' the tree with their flashlights. Got two exposures, one with the light coming from either side, then dropped them on top of each other on Photoshop and painted in a few of the areas from both, to round out the canopy's illumination. Coulda done all that in camera I suppose, but we were cold and there was more beer waiting at the cabin...

-llg

149/365: Rapids and Rocks.

The Glassenator strikes again! Who knew that blocking 10 stops of light out of your camera was a good idea? Don't we spend all our money on FAST lenses that can shoot in lower light WITHOUT motion blur? And then we go and spend MORE money on a filter to BLOCK the fast lens?!? Photography is a fool's errand.

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148/365: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

147/365: Cathedral Meadow.

So I want your opinion, do you like the black and white version of this pic, or the color...hit the jump for the color version...

These files I'm pulling up are routinely blowing my mind. Not what I did, mind you, any hack who's at the right place at the right time can press a shutter, but by what I'm able to get out of them. Out in the field, the shot comes up on your little LCD and you think, well, not bad, but it seems too contrasty, seems like you can't get all the tones in one shot. Now, when I'm opening up these images, I'm finding I have so much room to push and pull and get the range I'm looking for...certainly a good thing for those of us that can't nail it everytime in camera.

I think I like the black and white more, since I posted it, but I'm not sure. Please sound out in the comments with your opinion.

-llg

146/365: Sierra Point Panoramic.

In our explorations of Yosemite, we saw our share of crowds in the typical spots. The DSLR revolution has put a LOT of good cameras in a lot of hands, it's both inspiring and scary to think of all the amazing images that are being created everyday...I'm sure there's a lot of crap too, but that's just the way it is in a democratic photographic world, where the playing field is leveled by the low cost of quality tools. It's a good thing; now the real determining factors to making good images is your own drive to learn and practice and develop your vision. Sometimes this drive may require you to go where the others aren't, to get a fresh perspective, a scene that you can't just pull up to in a car (although there's about a million amazing pictures you can get from your car WINDOW in Yosemite).

That was our thinking when we embarked to Sierra Point, a formerly popular vista overlooking the Happy Isles and John Muir Trails. According to the website we used to find the route, it used to be a well maintained trail till a rockslide took out a section some time ago. One ranger told us outright when we mentioned it that  we "would never find it." I plugged in several way points in my GPS unit to help us find the trail, especially the point at which you leave the main paved trail to head up the side of the mountain. We found that point fairly easily and set off right up thru a massive boulder field, which, it turns out, was well marked with rock cairns and a discernible trail. In fact, the whole trail was really easy to follow and it seemed that it was often hiked. Nevertheless, we saw no one else on our Sierra Point hike, nor did anyone else appear at the Point itself as we held it down for three or so hours, shooting timelapses and stills with the Canon 5Dmk2 and 7D, taking naps, eating sardine bagel sandwiches.

Below us, looking like the were a mile away (but probably only 1000 ft), we could see everyone else hiking up the trail we had left, hiking up to Vernal and Nevada Falls. We could see both from our vantage, as well as Illilouette Falls and the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls in the opposite direction. Needless to say, we were happy with ourselves. Looking back, it does make some sense that we didn't see anyone else...the trail, though easy to follow, was not an easy hike. Quite brutally steep, in fact, which can suck both ways for different reasons.

The posted shot is a basic stitched panoramic from the old railing viewpoint. It's a bit misleading, being that its made up enough shots to cover about 200 degrees of view. They have to be warped and compressed together a bit to make an image that isn't completely distorted around the center. This makes it look as if you could take in that whole scene just facing in that direction, which was not the case; The evidence is in the shot, the railing on the left and right corners is actually the same piece, in fact the right side end is at a full 90 degree angle to the left side piece that faces out to the valley...it's hard to imagine, so here's a shot that may help.

Pete on the right side there has his hand on the railing that's on the right end of the posted panoramic, and Brian on the far left is standing in the junction that's on the left side of the panoramic. Doesn't do it justice.

-llg

145/365: The Yosemite Falls.

The four days in Yosemite were spent, as my buddy Pete said, much like tourists in NYC...necks crained back and mouths a bit agape. Agaze at the wide wonder, the joy we had found.  It's just all so big, and it's just right there in front of you. It's all you can do to wrap your mind around it, much less try to make a picture that you pray will do the scale any justice. The size and grandeur of the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls just takes your breath away. They looked amazing in real-time...and I'm not sure if the fast-shutter speed version isn't better...but I had to try the ND filter, the 10-stopper. Twenty-second exposure at f/7.1. The Glassenator. Lot of time for some subtle camera shake, even on the tripod, even from the mirror flipping up (didn't turn off Mirror Lockup, it's even on my custom immediate menu, call me lazy, but I did use a remote trigger to help keep 'er steady).

This photograph is so sharp it's kinda blowing my mind, actually. Didn't think the tripod was this solid, on grassy, muddy dirt even. The quality of the pixels at 100% is worth a look. (That's a big file, by the way, 8 mb or so, but click it again to zoom as it's loading and it should come up.) Lots of texture and detail. And a surprise in there.

-llg