It seems like it was just yesterday when the grass was green. That is probably because many of the leaves started falling yesterday (or at least not too long ago). When I woke up this morning and stepped outside, I noticed that this car got bombarded with leaves overnight.

Ok. So it wasn’t completely ”bombarded” but it did stand out more than any other car on the block. Red leaves on a black car. It made the mistake of parking under the tree in my front yard.

The crazy weather is confusing the plants. First we had temperatures below freezing that triggered the leaves to fall. Then it warms back up and the green fights back. I think the leaves are blocking the sunlight and killing the grass.

Oh well. I love all the color. It is a photographers dream!I can’t really complain about the 60 degree weather.

It’s always nice getting in touch with nature.

This year, our adventure started somewhere near Eminence, MO. Once we found the drop off point, we quickly got on the river. Shortly after, we tied off to a tree to go explore a cave.

We broke a few of the posted cave rules. We didn’t have helmets and we didn’t have three sources of light. As we wound back further into the cave, we realized we shouldn’t go any further without a big flashlight. For some reason, my LED light just wasn’t cutting it!

Once we set up camp for the night, it wasn’t too long before we were doing long exposures. The sky had been cloudy all day and blocked the full moon at night.

It almost looks like a set of wings coming up out of the tree line.

I woke up early-ish the next morning. It was at least early enough to see the morning fog.

On the right, you can see the site of our campfire. Notice the demonic log that we tried to burn and it just wouldn’t. I guess it has seen it’s fair share of heat and flame.

Our tent was really dwarfed by the surrounding nature.

Our trip out in middle Missouri wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of political ingenuity. On our drive there, as we passed through a town with an abundance of McCain signs, I noticed a lone Obama sign. It was unique. It was painted on a wooden plank. I only had a quick passing glance.

On the way back home, we wanted to stop and take a picture of the sign. Once we found it, I pulled into the driveway, got my camera and got out of the car. As I am framing the image, Gavin yells to me, “That’s not an Obama sign! That’s an Obama Grave!”

So it was.

In Sikeston, MO at Beggs Family Farm, they have what may be the best corn maze ever. Every year, they change the path in their maze. Their maze is nothing short of an artistic corn creation. This year, the maze was designed to look like a Ford Model T with the Ford logo. Previous years designs include a dinosaur, Alcatraz and an American Flag.

As you enter the maze, you descend down a stairwell into the corny abyss.

After a miraculous finish in 40 minutes, we headed over to the corn air canon located right next to the maze.

Unfortunately, none of us were successful hitting the target. At least we all looked good trying.

Many of the areas were fenced in with roped flags. Sometimes they seemed slightly too high to hop over and slightly too low to duck under. Chris took a running start and made a flying leap over the fence.

Of course there are other interesting things going on at Beggs farm. Pig races. Weird spinning rooms that cause severe nausea and an immediate disorientation. I took pictures of those too. They will go up when I get a chance.

Tomorrow (actually it is later today at this point), we are going to Lambert’s Cafe, home of the throwed rolls. That will be an exciting gourging of food. We are all looking forward to it!

I decided to try more time lapse today. Well, tonight. I attached my camera onto my car. I hooked up hard power via a power inverter to both my camera and my laptop. There were also steel safety cables just in case something went wrong.

I wanted to shoot at two or three frames per second (fps) but my computer’s intervalometer only allowed me to shoot down to five fps.

I started in my drive way, turned out onto a main street and just drove. At one point, I decided to stop at a McDonalds. I wasn’t really hungry; I just thought it might look interesting in the final product. I then turned onto another main drag and eventually got onto the interstate (yes, I was going 60mph with my camera attached to the outside of my car).

When I got home, I was anxious to see what I got. I rendered it out as 30fps video (standard video) and since I was only able to shoot five fps, It was REALLY fast.

I then slowed the playback down to 20fps. It was still too fast. I didn’t want to slow it down too much more because it would start to look choppy. A humans persistence of vision is 16fps. In other words, if you saw a sequence of images played at 16fps, your brain would interpret it as fluid motion, however awkward the speed may appear.

To get it slow enough, I broke persistence of vision and set the playback to 12fps. It definitely looks a little choppy but it gives each image a little more time on the screen so you can see what’s going on…kind of.

There is definitely more to come. I might try one with people in a more populated setting sometime this week. Maybe even tomorrow. Anyone have any suggestions? I might try the comment left by Gavin on the last post — use a slow shutter speed to virtually eliminate people from an urban setting. I wish I had a really powerful battery backup or solar power source to take my gear into rural areas. I could also use a nice intervalometer that’s not built into a computer. Where’s my winning lotto ticket?

I tried to figure out the best place for my camera where I would have power and decided to aim it out my front window.

My camera was on a tripod with a hard line for power. It was tethered to my laptop via Firewire. My computer essentially became the dashboard for my camera. I set all of the settings on the computer screen.

After I was content with my capture settings, I went into the time lapse (intervalometer) settings. This allows me to set the intervals between pictures and how long I wanted it to shoot. I set it to shoot one picture every 30 seconds for 1,200 frames. That’s ten hours of recording images.

So I let it run. I watched a lot of TV. Thank god there were movies on!

About eight hours into it, I decided that was probably long enough since this was just a test anyways.

So after 900 frames and some heavy compression, here is what I ended up with:

Now I have to go find more things to time lapse! That is if I’m patient enough!

I went to the St. Louis Zoo with one thing in mind – see every single animal that the standard free admission would allow. I wanted to spend as much time out of my house as possible.

The day was filled with things that struck me as odd.

To start my oddities, it seemed that many of the animals were asleep or groggy. Everything from crocodilian creatures to pathetic pumas.

One thing that was more bizarre was the high level of hippo activity. There were at least four hippos in the tank. One of them kept swimming laps. This may not be unusual but their tank is so dirty, you can’t really see anything unless they are just about right up against the glass. This hippo happened to literally be right up against the glass.

I overheard a zoo worker say how the hippos had been extraordinarily vocal that day. They were getting a little physical with each other. Apparently hippos fight from time to time. Some of the lines on the side of the hippo pictured above are scratches and not light reflections.

I would think that if hippos were fighting, arguing or even having a somewhat heated discussion over a cup of tea right up against the glass, you would watch. Instead, many of the good tourists blocked the spectacle for everyone else by having their picture taken with the violent backdrop.

I hope their mothers flash reflected off the glass so when they go back to look at this picture a year from now, they will have no idea what was behind them that was so important that they needed to block it off from the rest of the world in an attempt to capture the memory for themselves.

On the way out of the zoo, I looked up to the trees only to find a man tending to an animal…with a paint brush.

Ok. so it is a fake animal. It is there to represent prey that a big cat would drag up a tree. I saw it on Jack Hannah once. I guess it was time for a detailing.

Her model rides a Harley. It was only fitting to shoot it outside a local Harley dealership against their colored fence.

With her trusty AE-1 and a few rolls of Kodak UltraColor, she got to work.

You know me though. I had to shoot too!

Well, she has impressed me again. I pressured her into taking a photojournalism class. I have always told her that I am happy to help but I will not come up with her ideas, do any of the hands on work, or tell her when the final product is right.  That has been my rule since day one.

She was really worried about her photojournalism class. When it came to doing a multimedia project, she was worried that it would be too overwhelming. I reassured her that is was just another way of telling a story.

She found an international culture and faith festival in Illinois. She went with the intent of covering it as a multimedia project.

We both went to the festival. I kept telling her to gather more audio; shoot more pictures. She got really angry with me at points but I wanted her to have more content than she needed. You can always cut but you can’t add what is not there.

After a few hours of working through Premiere Pro, she came out with a nice piece.

So again, I send a kudos to Katie. You made a nice project! I told you that audio isn’t hard!

Our plan once we got to Alton was to drive up the river road to Grafton. With the strong rain we had on Sunday, it seemed likely that Grafton would have some flooding.

Once we figured out a back way in to Grafton due to the river road being closed, we got some nice images.

This is my third flood this year. ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

We wanted to shoot some sports today and the only local event we could find was a Meramec mens soccer game. This game had absolutely no action. Ok. Very little action. I hardly felt compelled to press my shutter button. There were a few nice moments.

The last shot isn’t too spectacular but I am including it because it was the only score during the entire game. That isn’t too unusual for soccer but it was the only thing close to a goal kick. I guess you could argue that this moment was the peak of the action.

While the day may not have yielded anything any photos that will land the cover of Sports Illustrated or the New York Times front page, I wasn’t left empty handed.

“Windy with rain diminishing to a few showers late. High 73F. ENE winds shifting to NW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall may reach one inch. Locally heavier rainfall possible.”

That’s what the weather channel has planned for tomorrow. The brief blurb says 80% chance of heavy rain/wind. This is of course hurricane/tropical storm Ike now that it has made its way on land.

Great.

I am shooting the St. Charles Marathon tomorrow. Marathons go on, rain or shine. That means photographers work, rain or shine. I am shooting with the Action Sports Images team out of Kansas City. We are all digging up our wateproof shoes, finding rain protection for our gear and getting ready for a long and wet day.

Since I have to be up around 5:30 am, I decided to pack my bag tonight. Luckily I am shooting for specific shots and don’t need to bring a slew of gear.

Included is:

• Crumpler 7 Million dollar home (a waterproof bag of course)
• Canon 1d Mark II in a plastic rain cover
• 3 spare batteries
• monopod
• memory cards in a hakuba case inside of a ziplock
• sunglasses (which I pray that I need)
• Camelbak Blowfish (when you are standing around shooting for 4-5 hours, you want water!)
• A variety of energy bars.
• Rain jacket (the white thing in the bag)

Not pictured are my energy drinks, waterproof boots, microfiber shirt, light weight pants…etc.

The marathon starts at 8am. If it is raining hard all morning and very windy, it could get cold very fast. Last year, I stocked up on chemical hand warmer packs. I might bring a few just in case.