The sky was a clear blue, with virtually no clouds. I thought that might help make some great downtown photos, but I didn’t want to deal with the hour long Friday afternoon rush hour traffic to get home. It was fairly breezy, so I didn’t want to try and do some macro photography of flowers wagging madly in that wind. Or did I?

Earlier in the week, I had attended Syl Arena’s Speedliter’s Intensive Workshop that he held here in Austin. Syl is universally recognized as the world’s renown guru on Canon Speedlite flash photography. If you are a Canon shooter, you simply must buy, read, and re-read his Speedliter’s Handbook.

Now I certainly wasn’t in the mood to be walking around my neighborhood with my heavy Canon 5D Mark II camera, the 100mm (non-IS) macro lens, and a 580EX II Speedlite. I was however, willing to try something new with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. I thought I’d go out and try to stop the flowers in their tracks by using flash….

Now the rest of this blog is aimed toward my photography-oriented friends. If that’s not you, then feel free to stop reading right here and just scroll down through the photos. I’m about to describe the gear and the technique that I used to make these photos….

Since it was nearly 2:30 PM, with the sun high in the sky and no clouds in site, I doubted that I would need the f/2.8 aperture of my new Olympus 60mm macro lens. Instead, I decided that I would take my more versatile Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, which also has a macro mode. (When in macro mode, the focal length is fixed at 43mm; 86mm equivalent on a full frame sensor camera.) On top of that, since it was so dang bright, I put a circular polarizer filter onto it.

Using a low ISO of 200, a small aperture opening (higher f-stop number), and a circular polarizer would normally require the shutter to stay open much longer than one would normally want – if their goal was to stop the motion of a flower wagging in the wind.

I intended to find out if using the very short duration burst of light that a portable flash emits could be used to stop that motion. I grabbed my Olympus FL-600R Wireless Electronic Flash and strapped a Small ExpoImaging Rogue FlashBenders reflector onto the top of the flash unit.

Since I didn’t want to use the flash while it was mounted in the hot shoe on top of the camera, I also grabbed my Canon OC-E3 Off-Camera Shoe Cord. One end of the cord attaches to the hot shoe of the camera, while the other end attaches to the base of the FL-600R flash unit. And yes, the Canon cord works perfectly with the Olympus camera and portable flash.

(I also have a virtually identical cord; the Vello OCS-C6, which is about half the price of the Canon cord. I keep the two cords together in identical zip-lock baggies, and I just happened to pick up the Canon cord.)

I put a spare camera battery into my right pants pocket, and 4 spare AA batteries in a holder into my left pants pocket.

OK, so that was my gear. My camera settings were to operate the camera in manual mode. I wanted the lowest ISO, which is 200 on this camera. I wanted the highest shutter speed, while not exceeding the sync speed of the camera, so I set it to 1/200th of a second. (The sync speed of the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is actually 1/250th of a second, but I couldn’t remember that, so I played it safe and set the shutter speed to 1/200th of a second.)

OK, so ISO was 200. Shutter speed was 1/200th of a second. What was my aperture? That was the variable that I played with!  I adjusted the aperture until the meter reading in the electronic viewfinder indicated anything from -1/3 stop down to -2 full stops below a proper exposure. In other words, I was simply underexposing the photo – until I got the flash involved. (Yes, I suppose I could have operated the camera in shutter priority mode and just dialed-in some negative exposure compensation.)

Before heading out into my neighborhood, I went out our back door, onto our deck (patio) and set a custom white balance in the camera. I thought that the direct sunlight would have the same color temperature as the flash, and that they would be about 5500 degrees Kelvin. My WhiBal card indicated differently, and later Lightroom agreed with the camera that there was no color cast with the Temp slider at 5950 and the Tint slider at +3. That’s where I left the white balance on all of the photos that I took later, except for the ones with bright yellow petals. On those, I cooled down the temperature to 5350 degrees Kelvin.

You can see in the photo above how dark (underexposed) the background is. That is what I was trying to do. I was intentionally adjusting the aperture so that the background would be slightly underexposed like that.

The magic happens when I turned on the flash. By putting the flash unit into the automated TTL (Through the Lens metering) mode – instead of manual mode – the flash puts out enough light until the camera thinks it has seen enough light needed for a proper exposure at the current aperture setting. When the camera and flash working together in TTL mode seemed to underexpose or overexpose the object in the foreground, the only control that I had for me to alter the result was by dialing up or down on the Flash Exposure Compensation setting.

I also had to aim the light. In the photo above, it’s pretty easy to see that I was just learning how to deal with this technique. It appears that I was holding the light too low, which resulted in some less than ideal shadows on the petals themselves.

The flash head will automatically widen or narrow the beam of light that it emits in order to cover the field of view that is seem though the lens. The flash was being told by the camera that the focal length of the lens was set to 43mm, so the flash was auto-zooming it’s head to create the relatively narrow beam of light to cover the area that would be seen through a 43mm (86mm equivalent) lens would see. The flash unit had no way of knowing that it was not mounted into the hot shoe on top of the camera, though. I changed the setting on the flash unit to manual zoom and changed it to a much wider beam of light by changing the zoom setting to 25mm (50mm equivalent). That gave a much softer bounced light off of the FlashBender.

This is two-handed photography. I was following a technique where Robin Wong recently described how he does his fabulous macro photography of insects in Malaysia. (Be sure to click that link to see how he does this.) Robin appears to trigger his flash wirelessly, and although the flash that I was using could also be triggered wirelessly, I was using the Canon OC-E3 cord – the camera and flash don’t know that there is a cord between them.

With the FlashBender mounted onto the flash unit, I was bouncing the flash off of it. Just like bouncing flash off of a ceiling or a wall, which makes the light source (the flash) much larger than when aiming the flash head directly at the subject. While I do have the Large size FlashBenders, I was using the much smaller Small size. Unfolded, the Small unit measures 10” x 7” (254mm x 178mm). I had the ends curled in, but not to the point that I had made a tube, or snoot, out of it.

I mention that for two reasons. First, the size of the white surface that I was bouncing the light off of was still about 6″ x 7″ (152mm x 178mm). When I brought it in close to the flower or bee that I was photographing, the relative size of my light was getting to be huge in comparison to the object that I was photographing. That results in very soft shadows. And remember, these photos were all taken in direct sunlight, in the middle of the day!

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

The second reason that I mentioned the shape and the closeness of the FlashBender is this: The shutter speed of 1/200th of a second was not what was responsible for stopping the motion of the very busy honey bee. Instead, it was the much shorter duration of the burst of light emitted by the flash that was freezing his motion. Since I was underexposing the photo between -0.7 and -1.3 stops in most of the photos, the flash only had to add enough light the bring the exposure up by about 1 stop.

Since that flash unit was being held very close to my subject, it didn’t really have to put out much more than just a puff of light. The less light it puts out, the less time the flash tube is emitting light, and therefore the duration of the burst of light was probably only about 1/1000th of a second. That is what was freezing the motion of the very busy bees and the constantly wagging flowers!

Again, the only two adjustments that I was making were the aperture (to get me to an underexposed ambient light exposure) and the Flash Exposure Compensation (to manually influence the automated TTL operation of the flash unit). Sometimes I significantly underexposed the background, and sometimes not so much. Sometimes I wanted the flash to put out more light, and sometimes I didn’t.

In the photo above, I had my flash unit underneath the flower, and was bouncing the light up onto the underside of it. You can see the black Velcro edge of my FlashBender in the lower right corner of the photo. I could have removed that in Lightroom (or Photoshop), but then I wouldn’t be able to show you this “trick”!

In this photo, this blossom was on the end of a very long, spindly stalk, and it was wagging back and forth very wildly. It was coming toward me, and then going away from me. The Olympus OM-D E-M5 was having a terrible time of trying to focus on it. I just stood there and ripped off a dozen or so photos of it, and hoped that at least one of them would look sharp on my computer monitor. (Two of them did.) So, even with an electronic flash to help freeze motion, the dang camera has to focus on what you want it to!

I also had another new to me experience with this camera while shooting this way. I could see the results of my underexposure in real time by looking into the electronic viewfinder. Obviously that made everything pretty dark, so at times it was difficult to see what was going to be in focus. But, the instant that I would push the shutter button down halfway, two things would happen. First, the image in the electronic viewfinder would instantly get amplified and lit-up by the electronics to what would appear to be a normal exposure, and then (if you were lucky) you would see the focus lock indicator blink (which I had fixed to the center of the screen).

I don’t normally have the Autofocus Assist Beam turned on, but it was about this time on this walk that I decided to turn it on. It didn’t seem to help much… with my setting the autofocus to Single Shot Autofocus, it just didn’t help much with quickly moving objects – and with a macro lens, everything seems to move rather quickly. I seemed to have the most trouble focusing on red colored flowers.

Just to play around with the flash in a different way, I set it to FP TTL Auto mode, which is what Canon calls High Speed Sync flash. The photo above was taken with a shutter speed of 1/320th of a second, and the next one was taken with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second.

In FP TTL Auto mode, the flash unit turns into a very high frequency strobe light. I don’t know how fast the Olympus FL-600R pulses, but the Canon 580EX II pulses at 30,000 times a second! That effectively turns your little flash unit into a strobe that starts flashing before the first curtain of the shutter opens, and continues flashing until after the second curtain has completely closed. Of course, the flash unit cannot pump out its maximum intensity of light while it is doing that, but like I said before, I had my light so close to my subject that I just needed it to put out a puff of light anyway.

You can tell in the previous photo that my light was just outside of the left side of the photo. The Inverse Square Law is definitely in effect here!

That last photo, the flower of the plumbago plant was just 6 inches (15cm) off of the ground. This is when I was really glad that I didn’t have to get down on my knees, bend over and look through the viewfinder while holding the camera in my right hand and the flash in my left hand. Instead, I tilted the rear LCD (it’s really an OLED panel) up, let the camera strap around my neck hold the camera at the desired height, and used my right thumb on the shutter button.

OK, so the FP TTL Auto works just fine, but I didn’t really need to use it, so I set the shutter speed back down to 1/200th of a second. As the photo above shows, even at f/11, and on a Four-Thirds sensor, you just don’t get a lot of Depth of Field when using a macro lens at close range.

The one thing that I really need to improve upon is my composition. Almost all of these photos have the subject in the center of the frame. In self-defense, there are two factors that also lead me down this monotonous path…. First, I set my autofocus point to be the one in the center of the  frame. If I didn’t do that, the camera would tend to focus on the part of the flower that was closest to the camera. In general that would be OK, but that makes it virtually impossible to focus on a bee, or other object that is not the front object. The second factor is that these flowers, and bees, were almost in constant motion. It doesn’t take much movement, when shooting at these close distances, to have 1/3 or more of the flower end up being cut-off as the wind quickly accelerates the flower from where it just was. There were several flowers that I tried to photograph that afternoon, where I was not successful in getting the entire flower into the picture – so centered in the frame is what I usually walked away with.

Now this next photo is unusual to me. A cloud came over us, dimming amount of sunlight. To get my ambient exposure down to about -1 stop, the aperture was f/10 and the shutter was a relatively long 1/50th of a second.

As soon as I took the photo, the review image that shows up in the electronic viewfinder showed violet flower in an electric, iridescent color. I don’t know if the slower shutter speed had any effect on that or not. It seems that the white balance contribution between the ambient and the flash was the same as all of the other photos, but something was making the flash turn these flowers into something psychedelic. Maybe I had spent too much time photographing the poppies down the street….

This is the yellow flower of the prickly pear cactus, and they look like they are going to put on a spectacular showing this year. Cactus flowers are easy to photograph, simply because they don’t move very much when the wind blows!

Not knowing what the heck was going on with the colors (all of a sudden), I bounced the shutter speed back up to 1/250th of a second to capture this trio of lantanas.

I was almost home, so just to get familiar with the modes of the flash, I set the shutter speed to 1/500th of a second (aperture f/6.3), and had the flash in FP Auto TTL mode for this single lantana bloom.

It is worth repeating this: these photos were taken in the middle of the day, under what is considered to be extremely hard lighting conditions. Look again at the photo directly above, and see if you can spot the hard edge of the shadows. I can’t.

I was pleased to see that I had found a way to freeze the motion of the wagging flowers, without having to take a dozen photos and the toss out the blurry ones later. As long as the camera would achieve focus and then snap the shutter before the flower (or bee) had moved out of the range of focus (depth of field), the flash would freeze them in place for me.

I would like to mention that this was the very first time that I have ever wished that I had a more substantial grip area on the camera. I’m sure it was because I had been shooting for nearly two hours by holding the camera in only my right hand. My hand was beginning to get stiff and somewhat sore. I had been holding the camera with two fingers and a thumb – while my third finger was on the shutter button and my pinky finger was curled into my palm underneath the camera body.

Next time I will attach my Really Right Stuff BOEM5 base plate for the Olympus OM-D E-M5. Maybe it will be enough extra area to hold on to.

Just three houses from my home, I spotted this “camo lizard” on my neighbor’s driveway. I popped my lens out of its macro mode zoomed it all the way out to 50mm and walked as close as I thought I could get to this little guy and snapped this photo. Even the soft sound of the shutter on this mirrorless camera was all that it took to have him scurry off to safety under their car.

The last thing that I would like to mention here is about my batteries. I took over 340 photos in under 2 hours. All but about 5 of those photos were flash photos. I never had to change the battery in my camera, or the AA batteries in the FL-600R flash unit. I never would have predicted that! It just goes to prove that you can overpower the mid-day sun with little puffs of light.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Less than 48 hours after we went on the tour of Circuit of the Americas race track here in Austin, TX, I went for my second walk around my neighborhood with my new Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 lens. I had it on my trusty little Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. The LH-49 lens hood had finally come in to Precision Camera, and I had it on my lens for this flower hunting excursion.

Spingtime has been in full swing here for over a month now, and I really wanted to get out and photograph some of the beautiful flowers while they were still out in full force.

So, on Saturday April 27, 2013 I went for a 3 and a half hour walk before lunch.

Single

Double

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Fortunately, the sunlight was diffused by an overcast sky full of clouds. There was only a mild breeze when I started out, but it did get progressively stronger as I went along. Also, the clouds dissipated over the course of the morning, and by the time I got home, the direct sunlight was really making this type of photography a real challenge.

View from Above

Same Flower from Below

I was determined to try and do a better job of catching the flowers at a standstill this time out. Even in a mild breeze they seem to wag around continuously, and never come to a complete standstill for more than a fraction of a second. As a result, I always took multiple photos of the same flower.

About to Bloom

Honey Bee

Oleander Blossom

Even though the lens is a macro lens, it can also be used as a standard mild telephoto lens (120mm equivalent on a full frame camera).

Yard Bunnies

Purple Iris with Wary Insect

Wasp

Busy Bee

Bee in a Poppy

Poppy Seeds and Poppy Flower

Ants on an Orange Lantana Blossom

The size of this very small Prickly Pear bud is about 1/2 inch (1 cm) across!

This photo of a Texas Bluebonnet was cropped from a landscape orientation to this portrait orientation.

Multiple colors

Garden Bunny with Yellow Rose

This little flower had a bug on it (at the top) and several water droplets still on it from the lawn sprinkler.

This photo shows just how breezy it had become. Besides, I like our US flag!

At this point I had been gone for just over 2 and a half hours and I noticed that my low battery indicator was starting to flash. That was over 575 photos with a single battery! I didn’t wait for it to die on me, so I changed it out with the spare one I had in my pocket.

Yellow Flower

With light colored flowers like this, I add from +2/3 to +1 stop of exposure compensation. It is very easy to see that this is needed, due to the excellent electronic viewfinder built into this Olympus OM-D camera.

Now on the very same plant as the flowers in that previous photo, was this tiny little lizard. I don’t know who was more surprised to see the other, but he didn’t move more than 6 inches (15 cm) while he watched me take 15 photos of him!

Little Lizard

And this next photo seemed to be a fitting analogy to my morning. Just like this busy little bee was covered in pollen, he was still hard at work. Similarly, even though I had several hundred photos already on my memory card, I was still hunting intently for more of God’s beautiful creations to photograph up close!

I had a lot of fun walking around with my new macro lens. With the breezy conditions, I was intently focused on trying to capture some sharper photos than I did on my previous outing with this lens. I believe that I accomplished that, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

After reviewing several hundred photos from this outing, one thing that quickly becomes obvious is that I need to get the center of attention away from dead center in the frame.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing this set of macro photos, and I thank you for visiting my blog!

This is the second part of my blog posts showing the photos that I took while on a tour of Circuit of The Americas (COTA) race track in Austin, Texas on Thursday, April 25, 2013. Circuit of The Americas was recently constructed just southeast of Austin specifically to be the only Formula One (F1) racetrack in the United States. In case you missed it, you can find the first part here.

Before I get started on Part 2, I need to bring to your attention an inaccuracy that I reported in Part 1. I had stated: “The building on the right is owned by the Formula One organization, and can only be used by the Formula One organization. It therefore sits idle for 51 weeks out of the year. This building is called the paddock.”

A couple of readers pointed out that those statements simply were not true. I sent an email to COTA asking for their help in correcting this information. Here is what they told me: “The paddock building is only used by F1 during that race. It is rented out for events or used as a spectator area during other events. It is not vacant 51 weeks out of the year.”

Now that this has been taken care of, it’s back to Part 2!

I was lucky enough to be allowed to tag along with my wife, Barb, on this tour, which was organized by the UT SAGE group that she belongs to. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens.

The photo above is the same one that I showed at the end of Part 1 of my story. That is Turn 17 immediately below you in the foreground, and Turn 11 is way off in the distance, near the upper left corner of the photo.

In this blog post, I will not be showing the photos in the order that I took them. Instead, I will try to show the turns of the race track in the order that the racers encounter them.

Turn 1 is in the southeast corner of the tack, and here is what it looks like from the observation tower.

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The whitish building between the seats and Turn 1 is the parking lot that we were in when I took the photos of Turn 1 (that I showed in Part 1). That is Turn 2 as the track exits the lower left corner of the photo above.

This next photo starts with the pedestrian bridge, located between Turn 2 and Turn 3, and takes you all the way out to Turn 11 in the far back left corner.

The red, white, and blue painted areas are considered to be “off the official track”. They are more like a “warning track”. The drivers are allowed to drive on them, without any penalty for doing so, if they ended up out there as a result of losing control in the previous turn.

This next photo is basically the same view as the previous one, but I zoom in as far as my little lens will go. It shows Turn 5 (in the foreground) to Turn 11.

At this point, the racers really get up to some very high speeds as they travel the long straight-away between Turn 11 and Turn 12. That straight away comes into this next photo from the top right corner of the photo.

Here you see Turns 12 through 16. For a sense of scale, that is a full size water truck on the race track to the left of the pedestrian bridge. That pedestrian bridge is right at the beginning of Turn 17.

Looking straight down from the front of the observation tower (toward the east), you see the short straight-away between Turn 17 and Turn 18.

Turn 18 is a 90 degree turn to the right, and you can see it in the lower right corner of this photo looking due south.

When I took the photo above, I was more interested in the multiple horizontal layers: the race track, the back side of the paddock, the grandstand just beyond that, the southern parking lot (and I can see my little CR-V!), the country side view beyond that, and also Texas Toll Road 130 crossing over the horizon.

Looking back down onto the track, here’s a much better view of Turn 18.

And finally, this next photo completes “our journey” around the track. The stars lead into Turn 19 and the furthest turn from you in this photo is the final turn – Turn 20. Right after that last turn, the racers cross the start/finish line between the paddock and the grand stands.

So far, I’ve shown you the view from three sides of the observation tower. The fourth side is the back side of the tower, and that is towards the west. At the base of the back side of the tower is the Austin360 Amphitheater.

The red pipes that swoop up the back side are about 5 feet (1.5 m) from the railing surrounding the platform that we were standing on. To get the previous photo, I leaned over the rail a little bit (certainly not a lot!) and extended my camera out as far as I could while keeping the camera strap around my neck, and used the Live View on the rear LCD to compose the photo.

The schedule of what bands will be performing here is most impressive, and the schedule can be found here. The evening after we were there, The Lumineers were to perform! The next scheduled concert is Jimmy Buffet, who will be there Thursday evening. Dave Matthews Band, Mumford and Sons, and Train are a few of the bands that I personally know that I would enjoy seeing.

You can take the stairs down, and I believe that I was the only one to do so. I knew that it would take the elevator at least two trips to get everyone else in our group back down to ground level. I thought that I would be down before they all got down, but I was mistaken! When I finally got to the ground, the group was nowhere around.

I stood there and took this photo of the is 251 feet (76.5 m) tall observation tower.

I thought that I heard the faint voice of our tour guide in the distance. He seemed to be in the backstage area of the amphitheater, so that’s where I headed. Just before I caught up with the group, they had all turned around and were heading back towards me…. I had missed the tour guide’s speech, but I swam upstream like a salmon to get only two very quick photos of the amphitheater as seen from the stage.

Just think – The Lumineers would be on that stage in just over 24 hours, in front of a sold out audience!

I had to walk quickly out of the backstage area to catch up with our tour group. A few others with cameras were standing at the base of the tower looking up, so I figured I had at least a couple minutes to do that myself.

The photo above is from the back side of the tower, while the next one is from the front side, right by the open door of our bus.

That was pretty much the end of our tour. The busses took us back to our cars in the south parking lot. The bus drivers, the tour guides, and everyone that we had an encounter with were very friendly, helpful, and answered any question that anyone in our group had.

Barb waited patiently in my “racing Honda” while I got a photo of it in front of the entrance to the grand stands.

And as we circled our way around to get out of the parking lot, I couldn’t help but stop the car, get out, and take one last parting shot of the entrance with the observation tower also in the photo.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed seeing what we saw on our tour of Circuit of The Americas (COTA). I wouldn’t call my photos artwork, but I do hope that I did a good enough job documenting what I saw that will give you a good sense of what this new facility looks like. Maybe you will remember seeing my photos when you get out there to see it for yourself.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

About a month ago, Barb came home from one of her Monday outings with the UT SAGE group that meets on The University of Texas campus, and said that there was going to be a tour of the new Circuit of The Americas race track. She also said that spouses were welcome, and wanted to know if I was interested. I probably thought about it for, oh maybe 2 seconds, and said “Wow! Hell yes, I’m interested!”. So Barb got us both signed-up, and the tour was this past Thursday, April 25, 2013.

For those who don’t already know, Circuit of The Americas was recently constructed just southeast of Austin specifically to be the only Formula One (F1) racetrack in the United States. They have also had other car and motorcycle races on this track since it held its first F1 race in November 2012. To further use the facility, they also build an outdoor amphitheater for live music performances (named Austin360 Amphitheater).

Now I am like most typical Americans – I don’t know anything about F1 racing, other than there seems to be this huge, wealthy fan base that travels from country to country to watch the qualifying time trials and the actual race on the 3rd day. More than 117,400 people were in attendance to watch the first F1 race on November 18, 2012. The week before the first F1 race at Circuit of The Americas, all 24 racing teams were located in Abu Dhabi – which is 10 time zones away from Austin.

Before you can go on a tour of Circuit of The Americas, you have to know how to get there – and most people in Austin do not know exactly where this facility is. I didn’t really know until the evening before we went.

The race track is located east of Texas Toll Road 130, about 3 or 4 miles south of Hwy 71. Turn east on FM 812, and go about 1 mile. This is what you will see from the front (south) entrance.

That red and white structure on the left is an observation tower, and it is a key feature of this facility.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my Whi-Bal card. No camera bag, no tripod, no spare battery, and not even a hat.  The description of the tour that Barb had indicated that we would be driven around on busses. Also, everything would be outside. I didn’t think that I would need any fast prime lenses for that, and I was really hoping that we would at least be able to get off the bus occasionally to get some decent photos.

After eating lunch with several of the SAGE members at the round Hilton Hotel at the Austin Bergstrom airport, we arrived at the Circuit of The Americas (COTA) facility at 12:30 PM. It was overcast, and was supposed to remain that way. I did a custom white balance on my Olympus camera and then put my WhiBal card away.

We had about 15 minutes to kill before we were to get on the little busses, so we mingled with the other SAGE members and I took a few photos from the parking lot, and that is when I took the photo at the beginning of this post.

One of the other SAGE members, Dave, took this photo of Barb and I.

This is the only portion of the race track that can be seen from the main parking lot at the south entrance. This is the hill that leads up to Turn 1, and the seats for the spectators that want watch this exciting portion of the track.

Here’s a map of the race track itself

The start/finish line is where the “A” pin is located.

Here is what the start/finish area looks like from near Turn 1.

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I’d like to point out a few things in that photo. You can see downtown Austin in the upper right corner. The bridge in the center, near the horizon, is on Texas Toll Road 130. The spectators sit in the grandstands on the left.

The building on the right is owned by the Formula One organization, and can only be used by the Formula One organization. It therefore sits idle for 51 weeks out of the year. This building is called the paddock.

(Edited on May 1, 2013. A couple of readers pointed out that those statements simply were not true. I sent an email to COTA asking for their help in correcting this information. Here is what they told me: “The paddock building is only used by F1 during that race. It is rented out for events or used as a spectator area during other events. It is not vacant 51 weeks out of the year.”)

The F1 racers start from a stationary start, and you can see the white markings on the pavement for where each car is to be positioned. They immediately race up a rather steep hill towards where we were standing, and when they get to the top of the hill they have to make a hard left hairpin turn. This is what our view of Turn 1 looked like.

There seemed to be about 50 or more people on this UT SAGE tour, and this photo shows about a third of them listening to one of our tour guides as we stood there overlooking Turn 1.

The tour guides told us that it cost $500,000,000 (half a Billion dollars) to build this race track, and that it was entirely paid for by individual investors. One of the SAGE members brought up that the government (city, county, or state ?) was paying $25 Million a year for the F1 membership, though. People get all worked up over that, and I don’t really understand why. Supposedly Austin gets that $25 Million back by having this track here (tourists, lodging, meals, worldwide exposure, etc.). I don’t know if that’s true or not, and I don’t really care, and this is not a political blog… so back to seeing my photos of this spectacular race track.

There is a large “overrun area” on the outside of this hairpin turn. I don’t know how many multi-million dollar race cars ended up running out into that area….

This is the view when looking beyond Turn 1 over towards Turn 2, with a better view of the observation tower.

The red “pipes” sweep up the back and over the top of the observation tower, where they form a ceiling over the white platform that people get to stand on.

We then got back onto our 4 little busses and drove to the far northeastern edge of the race track, where Turn 11 is located. Here is the track as it approaches Turn 11.

And here is Turn 11. It’s one heck of a hairpin curve!

Here we are blocking your view of this incredible turn. When the tour guide asked how fast we thought that the cars were going as they made their way around this turn, I was thinking “40 mph, 50 tops” (64 kph, 80 tops).

I wasn’t even close! The average speed that they slow to is “just” 69 mph (111 kph). That must really be something to see!

Between Turn 11 and Turn 12, the cars supposedly get up to over 200 mph (322 kph). Turn 12 is just before the stands that you see off in the distance. The rate of acceleration and then braking must really be incredible.

OK so after 10 minutes or so at Turn 11, it’s back to the busses.

We drive over to the middle of Turn 17, and park the busses right at the base of the observation tower.

This observation tower is 251 feet (76.5 m) tall. The elevator has only two stops: ground floor and floor 25!

I have too many photos to show you to cram them all into one huge, slow loading blog post, so I’m going to stop this one right here. I have 15 more photos set aside for Part 2 of this tour (9 from up on the tower).

I will end Part 1 of this story by showing you just one photo from up top. This is the very first photo that I took when I got to look out from that observation tower.

That is Turn 17 in the foreground, and Turn 11 is way off in the distance, near the upper left corner of the photo.

In Part 2, I will not be showing the race track in the order that I took the photos. Instead, I will try to show the turns in the order that the racers encounter them. I hope that you will return in a couple of days to see them, as I am pretty excited about what I have to show you.

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For those of you who have been reading my blog for any length of time know that I like to shoot close-up photos, mainly of flowers, but also other things that I find interesting. The “kit” lens that I bought with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera is the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens. This lens has a macro mode, which you get into by pushing a button on the side of the lens, and then sliding the outer barrel of the lens backwards towards the camera. When in the macro mode, the magnification is 0.7 to 1, so it isn’t quite a true macro lens, which is generally defined to have a magnification of 1 to 1. In addition, the lens has its focal length fixed at 43mm (86mm equivalent) when in this macro mode.

Now that spring has fully sprung here in Austin, I really wanted to get out and photograph some of the beautiful flowers that I was seeing from my car as I would drive in and out of my neighborhood.

I remember reading the excellent hands-on review of the Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 lens that Robin Wong had put together last September. I decided that it was finally time to open my wallet and make my first purchase of any type of photography equipment in many, many months.

If you are interested in a macro lens for your Micro Four Thirds camera, be sure to visit Robin’s blog to see the fantastic images that he was able to capture with this lens. You can find all three parts by clicking the links that I provide for you here:

Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro Lens Preview

Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro Review: Extreme Close Up Shooting

Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro Review: General Shooting

So, on Saturday, April 13, 2013 I made my first visit to the beautiful new Precision Camera store on Anderson Lane here in Austin. They had only one of the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 lens left, and it looked to be in great shape, so I bought it. They did not have the lens LH-49 lens hood, so I had them order that for me.

When I got home, I only had an hour or so before we had company over for dinner, so I only had time to read through the few pages in the manual, and to re-read Robin Wong’s “Lens Preview” again. I needed to understand the Focus Limiter switch worked (specifically in the “temporary” 1:1 setting).

The next morning, I was anxious to play a bit with my new lens, and that’s when I took the photo above, which is the zipper on the blue pouch that my Lastolite LL LR1250 12-Inch EzyBalance Calibration Card came in.

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It wasn’t until lunch that I had a chance to go walking around my neighborhood with my new lens, but by then, the morning clouds had vanished, and I was faced with direct, hard sunlight.

The first thing that you have to learn to deal with with this lens is the 60mm focal length. That’s a 120mm equivalent on a full-frame camera. That’s good for a macro lens, as you don’t have to be as close to your subject as a shorter focal length lens. That’s a bit much telephoto to be used as a normal “walk around the neighborhood” lens.

The sunlight was very bright, and not diffused by any clouds. Worse than that, there was a pretty good breeze. That’s bad for someone attempting to do some macro photography of flowers – they seem to wag around continuously, and never come to a complete standstill for more than a fraction of a second.

As a result, I always took multiple photos of the same flower. Some varieties of flowers seemed to be less prone to constant “wagging in the wind” than other varieties – so I only photographed some flowers 3 times, but many I photographed 7, 8, 9, or even 10 times. Even then, there were a few flowers that I ended up with none of them being “good enough” to show you here, and I didn’t keep any of them….

You might think that I’m being a “sharpness snob”, but I don’t think so. The previous photo and the next photo are not really sharp when viewed at 100% on my 24″ monitor.

This macro lens is supposed to be super-sharp, but this will never be a blog post to prove that! About the only way that I could have improved my situation would have been to use an electronic flash to better “freeze” the flowers with the very short duration burst of light.

I didn’t anticipate the “wagging flower” problem to be as bad as it was. Maybe the 60mm focal length exaggerated it more than I was accustomed to with the 43mm focal length of my 12-50mm lens when it is in macro mode. That probably contributed some to my difficulty, but let’s face it, it was just too windy, but I was determined to play with my new toy, so I just did the best that I could…. and I was having a blast doing it!

Harsh, direct sunlight and a breezy spring day were making my job difficult. The weather was gorgeous, and I was having fun. Those of you who have read this far are having to suffer more than I did.

This next photo is a common dandelion seed head. It’s a weed, but I thought it was pretty.

Hey, now here’s something blooming that wasn’t being affected by the wind!

Those little cacti “spheres” were about the diameter of a baseball. That was small enough to use my body to cast a shadow over it.

Finally, putting that 60mm macro lens to the 1:1 setting, I was able to point it straight into one of the flowers on top of that cactus.

And just so I wouldn’t get run over by a car, I would occasionally watch where I was walking, and then I might see something that a slight telephoto (120mm equivalent) might be handy for.

Palm trees are not common in Austin, but they do exist.

By now it was 2:30 PM, and with the sun directly overhead, I was looking for flowers in the shade, or using my body to create the shade.

By doing so, you sometimes have to put your body into some pretty strange positions, and even then it isn’t possible to always eliminate “hot spots” in the background that you cannot also shade.

I don’t know what this next variety of a flower is, but I like it! I only saw it in one neighbor’s yard.

You’ve seen plenty of this next one, which is a Texas Bluebonnet – our state flower.

Some people plant them in their yard!

Now that last photo had the aperture set at f/8.0, and I was focused on the flowers in the background. The background isn’t as sharp as the flowers, but it’s good enough for this blog post (look at the street sign).

Here’s a photo where I actually focused the lens on a house in the background. That house isn’t “wagging in the wind”, and the bricks and the mortar between the bricks look damn sharp to me when viewed at 100%.

Finally, I arrive at our house at 3:35 PM, and take a photo of this little plant that Barb has sitting outside of our front door, somewhat sheltered from the wind. My shutter speed was 1/30th of a second, so I was thankful for the image stabilization of the camera, which seemed to do a great job even with a 60mm focal length lens.

This blog isn’t a review of this Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 lens. It is just me playing around with my new toy – even though the conditions were such that any sane photographer would have kept the camera at home and just gone out for a walk on a beautiful spring day.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery or a hat.

The truth is, I was just trying to get back to where I parked my car, which was three blocks east of Congress Avenue, on Trinity Street between and East 8th and East 9th Streets. I thought that 6th Street might be a “more scenic” route than 7th or 8th Street.

Within the first block after turning east on 6th Street, on the north side of the street sits the very historic Driskill Hotel, which has very recently been purchased by the Hyatt

I had my lens zoomed to as wide as it would go, which was 12mm (24mm equivalent), and even then I couldn’t get the entire front of the hotel into the frame. This is the only photo that I took that day where I wish I had some different equipment with me. My Canon 5D Mark II with the 24mm Tilt-Shift lens would have allowed me to capture the same photo – and not have the hotel seeming to be falling backwards (due to the perspective distortion). On the other hand, this would have been the ONLY photo that I would have wanted to be lugging that Canon camera (and a bag with at least one extra lens). Instead, this is “as good as I could do, with what I had with me”…

At the very first corner, which is Brazos Street, this is the view looking northeast along East 6th Street. Most Austinites do not see this scene at 4:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Actually most Austinites never see this scene, as East 6th Street is a one-way street, with traffic coming straight towards you in this next photo.

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I really don’t have much more of a story to tell. I only walked 2 more blocks along the south side of East 6th Street before I turned north on Trinity Street to get back to my car. Even though I don’t have much of a verbal story to tell, I did capture several photos within those 2 blocks that I would like to share with you!

People from all over the country (the world?) that come to visit Austin and ask “What’s there to do in this town?” are told about East 6th Street as one of the first suggestions. Obviously then, there are several businesses that cater to those who are visiting Austin.

Everyone who lives in Austin has heard or seen the slogan “Keep Austin Weird”. Most find it amusing, but nobody finds it offensive. This web site claims to be the origin of this slogan. I don’t really care, I just liked the tie-dyed T-shirt one vendor had hanging outside their front door.

And while you’re out partying on 6th Street, maybe you’ll have your thought processed altered enough that you might think that this is a good idea.

But really, the reason people come to East 6th Street is to drink and to listen to live music. I’ve never been to the Chuggin’ Monkey, but I like their sign….

After crossing San Jacinto Blvd, here’s another view looking northeast toward Trinity Street. Note that there really are not any modern buildings on East 6th Street, like there were back on Congress Avenue.

On the southeast corner of East 6th Street and Trinity Street sits Maggie Mae’s. I always thought that it was named after an old (but great) Rod Stewart song called Maggie May, but evidently the real story behind the name of this bar can be found here.

This little blackboard sign was in front of Maggie Mae’s, and I thought it was funny enough to photograph it.

OK, now that I was at Trinity Street, I needed to head north for two blocks to get back to my car. While still standing right outside of Maggie Mae’s, I looked back to the west, towards Congress Avenue, where you can see the modern buildings along Congress Avenue towering over the older buildings along East 6th Street.

Look closer at the photo above, and see if you can see the pair of cowboy boots dangling above the street…

It was just a quick, rather uneventful 2 block walk back to my trusty Honda CR-V.

Even though I had only been walking for 1 hour and 20 minutes, the time had just flown by, and I was certainly glad that I had left the house, despite the overcast and dreary sky that had been so prevalent earlier in the day.

It just goes to show you that sometimes you just need to get out there, and make the best of what you can of it.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery or a hat.

I drove up and down Congress Avenue, and even at 2:45 PM on a Sunday afternoon, there are no parking spaces available. I ended up parking three blocks east of Congress Avenue, on Trinity Street between and East 8th and East 9th Streets.

I thought that I would head towards the Texas State Capitol Building, which is located at 11th and Congress. As I walked west on East 10th Street, just west of San Jacinto Blvd., I noticed this building with reflections of both a Catholic Church and the Texas State Capitol building.

At the corner of Brazos St. and East 10th, I just looked up at the Texas Department of Transportation building and took this simple photo.

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I was pleased to see that the overcast sky had pretty much dissipated into the partially cloudy sky.

This next photo was taken while standing in the center of the crosswalk on Congress Avenue at 10th St.

I really didn’t have a plan, other than to just walk south on Congress all the way to 1st or 2nd Street and then come back up Congress Avenue on the other side of the road.

There are many, many building along Congress Avenue that have been designated as historical landmarks. It makes for a very interesting mixture of old buildings and modern buildings.

Just south of 7th Street, on the west side of Congress Avenue is this interesting statue of Angelina Eberly.

The plaque at the base of this statue tells this fascinating story: “In 1842 Texas was an independent nation, and Austin was its capital. Sam Houston, the president of the Republic of Texas, regarded Austin as a vulnerable and unsuitable location for the seat of the government and waged an unsuccessful campaign to have it moved to his namesake city (Houston). As a last resort, the President sent a military detachment to Austin to remove the government archives. When an innkeeper named Angelina Eberly discovered the men loading their wagons, she rushed to the corner of what is now Sixth and Congress and fired the town cannon, blowing a hole in the Land Office building and rousing the populace. The citizens chased down Houston’s men, recovered the archives, and gave them to Mrs. Eberly for safekeeping. This statue honors a bold woman whose vigilance and short temper preserved Austin as the capital of Texas. It was presented to the citizens of Austin on September 26, 2004, by Capital Area Statues, Inc.”

There’s no doubt where I took this next photo from.

I’ve seen Kirk Tuck show this same photo on his blog before, so I thought I’d just put my blatant copy here on my blog….

Looking southeast, one sees the Frost Bank Tower, which is located between 4th and 5th Streets, on the east side of Congress Avenue.

At 422 Congress Avenue is Shiner’s Saloon. I’ve never been there, but I like their sign our front!

We are now down to 3rd Street.

Just north of 2nd Street sits The Austonian, which is a residential building. A t 683 feet (208 m) tall with 56 floors, this is the tallest building in Austin.

At the base of the Austonian, is the little coffee shop Caffé Medici.

I thought that I would get myself a cup of coffee and do stake out a place for some relaxed people watching, but as I poked my head inside, I was surprised at how small, and crowded this place was. I guess it must be very good, because there were at least 15 people in line there to get coffee at 3:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Someday I’d like to give it a try, though.

So I crossed Congress at 2nd Street, and took a few photos of one of the Austin GuitarTown guitars, named Twinkle Twinkle Lonestar.

Back in 2007, there were 32 of these guitars scattered around Austin for public display before being auctioned off to help a charity. Dad and I located all of them, and photographed them wherever they happened to be located. You can see them all here. It’s hard to believe that was 6 years ago…

Just north of 2nd Street, there is huge construction site, with three very large cranes. This is future site of the 1000 room J.W. Marriot Hotel.

As I passed that construction site, here’s an interesting view of both old and new buildings in downtown Austin.

Out front of the Frost Bank Tower, sits one of my favorite Austin GuitarTown guitars, named Vibrancy. I guess just like colorful things, and this one uses it very creatively!

A couple blocks north, I turned east on the semi-famous East 6th Street. The photos that I took there will be the subject of my next blog post.

So, the day started out being what I considered pretty crappy for going out and making photographs, but it certainly didn’t turn out that way. It just goes to show you that sometimes you just need to get out there, and make the best of what you’re dealt.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

OK, it’s been over two weeks since my last blog post. I have been out shooting photos instead of sitting at my computer and writing about shooting photos…. I kinda like it that way, too!  I’m going to try to keep the words to a minimum in this post, but I do need to describe what you are about to see.

For the past 9 (or is it 10?) years, Barb and I have gone to visit her sister’s family in Coppell, TX for the Easter weekend. Coppell is a very nice town just northwest of Dallas, Texas. We drive up on Good Friday, and come home on Easter (Sunday) afternoon. This year, on Saturday, we went to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in downtown Dallas. Yes, the “Perot” is H. Ross Perot, who ran for US President in 1992 and again in 1996.

That’s about all I am going to say for a set-up, except that I do want to mention that cameras are welcome in the museum, but tripods are not. I therefore took 2 fast prime lenses inside the museum with me: Olympus 12mm f/2.0 and Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4. I tried to keep the ISO setting at or below 800 on my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. Even so, there were lots of times that the shutter would be open for 1/4 or 1/8 of a second. When that was the situation, I simply took 3 or 4 photos and hoped that one of them wouldn’t suffer from motion blur.

OK, that’s all the words I want to write – except for the photo captions below, and to say that if you are ever in Dallas, the Perot Museum is definitely on the list of fun and educational things to see!

The photo captions will appear below each photo.

Dancing Water Molecules

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Loving Wife

Friendly Stranger

Reflection

Colors of Light

Shoot the Moon

Phases of the Moon

Fossilized Skeletons

Mammoth Tusks

Mammoth

Huge Bones

Texas Geology

Tornado Maker

Cubes of Gold

Corner Pipes

Molecule Model

Oil Well Drill Bit

King of the Cats

Colorful Life

Image of Me

Stuff you Wish You Didn’t Know

 I hope that you enjoyed my images from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas.

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A week ago, on Saturday, March 16, 2013, the Austin Shutterbug Club had an outing where we met at 8:30 AM at the base of the Main Tower on The University of Texas at Austin campus. The outing was being lead by John Patterson.

As John was handing out maps of the campus, and filling us in on what we were to be looking for, I snapped a couple of photos of the club members. I was the only person without a DSLR camera. I brought my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens mounted on it. Even though I had three great prime lenses in my camera bag, since I had also brought my little Gitzo GT1542T tripod, I never bothered changing lenses that morning.

I had an Olympus camera, two people had Canon DSLRs, and everyone else was shooting Nikon. Many of these people are very accomplished photographers, and really know what they are doing…. Some of them asked about my camera, but I don’t think that any of them actually viewed it as a “real” camera. I realize that my photography skills are going to sway any of them to think otherwise. One of the ladies had a Canon 5D Mark II, and when I told her that I also had that same camera, she looked at me in disbelief as if to wonder why I would leave that at home.

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We met at the base of the steps to the main administration building, generally referred to as “The UT Tower”. Here is a photo looking up towards the tower. Note the inscription “Ye Shall Know the Truth, and the Truth Shall Set You Free”. Well, at least you can see the beginning of it.

Although this event was not a scavenger hunt, we were asked to take photos of patterns, windows, doors, perspective, architectural detail, textures, and extreme/unusual views. In a few weeks we will be asked to submit what we felt were our best photos in each of those categories, and some committee will select the best 3 or 4 from each, and then the entire club will vote for their favorites. As a result, I will not be showing what I consider the best photo that I took in toward each category – not at this time, anyway. Never fear, when I have participated in such events in the past, none of my photos have ever been chosen as one of the best 3 or 4 from any category.

I decided just to have fun, and mingle as best an engineer is capable of mingling.

Since it wasn’t even 9:00 AM yet, I decided to head over to the east side of the tower to see how well it was being lit by the morning sun, even though it was very overcast. (The clouds were predicted to go away by mid-morning, and they did.)

These were my very first sighting this year of any Bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas.

Just to the left of the Bluebonnets, I liked the textures of the rounded rocks, and the lone weed looked kind of like it was struggling for its space among them.

At 9:15 AM, we were to meet outside of Calhoun Hall. On the south side of this building is a rather interesting walkway.

We hung around here for several minutes. Brian Loflin, the founder and president of the Austin Shutterbug Club gave a little talk and demonstration of different perspectives of the same scene. This is Brian on the left.

We walked to the end of that “tunnel” you see in the photo above, which brought us out into a large courtyard behind the building, and next to the Harry Ransom Center and Sutton Hall.

Sutton Hall is a rather colorful building, quite unlike any other building on campus.

Going under the archway above the main door, and looking straight up, you can see some of the elaborate artwork that decorated the ceiling.

It can be a bit surprising when you realize that in the center of the photo above, that there are three “curly-Q” fluorescent light bulbs installed in the hanging light fixture.

Just outside of that same doorway I thought this huge tree limb looked rather unusual. My camera was pointed almost directly into the direction of the sun, so that’s why the photo appears to be somewhat hazy.

I walked over toward the Harry Ransom Center to get a few photos of Dobie Mall, and when I turned around I saw this photo of the UT Tower, framed by the tree limbs. The clock says that it is now 10:25 AM.

We started heading north, and outside of the West Mall Office Building, the patterns of this modern bicycle rack in front of the elaborate ironwork covering the window seemed like it might be good for one of the things that we were supposed to be looking for.

Directly east of there is Goldsmith Hall, which is built to surround an inner courtyard that contains 4 very large palm trees.

That’s Kathy McCall at the base of one of the trees. She’s a damn good photographer, and so I thought I’d wander in there and see if I could learn something by watching her!

I got close to one of the palm trees. looked up, and took this photo. Maybe I’ll use that one for the “textures” category.

We then headed over to the east side of the Student Union Building. I played around with various shutter speeds and depth of field while resting my camera on the limestone shelf. I must have taken 6 or 7 photos, but in the end, this is the only one that I kept.

I then wandered into the building, and went up a stairwell that had lots of daylight coming in through the windows. I setup my camera on my tripod and played around in this stairwell for 5 or 6 minutes.

I started wondering if I had become separated from the group, so I went more into the interior of the building to see if anyone else was inside.

I ran into one of the ladies in the club, and she was looking into this meeting room, acting like she’d like to check it out. I suggested that we go for it! She was getting down low for an “artsy” shot of a row of the backs of the chairs, but I was first interested in a “whole room” kind of photo. Even though there was a lot of light coming in through the windows, I had to keep my shutter open for 8 seconds to take this photo (but I had closed my aperture to a tiny f/22 to get maximum depth of field).

Right after I took that photo, an employee of The University came into the room and told us that we were not allowed to take photographs inside the building without first acquiring prior approval. We apologized and folded up our tripods and left. (At least she didn’t insist that we delete the photos from our memory cards!)

Back outside, we met up with John Patterson and John Sutton. Our group had dwindled to only 5 people. (We knew that we would meet up with many of the “drop-outs” at the designate lunch spot at 12:30 PM.) John suggested that we head up to 24th Street and take a few photos of the Littlefield House.

The home was built in 1893, and later bequeathed to The University in 1935. This home has many ornamental architectural features. I liked the lines of the multi colored shingles on the roof. This architectural style is not often seen here in Austin.

It was now noon, we were on the far north edge of the campus, and our designated lunch spot was at 12:30 on the southwest corner of the campus. On our walk to Schlotzsky’s, we passed by the south side of the UT Tower.

After we got to the Schlotzsky’s sandwich shop, there were about 10 of us sitting at a long table. We enjoyed lively conversations about photography, the drought, where one can find wildflowers already, and one of Brian’s upcoming Wildlife Photography Seminars. After about an hour, I decided to head back to the house and get ready for the Saturday evening that I had planned with Barb.

I almost didn’t make this blog post. Although I had a fun time walking around with my camera and mingling with fellow photographers, this set of photos didn’t cry out to me that I really wanted to share them. They don’t really inspire me. They are pleasing enough, I suppose, but something is lacking. Maybe it is the absence of color? I’m not sure….

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog today.

Last Sunday, March 3, 2013, was the 85th annual Kite Festival held at Zilker Park here in Austin, TX. Barb had an engagement with one of her friends for that afternoon. Since the weatherman said it was going to be a spectacular spring day, I headed downtown to catch the shuttle.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, a circular polarizer, and my hat. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery.

I only had to stand in line for 45 minutes before boarding the yellow school bus. The ride to Zilker Park took more than 30 minutes, in what would normally be a 10 minute ride at 1:00 PM on any other Sunday afternoon. I took the photo above just moments after I got off of that school bus. Even though the trees still haven’t yet leafed out, it definitely felt like springtime, and it was a great day to be outside!

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My first reaction was to get close and try to photograph some of the more interesting kites.

Zilker Park is just across the Colorado River (and slightly west) of downtown Austin. As you can see, there were a lot of people and a lot of kites!

It was definitely a warm, springtime day. The TV news and the newspaper both reported that 20,000 people made it out to the park that afternoon.

The circular polarizer can make the blue sky a unnaturally dark. I usually tried to rotate is so that the sky wouldn’t appear that way, but sometimes the action just happened so fast….

There were hundreds, if not a thousand kites in the air simultaneously. With that many kites in close proximity, there were bound to be some entanglements.

Some kites just never seemed to get off of the ground – it was usually the ones without a tail that didn’t seem to take right off.

Note the condition of the grass in that previous photo. While I wouldn’t say that dust was a problem for the people, but with all of the wind, the dust that was in the air was quickly accumulating all over my camera – and especially the front of the polarizer. I kept blowing it off. I was glad that this camera and lens combination is supposed to be weatherproof. I was also glad that I had only brought one lens, as there was no way that I was going to be changing lenses under these conditions.

This tree seemed to be a very popular final resting place for many of the kites. I was wondering just how many Charlie Browns came out to the park today.

After a while, I found the official Kite Contest Field, where people would enter into actual kite flying contest. I think they have different contests for smallest kite, steepest angle of flight, a 50 yard dash (where you kite must remain in the air). When I got there, they were about to start the contest for the largest kite.

I positioned myself with the downtown buildings as my backdrop and waited for that black “balloon kite” to take off. This is as high as I saw it get.

While I was standing there watching that black blob of a “puffer fish”, I noticed another animal was watching me. The owner told me that this is an African Grey Parrot.

Everyone was watching that black balloon kite roll around in the dusty field, including this other kite!

After an hour and a half, I decided to start heading out of there. But first, just one more look northeast towards the downtown buildings, with all of the kites up in the air.

During my one hour wait in line to get back onto the shuttle bus, I took this parting shot looking to the northwest.

It was certainly fun to get out and enjoy the weather, photographing something completely new to me.

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