Jim Danvers Photography - Berkshire N.Y.

For Bill

Jim — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:18:09 +0000

Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-200mm VRII
165mm (approx. 35mm length of 247mm) 1/1250th at f/2.8, iso 400
(download the pic – all of the exif info should be there… )

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…. so the other day I stop in at one of the very few remaining photo related retail stores that are still left in the area, just for the sake of popping in and saying “Hi” to the folks that own the place and/or work there. I haven’t been there in a long time since my employment situation has me working a long ways away now and I’m rarely in the area. One of the guys in the shop happens to mention “… hey – you got some pretty good stuff on your blog … ” I do an about face and am like “Oh yeah – you’ve been there before – yeah – you left me a comment on one of the race pics or something right ?” He mentions that he is “subscribed” to it and gets an e-mail notification whenever I update it.

Me: ( incredulously) “Really?!”

Him: Yeah….

Me: … I didn’t know it could / did do that… cool… (lol!)

He mentions that I haven’t posted anything in a while. I counter that I admit to being guilty of not posting here as often as I should – but that I do post to facebook quite regularly. I tell him that I don’t know if anyone ever see’s or even knows that this blog exists… he tells me “au contraire” … you should try and post to it at least once a week.

So I think that maybe I will try and be a little more conscious about posting here, and posting up only the good stuff too. So with that in mind, we got to “talking shop” ( cameras and related equipment ) and were lamenting the oft delayed, and now “mythical” arrival of the Nikon D400 which would be the LONG overdue successor to the D300. The D300 is the same body that both of us have. It is a fine camera so long as it is used within it’s limitations. Chiefly amongst those limitations are having plenty of available light as the D300 gets really “noisy” at iso’s above 800. ”Noisy” for those of you who might not be photo illuminati means the pictures look “grainy”. I was telling Bill about a couple of grabs that I did get recently with my D300 from a recent race up at Greek Peak.

So here it is. (up there) I do prefer to use my D700 more as that camera is and has been a beast of a workhorse, plus it handles high iso (low light) situations unbelievably well. It is what is known as a “full frame” body though which, for sports makes my lenses “shorter”. ( it actually reflects the true value of the lenses – it is the older “crop body” D300 that “lies” about the lense length ) Crop bodies will on average turn a 200mm lens into a rough equivalent 300mm for example. It is for this singular purpose that I still like to use the older “crop” body – it is extremely handy for field sports (football, baseball, etc ….. ). It can come in handy for motorsports too….

Anyway …

Racing, Racing and more Racing!

Jim — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:20:19 +0000

Round 4 of WNYOA’s series wrapped up this past Sunday out in Arcadia, NY at the Bark Buster event. There is an AMA National Hare Scrambles event this coming weekend (June 8-9) at the Greek Peak ski center / resort out in Virgil, N.Y. I’m going to go out and shoot that – it’s a two day affair – bikes on Saturday, quads on Sunday. The weather is looking a little sketchy for Saturday . . . we’ll play it by ear.

Just wanted to get this out real quick – haven’t updated this in a little while so here is a grab from the big bike’s action from Arcadia (prior to the cloud burst which drenched everyone including yours truly… ! ). I already have all of the keepers from the Big Quads up and a very small set of mini quads too. I didn’t get there in time to catch the morning youth classes…

http://galleries.jdanvers.com/wnyoa2013

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You don’t spit into the wind, you don’t tug on Supermans cape

Jim — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:44:37 +0000

…. and you don’t mess with WNYOA’s Iron Man! :) lol!!

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WNYOA Round #2 2013 is a done deal

Jim — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:50:19 +0000

Lock & Load

In what could only be called an “ugly” day for photography there was in fact some really good racing happening under, conversely enough, nearly ideal conditions for racing. The sky was 100% overcast – although it did at times have some “texture” to it that could be pulled out if exposed for – it was one of those skies that is nearly guaranteed to blow out in most of your photo’s. The temperatures were cool’ish – I’m thinking that the dampness and occasional misting that was happening contributed to that. The cool temps, lack of a blazing hot sun, and the dampness in both the air and on the ground did make for some really good race conditions though – it was neither dusty nor was it a sloppy mud fest. Like the fussy little bear looking for the good bowl of porridge – it was “just right!”

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I started out my day up on the hill at 7:30′ish am shooting the super mighty micro’s (pee wee’s) and ended it many hours, acres of terrain covered, and frames rattled off on both camera’s later a little after 4:00pm, I’m whipped…. I’m going through the lot now and have already posted a few to facebook and am now posting this one here. They will likely start appearing up on the galleries in a day or so.

Check that last link above for the galleries periodically over the next week and/or the facebook groups (WNYOA and WNYOA Riders) for updates.

-=- jd -=-

Raptor Project at Waterman Conservation Education Center

Jim — Sat, 11 May 2013 22:47:39 +0000

My wife told me about a show happening at the Waterman Conservation Education Center, in Apalachin NY, called “The Raptor Project“. We went out and caught the last show of the day and it was actually a nice little way to spend an hour or so. I brought my camera along and wisely opted to bring the D700 which handles low light / high iso situations much better than my other body. ( I had heard that the show was going to be in an indoor auditorium but I had no clue about the place – big, small, dark, well lit, etc … ) Turns out that it is in fact a very small facility AND not particularly well lit either. The small size of the place was good as anyone could get right up close to the birds, but I still had to crank the iso way up in order to get any kind of half decent shutter speed. I actually used VR today on my lens (70-200) which I rarely use. Readers digest – I really didn’t shoot to many photo’s as the lighting was really pretty bad. Even after I set the white balance on the camera to match the indoor flourecents, I was still seeing a LOT of color shift, and even wide open @f/2.8 and 3200 iso, shutter speeds were still only hovering around 1/125th or so. That was ok though – I would have rather spent the time listening to the speaker and watching the birds than “fight” with the camera.

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Here is a grab of the American Bald Eagle that the show presenter Jonathan Wood had with him. This particular bird was apparently rescued from Virginia after having been hit by a car I guess. It has a permanent injury to it’s wing that would have proven fatal to it had it survived the car strike – it can no longer fly. Wood is an engaging, informative and good speaker who interacts well with his audiences, the kids in particular. The place was packed – it was a standing room only crowd.

WNYOA 2013 Series Begins!

Jim — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:30:17 +0000

The first race of the 2013 series was held this past Sunday 5 May in Van Etten, NY at the event known regionally as Dream Riders. It is typically one of the bigger events of the year and the excitement in the weeks leading up to it was palpable in the facebook groups. I’m actively getting photo’s from the event posted up to the galleries – keep checking back over the next few days as they get more and more populated.

In the meantime ….

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Jared Jordan grabs the holeshot in the premier AA/Pro race of the day. Lurking behind him is the feared Ben “Batman” Bouwens, and the green plated #25 of Tony Howe. Jordan and Bouwens duked it out for two hours with The Bat eventually securing the win by :38 seconds over Jordan. Hopefully this will be a prelude of good racing to come this summer!

Free Photo Software = Awesome!

Jim — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:37:08 +0000

Check this out — googles picasa has been around for years and it continually gets better. I have discovered in the last year or so that it can open and read raw files (at least my Nikon D300 and D700 .nef’s anyway ) You’re mileage may vary for you Canonista’s and other brand shooters…

Today I grabbed what I was hoping would make for a nice pano of a bunch of cows in a field that I happened upon while driving into work this morning. I knew I’d be able to open them in Picasa ( I can’t have lightroom / photoshop installed on my desktop at work – not my computer… so I gotta make due with what I’ve got – ya know? ) I googled just for the hell of it – “youtube gimp pano tutorial” as The GIMP is a very powerful Photoshop clone that is also an opensource / free software. I found some tutorials on how to use it to create a pano, but frankly, didn’t really look like it did / does a really good job of it. ( compared to CS5 anyway – which is freaking amazing…. ! ) I did happen to notice another link to something called “Hugin” – I watched to tutorial, seemed easy enough, and appeared to do a half decent job. It too is open source – so I grabbed a copy of it.

Dudes – this is what that little (FREE) piece of software did for me – in a matter of a minute or two. Outstanding!

Moo . . . | Click the photo to view it larger | Right click to save or set as wallpaper

Synopsis:

Open and save as .jpg’s the 5 original raw files from picasa.
Start the little hugin thing – load the newly created .jpg’s into it and let it do its thing.
Badda Bing, Badda Boom! Crop it a tad, upload it here – done!

Free software … what’s not to dig about that? :)

Eagle, Amish and Sadomasochists

Jim — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:31:31 +0000

I finally, definitively saw an American Bald Eagle today. I was headed home earlier this afternoon from work under a clear, cloudless blue sky when I happened to notice a large bird circling over a field off to my left. Initially I discounted it as one of the many, many red-tail hawks that are very predominant amongst the larger raptors in the area. It was certainly bigger than a crow – probably a hawk. I watch it for . . . 3 seconds – I’m doing 55-60 mph on route 26 just north of Cincinnatus – gotta pay attention here. This is bigger than a hawk. A turkey buzzard – fair number of those around too . . . I check the rear view mirror – nothing back there. I’m on the brakes now slowing down fairly quickly ( “what is that… ?” ) and the window is going down. The bird circles right into the sun and there it is plain as day — long brown “finger like” feathers out at the wing tips and that white shroud from the neck up. This soaring creature has a golden yellow beak – he/she is an eagle!! I’ve finally seen one! :)

Car is off to the side of the road now and stopped. I grab my camera – I have a short / wide angle lens on it. Damn!! I quickly pop that lens off and rifle into my bag for a longer lens + my tele converter to give me more reach…. I drop the tele-converter – (Jack Bauer – “Damnit!”) I finally manage to get the stupid camera together – mr/mrs eagle has soared on the current and is now way to high and quite far away. What shot there might have been is lost. {sigh}

I finally saw an eagle though. :)

I did see this Amish guy working his team of horses plowing one of his fields earlier in my drive back up the road near Georgetown. That made for a kind of nice shot.

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I’m also still on the local cycling clubs e-mail list and happened to know that they were doing a time trial that wasn’t to far out of my way from home. It was a nice day and I know that this course is kind of hilly – if I could catch the riders coming into early evening, getting kind of low in the sky sun, then I might be able to get some good expressions of pain and suffering. The course was not entirely conducive to getting them headed directly into it – I wound up with more of a pretty strong cross light. I did get away with a few ‘eh so so grabs. I still had the tele-converter on the lens so I was able to shoot ‘em from pretty far out. I hit ‘em with it “wide open” ( f4.8 in this case – nikkor 70-200 vr-ii f/2.8 + the nikon 1.7 tele – you lose a stop or so – max aperture becomes 4.8 ) Still not sure if I like that thing or not….

A fist full of knuckle — b r a a p !!

Jim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:01:33 +0000

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The annual Moose Knuckle Shuffle was held just over the border in Pa ( near Elmira ) this past Sunday the 21st of April. This is a fun “ride” (that isn’t a race) that the two wheeled crowd holds as a kind of pre-season kickoff for the upcoming WNYOA series.

Photo’s from the event are actively being uploaded to the galleries. Check ‘em out and enjoy!

Broome Tioga MX Season Kickoff / April Edition of STORR

Jim — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:57:04 +0000

Broome Tioga’s MX season kicked off this past Sunday the 14th and I decided to go up as the weather forecast wasn’t supposed to have been to bad. ( frickin’ weather men and their damned WRONG forecasting… ) In actuality it wasn’t really ~to~ bad but it certainly wasn’t anywhere near the forecasted 50-some odd degrees either. It was cool (to cold), overcast, damp and just a generally kind of ugly day out. It wasn’t raining or snowing though so it could have been worse I suppose. The track was in remarkably good shape though considering the amount of rain that we have had in the area over the past week or so…

Anyway – I only stuck around for a little while as I had other commitments, plus I didn’t really dress quite as warmly as I should have. A number of photo’s from this race are already up and available at the galleries and I’m still adding to it as this post goes up. Check back from time to time to see if I grabbed a frame or two of you, or someone you know. I’ll update here and on facebook when they are all up.

Kawasaki rider Kevin Mang rips it up during first moto action at Broome Tioga’s 2013 MX season opener. Kevin finished 5th overall on the day. Click the photo to view it larger | Right click to save or set as wall paper.