Steve Stuff, etc.

I'm Moving!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 02:26:00 +0000

Yes, I'm moving. That is, my weblog is moving. I've incorporated it into my new website http://stephenwolfe.photography. That link isn't quite ready as I write this, but it should be very soon. If it doesn't work, an alternative address, http://stephenawolfe.com, is working and seems to properly redirect. I hope you (yes, both of you) will continue following my occasional ramblings. I know that I plan to do so.

Christmas Photo Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 13:06:00 +0000

A week or two before Christmas (I don't remember exactly when), Andi and I went on a photo walk at Easton Towne Centre in Columbus, Ohio. The walk was sponsored by Midwest Photo Exchange (MPEX), a very good local photography store. Usually photography isn't allowed at Easton, and, from what I've heard, this is regularly enforced, so when I heard about the walk, I thought it would be fun to go along and do some street photography.

It was a very cold evening, but we still had a lot of fun. For the most part we stayed together, but eventually some of us (Andi) became separated. We all met up, though, afterwards for dinner at one of the restaurants at Easton. It was a great way to warm up again and get to know better some of our new photography friends.

We went on another of MPEX's photo walks yesterday, which reminded me about the Easton walk, so I thought I should write about Easton first. I plan to post about yesterday's walk in a couple weeks.

One of our fellow photographers

A street scene

Aaron, our fearless leader

Another fellow photographer

The Strand East

My Home Town

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 22:21:00 +0000

According to my parents, and they should know, and I do trust them, I was born in Portland, Oregon. Several people have corroborated this story, so I believe it. Though I don't visit there often, I do enjoy my visits. Andi and I were briefly in Portland in December while we were making one of our fairly frequent journeys between Seattle and Eugene. While waiting for the light-rail train from downtown Portland to the airport, I had a few minutes to do some street photography at Pioneer Courthouse Square. There was a lot going on, and I had fun shooting.

Amtrak Cascades

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 23:15:00 +0000

Last month Andi and I visited our parents in the Pacific Northwest. My parents live in a suburb of Seattle, WA, and Andi's parents live in Eugene, OR. They're close enough together that visiting them in a single trip makes sense, but they're far enough apart that getting from one to the other takes a significant amount of time. For this trip, for the second time, instead of driving the whole way, we rode the train, Amtrak's Cascades.

Riding the train between Seattle (actually Tukwila, WA, in our case) and Portland, OR, is comfortable, convenient, and fun. The route is mostly scenic and at times spectacular. I especially like the wetlands south of Puget Sound and would love to spend some time there to do landscape and nature photography.

Here are some of my photos on the southbound part of our ride.

Amtrak Station, Tukwila, Washington

Someplace in Washington

Another Amtrak station in Washington

Vancouver, Washington

Union Station, Portland, Oregon

Back Again / Deconstruction

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 22:45:00 +0000

I was thinking about this weblog today, and how I have not published anything for quite a while... since July, it turns out. I was thinking about whether I should just delete it, abandon it and continue to let it grow stale, or try to get back to posting once in a while. I guess since I'm posting this, I've decided on the latter option, but we'll have to see how long that lasts. I'm just not much of a writer, and, for the most part, I don't really feel I have anything interesting to say... at least in words. I hope my photographs continue to speak to the world in at least some minor way.

So I have a photograph to post, one that I hope is the first of many more, and there's a story about how I came to shoot it, which I'm going to try to relate here in a comprehensible way.

First, though, here it is:

As you can see, it's a couple of people working on a couple of cranes. They're using one crane to help in the deconstruction of the other, which was something I found fascinating to watch and to photograph.

In my day job, I work for a major healthcare organization, one that owns and manages several hospitals. We're building a new tower at the hospital across the street from the building in which I work. Every day I go for a lunch time walk, and I like to watch what's going on with the construction.

For most of the construction period, there have been two large, fixed cranes in use to raise or lower whatever needs to be raised or lowered. One of the two was removed a few weeks ago. I had hoped to watch because I really wanted to know how it was done. Unfortunately when I arrived on a Saturday morning on site, the interesting part of the job was already complete.

When I noticed that the removal of the second crane seemed imminent, I started keeping a close eye on the proceedings. Last Friday afternoon I noticed that the cable that runs through the giant pulley had been removed. During my walk I saw that a large, mobile crane had been brought in and was being assembled. So I correctly figured Saturday was the day, and I decided that this time I wasn't going to miss it.

I arrived at about 8:00 AM and was relieved to see that the deconstruction hadn't yet started. The mobile crane was set up and was in the process of being extended to its working height. I didn't have to wait long before four men climbed up the fixed crane and started to work. They first removed most of the counterweights on the back end of the boom. Then two of them walked out the front end of the boom and climbed into position to grab the lifting cables of the mobile crane. During that process is when I shot this photo.

After making this photo I continued to watch until the workers had removed and lowered the first section of the boom. At that time I decided I had seen enough, that I had the photos I wanted, and that it was time for lunch.

Even More of the Streets of Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 02:25:00 +0000

More photos from the streets of Paris:

More of the Streets of Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 14:49:00 +0000

This is a continuation of my last post, showing more of my street photos from Paris.

The Streets of Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:29:00 +0000

Last month Andi and I travelled to Paris, France to attend a photo workshop taught by the great photojournalist and street photographer Peter Turnley. The workshop was excellent, Paris was beautiful (in a rainy way), and Andi and I had a lot of fun making photos and trying to speak French. Here are some of my photos made before, during, and after the workshop.

Walnut Woods Metropark

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 23:52:00 +0000

Today we participated in the annual Columbus Audubon New Year's Day walk. This year the walk was held at Walnut Woods Metropark, just outside of Groveport, Ohio. I had never been to this Metropark, which is the newest in the system. We've had a bit of snow recently, and the snow-covered park was very nice. I shot quite a few panoramas with my Fuji X100, and I'll be adding them to this post as I get them on Flickr.

Ohio State at Night

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 23:47:00 +0000

I should have been posting these as I created them, but for some reason I seem to be unable to find the time to do so. So instead here are several new photos, all at various places around Ohio State University, and all at night.

Merry Christmas to All

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:35:00 +0000

Happy Michael's Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 19:56:00 +0000

Today is my son's, Michael, 30th birthday, and I hope it is a happy one for him. The predicted apocalypse of December 21st, 2012 failed to materialize, so he was able to make it through another year.

I have a photo for the day that has nothing to do with either Michael's birthday nor with the apocalypse; it's just a photo, a photo of the main gym at Ohio State University. I shot it, along with many others, on the morning following the recalcitrant doomsday.

Fuji X-E1; Fujinon 18-55mm OIS @ 18mm; 8 sec @ f/18, ISO 200; Adobe Lightroom 4.3
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Night

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:12:00 +0000

I like taking photos at night. I like dark photos... they have to have some brighter parts, but mostly dark is good. Here are some of my recent night shots.

Some Recent Self Portraits

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:04:00 +0000

I like to include people in my photos. Understandably people get tired of me taking their photos. So the solution I've used is to take photos of myself. I never get tired of being my own subject (or anybody else's subject). So here are a few of my recent shots. I like them!

Copyright © 2012 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Moon Pi

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:22:00 +0000

Another Self Portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:20:00 +0000

The 2012 Transit of Venus

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:32:00 +0000

Andi, Meghan, Richard, and I just returned from viewing the transit of Venus across the Sun. We used a Televue TV-85 telescope with a 25mm ocular and a white light solar filter. I took a photo through the eyepiece using my Fuji X100. It's not a great photo, but it's still pretty special.

Quite a Day

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:06:00 +0000

Yesterday was a long and eventful day for me. It started out at about 6:30 AM when Andi and I drove over to the Schottenstein Center for President Obama's re-election rally. Andi had volunteered to be an iPad data entry person, and I rode along to get a bit closer to my ultimate destination, the Chamber Music Connection (CMC) Spring Festival, which was held at the Ohio State University (OSU) School of Music this year.

In addition to the rally and the festival, OSU was also hosting the state science fair and the Renaissance festival. And if that wasn't enough, the Columbus Half Marathon was being run around the periphery of the campus.

I spent quite a while taking photographs at the rally since the festival didn't start until 9 AM. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed interacting with many of the volunteers and attendees, all of whom were very enthusiastic and friendly.

I walked along part of the half marathon race course to get to the festival area and was entertained by a couple band, a drill corps, and several more enthusiastic people. I made it to the festival with enough time to spare to be able sit down and enjoy some quiet time.

I've just started going through the 1700+ photos I shot at the festival and have posted a few on the Chamber Music Connection's Facebook page, if you're interested. I plan on posting more photos, from all of the events that I saw, here and/or on my other accounts around the web.

Oh! I finally made it home at about 6:30 PM and stayed just long enough to get ready to go downtown to the Cavani String Quartet Concert, which was actually part of the festival, at the Southern Theater. I shot more photos there, both before and after the concert, so you can expect to eventually see some of those here as well.

My day ended at midnight, since it was then another day, but I don't think I made it to bed until well after that. As you might imagine, I had a few photos I needed to upload to my computer.

Australia's Snowy Mountains: Going Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:01:00 +0000

It was a cool and rainy day in the Snowy Mountains, and as we rode up the ski lift from Thredbo, the weather because even more cool, in many senses of the word. The thick, highly structured clouds promised for some interesting, albeit wet, photography.

We had expected to be rather lonely in the mountains, after all, it was a school day. We were definitely wrong on that point as we had found a crowd of one to two hundred school children and their teachers queued up waiting to ride the ski lift to the top. The Snowy Mountains are rather expansive, though, and even though there was a crowd, the 13 km walk provided for plenty of lonely looking panoramas.

The Snowy Mountains of Australia aren't very high compared to the standards of any other continent, only a couple thousand meters, but for us lowlanders, they provided sufficient challenge. Altitude gain is gradual and is a few hundred meters in total. With many "photo op" stops along the way and taking a reasonable pace, one much slower than most of the children, our walk to the top of Mt. Kocsiuszko, the top of Australia, was productive and enjoyable.

I hope you enjoy the views as much as we did!

Fuji X100; exposure: 1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Fuji X100; exposure: 1/30 sec @ f/16, ISO 250; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Fuji X100; exposure: 1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 500; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Fuji X100; exposure: 1/220 sec @ f/16, ISO 800; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Fuji X100; exposure: 1/340 sec @ f/16, ISO 200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

A shack somewhere in Australia's Snowy Mountains near Mt. Kosciuszko. Apparently the shack has a mass of 500 kg.
Fuji X100; exposure: 1/550 sec @ f/16, ISO 800; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Lake Cootapatamba is a glacial lake and is the highest altitude lake in Australia.
Fuji X100; exposure: 1/110 sec @ f/16, ISO 800; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Andi at the summit of Mt. Kosciuszko
Fuji X100; exposure: 1/750 sec @ f/16, ISO 800; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Australia: Sydney to the Snowy Mountains

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Andi and I are back from a very enjoyable vacation in Australia, and I'm ready to start documenting some of it (now that I have a sufficient number of photos posted on Flickr).

Andi had been at a woodturning conference, someplace north of Sydney, for a week before I arrived. She met me at the Sydney airport, with some difficulty in finding each other, and we headed out directly for the Snowy Mountains. We set the GPS to avoid tollroads, and that drive ended up being the only time I really saw any of Sydney. The roads were all very crowded, so I was pretty happy when we finally made it out of town.

We headed southeast towards Canberra and over the Great Dividing Range, which seems to be Australia's equivalent of North America's Continental Divide. Once out of town, the scenery was spectacular: mostly Eucalyptus forests and grasslands. We stopped several times for photo-ops in the Lake George area and made it to Cooma by dinnertime.

By the way, if you're ever in Cooma, be sure to stop at the Turkish Pizza restaurant there. Yum! The best food I ate while in Australia. It was so good that when we drove from the Snowy Mountains to Merimbula a few days later (more to come on that... stay tuned), we went out of our way in order to go through Cooma so that we could have some more pizza.

After dinner we headed out again and ended up making one more photo-op stop someplace before reaching Jindabyne. It was well after dark by the time we arrived at our destination, the ski resort town of Thredbo, which is the gateway to Mt. Kosciuzsko in the Snowy Mountains (another upcoming episode or two or three).

Photographically speaking, the long drive was quite a success. I hope you'll agree.

Australian Pond: Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 70mm; exposure: 1/2000 sec @ f/16, ISO 1600; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom CS5 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Andi at Lake George: Fuji X100; exposure: 1/125 sec @ f/16, ISO 200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Australian Hillside: Fuji X100; exposure: 1/550 sec @ f/16, ISO 200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

Australian Wind Farm: Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 70mm; exposure: 1/1600 sec @ f/16, ISO 1600; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom CS5 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Australian Landscape: Fuji X100; exposure: 1/40 sec @ f/16, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

The Milky Way

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:51:00 +0000

In addition to shooting the time-lapse series of the night sky while in Australia, I also shot a few single frames including this one where I aimed the camera toward the center of our galaxy.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D; exposure: 5 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 6400; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4

Southern Sky Time-lapse

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:14:00 +0000

During the first night of my vacation in Australia I awoke at about 1 AM and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to take a look at the southern sky. It had been a couple years since I had last seen the southern stars, and I was anxious to see them again. The night sky as seen from Australia's Snowy Mountains was spectacular, so I decided to set up my Nikon D700 to do a time-lapse sequence. I ended up working on it until 4:30 AM. I shot about 300 frames and used 212 of them to make this video.

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 70mm; exposure: 4 sec @ f2.8, ISO 6400; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5.

Back from Australia!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 01:16:00 +0000

Andi and I just returned from a vacation in Australia. We spent our time their in the Snowy Mountains and along the coast of New South Wales. We did a lot of walking and took a lot of photos. I've loaded the photos onto my computer and once I start getting them posted on my various social media accounts, I plan to add some, along with commentary, here. Please stay tuned!

50mm: Civil War Re-enactors

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:35:00 +0000

I came across a group of Civil War re-enactors while wandering around downtown looking for my COTA posters (see My COTA Poster Self-Portrait Project for more information about this). These guys (and a gal) had a cannon aimed directly at the Ohio Statehouse! I asked them if they were angry with the governor. Most of them laughed, and one said "no," and told me they were just practicing a cannon misfire drill for some upcoming event. It never did become clear to me why they needed to have the cannon pointed at the Statehouse for this drill. It did, though, make for interesting conversation.

I watched for a while and chatted with a couple of them. I eventually asked if they would mind if I shot some photos. They said that would be fine. I imaging they're used to that kind of attention. So I took a few environmental shots with the cannon and Statehouse in the frame and then started moving in very close to take portraits. I continued to ask them about their events, all the while happily shooting away.

Later on, back home, I wasn't too thrilled with the wider shots, but I loved some of the portraits. I post-processed a few of them then and a few more later on. I tried to make my photos look appropriate, by using a sepia tone and quite a bit of vignette, for what the re-enactors were doing. I hope I've succeeded.

I'd really like to find these guys or other re-enactors again and shoot some more portraits. Hmmm... I wonder if there's a business model in there somewhere?

I'm also still wondering about those who didn't laugh at my joke about the governor. Hmmm again.

All photos taken with a Nikon D700 DSLR and an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens and post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

©2012 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Blue Hour at Killdeer Plains

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:03:00 +0000

This past weekend Andi and I went to Killdeer Plains, about 50 miles north of where we live in Columbus, Ohio. We waited until late afternoon so that we could be there throughout the sunset and into the blue hour. We met up with some friends and found a nice spot for some landscape (and in my case, self-portrait) photography. The sunset wasn't spectacular, but the setting was nice and there were some nice clouds to the west, so after sunset the lighting was pretty cool. Here's one of my favorite shots, for which I used my favorite lens, my 50mm f/1.4 prime. By the way, I plan to post some of my self-portrait shots from that evening here as well, so (as usual) please stay tuned.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.