Sweet singletrack goodness. I'm already excited about this one!

On the YMCA spin bike for 40mins out of the saddle looks like this. I know the image isn't the best but that's what a shaky iPhone shot looks like. ;-)

I had some insane techno tunes blasting via the iPhone which helped cause a large biohazard to form in a 180 degree perimeter around the front of the bike.

Blurry vision, drool and sweat = awesome. I got 80mins on the bike this morning and some quick core and stretching. When I left the Y I was a bit wobbly. Nice!

I pulled it together in the parking lot and headed of to go pick up the boys from school.

Good times.

Shooting into the sun on a bright day causes havoc with images, with the SB-900 on it's BL setting the i-TTL mode takes care of business while still leaving room for creativity on how I want the end results to look. Without a flash these images would be dull and lifeless, with the subject dark and washed out and the background blown out. It's unfortunate this kind of shooting isn't better understood by mainstream camera-owners, I see lots of parents shooting their kids with the little pop-up flash on an expensive camera and I know they aren't getting good images given the shooting conditions. Too bad nobody has taken the time to explain to them how lighting can make a huge difference.



Nobody taught me how to use light, I've just done a ton of reading on sites like Strobist and the Nikon CLS forums and such. Reading only takes you so far though, eventually you have to start experimenting. I look for lighting challenges to solve, the harder the lighting problem the more I learn. I do ok sometimes, most of the time I realize how little I know and how many compromises I have to make in order to get close to what I want out of an image. I enjoy the journey more than the results so it's all time well spent. This image below is a good example of a lighting challenge where I had to choose a compromise, I shot Keegan speeding down a slide at the school playground with the sun directly behind him. Balancing shutter speed against aperture which gets balanced against lighting, in this case I had to take a compromise, showing a tiny bit of motion blur from his movement down the slide. I could have notched up the shutter speed to freeze him but then I would have taken a hit on the lighting or aperture. The image turned out pretty good, not great, just good. And that's the fun part, deciding in real time where to take the hit by making the best compromise for the result I'm chasing.



Another good example, shooting below Evan while he was swinging across the monkey bars which had me shooting up into the bright sky. In this case I managed to freeze him, get decent depth of field and still illuminate his face enough via the flash that it all kind of comes together.



Of course anyone who checks into the blog on occasion knows my main interests lie in dramatic light or non-typical shots, a lot of that stuff occurs indoors. This image of Evan down in the basement this morning was shot with the SB-900 remoted and triggered by the D200 in Commander mode. The flash was off to his side and on the floor pointing away from him with the flash head firing at a white door and bouncing the light back at him. Is it technically perfect, not really but I like the lighting and I like it's flaws.

I could have filled in the image some more with the SB-600 off on the other side or coming in at an angle from behind or high-behind but that's not the look I was interested in at the time. Tomorrow I might be chasing that, but that's for tomorrow.

Probably my favorite part of this image is the un-posed nature of Evan. Normally in these kinds of semi-portraits I will get him to smile or at least be part of the shot but in this case I waited until he was thinking about something else, preferring to catch him in his real time presence rather than something I was influencing with the camera. To my eye it is a perfect capture of the moment even with it's technical flaws. Flash geekery 101 done for the day, if you want to see the best tasting 4oz latte I've had in months (from this morning) go over here.

The night time ritual, pajamas and Doreen reading a bedtime story.

I shot some high speed macro yesterday. Three larger images sit over here.

Neither subject is related in anyway, I'm just too lazy to create two posts.

With Halloween coming up fast, last night we carved the pumpkins. Both boys got to pull scary faces so I could copy them on to their pumpkins. It was pretty funny watching them try to pull mean and scary faces. I think they are still a few years away from scary. Here's Evan's pumpkin.



While we had the lights off, I thought I would get creative with the flash and this is what I came up with. OOooooooooo, scary.



Evan's school had their Halloween costume party yesterday and Keegan had his today. Keegan was pumped about the candy he brought back, in this image he seemed super excited about the skeleton ring but that only lasted for 10 seconds then it was back to being excited about the candy. ;-)



After school I was downstairs getting the boys to clean up their mess and figured I would blast off some images of the fish we have in the fish tank. It's a 90 gallon tank and right now we have just over 20 fish. Here's what we have in there...

Bronze Cory cat and Golden Barb



Rainbowfish and Zebra Danio



Moonlight Gourami and Gold Gourami



Well, that concludes the biology lesson for the day, aren't you glad you dropped by.

It speaks for itself.

My Nikon SB-600 Speedlight has been having some issues. I've had it for over 3yrs and it's served me well but recently it has been randomly firing off flashes without me touching anything on the camera. It might be the flash mount that has become so loose the contacts are acting up, whatever the case it's been distracting and concerning for a while but it was particularly annoying when I was taking shots of the boys playing indoor soccer on the weekend. Standing on the sidelines with my flash blasting off for no apparent reason is enough to get stinkeye from other parents.

I use flash quite often. I can't imagine shooting without it. Since the weekend I've poured man hours into a solution to replace the SB-600, there's a bunch of ways to go regarding light but to make a long story short I went with the Nikon SB-900 Speedlight. It will offer me some advantages over the SB-600 both on and off the camera and I'll make the SB-600 a fill flash for as long as it lasts. I can fire the SB-600 with the SB-900 acting as the trigger on camera, or I can fire them both off camera using the D-200 popup.

I haven't used the SB-900 for much yet, I just shot some of the boys and some static stuff. So far I'm really impressed with what I see.



There's going to be a bit of a learning curve with the SB-900 so expect some weird lighting experiments while I see how far I can push it around. I've already started to experiment with the new setup, exploring the 'weird' side of things. I love this kind of stuff but I know it's not everyone's cup o' tea, so bear with me as I post the weird from time to time.

The next two images were taken with the 600 and 900 off camera, both firing along the table at different angles and power settings. I took quite a few shots to see what worked and what didn't. After the first couple of shots I made it a goal to try and light up the little rubber toys so they appeared to be glowing internally. I think the results turned out pretty well considering it was my first bit of experimentation.

Just in time for Halloween.



Glowing rubber toys. Ghoulishly fun. ;-)

I've been playing with macro flash photography for quite a while, it's a lot of fun. Kind of combining two passions at once, I mean I love a good espresso in small milk and I love catching new things in my lens.

I shot this one using the Nikon 105mm macro lens at 1/8000 and F/14 with the SB-600 in Commander mode approx 12 inches away and pointing directly into the cup on a 45 degree angle with the flash manually set at 85mm.

The boys were at their second indoor soccer practice of the season this afternoon. It's their first season of indoor, after a couple of years of outdoor in Texas. They both like it. Evan enjoys kicking the ball around and playing with a team, it's a faster game and he likes running.

Keegan likes playing net and running around chasing the ball, or chasing anything actually even if it's imaginary. He's still figuring out the way the game is played so it's mainly just fun at the moment. One thing he has figured out, snacks. His favorite part of any soccer game is the snacks at the end of the game. He's always trying to weasel his way into another teams snacks as well, little monkey.

A high speed macro of the Brewtus II in action.

I was crouched down in front of the Brewtus II during the shot pull. The SB-600, at a 90 degree position to the camera lens, was in Commander Mode and synced to the D200's built-in flash. I was shooting with the 105mm Macro lens on manual focus at a shutter speed of 1/3200.



There are a couple of larger images (and better) over on my other blog.

I decided to clamp my iPhone to the Gitzo tripod and grab some video of how I setup the shot. Not sure if it will help anyone.



If that didn't help, here's a bonus video of the wonky rosetta that went into that espresso. Enjoy.

I decided to post up the one pager I discussed in my last post. Keep in mind this one pager was designed to get someone heading in the right direction of a reasonable bike fit. It won't work for everyone, some common sense will have to be applied, it isn't here to replace a professional bike fit.

Of course I won't take any responsibility if you read the advice wrong and 'think' I told you to do Step 1 and Step 2 blindfolded and after drinking a case of beer.

If it helps then my job here is done.

I volunteer at the YMCA once per week. I also go there to hit the spin bikes and core about three days per week. So what does that have to do with bike fit geometry and angles? Well let me tell you...

The spin bikes at my YMCA are the Keiser M3, a decent general-purpose gym bike. It has a four-way adjustable saddle position (up, down, forward, backward) and an adjustable handlebar height, good load resistance which is predictable based on a lever input and a wattage indicator that is, uhmmmm, imprecise (I'm being generous, the M3 doesn't do wattage very well at all). I don't concern myself too much with the wattage readings on the M3, I generally look at the averages and then apply some fuzzy math against the sessions perceived exertion and then do a historical comparison against real wattage devices like my PowerTaps or my CompuTrainer in order to determine my WKO+ results. Whoops, I went off on a tangent, so in case I lost anyone there the only important stuff in this paragraph is the Keiser M3 is reasonably adjustable for bike fit angles.

My YMCA is home to a really wide range of people. Over the last couple of months it has been interesting to watch some of them walk out of the locker room, hop on a spin bike and start spinning like their life depends on it while using some really wacky fit angles. Imagine some of the worst bike fits you've ever seen and then double the worst part, now you're starting to get the idea. I'm not talking adjustments off by a quarter of an inch, I'm talking about several inches. Sometimes a 5' tall female will hop on a bike and do some adjusting of the bike angles and get on with riding, the next person on the same bike might be a 6' tall guy who doesn't change any of the angles, he then proceeds to pound out some really compressed pedal strokes. Aiyeeeee! Sometimes I will mention something, sometimes I don't, I could stand there all day long and be the bike fit crusader but really I just want to get a workout in.

Today, was the straw that broke my camel's back, let me explain. When I hit the spin bikes, pretty much every single time I ride I drop the saddle down to it's lowest position to get it out of the way because I will spend my entire ride standing out of the saddle. If I'm doing a 60min spin I spend 60mins out of the saddle. When I finished riding this morning I hopped off, cleaned the drool off the bike and started doing balance ball core fairly close to the spin bike area. Just before I had to leave to pick up the boys from school, a guy got on the bike I had been standing on, he didn't make any adjustments, he just put in his ear buds and started to ride. His horizontal and vertical plane was so whacked it was like a crazy carnival position. I looked around to see if anyone else was staring besides me. I should have helped get him in a generally acceptable position but a) it didn't look like it would be a 30sec conversation and, b) I was out of time to pick up the boys.

So, as I was heading for the door I thought of an option c). My c) option is create a one pager that the YMCA can hang up in the spin areas which shows example bike fit and provides general direction on how to get setup on a spin bike. Self-education works. Rather than blatantly screen capture some proprietary fit system advised angles or demonstrated ride geometry, I went down in the basement, threw a sheet behind the CompuTrainer, put the D200 on the tripod and then put Keegan in charge of pushing the shutter activation button (how funny is that). These are the images Keegan took, I'm pretty sure I did the Capture NX2 and Photoshop, or did I? ;-)

For the bike geeks out there, I don't want to hear any complaints about 'it' not being a perfect 30 degree angle and the XYZ isn't precisely yadda, yadda, yadda. Just know that my Roubaix SL2 is setup different than my Merlin which is setup different than my S-Works Stumpjumper. The important thing is these images might cause a gajillion percent improvement over some of the bike fits I have seen recently. Equally as important, I will be able to spin my little heart out and not have to explain to someone their saddle needs to come up six inches.

Here's the images, shoot me a message if you think I should have used a green line instead of yellow. ;-)

This morning we headed off to Butterfield Acres (really, who comes up with this stuff) for the seasonal Pumpkin Hunt/Hay Ride. Throw in a petting zoo and all is good in the land of Butterfield Acres.



Here's 'Farmer Dan' giving the briefing on how adults can't see the color orange but kids can, so any kid that sees a pumpkin has to yell out "PUMPKIN!!!" It was right about then that the dental surgery started telling me it was awake.

The boys had fun finding their pumpkins out in the small field, this is my favorite image from the day.



On the hay ride back the large hole in my jawbone informed me it was time to crawl under some blankets and hope the ibuprofen kicked in.



The boys continued to pet various other animals with Doreen while I retired back to the Pilot and pretended the nausea, aches and shivers weren't happening. Post-dental bonuses, fantastic.

When we got home I did crawl under the blankets and proceeded to moan and feel sorry for myself. I haven't been on the bike for a few days because of 'The Dental Event' and I'm starting to get irritated, hey, maybe the nausea, aches and shivering are actually withdrawal symptoms from not riding enough. Hopefully I'll be able to address that starting on Monday.

It's the best title I could come up with, it popped into my head after I poured this four ounce latte 30mins ago.



Why imperfect day? Well as the latte goes, the pour isn't very symmetrical and the depth of field focus isn't quite on the surface of the milk. Is that a heart above the mini-rosetta, or is it a lop-sided blob??? But in all it's imperfection it was a very good drink. Perfect for all it's imperfection.

On to other imperfection. This morning started off with a bang, a dental bang. I've had an annoying throbbing tooth on and off now for a few weeks, not so bad that I couldn't ignore it but it was letting me know it's time was coming. The throbbing was coming from the same area I had a root canal done nearly 10yrs ago, never a good sign I've learned. For the last few days the throbbing has been getting worse, to the point where I wasn't getting very good sleep, and an episode of up till 0400hrs cursing the toothache finally forced my hand so I set course for the dental office.

Just a few minutes into sitting in the chair I took this image using my iPhone as they prepared to do a Bridge. Ughh.



For those of you who haven't experienced the pleasure of a Bridge, it kind of went like this... "Dude, you're getting a Bridge". Out come the needles to numb things out, then the dentist got all medieval on me with some wicked looking tools and drills. He was going after the tooth that had the root canal done (which had posts down in to the bone to hold it in place) and then had to clear the root canals some more - goooooood tiiiiimes! Then he had go to work on the two teeth on either side of the now empty hole to reduce them in size to act as anchor points - soooooo much fun! There was blood and chunks of teeth going everywhere, I'm not kidding I saw pieces of teeth the size of peas flying into the air, unbelievable.

Once everything was prepped they fashioned a temporary bridge which is in place for the next few weeks till the bone heals and then I go in for a fitting for the replacement, then another visit for the cementing, then another... uhmmm, yeah whatever, what's it going to cost. Sit down. That would be $3100 all in. Ughh.

Payment taken care of with the front desk I then jogged out into the parking lot, hopped in the car with a non-functional face (still drooling from the numbing) and managed to pick Keegan up from preschool just 3mins behind schedule. While talking to the preschool staff I was spitting and drooling and looked like I had a stash of walnuts in my cheek, a mumbled "Dental Surgery" seemed to alleviate the concern.

Standing in the kitchen drinking my coffee several hours after 'The Dental Event' chuckling to myself as coffee drooled down my numb chin, I thought back to a time way back in the day when I got blindfolded, then had a sandbag pulled over my head so a couple of guys could get to work on me. I got two black eyes out of that one and a dislike for having my head stuck under water. The upside, the black eyes didn't cost me $3100.

For all it teeth shattering and costly imperfection 'The Dental Event' is gonna stop the throbbing headache and sleep loss. I don't get to put a tooth under my pillow to see what the tooth fairy will replace it with but I am going to get some sleep, oh yes, sleep you will be mine. An imperfect tooth replaced with a perfect solution, perfection within imperfection? Honestly, I could have done without the teeth chunks flying through the air.