HOW I SHOT THIS.
Here is a quick little tutorial on what I did to get this shot.

*Important safety tips.  Be sure to check with the event managers and ask about access to the track. Only go where they allow you. Wear bright clothing. Don't get in the way. Look both ways before crossing the track. Look both ways before crossing the track. Be aware of your surroundings- don't get caught up with the camera viewfinder and fail to notice the rider heading right at you. Pay attention. If a rider goes down, your camera should go down also. Help the rider.

I was using a Nikon D700 camera with a 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom lens. The zoom setting was a 48mm.

The basic camera settings were 1/800 of a second at f/10. ISO was set at 400.

The camera settings were for exposure and getting a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action. I usually try to shoot at 1/800 or faster to freeze the riders. You can experiment with shutter speed for different effects. A slightly slower shutter speed would have kept the bikes and riders sharp and allowed some motion blur on the spinning tires. This would have provided a more dynamic image by implying "speed" in a still photograph. By slowing the shutter speed even more and panning the camera with the movement of the rider, the background would blur and the rider and motorcycle would have remained fairly sharp. Try experimenting with the shutter speed the next time you get out to the track.

Your position on the track relative to the rider and the light is probably the most important factor. This allows you to get to best light on the rider and motorcycle. If you have hard light with deep shadows and burnt highlights, no camera settings will capture all of the detail. This image was shot in bright, hard, sunlight as you can see by the shadows under the riders. The shot was taken at about 2:00 and the light was nearly overhead. Not the best lighting situation. I usually look at my own shadow on the ground to determine where I will position myself on the track. I did manage to get on the lighter side of the riders. If I would have been on the other side of the track the riders and motorcycles would have been in deeper shadow. Lighting is the most important factor in photography and moving to the right spot gets you to the best light. If your shadow is behind you as you face the subject, you should probably move.

On overcast days or when the sun is behind a cloud, the light is diffused and the shadows are not as hard. These conditions allow the photographer more leeway for positioning for the shot. Again, experiment with location to get the lighting you want.

Shooting up close with a wide angle really puts the rider in your face. Up close and personal. In this image the front tire looks larger. A wide angle lens up close will emphasize this effect and bring depth to the image. This is where you really need to pay attention to the action around you. Don't get your eye stuck to the viewfinder and become an accident waiting to happen.

This image was also adjusted in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. That would be a post in itself.

Learn your camera settings and learn to shoot in shutter priority, aperture priority, or manual. Your images will benefit from it.

So move into position, get the best light, and be safe.

See you at the track.

Dana

Viewing Sharptail Grouse on the Lek.

Spring is in the air and so is anything that can be lifted by 30 mile per hour winds. North Dakota is wonderful. 
This spring I finally made it to the sharptail grouse viewing blind managed by the Long Lake National Wildlife Refuge.  I have been there three times and hope to get there one more time this week.  If you have never been there I suggest going.  Reservations are required and can be made by calling the Refuge.  Refuge information here   http://www.fws.gov/longlake/ 

I will offer a few tips from my trips to the blind.

• Arrive at least 45 minutes before sunrise. The Refuge staff recommend 30 minutes, but I like to be there at least 45 minutes early.
• Locate the blind during daylight hours before you try to find it in the dark.
• Bring a small flashlight and use it sparingly.
• Bring a pad to sit on.  There are two lightly padded folding chairs in the blind but remember you will be sitting for a few hours.
• Bring something that will also record audio/video.  The sounds the birds make are interesting also. I shot video before it was light enough to shoot stills with my DSLR.
• Bring a tripod. There will be lots of opportunity to shoot images and your arms will get tired if you are holding your camera all the time. 
• Waterproof footwear. There are a couple low areas (ditch and very small "wetland" area) that had water in them when I went. The ditch was fairly obvious, the small wetland wasn't. Fortunately I found the wetland during daylight hours on my way out from the blind. There may also be frost or dew on the long grass that will dampen your feet and shins. Avoid wet feet.
• Pack out whatever you pack in.

The low light level at sunrise requires shooting at a high ISO, wide aperture, and a long but manageable shutter speed. To avoid fumbling around with your camera in the dark, adjust your settings the night before.  For my first images of the day, I started with an ISO of 2000 and lowered it as light allowed.  For some of these early shots I was able to get by at an aperture of f/8. I was shooting in shutter priority at the fastest speeds I could manage. Some of these early morning shutter speeds were a second or more. (The birds occasionally sit still.) This is where a tripod is an essential tool. These early morning (just before sunrise until about 15 minutes after sunrise) shots really tax your ability to gather enough light.

When the sunlight actually strikes the lek, you can start to move your ISO back down. It seemed like every 2 minutes after the sun had risen I was able to lower my ISO or stop down my aperture 1/3 to 1/2 stop.

This light is better anyway because it brings out the yellow "eyelashes" and purple air sacs on the birds.

The first first image in the article was after the sunlight had hit the lek. This next image was before the sun had risen.  The lighting is flat, and I had to bring up the colors in Lightroom. On my third trip, when the light was like this, I shot video.

The birds are very active right about sunrise. You may hear the birds before you can see them and all of the sudden the grouse seem to pop out of the ground and they are everywhere. The action will slow down when the birds start to pair off. They will squat down and stare at each other.

If the birds get spooked and flush, just hang tight for a few minutes and they will come back.

Hopefully this will help you view and photograph these avian ballerinas.

Good luck and best light.

Dana Middleton

Protesters, Cops and Pepper Spray.

This is from an email written to me regarding the pepperspraying of the protesters at UC Davis. This was sent after the author viewed multiple videos from the incident and not just the first brief clip that went viral.

"I'm glad I didn't watch this last night (a longer video showing events prior to the spraying). I wouldn't have been able to sleep. I really felt for the officers in this situation. These are the same guys whose job it is to keep these same kids safe. I think they did EVERTHING to NOT use the pepper spray and they may even have left if they could have. This wasn't Kent State.

We have to remember that hatred, injustice, tragedy of all kinds are always with us. It can be overwhelming when it affects us directly but in one sense it is never personal. Ignorance and violence are simply there. They surround us, like those hundreds of students surrounded those few officers, but it is a force behind it all that it out of control and all the individuals in various degrees of danger in this situation are caught up in the storm. We have to try not to take anything personally. It's the only way to have any peace of mind.

Here are some thoughts of Carl Jung's which I think relate to the reaction I am trying to have.

"Touching evil brings with it the grave peril of succumbing to it. We must, therefore, no longer succumb to anything at all, not even to good. A so-called good to which we succumb loses its ethical character. Not there there is anything bad in it on that score, but to have succumbed to it may breed trouble. Every form of addiction is bad, not matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. We must beware of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites. The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so-called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both halves of a paradoxical whole.

...As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. Aside from general human inadequacy, a good deal of the blame for this rests with education, which promulgates the old generalizations and says nothing about the secrets of private experience. Thus, every effort is made to teach idealistic beliefs or conduct which people know in their hearts they can never live up to, and such ideals are preached by officials who know that they themselves have never lived up to these high standards and never will. What is more , nobody ever questions the value of this kind of teaching.

Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of SELF-KNOWLEDGE, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish-as he ought- to live without self-deception or self-delusion."

I have been looking for a particular quote stating that an individual's level of elevated or clear or ethical thought drops precipitously as soon as enters any group and continues to drop drastically as the size of the group increases. He knew what mass hysteria was having endured the horrors of his Nazi neighbors.

One of the hardest things for me in this situation my sense that the police officers at Davis were not necessarily there because they wanted to be. The students chose, for whatever reasons, misguided or otherwise, to go there. The officers do, through a choice to become police officers, take orders. Some of them may well have thought, "I don't want to do this but I'm going to have to go out there". This makes the officer's commitment, and yours, really hard. I don't like to think of you in situations like this but for the sake of others in the situation I would certainly like to have people with heart, like you, there.

Anyway I have been trying to work through my very upset state of mind by looking through Jung. There aren't clear answers. It's really bad that so many people only saw the short version of the video. After watching the longer version my heart was aching for the officers."

Thanks for taking a look.

Dana

Not your every-day burger.

I guess I spent too many hours watching the Food Network last week. I fired up the grill and this burger was the result. The chorizo made the burger very juicy and also very hot. Loved it.

The burger patty is hamburger and chorizo sausage. On the patty sits two slabs of hot pepper cheese, grilled portabella mushroom slices, Dijon mustard, vine-ripened tomato, coleslaw, alfalfa sprouts, leafy greens, a dill pickle plank, and pate, all on a Kaiser roll. Yummy.

Nothing New- Including the weather.

Winter may have finally broke. And I have finally been able to get back into the blog site after being hacked. Now all I have to do is think of something to write about. I did have some frog legs the other day at the Toasted Frog in Bismarck. They were quite tasty.

Business Practice for Streamlining Workload.

Business Practice for Streamlining Workload.

I was in my company vehicle on company business and had a near-miss incident. It was about 2000 hours  on a cold, windy evening. The roads had patches of compacted snow and ice, and in some areas there was 8-12 inches of snow.

I was approaching one of the icy patches and slowed to about 45 miles per hour.  My right foot began to feather the gas pedal as I hoped to coast through the slippery spot. Just as I hit the ice and snow, an oncoming vehicle did the same at the other end of the icy patch. The ice and snow patch was about 75 yards long.  As the other vehicle approached, the rear of my vehicle started to slide to the ditch on my side of the road.  Then my entire vehicle  started to slide to the ditch. I thought the ditch would be better than hitting the now identifiable white Dodge 4x4 pickup head-on.  My vehicle was sliding sideways as our vehicles passed each other.

I managed to stay out of the ditch and I did not hit the other vehicle. My vehicle made it out of the snow and I slowly brought it back onto the roadway. I think I swore out loud.  As I drove the next mile, I could feel the adrenalin dumping into my body.  All pumped up, and nothing to do but sit there in my car and continue driving.

After conducting business at a rural residence, I headed back to town on the same road I had just been driving on.  As I neared the hazardous area I saw an Isuzu Trooper in front of me, approaching the slick spot. The Isuzu started to slide in the same icy spot where I had nearly wrecked.  There was an oncoming vehicle.  The Isuzu crossed the centerline in front of the oncoming vehicle. I remember thinking to myself, watch carefully Dana, you are going to witness an accident and you will be taking the report.  Fortunately, the Isuzu slid back into the proper lane and the vehicles barely missed each other.

I radioed my dispatcher and asked to have the agency responsible for maintaining the road come out and blade the snow and lay down some sand. I was aware of the other agency’s recent policy change and didn’t think they would respond.  I was right. I was told that the plows would be coming out at 0430 the next morning. That’s wonderful.

A co-worker radioed dispatch and asked for the same assistance on a different road and got the same response.

I was upset about not getting any assistance. Well, I was beyond being upset.

At about 2330 or so, I was dispatched to a traffic accident. I immediately thought of my near-miss. Sure enough, I was being dispatched to an accident at the exact spot. I arrived and saw one vehicle sideways in the middle of the road and another on the east shoulder. They had hit head-on. Both drivers had been wearing their seatbelts and had only minor injuries. Airbags had been deployed. Now I was beyond angry. I felt the accident could have been avoided.

Here is where the title of this blog fits in. The agency responsible for maintaining the road and their new policy played a role in this event. I call their new business practice “Policy Implementation for the Reduction of Departmental Workload.”  Their new policy and practices keep them from maintaining the roads between certain hours. These hours end in mid-afternoon, or in case of an emergency situation, the hours are extended to early evening. Apparently this was not an emergency. I was nearly in an accident, I witnessed a near-miss, and after my shift ended, multiple vehicles went into the ditch at the same spot. My shift ended at 6 am and the plows had not plowed or sanded the road.

So, if you want to streamline your workload, create policies that:  a) limit your business hours, and  b) make other people do your job by passing the buck.

My recommendation for the problem would be to take care of the other agency's business and send them a bill for twice the cost.  It won't happen but other similar situations and billings are going on all the time.

I do understand there are issues related to scheduling and funding, but a public agency does not have the right to refuse service to anyone. I also believe the issue here is not with the equipment operators and employees, it is a management issue from the top.  I never heard of these business practices while I was getting my B.S in Management. It must be an on-the-job training kind of thing.

Drive safely.

Cody Beer- Raspberry Wheat



Another Cody Beer. This one was a raspberry flavored wheat. The photo does not do it justice. It was in a frosted glass but the "studio lights" were too hot and the frost turned to liquid and evaporated, which ended the shoot because I don't like warm beer. I liked the light hint of raspberry at the end. The one before this was a little bit better though. (Cody- What was your hydrometer reading?  My face is numb. That one must have been about 7%. ) Thanks for the beer and keep them coming!