California Poppies - perspective

I am sieving though hundreds of chromes of California Poppies - some of them were in full bloom a week back when the temperature was high. I did get some great perspectives of these poppies against the clear blue sky.

The Don Edwards Refuge have scattered poppies and the flats around Coyote hills have a square mile area of mustard. Here is one from the refuge. It’s shot on Provia 100 and scanned electronically.

Should you need more information on the subject or the image, please visit photoduniya.com or write to ranjaymitra@hotmail.com.

 

California Poppies

I am out shooting! Californian Poppies.

I have been shooting a lot again, and that’s wonderful. And I am shooting film again and the new digital baby has started to gather dust - which is not so wonderful. While I have shot for a few days with the long Nikon 400 mm VR, with the blooming of the flowers and the colors all around, quite by instinct, I have taken out my film cameras again.

Earlier this year, it was a little upsetting to hear that Fuji will not be making the Velvia any more. Lately I found out that Fuji has started shipping Velvia again, though at this time, its only the 100 ASA thats been shipped. I am hoping that the 50 ASA will appear soon again!

So I am back to the field, shooting a lot of Californian poppies and the wild flowers. This year, the wild flowers have not bloomed as much - and from the reports that I have been reading on NatureAli, the south California has not seen much wild flowers either. People who have visited the Gorman Hills and spots around Highway 5 have come back quite disappointed.

There are a lot of mustard though - in the east bay region, apart from the bright patches of mustard you would see on the Hills around Sunol, the wide open land around the Dumbarton Bridge is completely covered in the yellow carpet.

So I am out shooting with my F5 and my faithful old F100 again, and this time my bag is packed with Provia!

Save the Metalmark Butterflies

I posted this article on my website a few weeks back and I am posting it here to raise some more awareness to save the Metalmark Butterflies:

Also called the Lange’s Metalmark after late William H Lange Jr., the UC Berkeley entomologist and UC Davis professor, who first identified this butterly in 1930, this grey metallic colored, spotted butterfly with a wingspan of about 1 to 1.5 inches, is fast becoming extinct! The Metalmark, from the Riodinidae family, is one of the first insects to be protected by the US Endangered Species Act since 1976. The peak count stood at 45 adults in mid 2006 from 232 in 2005 and a high of 2,342 in 1999.

In a similar situation, the Palos Verdes blue butterfly, a Southern California local species once thought to be extinct, was revived by habitat improvement and captive breeding. Similar approach is taken to save and revive the about to be extinct Metalmark. Once quite popular throughout the central and northern Californian region, the Metalmark is now only found in the Antioch Dunes National Park. The revival process is slow and tedious, made even more difficult by the facts that it’s breeding ground is shrinking every day and it can only produce one generation in a year.

The adults lay eggs at the base of buckwheat stems during late summer, during August & September. The eggs hatch into larvae during the rainy season and are known only to feed on the buckwheat. With wild fire burning down large areas of buckwheat every year, the larvae dies of starvation. For the ones who survive, mature from caterpillars into butterflies in mid to late summer. Such a long gestation and maturity period makes breeding in captivity of this species even more challenging.

At the time of writing this article, Feb 24 2007, I have only seen one Metalmark in the Don Edward Wildlife Refuge. I could not take its picture! I was patiently waiting to see it pair up with another one, but it fluttered all alone!

The approximate $250,000 grant from the Central Valley Project Conservation Program for the Metalmark’s revival is to be run at the San Diego Zoo’s Beckham Center for Conservation Research in Escondido.

Nikon D200 - my new kid

For almost 2 years I have been worried about developing my films. Not only have I tried a lot of commercial developers but more frequently have I promised not to go back to the last one! It was very frustrating waiting for days for my chromes to come back and then not be able to use the most of them because the developers lacked the training to correctly process them. Worse still, in many of these developing shops, the machines that does all the work, have not been repaired for a long time. Fuji, which is one of the largest makers of these machines, have raised their costs and in some areas have completely withdrawn on-site maintenance work.

Had things not gone as bad as it did one weekend, I would have waited for a couple of more years and gone for a pro grade Nikon DSLR. But now the situation is different. I have a Nikon D200 DSLR. I had determined that I would be using this digital equipment only for street, candid and black and white shots, and hence there was no need for me to switch to any other brand. I still have a large stock of Fuji chromes for my art work. But had I not done that study, and for those who wants to do landscape on digital too, the Canon high end DSLRs would probably a suitable option.

For the first few days, it rained continuously in East Bay. The camera laid on the table completely ready to go but I just could not take it out. For the next week, I was so tied up with my regular job that I could not even think of anything! Finally, I managed to bring out the camera on the open.

My first few hundred shots were a disaster. It was not the camera, it was my lens. I was using about 800 mm handheld! I brought the camera out from chasing the birds and the bees into the streets of San Francisco. And it created wonders. I tested the exposure rapidly in all possibly drastic conditions that the city would allow me and I have to say, I am very pleased. I am yet to test the high ASA range though - I have used it only upto 200 ASA.

Below are three images from my tests - and if you see the tonal range, they are 5 stops apart! But as I said earlier, the metering is right on. So what did I like about metering? Ah! The ability to chose your exposure area in the center weighted option. Thats just brilliant.

And what I am no happy about so far? Well, since the first few days the camera was lying in my house, I tried a lot of shots in a lower Kelvin situation. I am not happy with the ambient range that is provided on the White Balance options - I would have loved to go down to 1000 K if possible!

The lady on the train

 

Lady on the train

 

 

The bicycle man

 

Bicycle Man

 

The Tram Cars in Powell, CA

 

Tram cars

 

Except for the last image The Tram Cars in Powell, CA the other two had f/stops difference of 4 - 5 and yet the camera handled it graciously. I had not used any filters and the shots were hand held.

Unfortunately, D200 is not compatible with the SB50 DX - my pet filler that I have so grown used to. A SB600 or the SB800 would cost another US $ 400 to upgrade. I have also lost 1 stop and 50% of the wideness on my Tamron’s 17 - 35 f/2.8 lens. Thankfully, most of my lenses are Nikon’s and will not suffer from such a problem.