Hey Ya'll! Hope you're having a great week! Me? Pretty good. This week I want to talk about a little photo trip that I took to Virginia International Raceway located near Danville Virginia. My Photography wingman Robert came up with this trip months ago and we tried to go once before but I had some medical problems and we had to turn around and come back home. But this time I'm doing great and we took the 2 hour drive to get to this Raceway. I am NOT a car guy or a race guy and really don't know anything about racing . This is more of a road racing type of course with lots of turns hills not just an oval track. Which I kind of like. When we arrived we got inline with all the other cars but we were different. You look at the line of cars and they go Porsche, Porsche, BMW, Audi and then us a Volvo station wagon then Corvette. These people were race and sports car people. LOL We got parked in the infield of the Raceway which is very large and spread out. They have places for camping and RV parking for those folks who want to park their RV and sit and relax to watch the race. There is a big speaker system and you could hear the announcers talking about the racing that was going on. And they had an accent . More European than American. So the place has a cool vibe and the roar of the race cars even boost it even more.

Now shooting this is at least for me was kind of difficult. You can walk around and find you a good spot and if you have a decent Long range telephoto you can really isolate the cars. But the problem is that they move pretty fast. If you crank up your Shutter speed you can get a really nice sharp photo. But the car looks like it's parked on the raceway. To get it to show motion you have to be able to Pan your shots which isn't as easy as it seems. I tried many ways to do this . First I put my shutter on high speed to shoot many shots hoping I get one in focus. Hard to believe this didn't work too well.  I tried slowing down my shutter speed and shutter on high and still didn't get the in focus shot I wanted with everything blurred. I tried using wider lens but still didn't get the sharp car with everything else blurred. Then I tried to shoot Single shot and just shoot one shot as the car came by panning my camera and this seemed to work better for me. I started getting sharper shots with blurry all around but not a lot. So you have the panning shot which is really fun but there are others to get . One is in the pit area where they prepare the cars and fix them if they get crunched up a little. I really liked this as well. Lots of neat stuff that you don't normally see. If you like shooting people there are lots of interesting ones to see and take photo's of. Now this was a practice day and qualifying day for the race teams so you got lots of different classes of cars to look at and see. They all looked pretty amazing to me not knowing much about racing.

Would I do this again. You bet and now I know what to expect maybe I could get some better photos than what I got this time. I had a great time with my wingman Robert and we both got some good shots but struggled a little. If you get a chance to photograph a race or something similar I would highly recommend. So until next week Get out and Shoot!

Hey Everyone! How are you doing? Me ? Wet! LOL I’m sitting in a hotel in downtown Cincinnati right now and thought I would start this trip Blog. It has been a very interesting trip so far. And a wet one. If you have watched the news you know that hurricane Helene really did some damage to the southern Appicacian Mountains from Georgia all the way to Ohio. And of course it’s been chasing us and dumping rain everywhere we go. It’s early Sunday morning and we (my photography wingman Robert) have been rained on since Thursday. Our plans have been changed by this storm but it din’t stop it. The original plan was to make our way to Brookville Indiana for a bike race that Robert was to participate in. I just came along for moral support and to document the event. We would make stops along the way and do some photography. Well I now know that my camera is very much weather sealed because we’ve been shooting in the rain ever since we left home. LOL After the race we were going to spend a night in Cincinnati and then drive to the Knoxville Tenn. area to visit a friend of his then take I-40 home. Well... the hurricane messed up all of those plans . So here is what happened. 

We have had this trip planned for months with the hotels and the logistics that come with a trip plan to include photo stops along the way. The only thing that we couldn't plan for is the rain. When we left on our first day Helene barely had a name and was hundreds of miles off the Florida coast. Little did we know that it would affect our trip for the next 5 days 8 states and almost 2000 miles. When we left it was misty and a little bit of rain but this was another rain event not associated with Helene. As we headed north west the rain became more steady. We traveled through Virginia and West Virginia and arrived at our first destination Charleston West Virginia the state Capital. We checked into our Hotel and headed out to find some Mexican Food and to go to a shot that we had planned with Photo Pills. And when I say we I mean Robert. He did all of the Photo Pills stuff with the trip and did a great job! When we got to our first stop it was misting a little but the scene was just as Photo Pills said and we were in the perfect spot to get the shot we were looking for. After we got the shot we headed to the state capital and it looked amazing! Well done West Virginia! We headed back to the Hotel to get some sleep before the next day.

Day two we are in bike race mode. Today our main goal is to drive to Brookville Indiana register for the race and do all the things we needed to do for the race. When we woke up guess what? Yes still raining. This rain was apart of the Helene system but it still had not made landfall yet in Florida. The predictions were that it was going to make a left turn and maybe Indiana would be spared. We Passed by Cincinnati and headed to Brookville a small town about 30 miles north west of Cincinnati. It was raining really good by now. We stopped and had some Skyline Chili. Robert had been talking this up for months so I was ready for the treat. I guess it's an acquired taste because it did not live up to the hype but I could use this to rib and make fun of Robert the rest of the trip. LOL We got to our hotel and chilled out while the rain continued to come down. We then went into town and skipped and jumped through puddles to get to the registration. Robert registered and got the bag of goodies that comes with the race. The place we registered in was a German Beer hall and we ate German food and listened to a Polka band that played. It was really cool. Everyone was saying that it was going to clear up by race time. 500 people had signed up and paid for the race. The beer hall was not crowded though . ( a sign of things to come)  The weather map did not look good...

Day three I got up early as usual and it was raining outside. I looked at the radar and it was all green not a good sign. Robert woke up later and asked how it looked I told him he didn't want to look at the Radar. He went downstairs to get a charger for his phone and when he came back he had a very sad face and said that the race was off for him because it was pouring down and even if it stopped the roads would be very slick with water and leaves and just not worth going down. He was not alone. We went to the start of the race and there were maybe 40 riders starting the race in the rain. We took some shots of downtown in the rain. The " in the rain" will become a theme. We headed to Cincinnati to start a new chapter of this trip. We also found out that damage was happening to the NC mountains and that I 40 was closed in a couple of places around Asheville where we were planning to go through would not be reasonable. So we got in touch with Roberts friend and cancelled that part of the trip and had to re-route our trip to the east. We booked a room in  Harrisonburg VA and headed to Cincinnati. This would be our busiest day yet. We headed to Cincinnati and found our hotel but it was way too early to check in so we went to a parking garage across the street. We called the hotel before we arrived because they had over 100 thousand power outages in the area in the morning prior. We called the hotel to make sure they had power and they did. There was suppose to be a festival in the downtown area but it got canceled because the storm that made all of the outages also tore up all of the tents and things they had set up for the festival. So we got out and walked and took photo's "in the rain" and surprisingly had a great time walking the city. We walked down by the baseball and football stadiums and the waterfront. We stopped and had lunch at a Korean Chicken place. Another theme is food from different countries. It was pouring outside so we decided to do something inside and took a Uber to a Sign Museum. This was a cool place with all kinds of Neon signs but upon our arrival I see Robert patting himself down. He can't find his phone! We finally demised that he left it in the Uber! Long story short we couldn't get with the Uber driver so Robert locked and wiped his phone and went to ATT and got a new one. We continued our trip and went out to eat at an Irish Pub and had fish and chips. Later that night we got with the Uber driver and she brought Robert his phone. Now he has two. Of course since he wiped out his old phone he had to set up the new one. We all know what a pain that is. So Robert stayed up late trying to get the new one set up.

Day four would be our longest driving day at almost 8 hours. We got up it was still raining and headed to a diner that was recommended to us for breakfast but when we got there it was closed. So we went back to the hotel checked out and headed toward Columbus. We stopped at a Bob Evans and had breakfast (much better than the Skyline Chili) and hit the road. We started in Ohio, then Pennsylvania , Maryland, West VA, and then Virginia. We took backroads thru most of it so we got to see the country not the interstate. And it was very nice we stopped a few times and took photos "in the rain". We finally make it to Harrisonburg and checked into our hotel which ended up being the best hotel and cheapest that we had the whole time. We went and got a Pizza " Italian food" and went to bed it was a long day driving in the rain. 

The last day of our trip we had about 4 hours of driving to do and of course it was raining when we got up. We packed up and drove home on backroads all the way home. When we got into our home county it finally quit raining but the roads were wet from a recent rain. All in all it was a fun trip. We got some good pics and had a ball like we always do. Good discussions, jokes and food make a great trip. You always have to look for the silver lining. I found out how to shoot in the rain without getting specs of water on my lens and that my camera can take quite a bit of rain and still function properly.  It was sad that the storm tore up the NC mountains that I love so dearly. Please pray and support this region that was devastated by the storm. We got rained on but the storm changed the landscape of our mountains and changed lives forever. Until next week get out and shoot !

Hey Ya'll! How's it going this week? Me? It's been a rainy week so I've been doing indoor photography stuff like writing this blog. I have also been getting my gear ready for my annual fall colors trip that my camera club does once a year. This year we're going back to West Virginia for 5 days.  So that means lots of landscape type of photography and hopefully lots of color. It has been a while since I've written about filters. Back in 2022 I wrote a blog describing filters and what they do from a question that a camera club member had asked. Here is the link to that blog.   What my filters do  This blog is going to be a little different it will talk about what filters you need as a modern day photographer. First lets talk about construction of filters.

Construction- There are a few types of construction of filters. There are the "Circular Screw In" type. They are round and screw into your lens. So they have to be the same filter size of your lens. So if you have a 67mm filter sized lens you have to use a 67mm filter. You could buy many different filter sizes to fit all of the different sized lenses you have but that can get very expensive quick. The easiest way to use these is to get the largest filter size of you lenses say 77mm and use step down rings to take the 77mm to the 67mm lens that you have. Step down rings are only a few bucks and you can get one for each size of lens you have.  This way you only buy one set of filters. The next type of filter uses a filter holder that connects to your lens and you slide in the filters to the holder. So you would have a filter holder with adapter rings that would fit all of your Filters lenses and just one set of filters. These filters tend to be more expensive. The system works but is very clunky and cumbersome. The other construction design are magnetic circular filters. Like the screw in type but uses magnets instead of threads. The great advantage to this one is that you can pop them off and on very easily without fumbling with trying to get the screw in type screwed in or off. Sometimes the screw in type get stuck and are hard to get separated. The magnetic ones eliminate this problem. So those are the different construction types now for the ones you need and don't need.

Graduated Neutral Density Filters.  This filter is not needed anymore. It was used for high dynamic scenes like sunrise when the sky is so bright and the foreground is darker. This filter would darken the sky so you would have a more even scene. But this can be accomplished better in post production. You can take a bracketed shot and blend in Adobe Lightroom and use the linear Graduated tool and control exposure , color, contrast and almost anything . The Graduated ND filter can't do this as well. So this is a not needed filter. Now for what is needed.

Polarizer filter. The polarizer is the most important filter of them all in my opinion.  It does what no other Polarizer filter does, and it can't really be duplicated by Photoshop.  You may have heard it called a circular polarizer also.  It actually comes in two flavors - one is the linear and the other is circular. The circular is the more popular of the two and screws onto the front of your lens.  It has a rotating part that you can turn to increase or decrease the effects of the polarizer.  The linear polarizer is typically a square filter, and you will need some type of holder that attaches to the front of your lens. There are really only two positions.  If it doesn't work, rotate it 90 degrees and it will be working.  Both kinds will block 1 to 2 stops of light that travels through them, so you must make adjustments.  Your camera will automatically do this if you have it in one of the auto modes. A polarizer does a few things. The first thing it does is increase the saturation of things.  You can make your blah skies turn them bluer than blue. It will also increase the saturation in vegetation making leaves greener.  It also knocks the glare and reflection off of things. Looking through a storefront window, if you see yourself in the reflection, using a polarizer will make the reflection disappear.  If you look at water and it's too shiny, when you use a polarizer it will let you see to the bottom of a clear lake.  It's just like wearing polarized sunglasses when you're driving. Not only do they darken, but they knock the glare off of the windshield so you can see clearly.  With a circular polarizer, you can adjust as you like by turning the ring. For best results, the sun should be 90 degrees from where you're pointing. So not behind or in front of you, but to the sides.  This filter is great whenever you shoot around water, say shooting waterfalls.  This is a must-have in any photographer's bag.  Price will vary on the quality of the filter. Generally, you get what you pay for.

Neutral Density Filter- These filters are used when you want to darken the scene to either do a long shutter release or you want to open up the aperture of your lens.  This filter is used quite a bit for video work.  But for photography, it's mainly for long shutter release or opening up your aperture to give that great bokeh in broad daylight. Say for example you wanted to take a portrait in bright sunlight but you wanted to use an open aperture of 2.8, which is pretty wide open.  You would have to crank up your shutter speed to the thousands to get it to work if your camera would even get that high.  But when you put on an ND filter which darkens the scene, the wide aperture would let in enough light and you could slow down your shutter speed. I mainly use these filters to show motion.  I can do a long exposure in daylight and still blur a waterfall or have motions of the clouds drift across the sky giving a cool effect. These filters come in different strengths.  They are measured in stops of light.  Usually 3,6,8,10.  You can double up and have a 6 and a 3 together to make a 9.   Or a 3 stop and a polarizer to give a 4 or 5 stop light reduction. This is the combo that I usually use for waterfalls.  These filters can come in either square or circular filters.  For the square ones, you will need a holder of some sort to attach to the front of your lens.  The circular ones just screw onto the front of your lens, so you need to know your filter thread size. (usually found on the front of your lens) One thing to be careful with the screw on ones is that if you stack them you may get a vignette on the corners of you're photo because of the thickness of the filters block out the edges of your frame.  There are also Variable Neutral Density filters which instead of buying a 3, 6, 8 and a 10 stop filter you buy one filter and like a polarizer you spin a outer ring and make the filter darker or lighter. So you just have one filter instead of 4 to carry around. These Variable ND filters used not to be very good but in recent years they have got much better. Thats what I use now. So I recommend them for ease of use and affordability. 

So the two filters you need for photography are the polarizer and the Neutral Density. Now there are all types of cool filters that you can get like "Mist" filters or different effect filters. But these you don't Need but can be nice to have. You do need the Polarizer and the ND filter. I have just updated my digital kit to the magnetic system with circular filters from K & F. For my longest lens (100-400) I've converted screw on filters I already had to magnetic ones using screw on magnets with this kit I have two filters a 77mm Polarizer and a 77mm Variable ND filter. For my other lenses they have the same filter size (72mm) and I bought a kit from K&H that included a polarizer, a 3 stop and a 6 stop ND filter. I got this kit because the filters are thinner and for the wider angle lenses when I stack them I don't get a vignette. Now for film it's a total different discussion which would be a different blog. So what filters do you have? Well I think that's enough for filters for now. Until next week get out and shoot!

Note: The last two photo's of the blog I grabbed off of google to illustrate the effects of the filters.