The rain did hold off for us in Columbus (for the most part) but there were a lot of clouds. We chose to shoot from North Bank Park last night. I have never seen so much goose poop in my life. It was quite literally everywhere. You couldn't take a step without stepping in it. I dug back into some brush and camped out for dusk.
The big challenge of last night came in the form of the geese themselves. The branches of the Scioto River flowing through Columbus are quite calm so you get a great reflection of the buildings but the geese were swimming right through the center. I tried sweet talking them but that didn't help. I tried to bully and yell at them - they weren't fazed. They just swam back and forth right through the center of my picture.
This may have looked cool but for the fact that these are dusk shots so they are 30 second exposures. You don't actually see the geese - just weird streaks through your buildings. I finally had a rare moment of brilliance. I dug into my pack and pulled out a Nature Valley Oats & Honey bar. I broke the bar up and began flinging pieces into the water well out of the view of my picture.
Two of the four geese cooperated and swam over for a treat. Unfortunately one of the two geese was very aggressive and kept the other two geese away. He later chased one in the opposite direction so I was left with just one goose to attempt to clone out of my images. I ended up going through 4 packages of Oats & Honey bars (with 2 per pack - those geese ate 8 Oats & Honey bars!).
The highlight of the night was when an enormous river rat climbed up on a branch 10 feet in front of me. I had heard that rats could get pretty huge but I had no idea!!! This thing had to be 8 inches long (body only). He eventually plopped into the water and swam down stream.
When the magic 10 minutes of deep blue sky appeared, I nailed down this shot. I am not a cloud fan but at least these clouds made the sky interesting.
This morning I took off for Genoa Park while Dave and Shelley returned to North Bank Park. While I didn't get anything brilliant at Genoa, it was a neat view. I shot with a 12mm lens which is VERY wide angle. The clouds were moving and I was shooting with a 30 second exposure which captured the movement. Here is the result:
The animal sighting of the morning was a river otter. He was swimming down the river and stopped right in front of me to chew on something he had picked up along the way. He was pretty cool. I will confess, though, I originally thought he was a snake. I really do not like snakes. I am not scared of bears, spiders, or rats but snakes will send me running for the high hills. Well, maybe not running, but I definitely don't care for them. So I was psyched to see the otter's head pop out of the water when he approached.
Well, my friends, this brings our cityscape tour to its conclusion. We are getting cleaned up now and will soon be heading back to Harrisburg. I am thoroughly exhausted and feel like I need a vacation - I think my day job will feel like a vacation after this. But this trip was definitely worth it.
As a good start to the "worth it", my Detroit cityscape just received an Initial Rating on iStock. Initial Ratings are given by inspectors when they really like an image they inspect. Out of my 1,030 images on iStock, this is just my 3rd Initial Rating. Hopefully the sales will follow!
Now on to the post processing. I will post a summary of the trip either this evening or tomorrow. Thanks for following along!
1 comment:
Hey Josh,
All the pictures were great. I had to especially laugh at the Oats & Honey nature bar story. Considering, the amount of bars you use to keep at work. Giving away 4 was a piece of cake.
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