Tag Archives: car

GoPro

Capturing a photo at 70 mph – the safe way

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It would not be safe for me to be driving 70 miles per hour down a crowded freeway, and then stick my hand out the window with my expensive DSLR and try to snap some photos. That would be an accident waiting to happen. Lucky for me, I have a GoPro HD Hero2 and a suction cup mount.

Capturing a low angle on the freeway

The Capturing True Emotion Salt Lake City Facebook group had a photo challenge this week – Low-angle. I originally thought about sticking my GoPro in the toilet and getting a low-angle shot looking out past the bowl – but I opted to go a different route. I recalled a photo I captured while driving up to Haleakala in Hawaii in a rental car.

Before heading off to work this morning, I mounted the suction cup, with the GoPro attached, to the door of my car, as low as I could to the ground. But would it hold while traveling up to 70 mph on the freeway? To give myself peace of mind, I attached not one, but two strings from the camera and tied them to a solid part of the car. That way, if the suction cup failed, it wouldn’t tumble to the asphalt and get run over by a bazillion cars before I could rescue it.

041213-Low-angle-on-road-SETUP

I programmed the camera to take one photo every five seconds. I figured that would give me enough photos to choose from, without giving me a bazillion photos to have to look through. Although I might have been better off to have it take one every one second – but maybe another time.

Here’s how it looked as I headed off to work. —->

Anyone else tried something risky like this with their GoPro? Share a link below.

~signed, Carltonaut

GoPro, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Everyday Life

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How many days do you hop in the car and drive somewhere? Is it to or from work? The grocery store? The gas station? The movie theater? School? Chances are, most people’s lives involve driving, either directly or indirectly.

With those thoughts in mind, I share this photo with you as part of the Daily Post at WordPress.com Weekly Photo Challenge – Everyday Life.

091812 Everyday Life

I really don’t have any specs to share on the photo (aperture, shutter speed, focal length, etc.) because I simply opened up my sun roof, held my GoPro above the car and let it snap a few dozen photos. Yes, I was driving on a one-way street in downtown Salt Lake City at the time and was convinced that drivers around me were giving me weird looks. But I promise I stayed in my lane, used my blinkers as needed, and made it safely to my destination. Oh, I hope I didn’t jinx myself for my next drive in the car!

~signed, Carltonaut

WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

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It’s been far to long since I’ve contributed to the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, which is wrong in and of itself. So with this week’s photo challenge theme, I tried to find something that was wrong. Instead, I found an event that, if something went wrong, you were out for the count.

As you can tell from the photos I shared, it was a demolition derby with the Salt Lake County Fair. Here are four photos from the event, and each one has something wrong with the car. Can you tell what it is without looking at the answers at the end of this post?

081112 Stuck in Dirt_5x7

081112 No Tranny_5x7

081112 Lost Tire_5x7

081112 Fallen tire_5x7

ANSWERS: 1) Stuck in the mid; 2) Lost the transmission; 3) No rear tire (among other things); and 4) A really messed up front tire.

It was fun shooting the demolition derby, but it would have been really cool to have been the one flying a GoPro attached to a remote control helicopter right over the arena. However, I would have been worried about getting too low, falling into the arena and getting it demolished.

What have you photographed from your county or state fair?

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Today

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When I saw the email about this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge, I thought the write-up about it makes a great point on photo challenge submissions. I have a pet peeve about that, which I will most likely elaborate on in future post. But for now, I’ll share the photo I shot and am submitting to the photo challenge.

060112 Today photo challenge

I was in a meeting and didn’t have my camera on me when I saw the post. Then it was one of those CrAzY Fridays at work where you’re frantically trying to get stuff done so you don’t have to bring work home with you over the weekend. (Which probably means I shouldn’t be taking the time to write this blog post, but I was eager to get my photo up).

At about 1:30, when I finally decided that I better grab some lunch, since I skipped breakfast and didn’t want to get sick before dinner, I headed out to grab some food. I decided to bring my trusty GoPro along to get a shot that I’ve been thinking of taking for a few weeks now. Carpe Diem!

I put back the sunroof, set the camera to take one photo every .5 seconds, and held it outside of the car. I didn’t expect to get so much of a reflection in the windshield, but I liked the final result. One that I really liked was of a cross walk directly in front of the car, and perfectly reflected in the windshield, but the camera was off-kilter (that’s what happens when you’re driving and photographing at the same time).

So that’s my shot. I’ll rant about my photo challenge submission pet peeves later!

~signed, Carltonaut

GoPro, Just for fun, Travel

Driving the road to Haleakala Crater in Maui

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My wife thought I was crazy when I pulled over and hooked a suction cup mount to the side of our rental car, just behind the driver’s side tire. After driving for about 10 minutes to test the $30 mount to assure it wouldn’t fall off, I attached the $300 GoPro to the mount, setting it to take a photo every 60 seconds, and climbed back into the car.

We started driving, and with every bump, my wife and I cringed, hoping the jolt didn’t knock the camera off the car. We drove anywhere from 10 MPH to 40 MPH, depending on traffic and the many turns encountered on the climb from sea level to 10,000 feet.

050612 Driving to Haleakala

GoPro | 1 photo every 60 seconds

I wish I would have set it to take a photo every 30 seconds. Even though I would have ended up with a ton of photos, there would have been more photos to choose from. But I do like this one, which proved that mount is strong enough to have attached to a moving vehicle. But if I plan to travel any faster, I might attach a string to the mount so if it does fall, it won’t end up smashed along the side of the road.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey

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This week has probably been the hardest one for me since I started doing the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge. Journey is a pretty abstract term, and I kept thinking about how I wanted to capture it to be a little different, but when I ended up with was pretty typical – I think.

041112 Journey photo

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1″ | f/18 | ISO 100 | ND 4 filter

I drive up Cherry Lane every weekday on my way to work. But rather than photographing  the path in front of me, I used my rearview mirror to capture the road behind me, while looking south out my car window, which is the eventual direction I journey to my job in Murray.

The longer shutter speed allowed for the blur of what was moving, and since the camera was inside the car, the car isn’t blurred, thus allowing the image in the mirror to not be blurred. I set the tripod up on the passenger seat with the camera facing out the window. Using the shutter-release cable, I snapped a couple dozen shots along the way, but after a while, the sun got too high in the sky, and even with the Neutral Density filter the entire scene was washed out.

I’m okay with how this photo came out, namely because of the blue sky and clouds, scene through the blur of the buildings and trees whizzing past the side of the road. What do you think of the photo?

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Pinewood Derby’s finishing touch

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My son’s pinewood derby is tonight, and this morning, before heading off to work, I added the finishing touch.

032812 Pinewood Derby

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/40 | f/3.5 | ISO 800

I didn’t want to reveal my son’s car to any of the other competitors before the race begins (that’s part of the fun), so I used a narrow depth of field to blur the car out, which is sitting on the scale, weighing exactly 5 ounces. I’ll have some fun taking photos tonight at the race, and who knows… maybe it will warrant another blog post of pinewood derby cars.

Other racers… Bring. It. On.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge: I is for Ice

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I have a 40-minute commute to work. Yesterday, I was sweating bullets on my drive in. Not because of traffic or the icy roads, but because there was a little piece of ice on my windshield that I wanted to photograph, but didn’t dare while traveling 60 mph on the freeway – and I was running a little late and didn’t have time to pull over.

The piece of ice was about the size of a quarter, but it was in the shape of a falcon. I kept imagining what the finished photo would like like, and what camera settings would be required to achieve those results. But why was this causing me to sweat bullets? Because as we all know, ice melts. I was determined to not use the windshield wipers for fear of killing my photo idea.

But if you’ve scrolled down to see the photo, you’ll notice there is no ice falcon there. While driving near a semi, the mist churned up by its tires covered my windshield, forcing me to use the wipers and destroying my masterpiece (dramatic, I know). I was only 10 minutes away from my destination, so I started looking at other parts of my car to capture a photo of ice for this week’s CTE photo challenge on the letter I.

When I finally arrived at work, I crawled into the back seat of the car, switched to my 50mm lens, played with the aperture, testing a few settings from f/1.8 to f/3.5. I was fairly pleased with the final outcome, but I really wanted that ice falcon from my windshield.

030212 CTE Ice Photo

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/800 | f/3.5 | ISO 100

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

Weekly Challenge – D is for Driving

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While perusing on Facebook, I found a group of photographers in Salt Lake City that presented a weekly photo challenge. I relished the idea of a weekly photo challenge in order to try and stretch my thinking and photography skills. Plus, since it’s local, I know a few people who are also in the group, the Capturing True Emotion (CTE) Salt Lake City Photography Meetup group.

The challenge is to start at the beginning of the alphabet and capture a thing, action or emotion that starts with the given letter. Since I didn’t get started until now, D was my first letter. After much thought, and going back to something I thought would be interesting to try a few years ago, I set up the shot in my car. I took more than 400 photos (436 to be exact) and ended up with this one being the best.

D_is_for_Drive_3

I have three others that I thought turned out great, so the set is posted in Flickr if you want to check them out. But here are the details on these shots.

The weight of the camera would toss the tripod to and fro during the trip, so I ended up sticking one of the legs into the back pocket of the seat, which provided the stability I needed. Before attaching the camera, I set it to TV (shutter speed) priority for a three-second exposure. I attached a shutter release button and then attached the camera to the tripod.

During my 45 minute commute, I started snapping photos. I had to remain completely still during each shot so that nothing in the car was blurred, which was not always easy to do to avoid drifting out of my lane, but I let safety trump my desire for a non-blurry shot. I also tried to match the speed to the person in front of me, while waiting for someone in the lanes around me to speed by, thus giving a sense of motion with the blurred vehicle.

Bumpy roads also made this a challenge. Overpasses were the worst, because if the car bumped, so did the camera, making the shot worthless. If I had to turn the steering wheel, or even my hand, it was blurry, too.

All of these factors are what made it a real photo challenge, but if you don’t try, you don’t know. I’ve noticed a few things in the photo that I would want to change to try and enhance it, so I’m glad for the letter D photo challenge this week, and I’m ready to move on to E. Hmmm. What will I capture for next week?

~signed, Carltonaut