Ramblings of a Photographic Road Warrior

Welcome to my expoundants of shooting while in motion on the road.

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System Update

UPDATE (4/24/17): Been working way too hard and not having much time for the Art, I decided to fix that a bit. Work is not going to slow up, so I needed to process much faster. Ergo, the Zen Box was build. The system I designed and built has taken my Linux photo processing capacity to the next level. It's base on a water cooled Ryzen 1800X processor mounted on an ASRock X370 MB . The system drive is on a Samsung NVMe ssd set to it's full potential (OS boot time to KDE is about 15 sec). The working drive to process the photos is a striped raid on a HighPoint Rocket Raid controller card. The hardware raid currently host five ssd's and is planned to total eight when finished (waiting for the next credit cycle). To finish the system and stay with the AMD spirit, the graphics is powered by an 8G RX480 card from MSI. Batch processing the HDR now takes 1/4 the time as it did in the past. The previous system would take about 30 hr to process 350 captures into 6 tone mapped variants for each capture. Now it only takes 7 hrs. I still have some fine tuning to do on the system, but I'm VERY pleased with the results so far. 

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FAllRunOnRoundBarns_15 by Mark Stumme A new subject mater for my photos is round barns.  I was surprised to see how many round barns or their remains still survive in Iowa.  I’ve been seeking this unique farming structures out and capturing them.  Checkout my photo stream on Flickr Where I’m posting what I find.

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Standard Processing by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: This is my standard position and latest setup for processing. I'll be trying some new things. First will be more minimal post processing. (Was reminded by a Flickr friend that this is possible). Also need binoculars to read some of the menus and settings. Not able do much for shooting, but got thousands on file

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I’m amazed at how many of these guys are used for target practice.

DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_148 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Thought I should try a few more windmills for this week.

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DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_140 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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Another example

aDayInJune_040 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Fountain in front of the Union Earlier this year we happened to be in Ames on a Sunday morning. It was a nice day and thought it would be fun to walk the campus we spent so much time on in our young adulthood. A lot has changed and yet not so much from the late 70's and early 80's. It was nice to see that the central campus was still a central campus, and the old buildings that give this place character are still standing tall. Most have been renovated, looking good and still functioning in the pursuit of higher learning. This is a project I've been contemplating for some time, and it so happened the day was perfect. Enjoy the walk Note: I hope to do this again when there are students about and when I'm able to get into the buildings.

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This processing reflects the upper limit on what I will push the HDR to.  I like this when I’m striving to maintain some of the finer detail like the carving lines on the fountain statues.  Zoom in and check it out.

aDayInJune_036 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Fountain in front of the Union Earlier this year we happened to be in Ames on a Sunday morning. It was a nice day and thought it would be fun to walk the campus we spent so much time on in our young adulthood. A lot has changed and yet not so much from the late 70's and early 80's. It was nice to see that the central campus was still a central campus, and the old buildings that give this place character are still standing tall. Most have been renovated, looking good and still functioning in the pursuit of higher learning. This is a project I've been contemplating for some time, and it so happened the day was perfect. Enjoy the walk Note: I hope to do this again when there are students about and when I'm able to get into the buildings.

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Wind giants in mono: 

 I’ve found that these wind giants make excellent subjects for a black and white scene. They key here is to get a morning or afternoon sun.  You want some angle to the sun setup a light side and a dark side to this subject.  This contrast shows very well in then monochrome world with very distinct dividing lines between the two.

DogDays_Home FromTheFair_59 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Long day of adventure headed to an end. On the way home from the fair.

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One of my favorite topics up close and personal.  We are always on the lookout for windmills to capture.  They add a unique element to these rural landscape pictures.  It’s kinda like adding another dimension to the scene.   So as your out roaming around looking for unique and interesting scenes to shot watch for these guys.  They really are easy to miss, especially if they are missing the blades.

DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_70 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_59 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_33 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_44 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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Happened to travel an new route in eastern Iowa this summer and found several fantastic windmill captures along side of the road. 

DogDays_DayOnTheRoad_48 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: It was the end of July and we had to travel to Clinton Iowa and back that day. We decided to take a route that wound through the hills of east central Iowa. Enjoy the road scenes as we travel through Iowa's Grant Wood area.

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I love what clouds can add to a scene.  These dramatic skies are as much of a focus of my captures as is the foreground.  I’ll even reduce the amount of foreground to capture more of the cloud structure.

SouthOfCL_58 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Earlier this spring we spent some time wandering the gravels south of Clear Lake IA. Enjoy the countryside.

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At the stone and log house I decided that the ambient light through the windows would make for some excellent effects.  I left my flash in the bag for this entire set and relied on natural light only.  Also learned to exhale then then hold my breath form the shot.  This was an excellent artistic tool as can be scene if this capture.  The bright windows generating silhouettes, the projection of the flower onto the lounge table, and the chair with red cushions dodging in and out of the shadows.  This place was great fun and an fantastic opportunity for me to experiment.

StoneHouse_20 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: At Littleport we toured an old stone house that had been restored. It is currently owned by My mothers cousins Helen Rowell and her sister. Helen was a gracious and knowledgeable tour guide for this outing. It was also an excellent photo opportunity for me. This house was built in the late 1800's and had sat empty for 50 some years until the early 2000's when it was restored and modernized with plumbing and electric. It is available as a B&B with information located at <a href="http://www.traveliowa.com/aspx/dest.aspx?id=9346" rel="nofollow">www.traveliowa.com/aspx/dest.aspx?id=9346</a> Enjoy this restored piece of Iowa antiquity.

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A view of North East Iowa.

I’m also posting from a recent trip we had to make back home.  We did manage to squeeze in an afternoon drive through the hills around Elkater IA.  This set is featuring a stone and log house my mothers cousin has acquired just down from the homestead.  She and her sister are running it as a B&B.  The natural scenery out the windows and the rustic feel of yesteryear make this an excellent place to relax and reflect.

StoneHouse_14 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: At Littleport we toured an old stone house that had been restored. It is currently owned by My mothers cousins Helen Rowell and her sister. Helen was a gracious and knowledgeable tour guide for this outing. It was also an excellent photo opportunity for me. This house was built in the late 1800's and had sat empty for 50 some years until the early 2000's when it was restored and modernized with plumbing and electric. It is available as a B&B with information located at <a href="http://www.traveliowa.com/aspx/dest.aspx?id=9346" rel="nofollow">www.traveliowa.com/aspx/dest.aspx?id=9346</a> Enjoy this restored piece of Iowa antiquity.

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More from the market

I’m getting back to posting here after a long a trying month.  On this trip WE spent some time on the sky walks and found this to be an excellent vantage point above the market scene.  Not only did it offer an excellent view down onto the market, it also offered an unique view of the cityscapes.  Checkout my Flickr stream for more photos from the market.

FM2015_024 by Mark Stumme Via Flickr: Too many sets in play. but some neat things in the Des Moines street market scene I want to post before it gets too old so I'm going to add it into the mix. Enjoy views from the Farmers Market.