5/23/2012

Cottage on the Lake - Putting in the Dock and Boats



Last week i went up north to our cottage to help put in the boats and docks. Also my dad and i took apart the aluminum boat hoist. We weren't sure how long it would take, but it ended up only taking a few hours.
boat hoist aluminum wire pulley frame build lift shore station crank wheel


A lot of the bolts were rusted from being in the water for several years. Luckily the nuts were at the ends of the bolt, so once we broke them free there wasn't any corroded threads to deal with.
rusted bolts aluminum steel boat hoist shore station loosen


Here is what the boat lift/shore station looked like when it was all taken apart. All of the cables and pulleys are inside of the aluminum beams. And the heaviest part was definitely the white cable crank at the top left.
aluminum boat hoist, disassembled, assemble, put together, how to, parts bolt

Also at night i wanted to try taking more pictures with my homemade ND filter, the stars at night and spinning wool. Here's the links to some of those previous pictures and how they are done:
Here's the pictures i took with my ND filter. I really like the way it makes the water have a glass surface, it's a very calm and dreamlike photo.
bench on the dock, cottage, lake shore, smooth glass water, nd filter, make, how to


With the photos taken using the welding glass there is some post processing in Photoshop. I have 4 or 5 presets saved so it saves a lot of time since now with just 1 click i can fix the colors. But in a lot of cases, converting the picture to black and white is the best way to emphasize the texture and detail.
sitting on the dock at the cottage, looking out to the lake, water

Also you can see in this photo that the ND filter acts as a polarizing filter too. It lets you see right into the water.
homemade nd filter, water, sky polarized dock bench

This was me just experimenting. I had to sit real still for the 30 second exposure.
self portrait, nd filter, water, dock, bench sitting, looking sky

This is a panorama photo of the lake at night. It was created using 6 pictures, each of them at 53 second exposures. Then i processed them all the same way in Photoshop and combined them into one picture using Autostitch.
(click to enlarge)
panorama lake water night stars exposure water

I took several pictures of the night sky, but this one turned out the best. I think at first i had the ISO set too low on the camera. I could have forfeit a little bit of added noise for more vibrant pictures. For the panorama i set the ISO at 250, you can see a couple of shooting stars in there too.

This was the spinning wool photos i wanted to try. If you click on the link above you can see the setup i used to hold and light the steel wool.
spinning wool, on the beach, lake, stars, night sky

I was expecting some amazing photographs from this, but none of them were all that great. I think the hardest part was in being the right distance from the camera. You want to be close to the camera to get the dramatic effect, but not so close that all you see is the sparks from the steel wool.
spinning wool, on the beach, lake, stars, night sky, sparks, lit, fire, steel wool

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