I’ve now had the IT for 32 days and it is 46 miles shy of turning 2000 miles, not to shoddy considering most of those miles have been just on weekend day rides! Still getting around 53-54 miles to the gallon and I'm Not taking it easy on the motor anymore, mostly stayed in 4th around or above 5K....she sounds really nice in that range, develops a nice throaty rumble right around there
Rode out toward Berkeley Springs, Martinsburg and points west and east. Every time I headed north, it would threaten rain, if I turned west it just stayed cloudy, if I turned south or east the sun would shine; obviously I was the victim of a weather conspiracy....
Found some nice small roads 710 off of 55, then some small roads north from 50 that took me to Purcellville and then west on 7 to Round Hill and then took 340 north to 611 and on to Country route 13 to 51 west just shy of Charles Town. That took me to Inwood where I picked up Rt. 11 and headed south and found my way to Rt. 37 which dumped me back on 11 south of Winchester and then back to 55. Traveled down a number of other smaller roads that either just ended or turned to gravel and then ended or became a bit rougher than what I wanted to take the IT on. Set up the Olympus for multiple shooting with bracketing set at an EV +-1 in sets of 3 for 1 over and 1 under using aperture to try some shots to process using the Photomatrix HDR software. From what I read on this they seem to recommend using 5 or more shots (i.e. 2 over and 2 under) but since I was shooting both RAW and jpeg fine I stuck with just three. Some came out pretty nice, but some of the wildflower shots were tough due to movement and subsequent ghosting of the overlying images from them swaying in the light breezes blowing, close-ups esp. were affected by this even though the breezes where fairly light. I also think I got a little carried away with the color saturation a few times during processing too!
One thing I have found with shooting and riding is that stopping to take photos is pretty time consuming, esp. when you spend any time trying to find just the right angle to shoot from, composing and changing the settings on the camera. Plus there are so many potential shoots that I see as I pass that don’t provide a safe place to park. This is especially true when traveling the back roads with no shoulder or that you have to backtrack to because they come on you so fast there isn’t time to pull over as you pass. So most often I try to find a single location that offers a number of possibilities which means even more time taken from putting on more miles.
So here now are the pick of the litter out of some 45-50 scenes/locations, some better than others…..
This tree cam out nice great range of tones and the sky isn’t washed out yet the detail in the fence is not totally dark
I played around with trying some trying to change the perspective/horizon line by shooting with the camera tilted to align with some feature of the scene so that it when viewed the image would be tilted. Occasionally it can produce some interesting results (at least I like the results!) as in these next two, using the two different methods for HDR in photomatrix
Most the next set were taken around this old abandoned house I saw along Rt. 55.
Looked like it would have been a pretty cool house at one time.
RM