Like any good landscape photographer, I look for both the wide scene and the telling detail. This is another shot just after sunset.
Author: James Vornov
I'm an MD, PhD Neurologist who left a successful academic career on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop new treatments in Biotech and Pharma. I became fascinated with how people actually make decisions based on the science of decision theory and emerging understanding of how the brain works to make decisions. My passion now is this deep explanation of what has been the realm of philosophy, psychology and self help but is now understood as brain function. By understanding our brains, I believe we can become happier, more successful people.
2007 Training Summary
207 Hours in 2007
Last Febuary, needing a new heart rate monitor, I invested in a Garmin Forerunner 305. It’s an oversized watch unit with a built in GPS unit, wireless heart rate monitor and, with a bicycle accessory, cadence sensor. I chose it because it was flexible for running or cycling and, most importantly, because I would finally be able to track workouts on the computer.
While Garmin had finally started supporting the Mac with it’s software, I ended up using Ascent from Montebello Software. Based on appearances, I presume that Ascent is a Cocoa based program that integrates with Microsoft TerraServer and Virtual Earth for mapping. While the maps and the workout data displays are nice, what I find most useful is the journal function
Since Feburary, I know I’ve lost a few hours of recording because a dead battery in the Garmin. And when I do my 15-20 minute Pilates stretch and core strength routine, I can’t wear the monitor. Weight training and any swimming haven’t gotten recorded either. So I’m tracking running and cycling for the most part.
Since the Journal tracks by day, week, month and year, today I finish the first calendar year with the system. Since I didn’t have the unit during January, I’ll need to extrapolate the missing data.
During 2007 I totaled 207 hours of activity. That’s about 19 hours a month or a bit less than 5 hours a week. Of course there was a good bit of variability with months ranging from 22 hours in April to a low of 14 hours in August. During the year I realized that time was a constraint- family, vacations and business travel making many days unavailable for exercise. One of my adaptations was to use those weeks as rest weeks and pile up extra activity in the week before if possible.
It’s clear that I could do better simply by being more consistant on easy days. I can also be a bit smarter about matching time to intensity. For example, when I have a couple of weeks during the summer with limited travel, I can use the flexibility of my schedule to move to lower intensity, longer duration workouts. During the tough travel times, I can do consistent days that are shorter, but higher intensity. Overall, though it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to push total training time above 250 hours.
Am I more Fit This Year Than Last?
When I set up this new weblog, I made my categories into goals. My fitness goal was simply to be more fit this year than last. I didn’t set objective criteria at the time, but there are a few that emerged. Of course, there’s weight. Today I was at 156.5 pounds. Last year, I was at 160.5, so there’s an objective improvement. As well, I’ve taken about an inch and a half off my waistline, so my fat loss may have been more that the 4 pounds of total weight. Psychologically, my stress level is low and I’ve had fewer colds and viruses this year than in years past.
I’ve tracked fitness somewhat using field testing as suggested by Chris Carmichael. My 12 minute Cooper Fitness Test, my running test has improved from 1.125 miles last August to 1.38 miles last month. Based on the standard calculations, that means that my VO2 Max has improved from 29 to 34, a 17% improvement. I haven’t had a long enough interval to judge my progress on the Carmichael 3 mile maximal effort cycling test, but based on my riding speeds, I expect that I’m faster there. I’m doing base miles at speeds of 13 to 14 mph this year rather than 11 to 12 that I was doing early last year.
Sadly, I’ve just managed to get myself into the average category for age. I’m not a naturally gifted endurance athelete and for years my exercise was always just recreational- hiking or long cycling. I have no trouble training to go long, I just can’t go fast. So while I’m clearly responding to training stimuli, I likely lack the genetic capability to ride or run really fast because of my limitations in oxygen use efficiency.
But knowing that my clear limiter is VO2Max and not strength or endurance gives me a focus for training this year. I’d like to see to what extent I can use last year as a platform to get another 10 to 20% gain by this time next year. If I take off another 6 pounds and put on some more lean weight, my strength to weight ratio should be better and performance should improve.
In the end, I’m deeply grateful to be able to be working on my athleticism as I enter my 50’s rather than dealing with the onset of chronic illness of aging.
Trying 8 Second Intervals
On the local bicycle club mailing list I saw this link to an interesting report on very short intervals. There are links to the thesis there, so one can review the data itself. The investigators first examined the physiological effects of very short, high intensity intervals, comparing first 8 s work followed by 12 s rest vs 24 s work and 36 s rest. There was little difference physiologically, but the 8/12 sequence was preferred by the subjects. In the following 15 week training study the 8 second / 12 second 20 minute interval training was compared to a 40 min standard cardio workout at 60% of VO2 peak..
For some reason I was very interested in trying it. This morning I put on the heart rate monitor and tried to use my strength exercise as the stimulus- working hard with light weight for 8 seconds, resting for 12 and going continuously for 20 minutes. It didn’t work at all, because as I always find with continuous circuit training I feel the effort, but my heart rate never gets very high even though I’m working hard. I get to audible breathing, but I remain in at a low level of aerobic exertion based on heart rate.
Not wanting to give up, I gave it 20 minutes on the bike. I picked a resistance on the trainer that felt like work for 8 seconds followed by “just turning the pedals over” for 12 seconds. And the workout was quite intense. It’s seems like it’s quite self regulating to get one working very quickly just above lactate threshold. The rest periods are no where near long enough to recover and and the work periods I kept to short of painful, since I was going to be doing this for 20 minutes. Over about 10 minutes then, my heartrate stair-stepped up to about LTHR and slowly moved moved beyond it in the second 10 minutes.
I think it’s a nice way to build intensity on a trainer while stressing the aerobic system primarily. I could see pushing the workout over time to longer than 20 minutes, since I felt a modest amount of fatigue after the workout. I’ll see how ready I am tomorrow, which is the true test of workout intensity, but tonight my guess is that it’s a moderate, not a hard workout and I probably could do it again tomorrow.
My Local Waterfall
My Local Waterfall, originally uploaded by jjvornov.
Just before it started raining this morning, I managed to capture a few images of The Western Run, a small stream that runs through a nearby city neighborhood. This is just after the stream exits from a concrete piping system of a few blocks long. It’s in it’s natural bed, banked by more storm drains and areas of artificially built up banks, as seen here.
Because it was dim and I wanted to blur the water with a slow shutter speed, I got the tripod out for this series of images. I see that I really ought to invest in a better ballhead, even though the results here are credible.
I’ve noticed that Moose Peterson is pushing his images more and more just as I am. I like Vincent Versace’s aim creating images that reflect a believable improbability. It’s all too easy to push images into a psychedelic fantasy world that stop working as insights into what was seen at the time of capture.
[Nikon D300, 24mm f/2.8 NEF converted in Capture NX, processed in Photoshop using Nik Color Efex 3.0 filters.]
Reworking Light and Leaf
I thought that one way of checking my progress in workflow would be to quickly rework an older image. I came upon this one, which I didn’t think worked well at all. I used Photoshop and the Nik Color Efex filters along with some of Vincent Versace’s lighting techniques to balance the leaf with the sunlight and create a more “closed composition. I don’t think it’s an image worth a lot more work, but I proved to myself that I’ve improved my editing eye and can return to images and improve the success of their composition. For comparison, the previous version is the smaller version at the right.
This Is A Photograph
This image was capture on film (C-41 process black and white), developed and scanned by my local lab, then posted here un touched or manipulated. To me, it is a photograph. A moment in time captured by the light recording medium. It’s momentary and completely accidental for me. Since it required no level or contrast changes, I had no need to further manipulate it.
Erwin Puts has been writing on the subject. He describes well the difference between snapshots like this image and the construction of digital imagery through computers.
In my color Suburban Landscape project, I’m pushing my post processing well beyond what I’ve done before. Digital provides better ways to do what we were capable of in the darkroom with greater speed and control. However when you start working with layers, combining multiple images, adding effects like selective focus or sharpening one has left the realm of photography as it was known and are now creating images. Like painting or drawing, this new digital medium is more free and more subjective than photography.
By using two different cameras and media for capture, I have an easier time moving between the two different modes.
Why Has Eliot Porter Been Forgotten?
When I started photographic seriously in the early eighties, I used Ansel Adam’s books as a guide. While I wasn’t a large format photographer, I digested as much of the Zone System as I could use and worked to get full range, high contrast prints. I still use those black and white darkroom skills in my work as one my early steps for every image is to desaturate and create a curve that produces contrast and midrange placement where it looks the best in monochrome. When I drop the saturation back in, I get my typical look of high saturation and high contrast. The saturation isn’t really boosted above that from the converted RAW, It’s just that the contrast in those tonal regions are pretty high. While I often like the monochrome rendering, putting the color information back always surpises and generally pleases me.
Today I realized that one of my other influences from that time was Eliot Porter. He introduced color to photography and I think was a great influence on the landscape photographers active today. Porter’s images were generally subtle, gentle and often small scale. These qualities still resonate with me.
I realized that the reason I had forgotten about Porter’s influence is that he is so rarely talked about these days in spite of the continued recognition of his historical contribution to color landscape photography. My Suburban Landscape project is a clear reflection of his influence on how I approach landscape photography.
Technical note: This is one of the last images I shot last night when it looked mostly dark. It’s ASA 400 shot with the 24 mm f/2.8 prime wide open at 1/15th second, availble light, hand held. When you look at the full resolution print, it’s hard not to be amazed at the technology we now have available for color photography. It would simply have been impossible to get this image with film, at least without a tripod. However, the instant feedback of digital capture was vital here for me to know that I had correctly placed the value of the tree bark of the brightest tree where I wanted it in relation to the rest of the scene.
6 megapixel Silliness
I captured this image of a tree down the block from my home just at sunset. I had a very nice image capture session, keeping the camera on manual and spot metering. I was metering to create contrast in the scene, usually by placing a bright object on Zone 7 with great success. I should be able to post a few more from tonight’s images if the forecast for rain turns out to be correct.Having shot this afternoon with the 10 megapixel Nikon P5000, I found this site to be rather silly.Â
Best picture quality with 6 megapixels: The 8 megapixels devices released in 2005 showed extreme picture errors (so-called noise) under low light conditions and colour fringes in high contrast structures became visible. These problems have become even worse in today’s cameras with 10 and 12 megapixels. Manufacturers have attempted to repair these problems with software for noise suppression and picture editing.
To me, this is like saying that ASA 400 color print film provides best picture quality and no other film should be used. It may have been the best compromise at the time for color print film, with decent grain and high dynamic range. With sufficient light or a tripod, slower films, especially high saturation chromes like Velvia, could create images that no ISO 400 film could duplicate.What camera manufacturers are trying to do is to create cameras that degrade more gracefully and be all things to all people.
And diffraction limitation at f/8! Isn’t depth of field on a compact sensor enough at f/8? It’s like f/22 in 35mm film format. I could see slow shutter speeds as the complaint if you need to stop down to decrease light, but you can’t have infinite resolution on a camera through pinhole apertures.
The real problem is that internet testers analyze 100% crops rather than looking at reasonable size prints or on-screen images across light levels- which is what, I think, users really care about.
Andrew Hyde’s Blogging Tips
Some very nice tips on weblogging fromAndrew Hyde:
Here are a list of what I see as the biggest everyday mistakes of 07, taken from a list I jotted down at a coffeshop talking with some bloggers I really respect.
I first ran across Andrew when he was a doing an outdoor equipment podcast, “The Adventure Lifestyle”. I’ve been following his creation of the “Startup Weekend” with interest. While I miss the podcast, I’m happy about his current growing success as a catalyst for new ventures. He continues to be a man to watch.
Starting the Cycling Season Now
It’s 47*F in Baltimore and sunny. I took advantage of the weather to go out on a slow recovery ride (1hr 20min). Yesterday I ran 7.5 miles on tired legs and this was the best break I could imagine. Since it was a recovery ride I brought the Nikon P5000 and stopped a few times to grab some shots. I thought they might serve as sketches to remind me of the scenery. I’ve watched these potential images go whizzing by during training rides before, but never stopped to capture them. Wearing my yellow tinted sunglasses always makes them look even more appealing.
Last year I didn’t start putting in milage on the bike until early March, so I had come up with a plan to ride 6 months and run during the rest of the year. I planned on cross training so I wouldn’t go completely out of riding or running shape during the year. I knew that I needed to keep up some running as it’s my best option for fitness during business travel. In October I switched over, putting the bicycle aside and started building mileage. As I finished up 3 months of mostly running, I had built to a 12 mile long run, taking me just about 2 and a half hours. My fitness, at least for running was measurably increasing.
My most important realization was how much I was gaining from higher intensity intevals approaching VO2 max. And with running, it was easier to get there given the weight bearing nature of the exercise and my low efficiency as a runner. Running is great during the winter because I feel comfortable running at temperatures and in weather conditions that keep me off the bicycle.
Having taken a few months to focus on running, I’ve decided to try to take January, February and March to build a base that will have me ready for intervals in April through May when the weather is better, but time is often short.