Hardly Harley

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 20

2013-05-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

The SF Night Sky

I haven't posted photos for my projects for the last couple weeks mainly because they've not been photos I enjoyed taking, never mind looking at. But these I enjoyed. I love San Francisco. It has some great photo opportunities day or night, but I really liked my night shots. The theme for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 was Contrasting Colors, and I think we have that covered.

Hemmed In SF

For my black and white group our theme was Framed. I chose this street shot originally for it's close in, hemmed in, feeling, that only seems to get worse as you head down the hill. Then someone pointed out all the "frames" on the buildings. That works too. As is my usual I did the conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2 and in an unlike me decision, put more grain into the picture. I think I wanted to give it a "street" or "edgy" look to it. I don't think I pulled it off.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Golden Gate

2013-05-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Golden Gate on a typical SF day

It's been a bit since I posted. It'd also been a while since I had felt like shooting anything. I think the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco in general is a good remedy for what ever the equivalent is for writer's block for photographers. I have a couple GG shots (a couple hundred) but this is my first down from the Fort Point area. That's Fort Point, a Civil War era fort, under the bridge. I'd seen a lot of GG shots from this vantage point on G+ so thought I'd give it a try. I like the heavy chain, it gives a kind of anchor and a little extra to the shot. Sadly the waves weren't so big as to give me a real dramatic bridge shot with a wave crash. Maybe next time. Weather was also not ideal for a photo, but was typical SF. Should have waited around a couple hours for the clouds to burn off. Other things I would have done differently would have been to actually use the tripod I had in the car with me, that might have made this seven shot HDR composite a little sharper.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 17

2013-04-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Night Lights. Literally

I thought this was going to be the week that I stumbled and didn't turn something in for at least one of the projects, but I was able to get photos in for both of them. Just not in a photographic state of mind. So for +Project 52 B&W our theme was night lights. Had I been on my game earlier in the week I would have lined something up with the moon through a window in my house illuminating the hall. By the time I got my act together fog and clouds obscured the moon and I was left with this night light. And a mirror.

Where the magic doesn't happen

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was favorite room. This is not always my favorite room, but it is in the morning. Just me, my cereal, and something to read. This shot is an HDR shot and also my first interior/room HDR shot. I realized that one processes these shots differently than outdoor shots.

Through the Arch

2013-04-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Archway

I spend some time on G+ looking at photos. Usually I'm looking at style as I'm trying to figure out just what my style is. Other times I'm looking for ideas and subjects. I've been seeing a lot of these water arches recently so I was happy to come across one of my own. I'll have to try and venture back here with a little more water drama and not in the middle of the day.

This is a seven shot HDR. I wanted to get all the detail in the shadows of the rock formation so figured HDR was the way to go. Apart from that I used Topaz Labs Detail. It was a very windy day, and my fairly lightweight camera and tripod were probably moving a bit during shooting. Detail lets me lessen blur and sharpen things up a bit.

Quick Post

2013-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

The IR Path

Just a quick post with some shots that I shared on Google+ that I thought I'd bring in here too. These were shot over the weekend. This first one is an infrared shot that tempted me after I had decided to not shoot IR anymore. For saying how windy it was on the coast, it was remarkably still here allowing this five second exposure to not look that bad in terms of motion blur. I've yet to figure out how to effectively do color channel switching, so the only thing I've done to this is set the white balance and increase contrast.

Beach Painting

It was really windy on the beach, and as I was walking into the wind I had my head down and was trying to protect my camera. As I was walking I was some lighter sand on top of the wet dark sand. I looked up and captured this. I try to "see" in what I want the final photo to be, whether it's black and white or infrared, and this was easy to visualize in black & white.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 16

2013-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Searching for aliens? No, searching for something to watch on TV

It's Monday and that means another recap. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was technology. There's not much to this shot, and I wouldn't place it high on my favorite lists. The one thing I will say about it is that flip-out and rotate touch screen made this a much easier shot to take. This was held as high up as I could reach, then when I thought I had the shot I wanted I just tapped the screen for the shot. Not much in the way of processing either. I wanted to emphasize the dirtiness of the dishes so took the shot into Topaz Labs Detail. All in all a boring shot.

Foggy Lane

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was the vague sounding fade. To get the shot I wanted I ended up having to go to the archive to pull something out, and even that wasn't good enough. Originally this shot (in color) had hints of fog in it. I need to figure out how to better take photos of fog. Longer shutter speed? Shorter? Anyway, I needed to help the fog out. I used Topaz Labs Lens Effects which was able to add some fog to bolster my fog up and have the street almost fade out.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Toning Fun

2013-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Black Cerulean Tea Rocks

My +Project 52 B&W is a very strick black and white group. No sepia toning. No toning above 15%, whatever that means. I'm sometimes surprised shades of grey are allowed haha. I suppose it makes sense, the group is a black and white group, but there's some fun to be found in toning. Topaz Labs Black and White Effects have some great dual and quad tone toning presets that I always want to play with but don't because of the rules. Well it's Thursday and this photo is (probably) only going to be used here on the blog so here's "Black Cerulean Tea Dynamic" from B&W Effects Cerulean collection.

I'm still trying to get a hold on toning, but it's basically moving color tones to be other color tones. This photo has four colors to it, a dark blue, a very light red, black, and white. I don't think Silver Efex Pro by Nik/Google has quad toning, but just the fairly standard dual tone. Hopefully I can play more with these in future photos.

Babbling Brook Before and After

2013-04-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Baseline Single Exposure and Final HDR photo

I thought since our +Weekly Photo Project 2013 group just finished up the theme of HDR that I go into a little more depth on how I created my image. Most of my steps were taken from +Trey Ratcliff's wonderful +Stuck In Customs HDR walk through and changed to better fit my equipment and workflow. The above two photos show what the camera felt was the correct exposure for the scene and what my finished HDR photo turned out to be. And after the break I'll outline how I got from the shot on the left to the shot on the right.

The 0 Exposure

Here's Exposure 0. It's what the camera decided on how to handle the light in the photo. One mistake I did on this whole set of exposures was to have my aperture too small af f16. I wanted to capture the flowing water but I didn't need an f16 to do that. I probably could have gotten away with an f8 and not blown out so much of the water. So besides that problem the shot doesn't capture much of what's in the darker parts of the photo. That's where the six other shots, or brackets, come in.

The Brackets

Above we see all seven brackets now in Aperture, starting with Exposure Level 0 on the right, moving to -1 to +1, -2 and +2, and -3 and +3. The photos are all RAWs. Many people use JPEGs, but I use RAWs because if I end up not liking the HDR I can still have a lot of flexibility in using a single exposure in RAW format. Most people just use 3 shots (-3 or -2, 0 +3 or +2) but my camera doesn't have a lot of flexibility when choosing how many brackets and at what interval, so the only way for me to get a -3 to +3 range to is to shoot seven shots along the way. I could do the brackets manually but that is more time consuming.

At this point I now typically send them straight to Photomatix Pro. I would normally take the time to DeNoise each file in Topaz Labs DeNoise, but to be quite honest I'm too lazy for it and I find the option to let Photomatix remove noise to be good enough most times, with just a little extra DeNoise work after the HDR is created.

The Created HDR

Here's what it looks like after it leaves Photomatix. We can see more into the shadows and the foliage has more depth to it. The details found in the shadows come from the over exposed (+1, +2, +3) brackets and the details in highlight areas come from our underexposed (-1, -2, -3) brackets. This is great, but HDR often leaves photos feeling flat due to low contrast, which makes sense because we're trying to bring out more information in both the darks and light areas, so I almost never consider a photo finished when it comes out of HDRing. With this photo I wanted to saturate the colors more, bring in some contrast and try to minimize the overblown whites in the running water.

Now the photo goes for what I call finishing. Using Topaz Labs' great photoFXlab I can access my Topaz plugins quickly and easily and make use of layers. First stop is to DeNoise to take care of the noise that seeps into HDR images. I love DeNoise for it's ability to remove noise and retain detail. After that it's off to Adjust where I do what I think of as large scale changes to saturation and exposure to get the overall mood and look I'm looking for. It's in here that I dealt with the overblown whites, add in some contrast and get the saturation so that greens are green. And then I finish it all off in Detail to bump the details of the photo up a little bit, and deblur it. Great thing about Detail (and most Topaz Labs plugins) is that I can brush out the effects, which I did on the water to keep the smooth flowing look.

Finished

I think I accomplished what I wanted in this final shot. The water smooth and flowing with the white highlights toned down (but still too noticeable for my eyes). The greens of the moss and ferns now pops some more with the changes in saturation, along with the other colors. The shadows have shadow areas have come back but are more detailed and more interesting to the eye. All in all I was quite pleased with this shot as it turned out better than I thought it would when I was behind the camera taking the photos. I hope this is of some help to you.

Equipement Used:

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3

Lens: Kit 14-42mm f3.5-f5.6

Tripod

Software:

Apple Aperture

Photomatix Pro
Topaz Labs Plugins

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 15

2013-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Babbling Brook

We didn't change too many of the themes for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 when we were using the 2012 group's themes, but some did get the axe. In place of one of those themes was my suggestion for HDR. Yes, I might have suggested it because I knew I'd have no problem coming up with a photo, but I also thought of it as a good way to introduce the method to those who had never done it before. This is a 7 shot photo processed in Photomatix then bombarded with Topaz Labs' DeNoise, Adjust and Detail.

Elusive

For +Project 52 B&W I figured it would be easy to shoot the theme flowers. I didn't take into consideration the weather keeping me indoors, oh, and no flowers around my house. A two hour bike ride didn't find me anything more than dandelions and some smaller flowers that didn't really photograph well. I finally came across this guy just as I was heading back home.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

The Cave

2013-04-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Who Lives Here?

While hiking around I stumbled across this. I didn't really think much of it until I heard some kid wondering who/what lived in there. Man, where'd the imagination go? 8 year old me would have been betting on some kind of amphibious undiscovered monster living there. Maybe the North American Loch Ness monster. The kind of whirlpool action on the right just adds to the mystery of the cave. Man, I wish I could look at things like that kid again.

In terms of the photo itself, it's a seven exposure HDR. HDR does interesting things to water, which I tend to like, making it more turquoise and showing more contrast. I'm about at the end of my Nik collection trial and did process the photo through the two different sets of plugins. Though I liked how the photo looked initially coming out of HDR Efex Pro, I felt more comfortable going through the Topaz plugins in getting what I wanted

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 14

2013-04-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

A Dark and Stormy Night

This was quite literally a last minute shot for +Weekly Photo Project 2013. I hadn't an idea for our theme of Night, and the weather wasn't helping much. So, I looked outside the front door. From my G+ post:

"So there I was, sitting at my computer looking at all the #weeklyphotoproject2013 photos when it dawned on me, tonight is the last night I can take a night photo (and be on time). Well, the weather was one reason why it came down to this. So, there I was squatting on my front doorway stairs with a remote shutter release in one hand, an umbrella in the other and my camera hanging upside down from my tripod, which I didn't know it could do until today, so there's that. Everyone's been there before, right? No? Well, the neighbors tend to look at you strangely."

That pretty much says it all. I did minimal work on the post processing side, some DeNoise-ing and a little brightening of the shadows.

Beauty and the Beast

For +Project52-2012 our theme was transportation, and I happen to run across this wonderful Jaguar D-Type with the beastly AC Cobra in the background. Both lust worthy cars for different reasons. Dad brought me up to appreciate classic cars, and the Jag D-Type is just about my favorite classic car out there. I played around with this image a lot. The color image wasn't that great to begin with, it was a really flat day out. On a mistake I took it into Lens Effects from Topaz Labs and applied the tilt-shift lens preset. It didn't do the usual "make big things look small" effect but did really play with the focus.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Fogged in Panorama

2013-04-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

7 Shot Panorama

On a rare sunny day in Humboldt I was able to trek to get this 7 shot panorama of College Cove with Pewetoll Island and Trinidad Head being fogged in.

This is a seven shot panorama processed in Photoshop for the actual stitching. I also ran it through Hugin, but have been finding Photoshop's stitching to be more consistent. I thought Hugin would handle these shots better since it was handheld, but Photoshop just beat out Hugin. I then ran two copies of the photo through Nik and Topaz Labs software and at the end I chose the Topaz Labs processed version. In Adjust I used the Vibrance pre-set and fiddled with the adjustments from there. Then to finish it I took to Detail. I had originally envisioned this shot in black and white, but wasn't able to get it together in time for posting, though I think I'll try it later.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 13

2013-04-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Shadow and Light

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was Playing With Light. I had a couple ideas on the theme, but when I got to shooting them they just didn't work out. So due to it being the last minute I had to find something in the archive. I liked this shot in black and white better, but it turned out ok.

The King of Trees

I had better luck with the +Project 52 B&W theme of Look Up. A giant redwood in the middle of a ring of redwoods.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Peaking Sunset

2013-03-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Topaz'd Sunset

Pulled this set out of the archive. Earlier this week Nik (owned by Google) released a new version of their software plugin suite for Aperture (and those other photo editors) for a much reduced price of $150. Considering the suite used to go for $450-$500 this was a pretty big deal. In this suite is an HDR plugin (HDR Efex), a black and white conversion (Silver Efex), a color and tone enhancer (Color Efex), a sharpener, and a denoise tool. I had gotten Silver Efex and absolutely love it, but had tried some earlier version of HDR Efex that I felt weren't as good as Photomatix, and I couldn't get into using Color Efex. But with this new release and tempting price I thought I'd try them again.

Nik'd Sunset

I denoised in Topaz's DeNoise. After playing with Nik's version I just felt more comfortable with DeNoise and wanted the 2 HDR photos to start off on the same equal footing. After that one set of exposures went to Photomatix for HDRing then to Topaz Labs plugins for finishing and the other set went through the Nik suite of HDR Efex and Color Efex. I originally wanted to try and get the same look and feel for the two. I wanted to bring out the colors and the clouds, the reflection in the water, and the sun rays peaking around the cliff. Some of those things are brought out in both photos but certain things obviously turned out differently.

HDR

Nik HDR Efex is a two step process. The first step involves alignment on or off, helpful for when you shoot handheld, ghost removal, and chromatic aberration removal. The first two are pretty automatic with you being able to click different percentages of ghosting, but the chromatic aberration removal have two sliders that I couldn't really get the hang of so I ignored them. After that the HDR is made and you're able to do a bit of toning. I felt more comfortable in this area than I do in Photomatix's comparable screen, though photomatix uses quite a bit more sliders to fine tune things, and after years of playing with them I'm comfortable using all of them now. I think if I was just starting out HDR Efex would get the nod here in terms of being able to jump in and do things, though I feel I can do more in Photomatix. So I'm going to give Photomatix the nod, if just barely.

Toning and Finishing

Topaz Labs a little bit ago released an awesome plugin/standalone program called photoFXlab which allows the user to easily access all their plugins through a simple interface, and even make use of layers. My typical workflow has me sending the HDR photo to FXlab where I make layers, or copies, of the photo with every plugin used. This way I can easily see the progression of the photo, and if need be tone down some of the edits with layer masks. My two most used plugins are Adjust 5, which works on the colors, toning, and detail of a photo and Detail which, well, works on the details of a photo in a much more powerful way. For this photo I only used Adjust.

Nik Color Efex and Topaz Labs Adjust have a similar workflow; presets on the left, photo front and center, and sliders to fine tune an effect on the right. In both you can one click a preset and call it a day, if you like. Their presets are grouped by looks (Adjust) or uses (Color Efex) which are helpful to quickly sorting through what amounts to a hundred or so presets. The big difference between the two are in how you can adjust locally, or specific parts of a photo. Topaz Labs does a kind of internal layer that you can either brush in or brush out an adjustment while Nik uses control points. Place a point in an area and on a specific part of a photo and you now have control over that circle of influence. Going into this I thought Topaz's way of doing things would be easier, but I think Nik's control points were easier to get the hang of using. With Topaz I found myself often resetting the mask and adjust the opacity of the effect, or the overall effect, then re-painting. With control points there are sliders available that make it easy to make adjustments on the fly. But after years of using Adjust I admit to feeling more at home there which is why I'm again giving Topaz the nod, though I think Nik might even take that spot.

I'll be using the Nik suite more over the next couple weeks to see how it works out, but either way you look at it $149 for these world class plugins is a deal. Topaz Labs used to seem like the best deal in this space at $300, but at half the price Nik and Google have made a statement. The question is, can the quality stay up to par?

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 12

2013-03-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

No More Fires for This Guy

Another Monday another week done for my photo projects. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 the theme was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I was tempted to find a copy of the movie and just shoot that, but then this abandoned firetruck ruined those plans. This is a seven exposure HDR that might have gotten a little too sharp and crispy. Especially in the sky, which is why I cropped it the way I did.

End of the Tracks

For the +Project 52 B&W the theme was uneven. I had a couple to choose from, but liked the play between the light and shadows in this one. I know if you have to explain why a photo fits the theme you've probably failed, but it's in the trees.

Putting It All Together

2013-03-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Cool barn

Recently a friend of mine shared with me some really great faux color infrared photos. Though he didn't know it the shots bummed me out because the quality of them were something I wouldn't be able to mimic until I permanently alter a camera to only shoot in the infrared spectrum. My main problem with how I shoot IR is that due to the very long exposure times I get so much blur that I can't stand looking at my own photos. So I decided to try and challenge myself and shoot trying to minimize the biggest weakness of my setup, blur.

On this really bright and sunny day (the same day I shot this panorama) trees were ruled out because there was a slight breeze. Bushes were ruled out for the same reason. But a field seemed to do the trick. A field with a barn in it worked even better. Still trying to figure out just how to expose for IR I did a couple things different. First I set a custom white balance on the grass, with the IR filter on my lens. Then I put the camera on a tripod (mandatory when your shot is going to take 2.5 seconds), and, because I was playing with exposure times, put the camera in auto-bracket mode to take 7 pictures with 1 step of exposure value up and down. The same setting I use when I shoot HDRs, though I wasn't thinking of an HDR shot when I set this up. The shots came out odd, white balance wise. I was expecting various shades of red but got yellows leading to red. Thankfully I shoot RAW so a quick white balance adjustment fixed that. Then, well, things got crazy.

The images with a 0 and +1 EV turned out pretty good, but when I went to do some faux color on them they didn't turn out the way I wanted. I can't decide if the problem is my camera settings or my post processing work, or a combo of both, but I wasn't thrilled. Then I threw everything out and HDR'd the seven IR shots. It wasn't horrible when it came out, and certainly not nearly as bad as I was expecting, so I went to switch color channels in Pixelmator, and was generally pleased, but not with the field itself. So then, I got crazy. I took the faux colored HDR'd IR image into Silver Efex Pro with the whole point to get that white look in the field. Using more control points than I'd care to remember I brought back the very blue sky, and battled to keep the blue out of the clouds. I like what IR does to clouds so I tried to just keep them white. Brought out some contrast and detail in the barn, lightened the shadows up a bit in Aperture, and I was done. And, even more odd, I liked it. Just don't look to hard at the field details, it's still a bunch of mush.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 11

2013-03-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Panoramic Spring

Week 11 came and went with little fanfare. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 I used this five shot panorama that I originally thought would be a throw away shot. I was trying to use my auto exposure lock function on my camera (which either didn't work the way I expected, or just didn't work at all for this shot) and thought I'd be tossing this shot after I finished stitching the five shots together. I ended up keeping it because I liked the vibrant colors, and really liked the clouds. If you zoom in (on the original at least) you can even see what I hope to be the last patches of snow on the background mountains.

Ironing

For +Project 52 B&W our very wide open theme was old. I don't like wide open themes, I like theme with a little more direction. I spend more time debating what is the theme then taking a shot. I happen to come across this old? antique? iron while doing some spring cleaning. My parents had a bunch of old stuff, and this coal heated iron was among them. My take away is that though ironing still sucks today, it sucked even more way back when. Especially when there were no wrinkle free shirts to be had.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Pewetoll Island From the Other Side

2013-03-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Pewetoll Island and Trinidad Head

I'm glad I was able to capture the other side of Pewetoll Island at sunset. The light was hitting the island just right, but I was having a hard time capturing it. So I did what I often do and turned the auto-bracket option on and fired of 7 exposures. Then I quickly scampered off the rock that was soon going to be underwater.

I couldn't find a single exposure that I really liked so went to HDR them all. It worked out really nicely I think. But I didn't like the large amount of water that was originally showing at the bottom of the photo, and cropping it at 16x9 wasn't doing enough for me. So this is a 2.35x1 crop, or what is sometimes referred to as a cinema crop, since a lot of movies these days are coming out like this. I liked how it worked for this shot.

In the background and to the right is Trinidad Head, and to the left you can just make out some of the coastal houses that make up the town of Trinidad.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 10

2013-03-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Pewetoll Island

A little late with the blog posting because I was a little late with one of the photos for this week. For +Project 52 B&W I went and grabbed a quick shot of Pewetoll Island (also shown here). The choppier water left me unsure about how the reflection would turn out, but I like that it's not as detailed as past shots I have of it. I love the detail in the island and trees. This G3 is really impressing me, still.

Charlotte's Web?

I have a timetable for +Weekly Photo Project 2013. I like to shoot and upload by Sunday so I can publish my blog post on Monday. I got out to shoot more this week, but each time out I was too wrapped up in what I was shooting that I forgot about shooting for this. Also in the back of my mind was the thought that I could stage something or find something in the garden to shoot. And then Sunday afternoon hit. I found these webs on the side-yard fence and shot a couple frames of them then went looking for other stuff. Got them into Aperture and these were the clear winners (once I threw out a version of a shot I'd used before for something else). I really like how you can easily see the area in focus both on the fence and the webs.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Revisiting an Old Friend

2013-03-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

An Old Friend

Haven't been in a photography mood lately, which is why I completely missed last week and am late with this week's posting. I think I need to dig into my archives and work on some of those.

When I get a new camera I like to look through my archive at photos I've really liked from my old cameras and try to recreate the shot with the new camera. This gives me a chance to evaluate the new camera and how it differs from the past ones. This isn't one of those shots that I would use for comparison, mainly because this is two shots merged into one. Using my neutral density filter I took a shot of the falls at f22 giving me a couple seconds of exposure to get the silky look of the falls. Unfortunately it was a bit windy so the foliage around the falls were not very sharp to blurry. So I kept the water part then masked in a shot I took at a much faster shutter speed to pull the foliage in nice and sharp.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 9

2013-03-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Foggy Trees

Week 9 almost had me diving into my archive to satisfy one group, and a last minute shot for the other. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 weather and timing weren't working in my favor four our landscape theme. I was never out shooting at the same time the sun was out. I was thinking I'd need to go into my archive to find something when I happened across this. I had accidentally shot this in auto-bracket mode, giving me 7 exposures, so I jokingly played with HDRing it thinking nothing would come of it. The exposures were really flat to begin with, but when it came out of the HDRing there was more depth to the trees there. As the day was very monochromatic, and HDR didn't help with the color, I decided to just ditch all semblance of color in Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2. I started off in their Platinum Collection, which makes use of quad-toning, added some grain to disguise my poor noise reduction technique (or lack thereof) and added a vignette to it. I find the shot to be very dramatic, maybe too dramatic. If I die and were to become a famous photographer I would hope this would be the only piece to be in my "emo period".

Grandfather clock

For the +Project 52 B&W our theme was hands. I don't have interesting hands. I don't know anyone with interesting hands or contrasty colored nails. And I don't think I could walk up to some stranger who has tattooed hands and as to take a shot of them. So for 6 out of 7 days I ignored this thinking something would pop up or if worse came to worse take a shot of my own hands. Then I saw this in my dining room, an old, sadly not working, grandfather clock with some pretty ornate hands. This was an HDR shot also. The reflection on the clock face glass was kind of annoying me, especially when I was shooting it handheld and seeing myself in it. A tripod and remote shutter helped.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 8

2013-02-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Don't mind the giant wave

This week I had one photo already accounted for which gave me 7 days to concentrate on the other one. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating, and I had a general disinterest in shooting anything.

For the +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was Other Photographers. Last year it required me to go into my archive to find a photo where I had inadvertently captured another photographer. This year I used a shot I took a couple week earlier specifically for this project. When I first saw these two it was just as a wave was going to hit and I thought for sure they were going over. But they didn't even react to it and kept at it. They were taking turns shooting and modeling. Talk about a dramatic portrait session.

So close

For the black and white group I was in some trouble. The theme was isolation, which wasn't the worst theme, but I just wasn't motivated. The weather also wasn't cooperating with getting out to shoot. So I spent 6 days doing nothing or going through my recent archive looking for something. I knew what I wanted, a group of something with a loner off to the side. I suppose I could have staged it, but I'm not a big fan of doing that. So off to the beach where I made something work. This lone rock separated from the bigger group of rocks.

In regards to processing this photo I used the newly released Topaz Labs Black & White Effects 2, a much improved product over version 1. I never knew that black & white conversion could be so difficult with so many options. I used to think of black and white as limiting, but for the right photo it can be very freeing, and Topaz Labs and Nik have different ways of going about it. Give them a try.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

The Lost Coast

2013-02-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Lost Coast

The sun came out and I went running for some photos. In hindsight I probably should have waited for the trails to dry out a little before trekking on the coast. Oh well. I really liked the convergence of redwoods, cliffs, and the ocean here. A typical northern California beach.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 7

2013-02-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Carpet of the Forest

This week was an all black & white affair; one of necessity and one to cover up bad lighting. Let's start with my black and white group's photo. Our theme was abstract, and this was a challenge for me. I don't like looking for or thinking in the abstract. So I interpreted it as a close up of moss on a tree. I was happy with the outcome and love what Silver Efex 2 can do to a photo. Not my favorite theme or photo, but I think it turned out ok.

2 Handed Sundail

For the +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was shadows. I had unwittingly taken nearly the exact same shot that I took for the project last year, and so had to scramble a bit at the end to get something. Sadly the lighting didn't really help with the shadows as this was the middle of the day. I liked the incongruity of the very dark sky yet the strong sense of light and a not so interesting shadow of this two handed sundial found on the beach.

Sun Kissed

2013-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sun Kissed

I didn't want to post this shot. Not because I didn't like it, I do, but it's the third or fourth shot from the same outing. The darn clouds give it away! I liked this shot because the hillside foliage is nicely illuminated, in the background you can see the mists hugging the coast, and the sun trail on the ocean. This was a seven shot HDR shot... or composition. I'm not sure if "shot" is the right word for a photo like this that's made up of seven other photos.

In terms of processing I didn't do that much. It came out of Photomatix looking pretty good and instead of my usual Topaz Labs Adjust to Detail, to Aperture workflow I normally do, I only used Detail to sharpen things up a bit then played with curves back in Aperture.