The Digital Photo Project

Recreating a Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 02:25:00 +0000

When Leah came home with us in August 2010, I set her on our bed and quickly composed a photo. I was relatively new to photography and inexperienced with my camera, but it turned out to be one of my favorites.

Leah, 8/14/10 (age: 3 days)

Fast forward nearly four years.

Last week we came home with Gabe, and one item on my to-do list was to recreate the same photo. Nothing too fancy, but I'm a little more comfortable with getting good image quality and tone curves, so I'm quite happy with the results.

Gabe, 6/12/14 (age: 3 days)

The Art of the Science of the Art of Taking Photos of Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 06 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Got to run around with friends and kids this weekend, and played with a certain Mr. F's new Nikon (it's dreamy!). And if you get the Mr. F reference, you are also excited about May 26. Anyway, I'm feeling the inspiration for a post.

Question

How do you take good photos of kids?
--Stock answer: blah blah blah blah blah
--My answer: Psychology. Tactics. Manipulation.

Let's take a step back - what makes a good photo?
(1) Technically solid (focus, exposure, whatnot)
(2) Follows principles (framing, rule of thirds, etc)
(3) Artsy stuff (tells a story, interesting subject, visually neat)

After hummingbirds, meteorites and dark matter, kids have to be the most difficult subject to meet all three criteria:
--They are always moving...away from you
--They are really short and unpredictable
--They really don't care about the aesthetics of your photography

Not following me? Here are a few illustrations from a fabulous (crappy) blog. For context, Leah is somewhere between blurry stage and performer stage, and fortunately her signature smile is nothing like the one my brother Luke wore from ages 3-14.

On the flip side, if what you want is the product of kneeling down and following the action as best you can, congratulations - the camera's memory card overfloweth with such gifts:

I've got more of these than Favre has interceptions

#1 The Snare

Say you are in the yard with your little darling. The sun is nice, her face is relatively clean, she's wearing something you are willing to show to others. It's a photo op. If you just pull out the camera and start shooting, odds are you'll get a bunch of photos that are a whole bunch of nothing special.

Shoot wide open? Good luck focusing. Take a deeper Dof? Now there's blur. Use a high ISO? You've gotta crop so much that the grain kills the shot. Want to see her face? Too bad, she's not looking at you. Whatcha gonna do?

Lots.

You know your child. You know what she'll respond to. You know what bait to put in the snare.
--Pick a good place for a photo, assuming your kid was standing there, then get your camera set.
--Maybe throw a stick there and see if she'll play fetch
--Maybe have a race...but instead of racing you just wait for her to run through a the spot (she just wants to win, anyway)
--Have her go down a slide and just wait at the bottom. Each time you can get a few shots.

You'll get something like this. It doesn't even matter if she's playing the same game as you, so long as she hit her marks:

This was her 10th time down that slide


Dad: You go down first, I'm scared. Daughter:.So, Dad, you coming down yet?

Interestingly, these are two different parks on two different days. Would you say that she has a few favorite outfits?

#2 Go Hide

Another technique - tell her to hide behind a tree from you. You have no intention of going to find her, but you know that she has no patience and will soon peek around to look if you are coming. Actually, it can be anything. A subject will frame herself very nicely by peeking around an object, and it's a flexible enough technique to use almost anywhere.

You can make this photo:

I can hide for at least 5 seconds.

#3 PBS is like GameGenie for Cameras

Indoor portraits? What do you think god invented PBS Kids programming for? Education? I can take 500 photos of her in the afternoon sun, as many angles as I like, and I can pretty much do anything so long as the Curious George is still on.

You can make images at F1.8, without cropping, at a low ISO!

ISO 200 45mm F1.8 1/60 sec

#4 Passive Observer

This is the most elusive and most effective method - find a time when she's doing something that's got her engrossed...and is worth blogging about. Wait...that's not the goal? Whatever.

I try to keep the camera within a 5-sec sprint at all times, so when such an opportunity presents itself I have a fighting change to document the moment. In this case she had (a) agreed to have her hair made "fancy," and was (b) willingly brushing her teeth. The mirror made a fun frame for the shot.

This has never happened again.

Proof for the dentist

Easy Mode

Here's a little sample from the simple days of yore (and an older post) - photographing a sleeping baby. Super easy to compose, get the right exposure, choose your depth of field.

Composing this was as challenging as stealing candy from her

Of course, stress and sleep deprivation are questionable fuels for creativity. Want to know what it's like? Stay up all night doing something delicate and difficult that you have no idea how to do (e.g. disassemble/reassemble your DVD player), then as the sun rises take a stunning photo of your cat.

Life on Mars

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:38:00 +0000

I had some time this morning to try a project - find interesting textures around my house and make abstract images from them. Easy enough, and I came in with little vision for what the final product would look like except that I wanted them to be unrecognizable from their original form.

If this works well, you won't have any idea what these things are, and I'll bet you a doughnut you can't guess but 1 or 2.

The fun part was that as I processed the photos, I found myself envisioning a lunar/Martian landscape - barren, rocky, cold, colorless...and a little weird. Maybe with an alien! Check these out and I hope you find them cool. Bonus points for guessing what they are in the comments.

Images from the Mars Rover?

Mountains of the Moon

A Martian Approaches!

Tenticles

Flying Objects

A Foreign Sky at Night

Creative Bathing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:30:00 +0000

I will not bore you by listing the antics that fill bath time in our home, but I will share some silly photos and allow you to infer what goofiness was going down. Okay, I lied - we were listening to the Barenaked Ladies kids album on my phone, singing along to Crazy ABCs.

Don't own it? You should. It's excellent.

Anyway, I took 72 photos during the bath, all with the 20mm (40mm equivalent), no flash, and no real tricks. Two photos stood out as keepers, and they also provided good material to try out some post-processing techniques I've been learning about.

Shampoo Buffant, a la Flock of Seagulls

Original Camera JPEG

ISO 400 20mm F1.8 1/15sec

This was a moderately challenging photo

There was a lot of noise, especially since this is significantly cropped
The eyes were very dark, so I had to dodge nearly half a stop
The focus wasn't perfect, and combined with the noise I needed both of sharpening and luminance noise reduction
Not much dynamic range between the subject and background

My process

Now that I'm more comfortable with the with how to fine tune sharpening I was pretty successful with this, though the eyes were a challenge to get right.
I selected the background (yay, auto-mask!) and burned it darker, the cut the clarity to blur it a bit more.
Finally I brightened the highlights a bit more (now only part of the subject), and this increased the contrast a bit.

Final Image

Bath Elf

The Laughing Game

I've got a great technique for getting shots like this - The Laughing Game.

I say, "Count and then we'll both laugh as hard as we can."
She counts to some arbitrary number, then starts laughing.
While she's counting, I get the camera ready and then just hold down the shutter to take as many photos as you can (I can usually get 6-8 before she moves out of focus). Also, I laugh like a manic.

I am so smrt!

Original Camera JPEG

ISO 1000 20mm F1.8 1/50sec

Again, this photo has similar challenges, and at a much higher ISO to boot.

I did most of the same things as the first image, though because Leah looked so ridiculous already I felt obliged to use more extreme modifications.

I added a new trick, too - editing the camera calibration setting for distortion, somewhat mimicking a fisheye lens. Looking at the final result you would probably guess that I had half the focal length.

Final Image

KABLAMAKUS

Also, I did one super duper smart thing this time - I used a neutral gray card to get my white balance correct!

Alex can be non-dumb, periodically

Tickling the Ivories

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 05:38:00 +0000

Okay, "ticking the ivories" generally means "playing piano," but I got this wrong as an extra credit question back in 10th grade and since then been looking to get "brushing your teeth" as an accepted second meaning. Now it's on the internet. Boom.

Not too much to say here, as this image was neither premeditated nor does it exemplify anything other than framing the subject as best I could and taking lots of shots. Pretty simple Lightroom processing (a little dodging, cropping, vignetting, fixing some highlights).

I'm a sucker for black and white, but I'm including this as both color and b&w in case others feel differently (e.g. family members that are totally going to make this the background on their desktops).

ISO 200 45mm F1.8 1/30 sec

The young starlet ticking the ivories

Brush your teeth.
--Alex

Cat Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:10:00 +0000

Cat + laser pointer + dark room + long exposure = blog post!!

Here is an image from my latest experiment. Shoulda switched to the longer lens earlier, as this is cropped a bazillion %, and then the cats started fighting and that ended the session.

ISO 200 20mm F4.0 2 sec

Here it is in monochrome. Very different, as the color is so distracting, and it makes me thing that I could do a lot with a laser pointer that would yield surprisingly non-bizarre results.

Sharp as a Bag of Wet Towels

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:12:00 +0000

Is there a term more widely, vaguely and euphemistically thrown around by photographers than "sharpness?" This lens is sharp. Every photo needs some sharpening. Sharp between F2.8 and F9. Tack sharp. In Lightroom 3 there are at least 7 sharpening-related settings I can think of off the top of my head, and if you ignore them all...you can make excellent photos.

What gives, yo? Why is this so important?

Many great things aren't sharp (hello, Monet?), and how is sharpening different from focus? I've been largely ignoring the settings in Lightroom for years, only using them when trying to recover a photo that's a touch out of focus or at a high ISO.

I've come to a conclusion - I need to read up on the principles of sharpening and figure out whether this is an elaborate hoax propagated by ignorance (e.g. tapping on the top of a soda can to reduce fizz), or actually a valuable part of my imaging tool belt. Hmm...how about digital-photography bandoleer? Yeah.

Mission

Take a couple photos that are already good and try to improve them significantly with the sharpness settings in Lightroom.

Overview of the Settings and Jargon

There are four basic sharpening settings in Lightroom 3 in the Detail window, grouped logically and more-or-less undefined unless you read a tutorial:

Amount - Slider that sets the "amount" of sharpness. The only obvious part of this. At 0 everything is blurry; at 100 everything is "posterized," which essentially means "fugly."
Radius - The distance from a strong edge, in pixels, that will be sharpened. 1 is the default and it seems generally ideal, but for fine things (e.g. grass) you might go smaller. I've yet to find a good example of why >1.5 is desirable. Best idea seems to be to leave this setting alone unless the image is of an extremely detailed/undetailed subject.
Detail -This affects the degree to which minor edges are excluded from sharpeneing, where 0 sharpens only major lines and 100 sharpens all shapes. Seems that the idea is to start low here and slowly increase the detail until there's enough definition in the details of the image.
Masking -Very fancy setting, as it sets a threshold on the image where only relatively stronger edges are sharpened. At 0 you sharpen everything, while at 100 only the edges of major shapes are sharpened.

Related settings include holding down ALT to get a preview of the tools (see links at the bottom for more info on this), and noise reduction, which reduces noise with some cost of detail (i.e. you should sharpen some to compensate).

Example 0 - How to ruin a photo

This is what happens if you "posterize" a photo with too much sharpening. Also, the subject is a moron.

This same moron over-sharpened himself in Lightroom

Don't do this.

Exercise 1 - Nice portrait, normal ISO. Fixing something that's not broken.

Here's a thoroughly adorable photo I took of Leah in the kitchen. You can't tell, but she's got a mouth full of banana.

Why am I sharpening this one? Well, it's supposed to be important. Let's see if I can improve on something that's essentially sharp as far as I can tell. And trying to improve things that are already non-broken is a bit of a family tradition, but historically there wasn't a CTRL-Z.

Note: By default, Lightroom does some sharpening, it's just not masked and at a fairly low level. I did some noise reduction to begin with as I'm cropped way in here.

Before

Default Lightroom sharpening (no masking)

After

Additional sharpening, including a mask set at 50

Seriously people, when I had a super-duper zoom on areas like her chin and eyes, I was making an improvement. I don't think anyone has looked that carefully at the Mona Lisa.

Verdict

Don't worry about sharpening if you don't have noise, detail or focus issues. Go pet a cat or make a sandwich.

Exercise 2 - Slightly out-of-focus, high ISO portrait

This is one of my all-time favorite photos - a 31-yr-old me with his 31-day-old daughter, credit to Meg for the camerawork.This is printed out on my desk at work, but I never felt I quite got it right and it's been sitting unchanged in my catalog for over 2 years. Here are my gripes:

Leah's head is a little out of focus, which is unavoidable for F1.8
The highlights on the faces were lost due to the high dynamic range. Though somewhat recovered it leaves the edges of the faces a bit soft.
Adding sharpness added noise, and reducing noise reduced sharpness. It's hard to find the best combo.

Before

Default Lightroom sharpening

After

The best I could do to get this sharper

Try to ignore the edges, as they stayed about as sharp as I could get as I applied the mask. Where I made the most improvement was in reducing noise in other areas, such as around the mouth. In short, applying a mask lets you get things a little sharper, but mostly protects the rest of the image from being ruined.

Verdict

Sharpening doesn't do as much as you would think, or at least Lightroom does a really good job without you needing to take the yoke from the autopilot. You are more likely to be able to limit the bad parts of sharpening than get make significant improvements.

Conclusion

After all this putzing around with sharpening I'm left thinking that Lightroom is doing pretty darm well in this dept without my making any changes. Not to say that I won't mess with sharpening on occasion, but it's unlikely that I'll be able to save a terrible photo or make changes to a keeper that someone would notice consciously.

I believe that the digital photo gurus out there know what they are talking about, so I'll keep experimenting with other types of images (landscapes?) to see if there are more places where the sharpening controls will make a difference.

Credits

I read the following webpages as part of this process. Citing sources like a champ.
ISHOOTSHOWS.com
PHOTOGRAPHYLIFE.com
Digital Photography School
ePHOTOzine

Lens vs Lens

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:01:00 +0000

Because my life is perfect, I was gifted a Olympus 45mm F1.8 lens for xmas. Meg rocks.

Now I have a dilemma - I have two fast prime lenses, as 20mm and 45mm, but which do I leave on the camera for all those household snapshots that won't wait for a lens change?

These are multiplied by factor of 2.0 for a 4/3 sensor, equating to a 40mm and 90mm focal lengths. In other words, a classic slight wide-angle lens and a classic portrait lens. In short, both are perfectly functional for taking pictures of living things inside your home, but they have very different behaviors.

Today I just happen to find myself with an unscheduled few hours an home (the muchkin had to come home from daycare due to a fever and is currently zonked), so I decided to do a short series of test photos. I promise I'll finish my homework later.

Test Subject - Nola the Cat, aka The Plush Statue

Why she's perfect for studio tests:
--Doesn't move, except to relocate to whichever place in the house has the best photographic lighting
--Great detail and dynamic range
--Couldn't care less whether her picture is shared on the interwebs
--A suitable proxy for the relatively less-static things I photograph (the other cat, the kid, plants)

Note: These images were taken at F1.8, so the difference you see are mostly due to the difference in lenses. I did a bit of post-processing to get the exposures as close as possible, including recovering some highlights. My blog, my rules.

Test Series #1 - Closeup

45mm

20mm

This first shot is more of a classic portrait, and the 45mm is...a portrait lens. I think it wins out because of the huge difference in depth of field and subject isolation. With the 20 you inevitably get a more cluttered frame. Nola's face is nearly identical in each, and pleasantly sharp and undistorted (and furry).

Test Series #2 - Body Shot

45mm

20mm

The change here is subtle as I frame her whole body, and while the same things are true as before (DOF, cluttered frame), I think the 20mm facilitates a slightly more interesting photo. Here's why: the height of the camera relative to the subject. The first image is straight on, even with eye level. The second is just a bit below her eyes, which I prefer.

When you take a photo of a person, being above or below them has a huge impact on the feel of the image. How many lousy images have you seen of kids taken from a parent's eye level? By getting below a cat you see her the way you see another adult human, and it's a more pleasing picture. You can't take a from-below, full-body photo of a cat with a 90mm focal length without putting her on top of a bookshelf, but at a 40mm focal length you can lie on the floor and take the shot.

Beyond this, as I took photos with the 20mm I naturally made all sorts of different angles - above, below, on the side. Rotation is easy when the radius around your subject is short (a 1-2 feet vs 5-10 feet).

Conclusion

45mm

--Generally impossible to get below the subject, especially for cats and kids
--Better subject isolation - short dept of field and more control over framing
--More accurate metering, as the frame can more easily be kept clear of bright light and dark shadows
--Not much flexibility in positioning, as often you have to stand in a different room or on top of furniture to get the distance right

20mm

--Easier to frame above or below the subject, especially for cats and kids
--Facilitates rotation around a subject, almost inadvertently taking a wider variety of angles and frames
--Option to take a photo of the whole scene, not just the subject

So the best lens is both of them, depending. Still, this exercise helped me see what types of photos I can make with a lens and why a specific shot would be better done with one or another. And I got to play with my camera during a weekday afternoon :)

Top 11 for Costa Rica '12

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 04:39:00 +0000

I finally got to take my camera on a grand safari, or at least a family vacation to Costa Rica. Close 'nuff. Mostly I shot with the 45-200mm lens, as family antics and wildlife are best viewed from a distance. I played with a flash some, as rainforest often is too dark for ISO 200 and max aperture of 5.6 when zoomed, but by best results where when I had more light to play with.

I've discovered that find it easier to frame things when I can really cut down on the clutter. With my other lens, the 20mm (40mm equivalent), I see such a huge field of vision that I struggle to create something interesting outdoors - there's just too much! At 90mm I can cut out things so easily, even if I'm shooting something as big a volcano.

Here are the best 11 photos I made during the trip. 11? No, I'm not feeling prime or palindromic, it's just that there were 11 that seemed worthy; the ones where I had an idea in my head when I took the shot, and that worked once I saw it on the computer at home. Sometimes I had it immediately and those were essentially snapshots, and with others I had to take 20 tries to get it. Seeing as I filled an 8-gig card and put a good dent in a second, I clearly wasn't stingy with the number of shots.

Okay here are my criteria:
--Technical quality - sharpess, focus, exposure, depth of field
--Good composition - framing, balance, etc (unless I specifically intended to break a rule)
--The technique and the subject jive with each other
--That je ne sais quoi. They are the ones that I want to look at.

FURTHERMORE, I'm making it an ascending list of quality, but counting down. In other words #11 is the one that was most flawed, #1 is where I think I kicked the most booty.

#11 Cloud Volcano

ISO 200 45mm F/9.0 1/500 sec

This is the famous Arenal Volcano, alas dormant for a couple years or this would be a way better subject. Taken from the porch of our cabin near Fortuna.

The good: I like how it was framed with the trees below and the roof above, and the clouds make a second frame around the caldera. It's nice and sharp, as I focused 1/3 into the scene and used a small aperture.

The bad: It's a bit drab and lifeless, and if I have to tell you something is a volcano, I've already failed.

#10 Solo Parrot

ISO 200 F./5.6 200mm 1/640 sec

Tropical forest have...parrots! This guy was aggressively defending his tree from some peahens, and he paused for me here.

The good: It's an unusual view of a parrot, giving a rather cold and brooding sense. His color provides enough contrast, despite the lack of fill light (it was too far for my flash).

The bad: Ouch - balance. I though about faking in a crescent moon on the top right. Even a mosquito. It's a notable flaw and pretty darn hard to correct when you are taking snapshots of nature. Also not great sharpness.

#9 Butterfly Money Shot

ISO 400 171mm F/5.4 1/250 sec

Before you get carried away about the serendipitous arrival of two different mariposa species, this was a butterfly garden in Monteverde. However, it was a fabulous place and possibly the coolest thing we did on the whole trip.

The good: 2 butterflies. 2 species. 1 picture. It's technically good and about all you would want for a documentary shot. It very simply shows the context of the subject - that there is diversity and abundance.

The bad: Somehow just a bit bland. I know, live butterflies don't stand still so you can't really pose them, but if I had an hour I'd have found a more interesting background to really make them pop. The depth of field is a tad too short as the right one is out of focus.

#8 Big Wall, Small Gal

ISO 200 20mm F/2.5 1/80 sec

Leah hamming it up for me. As far as a family snapshot, this is one of my favorites from this trip. That kid sure can smile. This is on our balcony in Manuel Antonio. Notice that Pink Blanket is present, and by day 10+ of our trip you should be glad this image isn't scratch-n-sniff.

Good: Great color, texture and lighting. Can't beat that smile, either. I framed this to make her look small and that is exactly the impression you get.

Bad: Balance gets me again. This is shouting for something other than a bit of shade in the top-left, such as a little lamp or clock. It almost looks like an ominous cloud is coming in, which is rather incongruous.

#7 Pulped Coffee Beans

ISO 200 20mm F/1.7 1/40 sec

Grabbed the camera in pocket-sized mode (20mm only) for a tour of a coffee plantation. Wonderful time and I could go on and on, but here's one of the better shots I got. These are fresh-picked coffee fruit that went through a hand press to separate the beans from the pulp.

Good: I love the color, and you can see how sticky they are. The textures, color and shininess convey just want I wanted, especially with this close crop. Notably I pulled back the highlights as much as I could without reducing exposure, as there's a lot of shiny.

Bad: Nothing is wrong with this, but I know I could have gotten something better, especially with the big, bumpy wheel of the press on the top. I only took two shots and I wish I'd paused longer to get more chances. I would also have liked a smaller aperture, as I could easily have shot at 1/8 sec and gotten very close.

#6 Bird Butts

ISO 200 200mm F/5.6 1/60 sec

These love birds were our breakfast companions in Arenal, and what a party they had at the local watermelon diner.

Good: There's humor - the booty line in the front. There's a subject - the one bird looking right at me, framed right in a rule-of-thirds intersection. There's action - the one bird is landing. The mood and tone are just right, and technically the image is solid. The splash of red watermelon is a nice touch.

Bad: Green on green on green. That's rainforest photography. Against some blue sky, or even eating something a bit more contrasty. With all the action there should be much more pop. When I checked this a a black-and-white image all the detail was lost, showing just how little dynamic range there is.

#5 Long Road for a Small Ant

ISO 400 200mm F/5.6 1/500 sec

Leaf cutter ants were everywhere, and if you are curious they are part of one of the most interesting symbiotic relationships in the animal kingdom. Look it up. This is again at the butterfly garden, though they were an ad-hoc addition to the menagerie.

Good: The feeling is right - the struggle of one ant carrying something many times his mass, and how often can you get below and ant? The focus is right on him and there's no clutter, so this one is a keeper.

Bad: Not very sharp, even after a bit of improvement in Lightroom. The ant should pop more, too. The purely horizontal plane of the bamboo would have been improved if I could have it sloping to the top right, just a little, as it would give a Sisyphean sense (poor dude).

#4 Beach Monkey

ISO 200 120mm F/5.0 1/250 sec

Two weeks of travel and the best monkey photo I took was on the day before we flew out. Here again in Manuel Antonio, right by the beach. The squirrel monkeys were zipping all over the tree, but this gal paused long enough for me to compose a shot.

The good: She's gazing off like a ship's captain, and there was enough light to see her features. There's tension in her pose, but it doesn't seem I interrupted anything despite my proximity. Pretty sharp, though I had to post process a good deal.

The bad: My kingdom for a flash. I post-processed a lot and did my best to make it look natural, but this was too back lit, and the sky is just a bit blown out. Not an ideal framing as the leaves are just a bit distracting.

#3 Post-Roast Coffee

ISO 200 20mm F/1.7 1/10 sec

This was a fun one. Back at the coffee tour, but now taking a photo of the beans cooling after coming out of the roaster. You could take this photo in Wisconsin...whatever. I saw the action of the machine and deliberately set my shutter to 1/10 sec to get a fair amount of subject blur, but not so much that camera shake would be an issue (woot - in body image stabilization!).

Good: Really neat abstract image. I appreciate it knowing what it is, but I can take a step back and enjoy the smoke-like patterns. Just cool and there are no technical issues.

Bad: Wish I'd stood over it a bit more so that I could crop out the edge of the tub and possibly the center. Note to self - frame more ways so that you have more options when you get home.

#2 Praying Before Lunch

ISO 400 200mm F/5.6 1/500 sec

Do you see the ants? Look carefully, as I didn't notice them until I was home. 3rd photo from the butterfly garden, this time an interloper that Meg spotted. This was the first shot I took, so who says snapshots are for amateurs? Plus praying mantises are banana pancakes awesome.

Good: Great subject. Great color. Good sharpness and framing. The background is sufficiently dark that the mantis stands out, even the antennae, and the yellow/orange contrasts nicely.

Bad: Oh to have a macro lens, as this guy was standing nice and still for me (you can Paypal me $800 if you are sympathetic). The plant and flowers didn't quite cooperate for my frame, and of course I didn't consider this until I got home. Wish I'd had time to wait for him to pounce, as that would have made for a much more engaging story for the image to tell.

#1 Lizard on the Steps

ISO 200 200mm F/5.6 1/100 sec

I waffled 10 times between this one and the mantis, but I settled with this as #1 if for no other reason as this was a photo I made more than stumbled upon. The little lizard lived under our porch in Manuel Antonio and wasn't particularly shy. I must have taken 30 shots, with and without flash, framing different ways, varying exposure.

Good: Tack sharp and very well exposed. Despite being at F/5.6 there's a shallow DOF and his face is right at the focal point. The brown, red and green make a frame within the frame, making this more interesting while not taking too much away from the subject.

Bad: A bit drab, though if it were less overcast I'd have lost texture. An open mouth or some other action would add an element of story to what is a pretty static pose.

Taking Advantage of an Uber-Early Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 03:58:00 +0000

It's the first weekend in April and the lilacs are already blooming, and ignoring the ominous portent of being over a month ahead of the normal seasons, this was a wonderful opportunity to take the kiddo to the UW Arboretum this morning. Of course I brought the camera, silly!

Leah sported a purple sweatshirt, which paired very well with the flowers, and don't you know that green and purple are a nice combo with the color wheel? I took tons of shots and when I returned to my trusty Lightroom I found that pumping up the vibrance was the key to giving these photos some pop. In addition, these were nearly all portraits, so I used a healthy dose of post-crop vignetting and dodged the faces quite a bit. The only other remarkable adjustment was consistently darkening the shadows so that I could get a little more contrast.

I'll skip the rest of the details and show you the best of the shots I took. Cheers!
--All taken with a 45-200mm lens at max aperture (4.0-5.8) at ISO 200

Apples and Toddlers and Presets, oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:12:00 +0000

A recent apple-pickin' excursion left me full of photos to play with...and so many delicious, delicious apples...mmmmmmmm. Gorgeous day, tons apples, good company - photogenic and memorable.

Back home on the computer I initially tried my normal approach - fix the exposure and white balance, dodge and burn a little, get a little more life in the colors...export! However the results just weren't quite what I was looking for, a bit too daylight-y, perhaps. High time to try some presents I downloaded free from the internet (full credit to Lightroom Killer Tips).

The particular preset I uses was called Wedding Day, which seems incongruent, but after applying it I just felt it was right. The rough list of changes it makes are a magenta shift of the tint, some vignetting, a reduction in saturation and vibrance, a slight under-exposure, and an increase in the blacks. This seems the opposite of what I normally do, especially the desaturation of color, and it's no surprise that these images look little like the rest of the ones I've made lately.

Of course they weren't done and I did some additional futzing to get just what I wanted. The edit trail is 30-50 change long for some of these as I kept tweaking, but I didn't change the essence of the preset's style.

Here are a couple of my favorites with the camera jpeg on the left and the one I made with the preset on the right (all at ISO 200 with +0.3 exposure compensation and a 45-200mm lens).

And one more of me with the little apple chomper. I don't often take a turn on this side of the lens :)

Peace out.

Happy Accidents with the Sprinkler

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:37:00 +0000

Last Saturday we were going to go on a bike ride, but yours truly busted a tube trying to top it off to full pressure (accident 1). So we hung out at home, played at the park, and eventually set up the sprinkler in the driveway.

What self-respecting papa/photographer would miss an opportunity like this? While Leah was happily running around the sprinkler I grabbed the camera with the 45-200mm lens and started taking shots from different angles, near and far, focusing on the water or her face, all with essentially no planning.

Happy accidents:
--I put the sprinkler in the sun, but because it was much darker everywhere else I got excellent isolation of the subject and the water. In the yard I wouldn't have been able to do this because the background would have been well illuminated.
--Leah was essentially back lit the whole time, which meant that her face was in shadow. Somehow (and some help from Lightroom) this didn't pose a big problem, and it created a neat effect with her face more implied than clear and thus the focus was more on the water.
--The colors in the water! The differences between the blur on 1/320 sec and the freezing at 1/1600 sec! Talk about excellent luck, as I had this on aperture priority mode the whole time so the camera was picking the shutter speed to maintain exposure.

Maybe I'm lucky. Maybe I'm getting some photographic instincts (the whole "Blink"idea"). Maybe I'm the blind squirrel finding the acorn over and over again. Anyway, here are some of the best images.

Hands in the sprinkler - what fun!
ISO 200 45mm f/4.0 1/320 sec

Trying to catch the water
ISO 200 45mm f/4.0 1/800 sec

Thirsty work
ISO 200 115mm f/4.9 1/1600 sec

Go play in the sprinkler, fools!
--Alex

Bikes on the square

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 03:25:00 +0000

Leah and I head up to the Farmer's Market each Saturday AM, but one morning we took a stroll down MLK boulevard to do a little sight seeing. While Leah gazed with awe at a firetruck, I took a few shots of a line of red, rental bikes.

First off, here's the full-color jpeg that I started with:

ISO 200 20mm f/3.2 1/320sec

Cropping. A bit of lighting adjustment. Switch to monochrome - I think this is a much more interesting image. At first it was the color that caught my eye, but it's the pattern that's most interesting. I wish I could have take 10 more like this, really isolating the wheel.


Bikes off the Capital Square

Toodles

Summer Is Online

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:23:00 +0000

Meg had hung up up laundry in the back yard and when I saw Leah's orange dress hanging up I had to take some photos. At first it was in the shade and facing the other way, but those are things I can control.

Leah's dress that she wore on the first sunny day after the solstice, drying on the line
ISO 200 45mm f/4.0 1/250 sec

I'm actually sitting on the ground with the camera almost set in the grass, as it's a 90mm-equivalent and the clothesline doesn't hang that high. It was worth the wet bum, and it was a fun break from cleaning the grout in the kitchen floor.

What's fun about this is that it was exactly what I wanted to get. I saw the dress and thought that it was so summery, so all I needed to do was get it in the sun with a blurred green and blue background. I put the lens on the camera, went outside, made a couple adjustments, and voila. It took about 5 min total.

Still Life...on a Challenge!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:56:00 +0000

Okay, by "challenge" I mean one of the photo challenges on dpreview, but I'm a very competitive person and I do my best with an audience. So, I decided to enter a photo on the topic of scotch whiskey. In addition I've been inspired lately by some of the work of John Hedgecoe. I highly recommend his book How to Take Great Photographs. I found it used at a store, but it's not expensive new.

First off, I love scotch with all of my body. I've had the fortune to drink some excellent scotch, and my liquor cabinet is well stocked, so the easy part was getting the props. I looked at the other entries and saw a few that were excellent, but there wasn't much breadth to them. I don't have the flashes or studio to make a great product shot, but I thought that if I grabbed a bottle and glass and set them up somewhere in the house where I could control lighting that I might find a little creativity.

I really should have used my old compact camera to record the "studio" I created. I moved an oak end table into the bathroom, tilted the metal shade of a lamp (compact fluorescent bulb) as a sort of snoot, put that on top of a roll of TP (needed a little height) and started arranging things.

Note: TP rolls are not an effective light stand. I'll come back to that later.

I'll start with my best image, then talk about how I got there:


Tobermory 10-yr from the Isle of Mull ISO 200 20mm f/6.3 1.6 sec

I was using my 20mm 1.7, so light didn't need to be a big deal, but I wanted depth of field and was only using one light in the whole room, so all of my exposures were from 1.5-8 seconds. The tripod did the trick, but setting a 2-sec delay on the camera was good enough to eliminate the shake from my touching the shutter button. Who needs to pay for a remote release, huh? Other than that this was pretty darn vanilla. Aim the camera, focus, take a shot, adjust things, take another shot....

Technical stuff. Whatever. The fun part was using the light and the elements at hand. At first I was just arranging things to get good balance, but I saw that I could shine the light either through the bottle or the glass and create a neat effect, so I tried a number of arrangements that way, even not showing the bottle or glass at all. In the end this looked best to me and it is my challenge entry. Wish me luck.

The session ended when the lamp fell of the TP roll, made a huge crash, and I sat stunned waiting for Leah to wake up in her crib and start crying (she was only about 20-ft away, but there were two doors). Thankfully she didn't wake up, so I called it a night and enjoyed a very well earned scotch :)

Next time I do still life photography:
--I will take more photos! I wish I'd just hit the shutter more often
--I will pay more attention to the orientation of the objects, such as the label on the bottle
--I will pay more attention to the background, either adding more of keeping it totally neutral
--I will not put a lamp on something precarious

Madison in a Photo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Madison is the capital of Wisconsin, the only major city in America built on a isthmus, birthplace of the progressive movement, home of an elite university, a flashpoint in the 60's revolution, a mid-sized city in the midst of rolling hills and farmland, and a bunch of other stuff. 'Nuff said. The people who live here make the city, but also mime this idea of their city - we feel the need to reaffirm our membership by being the things a Madisonian should be, and I don't think I'm an exception.

I'm really making a silly preamble to a photo, but bear with me.

Yesterday I headed to the Capitol Square to the Farmer's Market (the Midwest's largest!) to pick up my CSA share...and I brought my camera just in case I had an opportunity to use it. At the head of King St is the prime spot for all things Madison, and it's also where Driftless Organics sets up their stall, so I like to take at least a couple minutes to take things in, do a little shopping, meet friends, and observe those fascinating Madison people before I grab my veggies.

Here's what I saw:


Grannies for Peace performing at the Saturday Farmers Market ISO 200 20mm f/6.3 1/320 sec

--The Capitol dome, with statue (which has a badger on its head)
--"Grannies for Peace" performing songs, mostly protesting our craptastic Gov. Walker
--Flags of the State and Union
--Some dude dressed in officially licensed UW Badgers apparel
--A reminder that we have a sister city in Germany...for some reason
--The statue of Hans Christian Hess, who did something important in a war, I think

Admittedly this was more-or-less a snapshot. I lined it up so that the Capitol, Hans and the singers were balanced, and I think that worked. It's actually very close to the rule of thirds with only a minor crop, but that's at least 25% luck. Maybe I'm just getting some intuition :)

But what this photo means to me is that there's a quintessential Madison-ness that I revel in when I'm downtown. I love how the city has come alive now that we have something we all want to protest together. I love that we do this wearing Badger red, eating cheese curds and buying excellent produce from local producers. I'm proud of our heritage and the monuments we've built and I love looking at that dome.

I wish that the sky had been more interesting, as it really kills this picture. Oh, well. I'll be there again in 5.5 days and I'm sure that someone will be putting on a show.

Gratuitous Cat Photo

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:14:00 +0000

Been quite busy lately and had little time to post, but I've been snapping photos whenever possible. Just to keep things going, here's a cat photo.

But not just any cat photo! This is little Penny, the loaf cat of Woodridge, IL, from a fun perspective. I reiterate my previous statement - there's no better subject than a static one, and few animals are so photogenic and static.


Penny in Perspective ISO 200 20mm f/2.0 1/25 sec

Where's Waldo quiz - can you find find the second subject in this image? Hint - he's holding a camera. Unfortunately this jpeg makes this less impressive, but I'll email you the raw file if you really care that much.

The Steel Man

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:37:00 +0000

Not the Man of Steel, mind you. Quite the opposite as this is the face of a veterans memorial statue from a very small park, which is basically the parking lot of a municipal storage building. You wouldn't even know it's there, but I drive by in on my way to work and I found it once when picking up some free mulch.

Without further ado, here's an photo I took this morning:

The Steel Man
ISO 200 20mm f/2.2 1/500 sec

It was very overcast which helped some, as a bright day would have been all wrong and possibly forced me to use a smaller aperture. Still the bottom left required me to really burn back the overexposure. Next I cropped, changed to black and white and voila!

More interesting than the technical aspects are the emotive ones. The sculptor did fine work and all I can do is represent him or her well. The eyes especially. No point saying more - I hope you find it pleasing and just a little moving.

Once more into the breach!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 May 2011 02:37:00 +0000

That's about as absurd a title as I could come up with for "once again I got before 7:00 AM on a weekend and took some photos of flowers in my back yard." If I didn't amuse myself I'd probably cease to exist.

I really liked what I had the other day taking photos of back-lit daffodils, but I didn't take nearly as many as I wished. Here are a couple more takes on that idea. Exploring the theme, if you will.

ISO 200 20mm f/5.6 1/1000 sec

ISO 200 20mm f/2.5 1/2000 sec

Both of these are the same flower and the sun is directly behind, which adds to the translucency. I particularly liked the triangles that are made when two petals overlap - it's not something you see unless there's a strong back light and it changes how you perceive the flower's shape.

Neither of these really did what I wanted, not that I could have clearly articulated what I was trying to do until I got back to the computer. Perhaps it was because I couldn't quite isolate the flower from the surroundings - other flowers, trees in the back, leaves. I have about 10 shots at different apertures and tried a bunch of crops, but I couldn't quite get this the way I wanted. Perhaps I should have found a way to block out everything else so that I could physically isolate the flower, but that seems like cheating. Surmountable problems? Sure - that's why I practice!

ISO 200 20mm f/2.5 1/2000 sec

For those of you following along at home this is the same spot (maybe same flower) that I took the halo shot of a couple weeks ago. This time I made sure to obscure the sun completely behind the flower and I think it creates a neat image.

I did a fair amount of processing this photo, especially by desaturating the background colors and pumping up the yellow and orange. I tried this as black and white, and it's neat, but the color is just so nice that I like keeping it in this time. It's a give and take for aperture as I want enough to have detail on all of the flower, but I really want that bokeh in the background. Not perfect, but I like it.

I will officially put a few more items into my bag of tricks:
--Be mindful of aperture so that you get enough detail in a flower, but still have good isolation
--Pay attention to the background, especially things you can't crop out
--Sun behind a flower is really cool

Sunny day on the grass with Leah

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:02:00 +0000

This last weekend we spent Easter with Meg's parents, and wee Leah got to soak in the Minnesota rays on a sunny Sunday morning. Here are a few that turned out especially well (out of the 220 photos I took).

ISO 200 103mm F/4.8 1/1250 sec

ISO 200 103mm F/4.8 1/1600 sec

What I like about these two are how the green grass bokeh looks like a matte background in a portrait studio. There were a few others that had better smiles, but there was always a house or something that was distracting. With these two Leah's face is really nicely isolated and I think it draws you in.

Just for fun, here's an action shot of plastic Easter eggs mysteriously hovering. I'll let you guess how this came to pass, but here's a hint - look at the shutter speed :)

ISO 200 45mm F/4.0 1/2000 sec

I found your trilling quite thrilling, my dear blackbird

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:57:00 +0000

The park by our house has a little marsh in it and it's already full of frogs and red-winged blackbirds - especially their chatter. Last week we went for a walk and I kicked myself for not bringing the camera, but I often don't make the same mistake twice. Fairly often.

Here's a shot of a trilling red-winged blackbird. Of course, you know what he's saying, "Baby, you know I'm the man for you! I'll be sweet and bring you breakfast in nest!"

Trilling red-winged blackbird. ISO 200, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/200 sec

Sillyness aside, he gave me a great pose and I'm really happy I caught him in his moment. I worked pretty hard to get a good background, as there are houses in several directions and mostly leafless trees. It's nothing remarkable beyond the subject, but at least it isn't distracting. I could be in the Horicon Marsh for all you could tell :)

As to the shot, this was fully zoomed at 400mm equivalent, which I needed as he flew away when I got closer. This is cropped to about 1/3 of the original size, but it would have been preferable to be closer and not have to max out the focal length as this lens has a bit of chromatic aberration at this limit (zoom way in and you can see it by his feet at tail where the white and black contrast). With that said, who cares! I love that I caught the moment and for the brilliance of his plumage on this spring evening.

Update - added a new crop based on some good advice by Sam

Crop #2

Exploring a subject - daffodils on a sunny morning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:57:00 +0000

I've been trying to spend more time working with a single subject and to explore more of the possibilities; I have also been waiting for a sunny weekend morning to try taking some photos of the spring flowers in my yard. The result? I jumped out of bed this morning, skipped the coffee for the trusty camera, and started snapping some shots.

A few of the early flowers are on the wane, but the daffodils are just hitting their stride. I'll begin here with a few of the shots I took just getting a feel for what I could produce, though I didn't have any real plan and just picked the flowers that seemed promising. None of these stand out as much, but it helped me see what I was going to get for light, depth of field, and whatnot.

I stumbled upon that last shot, as I had no intention to get the sun coming through between the tree and the deck, aside from that I was looking for flowers that were actually in the sun. Anyway, it seemed promising to get some macro shots with a really short DOF with the sun doing its magic. Here's the next round:

Cash money! That last one had something going for it. Now come inside, make coffee for me/wife and cereal for the kiddo...and during her nap I imported these into Lightroom. All I knew was that I wanted something more abstract - it doesn't need to look like light coming from behind a tree in my yard on a spring morning - I just wanted something visually striking.

I cropped a little to start out, isolating the flower more, and then I took back a few highlights and dodged a bit in the center of the flower. Non-flower detail was mostly gone, and more so after desaturating everything but the yellow/orange. I like how the flower is floating, but still I just see "yellow," and not something more compelling...

...until I converted to black and white. It never ceases to amaze me how much more you see when you remove the distraction of color. In this case I see the texture in the translucent petal, and I pick up more of a sense of a halo. I'm biased, but I think this is a stunning image.

Final image, daffodil with a halo

I'm pleased, but there's got to be a lot more I can do with this subject and I won't get better by blogging. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Cows on a Foggy WI Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 03:06:00 +0000

I really have the best commute - 15 minutes and every day I pass by corn fields, apple orchards, a huge pumpkin patch, two kinds of cows (including a bunch of calf houses), horses, and probably the laziest pair of ponies in the world. In the morning the light is especially nice, and often there is quite a bit of fog.

Needless to say I've stopped many times to take pictures. A few days ago was a cool, slightly foggy morning and the shaggy cows on the west side of the road were grazing fairly close to the fence, so I pulled over and pulled out the trusty 45-200mm zoom. Antics ensued (see image 2).

Cow facing a foggy wood

This was probably the best shot I took. Not because of any technical coup, but there's something foreboding about the woods and how the cow is facing them alone. Interestingly, it's quite far to the woods, but the zoom lens (at a full 400mm equivalent) really smashes the subject and the background together and changes the scene a great deal.

That was one tasty hobbit!
(credit: P. S. Mueller)

This one is much sillier, and there's something about her tongue that says it all. A video would be good, too, as she was really using that horn to full effect.

You lookin' at me?

One last image, and there's not much to say that you can't see. I wasn't very interesting to the cows, being as I'm not made of grass, but I didn't go completely unnoticed.

Hitchcock presents "The Cats"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 03:34:00 +0000

The low angle of the sun on winter afternoons casts long shadows, and there's no better subject than one that stays still about 23.5 hours a day. I snapped a couple images of my cats because of their shadows and then had some fun in Lightroom with these high contrast black and white images.

Olympus PEN PL-1, ISO 1600, 45 mm, f/4.0, 1/10 sec

I liked the grainy look here and at 1/10 sec about as sharp as you could possibly get without a tripod, but it works. I was able to pull back just the slightest amount of Nola's face by dodging it a bit. Highlight recovery allowed the floor to not be overpoweringly bright, but I left it just a little overexposed as I like the glare contrasting the black of her body and shadow. I wish I could have gotten one with her looking less cute, as some angry ears would heighten the tension.

Olympus PEN PL-1, ISO 320, 56 mm, f/4.1, 1/125 sec

Maya lurking from above. I managed to pull this off with a baby in my hands, including a lens change, so I'm pretty happy that I got anything! The crop lost a little of the sense of her being above (bird like...), but I really love the sharp lines and the soft shadows. Again, I'd have loved a more menacing expression, but they are just too well fed.

Dodge and Burn

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:59:00 +0000

It's astounding that dodge and burn didn't originate as first person shooter lingo for strafing with a flamethrower, much less something coined with the advent digital image editing. The truth - it's as old as photo development. In the darkroom, burning is the process of letting something get more light and thus become darker, and dodging blocks light and leaves it lighter. Simple. Logical. Powerful.

In Lightroom this is a piece of cake, and here's an example. This was an excellent photo, but Leah's head was directly under an overhead light leaving her overexposed, while I was shielded from the light and rather shaded.

I was able burn her head in (sounds terrible) and get back some of the highlights, then dodge some on my head and shoulder to get a little detail. I actually like shadows as they are away from the action, but this let me recover a great image.

For perspective, I was just reading about people who looked at negatives from some of Ansel Adam's greatest photos and found that they were relatively unimpressive if you made a straight print. What this means is that his amazing images were to a significant extent creations made in the darkroom, and dodging and burning were the techniques he used to brighten and darken parts of the landscape to create something greater than what was directly captured on film. Decades later and nothing has changed.