Category Archives: inspiration

A New Kind of Point and Shoot: iPhone 4

Posted on August 3, 2010 by singraham| 3 Comments

It had to come to this, of course. My new iPhone has a 5mp camera with a back-illumined, low-noise, high sensitivity CMOS sensor, auto focus and auto exposure (or you can select the focus and exposure point with a tap), and, by all appearances, a pretty good, maybe even and excellent, lens. It is, in every sense of the words, much more camera then my first digital camera, a 2.1 mp Olympus that I bought in 2001 for over $500 (well, every sense of the words except for the 3x zoom).

Couple a decent digital camera with the on-board processing power of the iPhone and its available apps…conservatively a more powerful computer than my first Mac Classic by a factor of several hundreds…and you have a whole new kind of Point and Shoot photography: a camera with built in post-processing.

This is going to be a joint post, with mini reviews of the applications appearing in due course on my Cloudy Days and Netbook Nights blog, for those who are more interested in the technology behind the images. In this post, I am mostly going to talk about (and demonstrate) some of the new potentials the iPhone 4 brings to the photographer.

Let me say that some of these potentials are beginning to appear in some Point and Shoot cameras on a more limited scale. No P&S yet has the processing power to do what the iPhone does with ease…but I expect that in the not to distant future (if you are in the mood for prognostication), we will see P&Ss with all these capabilities. Two of the main potentials of the iPhone are already incorporated in some Sony offerings. Sweep panorama does the iPhone’s panorama potential one better, in some ways, and Sony is already stacking images taken at different exposures for in-camera HDR (extended dynamic range) images…though they seem to limit it so far to low light situations.

HDR: Pro HDR app

The three images showcased so far are examples of HDR photography on the iPhone 4. All three were produced completely on the iPhone (in fact, they were even uploaded to my SmugMug site directly from the iPhone). All are linked back to Wide Eyed In Wonder if you want to study larger versions.

The iPhone app is Pro HDR. Open the app. Choose HDR Camera on the splash screen. Point the phone at your scene. Tap the image once in a bright area (generally sky and clouds) and then take the picture. Tap the image again in a dark area (generally foreground landscape) and take a second picture. The app then takes the two images and combines the sky tones from one with the landscape tones from the other (or the light tones from one with the dark tones of the other), aligning and rotating if needed (in case your hand was not perfectly steady holding the camera for the two exposures) and produces a HDR image like the ones above. The image is displayed over a set of sliders that allow you to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and warmth (color temperature or white balance), so you can fine-tune the result. You then have the option of saving your HDR image to your Camera Roll (the originals are also saved if you set the app to do that in Settings), or emailing a smaller version to yourself or directly to a photo site on the web that takes email posts, like Posterous or Facebook.

An unintentional benefit of Pro HDR is that tapping far and near for exposure also focus the camera far and near, so that the finished image has a much greater depth of field than normal. If you take a look at the images above, or the one below, you will see that there is amazing detail from the bottom of the frame all the way to the top.

A lot of today’s HDR work really turns me off…I find it overdone and unrealistic…not just painterly…but verging on cartoonish. A caricature of the scene, so to speak, rather than a faithful rendering of any reality I have ever seen. Pro HDR, on the other hand, produces an image which to my eye is almost perfectly balanced…an amazingly realistic rendering of what I see with my naked eye…all the drama, and yet all the subtlety still intact.

Generally I don’t leave the Pro HDR image as it is. To my eye, it can always use a little sharpening and some color adjustment. I open the saved images in PhotoGene, which is kind of like Lightroom for the iPhone, and make final adjustments. I might straighten the horizon (dead simple in PhotoGene…just slide the straighten slider). I generally, as I said, use the sharpen filter. Finally, for most landscapes I use the RGB controls to pull back the red channel a bit and bring up the greens. (Much more effective than trying to adjust warmth in the Pro HDR app itself.)

Take a look at the full range of tones in that last shot. Notice the transparency of the water and the way the bottom of the stream shows through where the sky is not reflected in the foreground. Notice the detail in the marsh grasses and the range of subtle shades. And the sky is near perfect…as good as I have ever captured with any camera. And it went directly from the iPhone to my Wide Eyed In Wonder SmugMug site via SmugShot.

This final HDR is an example of yet another iPhone app: Foto FX from Tiffin. It was captured and processed in Pro HDR, and then received additional processing in PhotoGene, which included a crop at the top. However the largely featureless sky was still too bright to my eye, so I opened it in Foto FX and applied a .6 Graduated Neutral Density filter. Foto FX has hundreds of effects and filters, and I can not honestly say that I have even scratched the surface. I bought it specifically for the Graduated ND filters and those are the only ones I have used yet. The ND filters are graded, as above, by degree, but each one has a brightness slider that allows for a lot of adjustment. In this case, the .6 GND set to brightness 2 added just enough density to the upper sky to balance the landscape to my eye.

Now you might be thinking that all of this could have been done (maybe even better) with a conventional camera and software on your desk or laptop. Of course it could have. However, the total cost of all the apps mentioned so far is less than $10. Compare that to a copy of an HDR program for the desktop, or Lightroom, or a complex after-effects program with the capabilities of FotoFX.

Then too, having all this potential literally in your pocket at all times, and at your fingertips in seconds, physically wrapped around the camera, and ready to instantly publish, only makes what I have always said about post-processing even more evident. Post-processing, rightly seen, is part of the creative process and stretches back even before the press of the shutter to where you are still looking for images. Knowing all the potential of the camera/computer in your pocket changes the way you see the world, as well as the way you capture images.

I took most of the images above simply because I could…that is to say…in a very real sense…I think I saw them because I knew I had the tools in my pocket to capture and process them to a faithful rendition of what I saw. I might not of attempted the images without those tools.

And the availability of the all that power at low cost to any one who owns an iPhone, plus the potential of having the camera and computer always with you, wherever you go (it is your phone after all) will, I predict, cause a flood of new images like we have seldom seen before.

The iPhone 3G was already the most uploaded camera on Flickr by a good margin. The iPhone 4 stands to surpass it by far. And sites and communities like Eye’em (eyeem.com), dedicated to nothing but mobile photography, will only accelerate the process.

And I am only half done!

Panoramas: AutoStitch on the iPhone.

What if there were a camera that just let you take roughly overlapping images, in whatever pattern you like, vertical, horizontal, of any combination of the two, and then it would automatically assemble them into a panorama…and do a better job of blending the images than any desktop program you might have tried. Well…there’s an app for that…on the iPhone…so I guess you have to say there is such a camera already!

This is 8 images, 4 horizontal by 2 vertical. View it as large as you like.

This is 10 images: 5 x2. Notice that stacking the images 2 deep makes them look less like panoramas and more like just a super wide, natural view. Also, since the upper set are metered off the sky, and the lower set are metered off the landscape, the blended exposure approaches that of an HDR.

And finally, as an example of a fully processed, more panorama-like, image…

…12 individual iPhone shtos: 12 x 1, representing over 220 degrees of sweep, taken from the same spot as the forth HDR above (so you can easily compare the field of view).

It is hard to imagine how easy these are to do on the iPhone. No complex framing. Just make sure there is a fair amount of overlap image to image, and trust the AutoStitch app to do the cut and paste, rotate and blend. No complex exposure calculations or considerations. Just let the auto exposure work and trust the app to blend exposures to best effect. And because you have to hold the iPhone out at fair distance from your face to see what you are doing, the camera follows an almost perfect photographic arc that maintains natural perspective image to image, so that the result flows together perfectly. AutoStitch will auto-crop the finished panorama to a rectangle, and then you can save it to your Camera roll.

I generally have to straighten the horizon so I often leave he cropping until I have the image open in PhotoGene. I also apply the Sharpen filer, and generally adjust levels for better exposure of both sky and landscape. The last pano is an example where, since it is only one layer, the foreground was too dark…normal levels adjustment for the foreground would have burned out the whites in the clouds and washed out the blue. I resorted again to a Graduated Neutral Density Filter in FotoFx to darken the sky enough so that I could reopen the image in PhotoGene for one more pass at levels, exposure, contrast, and saturation for the final image. All on the iPhone.

For more detail on Pro HDR, AutoStitch, PhotoGene, and FotoFX, keep your eye on Cloudy Days and Netbook Nights. To follow my progress with iPhone 4 photography, check into my iPhone HDR and Pano gallery on Wide Eyed in Wonder every once in a while, or follow my Pic of the Day blog.

The iPhone 4 is an amazing piece of equipment…an amazing camera…an amazing computer. The potential for expanded photographic range hints at a whole new world of possibilities to come. And it is right there, all the time, in your pocket. Point and Shoot at its very best!

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Posted in apps, editing, hdr, iPhone 4, inspiration, panorama, postprocessing

Rainy Day on Point Loma: learning.

Posted on March 14, 2010 by singraham| 3 Comments

My one free day in San Diego with a new camera to play with…or rather, a new camera to learn…turned out to be blessed with rain. Still, it was San Diego…I only get there once a year…and I have never yet been disappointed by a visit to Cabrillo National Monument at the tip of Point Loma high above San Diego Harbor and the Pacific. The Monument’s hours are dictated by the fact that you have to drive through part of the naval base and the National Cemetery to reach it, and, with budget cutbacks, the military gates are only open 9-5. I drove the few miles from my hotel to the Monument in the rain, and arrived at the pay station just after it opened. It was drizzling then, and I hoped for dryer weather later in the day, so I took the turn down to the Tide Pools at the foot of the point on the Pacific side, accessible by the road that serves the modern Coast Guard station lighthouse down there, and the water treatment plant for the naval base.

I was dressed for the weather, and had a umbrella with me to shield the camera, so it seemed worth a walk from the parking lot down the short trail to the top of the cliffs overlooking the tide pools themselves. When I got to the cliff top I realized that the Monument must have come into some of the Economic Recovery Funds, since they had clearly been working on expanding the trail system back up and across the soft sandstone conglomerate and compacted soil cliffs and further back along the coast toward San Diego, giving me access to new views. Even in the rain, this proved too tempting to resist, and I spent a couple of happy hours there shooting the rain drenched cliffs from under my umbrella…the surf, the rocks, seaweed, pelicans and the green headlands further north.

Shooting in the rain, or near rain, is a challenge, not only because you need to keep today’s digital cameras dry, but because the lighting is so tricky. The sky can be surprisingly bright, especially when compared to the rain soaked foreground. If you are not careful you end up with the worst of both extremes: muddy, dark, indistinct foregrounds and white skies. Even within the clouds themselves, it does not take much thinning for the contrast range between dark heavy cloud and lighter cloud to exceed the range of most sensors.

Of course, Lighroom has the tools necessary to extend the apparent dynamic range of an image in post processing: Recovery for highlights, Fill Light for foreground and shadows, and Blackpoint adjustment to bring up the intensity of flat images…but there are limits to what can be done in post, even if shooting RAW, and certainly if, like me, you shoot JPEG.

Then too, one of the things I have learned about my new Canon SX20IS is that, in Programmed Auto mode, it favors high shutter speeds and large apertures: more suitable for people (who are often in motion) than for stationary landscapes. The Canon seems to select even wider apertures than my Sony H’s did. This is not necessarily bad, as the lenses on these superzoom digitals are certainly optimized for wide apertures as well…but I am still traditional enough to be nervous shooting landscapes at F2.8.

The SX20 has a Landscape mode, but there is practically no information in the instructions as to what it actually does, beyond the obvious; “for capturing stunning landscapes.” Not helpful for anyone with photographic skills. Still, brief experimentation has taught me that it selects smaller apertures and slower shutter speeds and tends to favor lower ISOs. I am pretty sure…but not certain…that it also defaults to infinity focus when the auto focus fails to find a subject to lock on to, and it might adjust image contrast and saturation slightly too. Worth a try.

I am also gaining confidence in the SX20s iContrast setting, which is supposed to handle high dynamic range shots better than the conventional Program mode. I have experimented with intentionally biasing exposures toward the sky in tricky landscapes with clouds, using the Canon’s Exposure Lock, leaving the foreground darker than I would like it, and then adjusting in Lighroom (as I generally did when using the Sony, even with the Sony’s high dynamic range setting on)…but I am finding that using the iContrast or Landscape Program mode (which seems to have some of the same built in) and letting the Canon do its thing, actually gives me images that are, in fact, easier to adjust in Lightroom, and which require a lot less Fill Light for the foreground. If it is a choice between Recovery for highlights for Fill Light for shadows, I find that Recovery does less damage at the pixel level by introducing a lot less noise. Then too, if you are not careful with Fill Light, you can get halos at high contrast edges. Better, in high dynamic range situations, to work the sky, even using Lighroom’s Graduated Filter Effect at need, than to over-work the foreground.

Shooting in the rain or on a rainy day, it is really all about mood. You want to capture the wet saturation of the colors (using saturation in its photographic sense) without letting them go dark, and you want to catch the drama of the sky. In my opinion, you do not want the resulting images to look like they were taken on a brighter day…you want to preserve the feeling of wet and damp…the cool tones…and the feel of the soft heavy air, even in images with brighter colors.

After exploring the tail up the cliffs and further along the coast I came back to the tide pools and braved the slippery rock to climb down to the rocky shore. The tide was too far in for much tide pooling, and it was too dark anyway, but the wet seaweed on the beach offered some nice close-up and macro opportunities. The colors were richer than they might have been in full sun, and the wet provided interesting highlights.

Before leaving the Tide Pool area for the drive back up to the Visitor Center and original Lighthouse, I spent a few moments trying for Pelicans in flight as they road the inner line of surf down the coast toward me. With the SX20 at full reach (560mm equivalent) and on Sports Program, I got a few interesting shots.

Finally I did make it back to the car and drove up to the top of the Point Loma for the view. As things turned out, I had no more than got out of the car in the Visitor Center parking lot when it began to rain harder…and, though I attempted to wait it out in one of the Whale Watching shelters overlooking the Pacific, I finally had to decide that the rest of the day might be better spent back at the hotel processing my Tide Pool images.

I took this one last shot out over the Pacific just before the rain became too dense for photography.

So out of a rainy day at Cibrillo National Monument, I learned to trust Landscape mode a bit more, even if I don’t know exactly what it is doing, and how to enjoy and capture the mood of a stormy California day. Not bad.

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Posted in Canon, Canon SX20IS, Lightroom, bridge camera, inspiration, instruction, postprocessing, super zoom

A Year of Pics and Places

Posted on December 31, 2009 by singraham| 3 Comments

Happy New Year!

A journey through my past year via the pictures and the places. What a blessing it has been, beginning to end! I can only praise my God, for God is God and God is good.

Each thumbnail is linked back to the gallery it came from on WideEyedInWonder. This is not a best of, by any means. Just a key to the places and the pics. To remember. To celebrate. To enjoy.

Jan	Kennebunk ME	Sanibel Island FL	Merritt Island FL
Feb	Sonoma CA	Albuquerque NM	Kennebunk ME
March	San Diego CA	Galveston TX	Kennebunk ME
April	St. Augustine FL	St. Augustine FL	Wells ME
May	NYC	Saco Heath ME	Kennebunk ME
June	Jamestown ND	Acadia NP ME	Kennebunk ME
July	Kennebunkport ME	Coastal ME Botanical Gardens	Costal ME Botanical Gardens
Aug	Rutland Water UK	Rachel Carson NWR ME	Kennebunk ME
Sept	Portland Head Light ME	Lakeside OH	Point Lobos CA
Oct	Kennebunk ME	Jekyll Island GA	Green Kay FL
Nov	Cape May NJ	Kennebunk ME	Wetzlar Germany
Dec	Kennebunk ME	Phoenix AZ	Kennebunkport ME

May your New Year be blessed, with places and images you will always remember.

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Posted in 2009, inspiration, retrospective

The Photogenic Moment?

Posted on December 23, 2009 by singraham| 3 Comments

North American Butterfly Gardens, Mission TX

My first Pic of the Day post

Just over a year ago I started a Pic of the Day project, sort of by accident. I was new on Twitter and Facebook at that time, and I began to post, just for fun, an image each day to TwitPics and to FaceBook. After a few days of that it occurred to me that it might be fun to make it a project, and I formalized my posting. My rules were simple: 1) any image I wanted to share, no matter when or where taken, and 2) one image per day, without missing a day.

That went on for about a month, but then it occurred to me (these things do occur if you let them) that people might like to know where and when the image was taken, how and why. For that matter, I wanted to know those things myself…when and where were matters of record (when is in the exif data, and memory generally serves for where), but the how and why mattered more to me, and I suspected would be more valuable to others…and they were much harder to pin down.

In order to share that information, I needed more space than TwitPics and Facebook allowed me, so it seemed natural to start another WordPress blog, and I did. Steve Ingraham’s Pic of the Day.

I knew from my experience here at Point and Shoot Landscape that the major beneficiary of the new blog would be me. Articulating what I have here about how I take pictures has been invaluable in helping me to refine my methods in the field…and recounting that daily, one image at a time, could only force me to learn a lot faster. I posted a brief repose on the anniversary of the Pic of the Day blog outlining some of that learning, and I will not repeat that here…but over the past few weeks I have noticed another change in my way of working which is significant and worth talking about here.

I don’t actually like to have to dip back into my archives to fill a day. I have thousands of images already posted to Flickr and Smugmug…certainly enough for several years of Pic of the Day blogs, but I don’t like to use them unless there is a particular reason. It always feels like cheating to me to go back to work I did several years ago…and certainly less interesting. I doubt, in fact that it matters to my readers, but it does to me. Occasionally, as when I was traveling in England this summer, it makes sense to me to revisit a past trip and post some of that work, as a kind of introduction the new work I hope to produce on this trip…to get both the reader and myself in the right mind-set for images of England. That’s okay. But just dipping back because I don’t have any new work to share…well, that makes me feel just a bit guilty.

It has served as a spur, more than once this past year, to get out and take some pictures already! I am not really comfortable unless I have a week’s worth of Pic of the Days in the can…processed in Lightroom, uploaded to WideEyed InWonder (my Smugmug site), and ready to be posted to Pic of the Day. And because of that, I have become a much more concentrated shooter on the days when I am out…and, I go out much more often with the express intent of filling my Pic of the Day stock.

Photography is not my job. I work full time, have a family to care for, other blogs to produce (Cloudy Days and Netbook Nights on cloud computing, netbook tech, and iPhone applications takes a considerable amount of my time), etc. My photography time is limited. Often only the fact that my PotD stock is running low forces me to make time for photography! It has inspired me to make time on business trips, even if it is only a few hours snatched between other obligations, and, perhaps more importantly, to shut down the computer and get outside…somewhere…anywhere…around home to find images to fill my PotD stock.

First Snow Morning

It forced me, after the first snow of the year, to find my boots and get out at sun-up. It forced me to don my winter coat and gloves and drive the miles on a frosty Saturday morning to Emmon’s Preserve the other day…just to see if there was anything there worth photographing that day.

During the Lunch break at Cloister in the Wood, Germany

It forced me, on a trip to Germany, to get outside on lunch breaks between meetings, camera in hand. It forced me to take my few rest hours in Germany between sets of meetings (I had half of a day on Sunday uncommitted) to walk the old town of Wetzlar and look for images…when I would, in many ways, much rather have been resting at my hotel. It has forced me, on Sunday mornings in Texas, when exhausted from a week of field-trips and talking to birders (my job), to leave my binos at the hotel and go look for images.

Sunday morning in Old Town Wetzlar, Germany

And, on each outing, if forces me to be productive. It forces my eyes wide open, and my imaging sense into high gear every moment I am in the field. I am looking for images. I need to bring back the bacon every chance I get, and since that Pic of the Day just does not stop, I have to bring back as many good images as I possibly can. WideEyedInWonder is apt. Only now I can’t wait for the wonder to happen to me…I have to go out looking for wonder!

And what a difference that makes. From looking for photogenic moments, I have had to turn to making every available moment photogenic. It is a matter of focus and will…of turning the skills I have developed over a lifetime in photography loose in a hyper-intentional way every moment I have. As I write this, I am realizing that, while focus and will are accurate, so is the loose in that sentence. It requires a kind of relaxing…a certain restful confidence that the images are there, that I will find them…and that my skills, always growing, will rise to the occasion of capturing any and all images that offer, when I am consciously looking for them.

“You don’t take a photograph…you make a photograph.” Ansel Adams.

Over the past year I have really learned that lesson…I need to make images for Pic of the Day…and on outing after outing…I go out and do make images.

Winter morning at Emmons Preserve, 10 miles from home

Whether it is a winter morning at Emmon’s Preserve with nothing much out of the ordinary happening, or a winter morning at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, one of the most photogenic places I know of…there are images to be found…photogenic moments to be captured. I might come back from Emmons with 10 good images (10 Pic of the Day posts!) and I might come back from the DBG with 30, but I do come back from every outing with images worth sharing. And that is a very good feeling.

Winter morning at the Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix AZ

Okay, so good enough for me…but what do I have to say that might help you to achieve something similar?

1) set yourself a goal. If an image a day seems too steep, try for an image a week (much less than that seems, to me at least, to be too tenuous to hold on to). Just the process of looking closely at a single image you have made every day or every week will quickly make you better at seeing images wherever you look. And, if like me, it inspires you to take (make) more images, that is all to the good!

2) relax. Begin where you are. If your camera is still on Auto, shoot on auto. If you look at my blog you will see that 90% of my images are taken on Programmed auto…without any in-camera adjustments on my part (one of the lessons I have learned from the Pic of the Day blog, by the way…I had no idea how mundane my shooting habits are until I had to write it down every day). The Programmed there might mean that adjustments are possible…it does not mean that I often make them.

3) Look for patterns…look for patterns to fill the frame of the image. Big patterns, as in a landscape, and little patterns, as in a macro. It is all about patterns. Line and form and light…the way shapes are arranged to fill frame the camera is able to capture, just a little rectangle after all, and the way the light molds the shapes with highlight and shadow. The way the colors, which are the second aspect of light, fall within the frame. You are not photographing things or people. You are capturing patterns within a frame. The things (or people) that make the patterns may be more or less important, but their importance is controlled by where you place them in the pattern you have captured (composition…rule of thirds, point-of-view, etc. See The Really Strong Suggestion of Thirds, Point of View, Shopping for Color in Old Town Albuquerque, and Lupine Lesson: Point of View). It is the pattern that will make or break the photograph. It is the pattern that the photograph is really about. (I plan a blog entry about this pattern thing soon.)

4) don’t wait for the Photogenic moments…go out and find them…better yet, go out and make them. Pattern: line and form, light and shadow and color…pattern is everywhere. There are no unphotogenic moments. Photogenic is not, when it comes right down to it, an attribute of the world you are part of (though we generally use it that way)…it is, in reality, an attribute of your soul, your mind, your spirit…of the person you are in the world. You make the photograph. It is your eyes that find the patterns. Your hands that hold and point the camera. Your finger that fires the shutter. It is all you…all in you…trust your photogenic soul, feed your photogenic soul, fill your photogenic soul. Go wide-eyed in wonder and the whole world is full of wonder! If I did not know that before, I certainly have learned it through the Pic of the Day blog…and learned to trust it implicitly.

So, here’s a deal for you. If any of you are inspired to start a Pic of the Day, or Pic of the Week blog, I promise to visit every day/week and look at your work. Promise. And I will make, as often as possible, comments. How’s that for a deal? But you have to be faithful. A Pic of the Day blog means every day…never fail. Pic of the Week, ditto.

Photogenic moments? I am eager to see what moments you make.

Bend in the stream of time: photogenic moments around every bend...

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Posted in Opinion, aesthetics, inspiration, instruction

Gingerbread Tourist: with Sanyo CG10 dual camera

Posted on October 31, 2009 by singraham| 2 Comments

Best Quality Cape May Gingerbread

I spent several days in Cape May NJ last week, and I was trying, over the phone, to explain the charm of the place to my wife. I said, “One of these days, on a nice sunny day, I will walk around the Victorian section and take some pictures to show you.”

Well, we didn’t get a nice sunny day when I was not trapped inside working, so one early evening I decided to just do it, despite glowering clouds and a threat of rain in the air.

Closer to the Gingerbread

In the spirit of the thing, I left my Sony H50 in the hotel room, and just took my little, fits-in-my-pocket, Sanyo CG10: a dual camera that does HD video and 10mp stills (which I have reviewed here in the past). Playing tourist, plain and simple.

Though the Sanyo does not have a true wide-angle lens, I set the camera to HD still format which produces a wide looking shot. It was a bit cramped in places, but it worked.

I also kept the camera on auto everything. This was not about photography as a craft.

Quick, spontaneous…see image, snap image. Don’t think, just see and snap and move on. After all, it was about to rain on me.

I covered about 1.5 miles of Cape May’s streets, and found some excellent examples of gingerbread, and a few quirky sings. I recorded the motel where I was staying, which features some interesting sudo-Victorian iron work, mostly so my family could know where I was. Pure tourist.

And I have to say it was fun. I accepted the limitations of the camera and worked with it…kind of setting my mind and eye to see what the camera could capture, without worrying about what it couldn’t. I refused to think about what I might have done if I’d had the more capable H50 with me. Not what this was about. Pure tourist.

Extreme Color

And, all in all, I am pretty happy with the results. In the spirit of the thing, my only processing in Lightroom was done with presets in batch mode. Auto White Balance. Punch. And Sharpen Landscapes. All applied without opening a single image in Develop mode.

No single image stands out, but the whole gallery is makes the impression I was after. Good exercise. Lots of fun. Pure tourist stuff, and what P&S is really made for.

You can see the whole gallery at Cape May Gingerbread. Take a stroll with me through Victorian Cape May and enjoy the simple pleasures of being a tourist.

Though, come to think of it, maybe this image does stand out.

Ceramic Gingerbread

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Posted in inspiration

No Such Thing as a Bad Photograhpy Day at Point Lobos

Posted on October 18, 2009 by singraham| 4 Comments

Off North Point and Cypress Grove

I visited Point Lobos the same weekend, two years in a row. The first time, a year ago, it was a clear morning. I got there just as the park opened, and stayed until early afternoon when the fog rolled in. This year, I was late, as I stopped on the way down to PhotoScope Sea-Otters and Curlews at Moss Landing.

North Point from Sealion Point trail.

I got to Point Lobos about 10:30, and the fog was already rolling across the headlands. But still, there is no such thing as a bad day for photography at Point Lobos. The light may be different. The mood changes with the weather. But the cliffs and coves, the headlands and inlets, the coastline and the trees, are always spectacular.

Hidden Beach: one of my new discoveries from this year

This year I walked some trails I had not walked last year, and discovered some new beaches and coves along the center section of the coastline. I was amazed. And I revisited all my favorite spots from last year, often taking very similar images…the vantage points along much of the coast are limited by the trails and wire trial guides…you can only stand where they let you stand unless you are the kind to break the rules and trample fragile vegitation. I am not. I stood where expected and took the expected shots…except that they were, of course, completely different than those I took a year ago.

Splender in the Weeds

The fog added mood and mystery to what had been sun-lit and bold last time. The horizon was closed off just beyond the points. Coves were walled in on the sea side. Colors were subtle and softer. It made the small details close by all the more interesting. It was great!

Down at Beach level in China Cove

This year the stairway down to China Cove Beach was open again (last year the bottom half had been torn away by a storm). I love China Cove, and this was a whole new view.

China Cove from Above: stood here last year...this year's image is different!

But then, as I say, I can’t imagine any weather, any day, that would not be a good day for photography along this amazing section of coast.

I could have taken these same shots with a full bag of DSLR gear, and they might have marginally better, but the ease of carrying the advanced P&S (Sony DCS H50) somehow keeps me more in the experience…more focused on the sights and sounds of the place…the physical sensations…that I might be while doing serious photography with a full DSLR kit. It allows me to do satisfying photography without being completely focused on photography. That is what I like about P&S.

Bluefish Cove from the trail above Whaler's Cove

When the fog got really heavy shortly after noon, I packed up and headed out of the park. It seemed a shame not to see what Whaler’s Cove was like on my way past, and I discovered another whole world. The fog had not reached that far into bay yet and it was all bright sun there. Another mood…almost another world.

The Wall of China Cove

You can compare the images from this year with last year’s take at my Point Lobos gallery on Wide Eyed in Wonder. Many more from this year’s visit are near the center of the Monterey Bay 09 gallery (or you can get to the gallery by clicking any of the images above, and then clicking the larger image to go to the gallery behind it).

There is no such thing as a bad photo day at Point Lobos.

Another from China Bay Beach

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Posted in aesthetics, inspiration

Emmon’s Preserve: Learning to Expose for Post!

Posted on August 15, 2009 by singraham| 3 Comments

Deep in the Green

Emmon’s Preserve, managed by the Kennebunk Land Trust, is one of my favorite places to photograph. It is also one of the most difficult. A river runs through it under a solid canopy of maples and pines, and depending on the weather can be anything from a trickle down over rocks and through pools to a raging torrent. The light is very tricky. Lots of shadow, from open to deep, and shafts of full sun illumination random patches of vegetation, a rock here and there, and select passages in the stream…often a single curl of water around a stone. It is any exposure system’s worst nightmare. Then too, the light is green in the shadows which gives most white balance automation fits.

And it is beautiful with an almost mystical beauty.

So I go back again and again to try again and again to capture what I see and feel there…with never any more than limited success. The dynamic range, from bright foliage to deep shadows under banks…from sun on water to shade under ferns, is simply too great for any sensor to capture. It does not matter whether you are using auto exposure in your camera, or computing manual exposure using the zone system, there are simply limits to what can be done.

This shot comes from an area of the Preserve I only discovered on my last visit. I don’t know how I missed it all these years, but a side trail loops up over a small ridge and comes back down to the river above the rapids and pools I know so well. This section is quieter, but with its own beauty.

Emmon’s Preserve is a great place to learn about exposing for post.

When shooting in Emmon’s preserve, I continue to experiment with different degrees of Exposure Compensation in the camera. Too much and you get great highlights but shadows that are totally blocked up and black. Too little and you get highlights which are burnt out and pure white. And of course the light in there under the canopy is never the same twice. You have to develop a sense of what will work. And you have to keep trying.

With a camera like the Sony DSC H50 that has true live view, you can judge, or maybe learn to judge would be more accurate, the effects of your chosen Exposure Compensation…you can see pretty much what you are doing.

With a camera like the Sony DSC H50 that has true live view, you can judge, or maybe learn to judge would be more accurate, the effects of your chosen Exposure Compensation on the LCD…you can see pretty much what you are doing.

Still, the proof of the pudding doesn’t come until you try to process the image back on the computer. Even if you use the camera’s exposure compensation, or manually compute a compromise exposure, an image like this requires post-processing.

I use Lightroom, and it has both Recovery and Fill Light tools. Both are tone mapping tools, in that they change the relative exposure values (tones) for a selected range of tones, and only that range. Recovery selectively reduces the intensity of highlights within the image. It is a simple slider and you can watch its effect in real time as you move it. Fill Light is exactly the opposite. As you might expect from the name, it increases the exposure level of only the shadows. Again, it does it in real time, as you move a slider.

Tone mapping is a powerful tool, bull all tone mapping tools, and Fill Light in particular, require restraint. Over use leads to strange and easily recognized halo effects at sharp contrast boundaries, especially where land meets sky. When you see a little whitish line running along the tops of mountains in some HDR images or outlining tree branches caught against the sky, it is the result of aggressive tone mapping (high dynamic range images are generally tone mapped to fit the expanded contrast scale from multiple exposures into the limited scale of the monitor or printing device).

In this image, heavy Recovery was needed to bring out any detail in the brighter areas back among the trees, and Fill Light was needed to open the shadows.

I have mentioned before that post-processing in situations like this is not used to save an incorrectly exposed image. In the field you expose the image knowing what you can and will do to it in Lightroom (or whatever software you use for post-processing). You expose it differently than you might if image editing software were not available. I used -.7 EV exposure compensation in the camera in the field to tame the highlights back among the trees. -.7EV is not enough to bring out all the detail in the highlights, and yet already it makes the shadows too dark, obscuring detail there. -.7EV is, however, the correct place to begin expanding the dynamic range with the tools available in Lightroom. All but the brightest highlights can be brought back in range by Recovery, and the Fill Light tool does a good job of selectively opening the shadows. You have to know this when making the exposure in the field. In a sense you expose for post, knowing that image as it comes from the camera will be unsatisfactory, but also knowing what you can do in post-proecessing.

This is exactly the method film photographers developed to deal with the limited dynamic range of their materials. Ansel Adams was perhaps it’s most noted practitioner. He called it the Zone System. He exposed the negative to make the best print, even though it might look like an underexposed or overexposed negative to a conventional film photographer. There was definitely a method to his exposure madness.

With today’s tools, you don’t have to know the Zone system: especially with Lightroom’s interactive tool set. With Lightroom, as noted above, you can see what you are doing. Changes are real time as you move the control. You see how much the highlights are brought back with the Recovery tool. You can see how much the shadows are opened with the Fill Light tool…and, just as importantly, you can see what the tools are doing to the rest of the image.

Both Recovery and Fill light flatten the contrast curve at the ends. They remap the tones at either extreme down into the range where the monitor or print medium can handle them. Overall you lose contrast, but if done carefully, it gives the appearance of expanded dynamic range. As in the image above.

Here is another example:

Run and Fall

I used the same -.7EV Exposure Compensation as a starting point. As you see maximum Recovery in Lightroom still left the highlights in the water too hot…not noticeable perhaps, but there to my eye. And I was not able to pull the shadows under the bank out without losing the dappled sun effect on the mossy rocks. Still, it is about as good as can be done with a single jpeg exposure.

After lots of experience in Emmon’s Preserve it is becoming easier for me than it sounds, since I have learned that, with proper EV adjustment, the Programed auto on the H50 produces an excellent, well balanced, beginning exposure. If I ever switch cameras (realistically when I switch cameras) I am going to have to learn to do this all over again.

And Emmon’s Preserve will be there, always willing to teach me.

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Posted in Lightroom, editing, inspiration, instruction, postprocessing

To Blur or Not to Blur: moving water?

Posted on July 14, 2009 by singraham| 4 Comments

Silky Water and Solid Rock

Classic shot. Rushing stream singing around rocks between deeply shaded, moss covered, banks with rugged tree trunks framing. The photographer set his tripod mounted camera to the slowest speed possible so that the water appears in the image as a silky blur, fog-like, wrapping itself around the solid rocks. If the light is too intense to allow for a shutter speed slow enough to blur the water, the photographer has used a neutral density filter to cut the light, and force the shutter speed down.

You have seen the results: thousands of times. It is a classic shot.

So, of course, I am here to challenge the conventional wisdom. Is the silky blur of water kissing rock always the best way to capture the energy of the rapids or the fall? How do you catch the music, be it a gentle melody, or a shouting Beethovean symphony, of the brook or river?

The shot above was taken at 1/6th of a second.

Here is the same shot above taken with a faster shutter speed: 1/40th, still not motion stopping fast, but all the light would allow.

Not so Silky Water Kissing Solid Stone

There is still a little blur to the water, but it has lost its silkiness. My question is, which captures the motion and energy of the water better?

I suspect that we have been somewhat conditioned to see the silky water shot as the better representation of moving water. My problem with it, if I have a problem, is that it is totally artificial. It is an artifact of the photographic process, not an aspect of reality. The water blurs because it is moving too fast for the shutter speed, but it never moves too fast for our eyes! When we look at the same scene in real time, we see every splash and sputter and spray, every cascading, churning, turning, twisting, flying, fraying fabulous play of water and light and rock. We see a always changing, never still, living substance that amazes the mind and leaves us almost literally breathless. At least that is the effect a rapid or a fall has on me. Always.

And I am not sure the silky water treatment captures that energy?

Of course I am not sure the motion stopped image does it any better.

Two more:

Water Head

At 1/13th second.

Water Head 2

at 1/60th sec.

Or consider this, taken at 1/1000th sec.

Churn

Of course, like most questions of aesthetics, there probably is not a right and wrong answer here, and certainly there is no answer that can be true in all situations, for all people.

Perhaps it is enough to be aware that there are alternatives to the silky water shot. The search for a way to convey the energy and music of moving water is far from over. Be a pioneer explorer, not a settler with all your photographic baggage in the wagon you call a camera bag.

At least that is what I think. I would be very interested in hearing what you all think. Comment fields below.

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Posted in aesthetics, inspiration, instruction

Lupine Lesson: Point of View

Posted on June 16, 2009 by singraham| 6 Comments

Lupine Bank

I first noticed that the lupine were in bloom on a rainy day drive from Kennebunk to Bar Harbor Maine. On both sides of I95 going north there were particularly lush stands of lupine. Of course, even if it had not been raining hard, it is not possible (or at least not wise) to pull over on I95 to photograph lupines.

The following day in and around Bar Harbor was sunny, and while out and about Mount Desert Island I kept my eye out for stands of lupine. I was looking for the proper background. The stand nearest our motel cabin was in an angle between two roads (typical place for lupine), and did not inspire. I saw some lovely stands along the rock shoreline of Somes Sound, but well back on private property and inaccessible. Then, coming back up the quiet (Southeast Harbor/Bass Head) side of the island after a bird walk at Seawall, I spotted this slope running up to the evergreens at the top, and thick with lupine. Not much traffic and a good wide verge, so off I went.

For scale, here is a shot of my daughter, who is about 5’4″, waist deep in the lupine (also with camera in hand).

Waist Deep in Lupine

And already, with these two contrasting shots, we being to learn the lesson of the lupine stand. Point of view can turn a single subject (lupine stand) into an amazing array of image opportunities.

As I have argued before in this space (Why take just one???) part of the wonderfulness of digital is that multiple points of view cost little but the second it takes to frame and press the shutter release. You can take your time back home, at the computer, sorting through the possibilities you saw and captured in the field for the ones that work best in the larger format of you monitor or a framing print. On the other hand, I am not one of those motor drive, sequential shooting guys who just holds the shutter release down and takes 5 shots of every framing. Never saw the point of motor drive unless shooting unpredictable action or candid human faces where the mouth and eyes, at least, are often in unpredictable motion.

My first instinct with this stand of lupines on the hill side against the evergreen background was a low angle, uphill shot. That vision is what pulled me off the road. I flipped out the LCD screen and held the Sony DSC H50 low in the vegetation, looking for a pleasing pattern. The first shot is the best of that bunch.

Next I turned side on to the slope at a long diagonal (similar to the shot with Anna above, which actually came at the end of my session with the lupine). I wanted to capture the mass of the display and keep the evergreens behind.

Along the Lupine Slope

I took several variations, but this one with the strong flower in the corner and the slope leading away is the one I decided to keep.

This daisy caught my eye, buried in the lupine, and I tried a shot around it.

Daisy among the Lupine

I am not completely happy with this as the white on the daisy burned out and I am not sure it is a strong enough focus for the image as a whole to work. Also the very blue lupines in the background distract from the effect I was looking for…so it goes. Sometimes what seems like a good idea in the field turns out, on reflection to be not so good after all.

But in the process of framing this shot, I was pulled in close and began to wonder if a tight detail shot might work. It is a challenge to balance detail of individual flowers with the effect of the massed spike of lupine.

Lupine Close In

This view, with the out of focus flower spike in the background works, I think, pretty well.

For the alternative view, which emphasizes the full mass of the flower spike, I shot down on spike so heavy it was bending under its own weight. This has the advantage of showing off the undeveloped blooms yet to open, which also provide some color relief from the massed blues.

Lupine Head

Along about now I though about compression to emphasize the mass of flowers. My H50 has a long zoom, so I used it, set aat about 200mm equivalent, shooting along the slope of the hill, to press a whole stretch of flowers into the same frame.

Compressed Lupines

I took about 10 shots at this zoom setting, framing different sections of flowers, with different mixes of colors and detail, to sort through later. Mind, I saw some possibility in each frame I shot. No waste, and not random at all. This is just the one, that on reflection, stands up the best.

So there you have it. A lupine inspired exercise in point of view. One subject, many ways of seeing it, many images. Which one do I like the best. I like them all. Each one here says something to me and captures a bit of what I saw. The more important question is which one do you like best? I’d be interested in hearing your opinions.

An even better question is will you remember this next time you are confronted with a similar situation. Shoot low. Shoot high. Shoot far. Shoot close. Use wide angle. Use macro. Use telephoto. Shoot all around your subject. It is part of the creative process. Continue the creative process when you get home to the computer, and make an image of every worthy frame. It is part of the wonder of digital.

We finish with an alternative low angle uphill shot, with a different mix of colors and stronger (maybe) center of focus.

Lupine Variety

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Posted in inspiration, instruction

Crocus Fixation Disorder :)

Posted on April 11, 2009 by singraham| 3 Comments

Late Afternoon Croceses

A funny story about these crocuses (croci?). When producing the previous post (a comparison of the Sony Webbie HD and a compact HD camcorder from Sanyo) I took two still shots of blooming crocuses in our yard and posted them to Flickr, since I wanted to be be able to link from the blog to the full resolution files. They immediately started to draw comments. People like flowers. People apparently like croci. So, of course, I had to go out with my real camera (Sony DSC H50) and take a few shots. It was late afternoon by then. The light was failing fast and I was pushing the aperture down for maximum depth of field,which lead to longer exposures than I should have been hand-holding. And, of course I had to try some extreme macros. The published close focus on the Sony H50 focuses is 2 cm, but I know from experience that it focuses closer than that. I tried a few shots where the leading petals of the flower were actually touching the lens so that I was shooting right down inside the blossom. Since there was a strong side-light by that late in the day, I was getting just barely enough light coming through the pedals to actually take an image with the camera inside the bloom. Though the stamens, when I took at look at the images on the computer, were not as sharp as I had hoped (despite spot focusing), there were some very strong images from a graphical standpoint. So I started experimenting in Lightroom to see what kind of interesting effects I could produce: softening the whole image and then popping the colors for an abstract, almost surreal look. That lead to some experimental selective luminance changes, using the HSL panel in Lightroom and the tool that lets you chose individual colors in the image to alter directly. I pumped up the luminance of the orange stamens and surpressed the luminance of the purple veins. This is lead to images that were even more graphic.

Surreal Crocus

A reader, when I posted the image on my Pic of the Day blog, commented that she could see it wall sized and hanging over a black leather covered bed. Yup. With fake fur trim, stainless steal and glass bed-side tables and lava lamps. Just the thing.

This image was even more popular on Flickr.

Still, for my own satisfaction, I needed to get the same effect with a more realistic image…one where stamens were critically sharp. That required more light, so the next morning, as soon as the sun was fully on the crocus bed, I was out there on my hands and knees with the H50.

Real Crocus Macro

In this image you can see the polen pores on the stamen.

Of course I took a lot more shots. With such an interesting subject how could I not.

Crocus Chalice

Category Archives: inspiration

A New Kind of Point and Shoot: iPhone 4

HDR: Pro HDR app

Panoramas: AutoStitch on the iPhone.

Rainy Day on Point Loma: learning.

A Year of Pics and Places

The Photogenic Moment?

Gingerbread Tourist: with Sanyo CG10 dual camera

No Such Thing as a Bad Photograhpy Day at Point Lobos

Emmon’s Preserve: Learning to Expose for Post!

To Blur or Not to Blur: moving water?

Lupine Lesson: Point of View

Crocus Fixation Disorder :)

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