Hard and Soft Water

About a year ago, I attended (with my friend Joe) a photography workshop at Ohiopyle State Park, a gorgeous park located in the beautiful Laurel Highlands of south-western Pennsylvania.  I really love it there, and having the opportunity to not only take some photos there, but to learn a lot in the process, made for a really great day.  The best of the shots I got are collected in my "Wild Ohiopyle" album.

I was looking through my shots from that day again recently, and I came across some photos that demonstrate a technique that I learned that day, which I call the "soft water" effect.  (I'm not sure if that's what it's really called in photography circles.)  It's the technique by which you slow your shutter speed down enough to give flowing water a 'soft' appearance, effectively smoothing it out, rather than capturing each ripple and droplet.

I think I already knew how to achieve that effect.  It's certainly been done to death in a lot of photos (and can easily be over-done if you're not careful).  But in last year's workshop, the instructor gave us some specifics on recommended camera settings related to this.

Anyway, the two photos that I found are of the exact same scene - a zoomed look at a small portion of a quickly-flowing stream.

The first photo was taken with a relatively fast shutter speed (as compared to the photo to follow).  Here I used a speed of 1/80.  My aperture was f/9.  Because of the shutter speed, you can see the water in more detail, with discernable ripples, etc.
 

The second photo was taken with a much slower shutter speed: 1/4 sec.  My aperture here was f/32 (necessary, of course, to avoid over-exposure).  The smaller aperture explains why the rocks in the foreground are in better focus in this shot.  And here you see the soft-water effect:
 

Of course, this effect is easy to do.  Anybody can do it if their camera allows that level of shutter control.  I'm just presenting it here because I came across these two similarly-framed photos created with different camera settings. 

I'm hoping to make it back to Ohiopyle again this year.  If I do, the resulting photos will definitely appear here.  (Don't worry, I won't over-do the 'soft water' thing.)

Color Popping Up Everywhere

I thought I was finished making photos of spring flowers.  The early burst of color that we experienced when spring first sprung has died down a bit now.  But there's still color popping up here and there.  

Such is the case at our house, thanks to my lovely and talented wife, who knows all about these things.  (I really only know two things about flowers: (1) they make good subjects for blog posts, and (2) I need to be careful not to knock them down with the lawnmower.)  We had a few great-looking blooms appear recently, in both pink and blue, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and went to work getting a couple shots.

The first is of our rhododendron, a big pink explosion of color.  I took this shot early in the day (a great time to be outside with your camera).  The morning light is coming from the right.  Since these blooms are so large, there's a noticeable difference in the appearance of the petals on the side facing the light as compared to the side away from the light (which made for some challenging post-production Photoshop work in this shot).
 

The next shot is of some great little blueish/purple flowers in our garden.  I really love all blue flowers - I don't know why.  Blue is my favorite color, so that's at least part of it.  I think the color blue seems to really pop against most other colors in a garden setting.  Anyway, I like these guys, so I got in really close to one and got the following shot.  (I could have edited-out the spots of color around the edges of the frame, but I decided to leave them in.)
 

As usual, these are not masterpieces of flower photography.  But I thought they were at least good enough to share.

I can't guarantee that this is the end of my flower shots for this year.  You never know when more natural color is going to pop up around here.  When it does, I'll be ready.

Re-Thinking an Interesting Photo

I've been re-thinking some of my older photos recently.  In many cases, I've discarded photos just because they don't seem to be "interesting" enough to keep.  I may hold on to them, but I certainly don't publish them on this site or elsewhere.  But after all the reading I've done -- of numerous photography books and magazines -- I'm starting to realize that a photo can be interesting for all sorts of reasons.  

This week's post is an example.  Last year, I accompanied my wife on a business trip to Napa, CA.  I, of course, brought my camera, and the resulting images (at least the ones that I thought were good enough to share), ended up in my "Sonoma in the Rain" album.  

One day, while my wife was in a meeting, I drove up to Santa Clara, to visit the Charles Schulz museum, being the huge Peanuts fan that I am.  While there, I stopped for lunch at the "Warm Puppy Cafe".  The cafe is located inside the ice rink that sits right next to the museum.  (Schulz was a big hockey fan.)  It was early afternoon, just after any lunch rush was over (though it was a weekday, so I doubt there was much of a rush).  As I sat at my table, I noticed that the lunch counter was unmanned, and the lights were off, except for some track lighting aimed here and there.  I pulled out my camera and took this shot:

I originally discarded this photo as just a "snapshot" - i.e. a touristy shot with no artistic value or interesting aspects.  

But, as I mentioned above, I've begun re-thinking photos like this.  In this case, it's a shot of a place which is ordinarily filled with people, on both sides of the counter.  (You can just picture the crowds of kids that would be there on a Saturday, holding their skates and ordering hot dogs and fries.)  But here it's completely deserted.  That, I think, makes this an interesting photo. The dimmed lighting, with spotlights on the oranges and elsewhere, also makes it interesting.  There's just a lot to look at in this shot - and that's interesting.

Had the lights been turned up, and had there been people standing around, this image would not have been interesting at all.

So, I've resurrected this photo.  I now think it's worth sharing, so here it is.  I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Airspace

I needed to do a little business traveling this past week, and some personal traveling last weekend.  So my time was limited for this week's post.  

I did, however, recently re-discover a shot I took while traveling a while ago.  I don't usually do "abstract" shots like this one, and I'm certainly no expert on that type of photography.  But I thought this photo was at least somewhat interesting.
 

I was sitting in an airport restaurant about a month ago, undoubtedly scarfing down some cholesterol-laden food between flights, as travelers love to do.  I looked up from my seat, and noticed that I was directly beneath some skylights, and the sky above was a perfect combination of blueness and clouds, just what photographers like.

So I reached for my trusty Droid camera phone, and snapped this shot:



I tried to get the windows on the diagonal of the frame, just to make it more interesting.

Again, I thought this was at least an "interesting" photo, because it makes you stop, even for a brief moment, to figure out exactly what it is that you're looking at.  And the fact that it's not just a picture of the sky, but the sky above an airport was, I thought, an added twist.

Of course, my travel companions thought I was a bit odd, taking a picture of the ceiling.  But I've gotten used to that.

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On a personal note, I just wanted to "plug" an up-coming exhibit of paintings by my friend Joe Winkler at the Shaw Galleries in downtown Pittsburgh, on May 11-12, 2012:

This exhibit will include a variety of unique subjects painted in a realistic style, from a painter who won top honors in two juried group exhibits in 2011. Four new original paintings executed in 2012 will be exhibited for the first time, as well as Joe’s recent, award-winning, still life paintings. The best of Joe’s available, original early landscapes will also be displayed. These art works vary in size, but most are small and elegant “gems” that art enthusiasts love to collect for themselves, or give as gifts.

If you're in the area, try to stop by.
 
Be sure to follow Joe's blog too, for the latest updates on his work.

And tell him I sent you - maybe I'll get a free beer out of this.

Window Treatment

This week, I decided to play around a little more with HDR.  (If you're not familiar with HDR, see my "Photo Merging" post for a description, and a bad example.)  I wanted to get another interior shot of a window, looking out, such that both the exterior scene and the interior of the window are properly exposed.  Regular readers of this blog may remember that interior window shots are a favorite of mine.

In this case, I took 5 exposures, varying each one by about 2/3 of a 'stop' (changing only the shutter speed for each).  Unfortunately, when I merged all 5 of them, I didn't quite get the look I wanted.  I'm not really sure why, to be honest.  On top of that, things weren't all that sharp, maybe because my camera may have moved slightly between shots.

So instead, I did a "manual" merge, taking one exposure which captured the details of the interior (which still looks a little dark here, I know):

...and one exposure which was exposed for the exterior.  (Now, the exterior shot here is really just exposed for the trees in the distance.  The sky itself is washed out and gray because...you guessed it...it was a gray, cloudy day.)

After manually selecting the properly-exposed areas to use in each exposure, and generating a merged result, I was still left with a couple things to address: (1) the gray sky, and (2) the electrical outlet and cord (which is distracting).

But never fear - Photoshop Elements can take care of all of that.

The electrical outlet was easily removed, using a 'content-aware fill' tool which let me replicate surrounding areas of the image and place them on top of the outlet, blending them in so that it looks right.  (It's not perfect, as you'll see below, but it's good enough for this experiment anyway.)

The sky was a more interesting fix.  In this case, I actually found another photo of mine which had an "interesting" sky.  This is the photo, which also appears in my "Longwood" album:

I could then select the sky area in my window photo, and paste the better sky from the above shot into that area, thereby magically making the sky outside the window a more attractive cloudy blue.

Some subsequent adjustments to saturation, lighting, and sharpness resulted in this final image, with no outlet, a blue sky, adequately-exposed interior, and adequately-exposed trees:

Highly-edited images like this are a source of a little controversy sometimes.  Some people are of the belief that photos should never be "Photoshoped".  Those people are, of course, wrong.  Post-processing (as it's called) is just another way of finishing a photo, analogous to the darkroom techniques that were used in the old days (and still today).  Just like movies are edited after they're shot, with sound effects added, etc., and music is "mixed" and "re-mixed" after being recorded, photos need some help too sometimes. In fact, post-processing is such an ingrained part of photography that, I think, mastering its techniques (using software like Photoshop and others) is almost as important as mastering the use of your camera, just as proper darkroom skills were vital to photographers in years past.  Now, the photo above has had more than just your typical touch-ups -- I've actually pasted in a piece of another photo (one that I also created) in this case.  But the bottom line is that the resulting image is mine, created by me (hence the copyright).  It's not being used in a journalistic way (where, I think, the standards for post-processing are understandably different) and is not a misrepresentation of anything.  It's just a nice picture, regardless of the steps needed to create it.  That's how photography works, and really always has.

Anyway, just as I said the last time I attempted HDR, the final result here is still not a great photo.  But I'm just getting a feel for the possibilities of HDR and where I can go with it, as well as other features of Photoshop, and I wanted to share my results along the way.

Local Color

Even though the weather has warmed up again around here (north-eastern U.S.), and even though I complained several times on this very blog about the lack of photo opportunities during a long, cold winter, I must admit that I really haven't ventured very far away from home so far this spring with the intent of making any nice images.

Part of the problem, if it is one, is that there's a lot of spring color around the house, so I truly haven't needed to go far for some nice shots.  

Another issue (and by "issue" I mean excuse) is that I've been too busy to go off on a photo shoot someplace.  I've got stuff to do, ya know.

Still another issue is that I just haven't really been inspired recently.  I must admit, I struggled to get a photo (two, actually) ready for this week's post.  Just having an off week, I guess.  For a brief time, I actually considered changing the theme of this blog, to remove the "Weekly" from the title, and ease up the pressure on myself to publish something every 7 days.  But then I remembered the goal behind that "weekly" theme - to force me to be creative and use my camera as much as possible, thereby improving my skills.

SO ANYWAY...I did scrape up a few photos this week.  Not surprisingly, they were taken near my home.  In fact, they were both taken within 20 feet of my back door.  Pathetic, I know.  But I do intend to get out and about later this spring, so stay tuned for some more interesting travel and nature shots.

For now, though, I've got more flower photos to share.  Flower shots may get old after a while, and they are pretty stereotypical subjects for newbie photographers like me, but I don't care - I like shooting flowers, so I'm gonna do it.

This first shot is titled 'Flowers and Fence #4', because it's the 4th in a series of 5 shots that I took with the intention of building an HDR image, exposed for the foreground flowers, the sky, and a few things in between.  The problem was that it was slightly breezy outside, and the flowers moved.  So the flowers in the merged image were just too blurry for this to work, at least with my HDR skills.  But I took the image that had a decent sky (#4), and edited the living HECK out of it (pardon my language).  I cropped it, adjusted the shadows and highlights, applied some sharpening, tweaked the saturation levels, and threw in some noise reduction, not necessarily in that order.  Here's the original (believe it or not):

And here's the final result.  (Photoshop rocks, doesn't it?)

The other shot was taken underneath our big elm trees.  There are some "ground-cover" type flowers growing there (don't ask me what they're called - no idea - my wife would know), and I spotted one that was popping up all by itself amongst a group of green leafage. (I'm just making up "leafage" - seems like that should be a word though.)  So I got down really low - we're talking knees in the dirt here - and grabbed this shot:

I'd like it better if the leaf in the top center was in focus, but otherwise it's an attractive shot, I thought.

So that's it for this week.  I'll try to do something more inspired next week.  And yes, this will continue to be a weekly blog -- I've been doing it for about 9 months now, so I'm not quitting now.

Playing Fetch

I decided to back away from flower photography this week, just because that's been the focus (no pun intended) of my last few posts.  Besides, it's been relatively cold around here recently, with some snow even making an appearance this week.  So the explosion of spring color, which I've been talking about for several weeks now, has slowed down somewhat.  I expect more things to bloom soon though, and hopefully I'll be able to get out and capture them "on film".  (Yes, granted, there's no "film" involved, but I can't really say that I'll capture them "on my image sensor".  Doesn't have quite the same ring.)

Anyway, a few weeks ago, the Mrs. and I were in the back yard playing fetch with our dog Duncan.  Duncan has appeared several times on this blog already.  I promised long ago that I wouldn't make a habit of that - I don't want this to become a pet photography blog.  But, he's a photogenic pooch, and I thought I'd share a couple shots that, I think, came out pretty nice.

The first shot is one of Duncan assuming a "ready" stance, as he waits for the ball to be thrown.  He just LOVES chasing a ball.  (He LOVES the treats we give him when he brings it back too.)  I liked the action that this shot implies, even though Duncan isn't actually moving much in the photo.
 

The second shot is somewhat more static.  Duncan paused for a brief moment during our fetch session, and I was able to zoom in tight and get this profile. He looks a bit unkempt but, well, he's a dog -- dogs aren't always "kempt".

 

My goal in bringing my camera out that day was to get some more "action" shots of Duncan.  I did get a few, but they didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, so I won't include them here.  I experimented with panning (to get a crisp shot of Duncan while blurring the background) as well as NOT panning (to do just the reverse), and I never quite got the shot I was hoping for.  So I may try again some time in the future.

Anyway, that's all for this week.  I may return to more flower shots next week, unless this cold weather keeps up.  There's nothing worse than April snow.

More Spring Color

Last weekend I was able to get some more shots of the spring blossoms and flowers around our house.  Our trees and flowers are really exploding with brilliant color right now.

Our dogwood tree finally bloomed, and I was able to isolate just one of the blossoms, using the rest of the tree and the early-morning blue sky as a background.  The end result turned out pretty good...

Next I moved on to our crab apple trees.  For most of the summer, these trees are actually a pain in the neck.  They drop little "crab apples" (I guess) all over our driveway, which our dog loves to eat - despite the fact that they make him sick.  (He's a smart dog, but food short-circuits all common sense in a dog's brain.)  Anyway, at this time of year, these trees are actually gorgeous, because they have these vibrant red/pink blossoms.  The shot I got isn't as sharp as I'd like, because I didn't use my tripod - I couldn't, because I needed to climb a ladder to get this close to the tree branch...

Finally, there are some little yellow flowers near our front sidewalk that just recently opened up.  They looked like happy little guys to me, so I grabbed a shot...

That's all for now.  There's new things blooming left and right around here, so hopefully I'll get some more shots this weekend, and share them here next week.
 

__________

P.S.   FYI, new posts on this blog will now be appearing on Saturday morning, rather than Thursday afternoons as before.  It's just easier for me to keep to that schedule.  (And, in case you were wondering, no, I don't get up early on Saturday's to update the blog.  I 'schedule' these posts ahead of time.  Blogging is fun, but sleeping is much more important.)

Photo Merging

Last weekend I finally got around to playing with the 'photomerge' feature of my photo editing software, Photoshop Elements.

The photomerge feature allows you to effectively create an HDR image.  For those of you who aren't photo geeks like me, HDR refers to High Dynamic Range.  It's a technique for creating photographs which have a greater "dynamic range" between the darkest and lightest parts of the photo - a range much greater than what ordinary photographs typically have.  The result is a photo that more closely resembles what we see with our eyes.  (Our eyes and our brain, after all, still do a much better job at processing visible light than cameras do.)

The basic idea is this:  Scenes with both very bright and very dark areas cannot BOTH be captured by a camera in one shot.  The camera needs to adjust its exposure for either the bright area or the dark area.  An HDR image is created by taking multiple shots of the same scene, varying the camera's exposure between shots metered for the bright areas (leaving the dark areas under-exposed) and shots metered for the dark areas (resulting in over-exposed, or "blown-out", bright areas).  Using software, you can then "merge" these multiple shots, taking the properly-exposed portions of each, resulting in a photo where (if you did it right) all areas are properly exposed.

Isn't digital photography cool?!

If done right, HDR photos are really amazing.  A well-known professional photographer named Trey Ratcliff definitely does it "right".  His shots are really stunning.  (And I don't use words like "stunning" very often.)

If done incorrectly, HDR photos look really 'cartoony'.  When looking at a bad HDR shot, the scene looks somehow "unrealistic".  You're usually not quite sure why - your mind just doesn't "believe" the shot.  

Anyway, as I mentioned, I tried my hand at HDR last weekend.  I took several shots of a flower garden area at our house, from a low angle, such that some bushes and flowers in the foreground were in low-light, and the distant horizon and sky were very bright.  I took 3 shots at different exposures:

One exposed for the foreground, with the sky completely blown-out:

One exposed for the sky, with the foreground under-exposed (notice how much more of the distant tree in the top-right corner is now visible):

And one sort-of in the middle (which may not have even been necessary):

All of the photos above, by themselves, are lousy shots.  But I combined them in Photoshop Elements, and created the image below.  (Note that I cropped the photo slightly, and removed some distractions, including the green tree on the horizon, which was 2nd from the right on the horizon in the shots above.)

Now, don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying that this is now a good photo.  This is actually still a lousy photo.  I didn't blend the shots correctly at the top of the tree line, and the flowers in the middle ground are out of focus.  But it's still cool the way that the foreground plants and blue sky are now present in the same shot.  It really opens up a lot of shot possibilities.

Photoshop Elements is not the ideal tool for this work, but it seemed to do a decent job.  I think experienced HDR photographers will often take more than 3 exposures.  But this was just an experiment for me, so I limited it to 3, and the software seemed to handle that well.

I may try this again in the future, next time with some better shots.  Stay tuned.

Daffodil Re-edited

This is a rare weekend post, but I just wanted to upload a corrected photo.

 

At my friend Joe's suggestion, I re-edited the photo of the yellow daffodil from my previous post, to remove the distracting petals at the edges of the frame.  Here's the result:

Much better, I think.  It's amazing what software can do.  ("Content-aware fill" is awesome!)  

This really puts the focus on the foreground flower, and eliminates distractions.

Thanks for the suggestion!  Keep 'em coming. 

Daffodil Days

Spring is apparently here, at last. That of course means one thing – more outdoor photo ops.  It means other things too, like warmer weather, more daylight, and the start of baseball season – which, in Pittsburgh, really means that the NFL draft isn’t too far off.  But for me, when the weather gets warm like this, photography springs to mind (pun fully intended) because nature is exploding with color right now.

I don’t know much about flowers.  I know they’re “perdy”, but otherwise I’m clueless.  But I do know that daffodils arrive in the spring, and they were the first to bloom at our house.

I always thought that all daffodils were strictly yellow.  But, because of my horticultural cluelessness, I was wrong about that. Some of them have other colors too.  All I know is these two little guys looked good together, so I tried to capture them in one shot, putting the front flower in sharper focus:

Then I moved on to some blooms that are more in keeping with what I’m used to calling a “daffodil”. The brown and still-bare bush behind them, thrown out of focus, made for a nice neutral background:

I think I like the second shot a little better, partly because I like the composition and sharpness better, and maybe partly because I just like the look of the “traditional” yellow daffodils.

Both shots called for the standard approach when doing shots like this (or so I’ve learned) – tripod, cable release, a low angle, a carefully-chosen aperture, and good light (early morning light, in this case).  There was little or no wind also, which helps.

Anyway, I’m keeping my camera at the ready in the days and weeks to come, as more and more spring color begins to explode in our neighborhood.  So don’t be surprised to see more shots like this appearing in up-coming posts here.

Two Shots From One

This week’s photo is one I took of my wife and dog on a local walking path. 

 

This shot was taken a few years ago, during autumn (obviously).  It struck me as an interesting shot – and I’ll tell you why...

The photo has two elements in the shot that grab your attention.  One is, of course, my wife (who always grabs my attention).  People appearing in a photo tend to be the focal point of that photo. My dog (Duncan) is pretty cute too.

The other element is, of course, the trail that curves off into the distance. Everyone likes to see where a trail leads, so your eye tends to follow it along.

Of the two elements, my wife is probably the dominant, not just because she’s adorable, but because she’s wearing blue, which really “pops” against the fall colors that fill most of the frame.

So given all of that, this is a pretty good shot, no?

No.

It’s actually not very good at all.

There’s too much to look at.  You don’t know which part of the shot (the person/dog on the left, or the trail on the right) is supposed to be the focal point.  It’s like reading a book without a clear plot.  You’re left asking yourself: “What the heck are they trying to say?”

But alas, all is not lost.  (I love saying “alas”.  It’s not always easy to work into day-to-day conversation though.)  We can crop this photo, through the miracle of modern photo editing software, and perhaps salvage two interesting photos from it.

First, we can crop in very tight on my wife and dog.  Keeping them off-center, as is often done, to add interest:

 

Much better.  It’s clear what this photo is about.  A woman and her dog, on a lovely autumn day.

Also, we can crop the path portion of the original photo, making it the focal point:

 

Very nice – you really can’t go wrong with a photo of a trail leading off into the distance.  Especially in the autumn (my favorite season).

Now, granted, cropping does have its costs.  When you crop, you lose pixels.  The overall resolution of each shot goes down.  But the original shot was relatively hi-res, and the resulting crops are still large enough to look nice, at least on screen.  (The colors in these photos aren't as vibrant as they could be.  The shots could still benefit from some touch-up work, which maybe I'll do someday.)

As always, I’d like to say that I captured both of these final images in one shot on purpose. But, as usual, this was an accident – I just did a poor job of composing, and I was trying to put too much into one shot. 

They say that a good photographer knows what NOT to include in a photo.  Someday I hope to be a “good photographer”.  I don’t think I’m there yet.  But I'm getting better at recognizing what’s wrong with a photo, and sometimes you can turn a bad shot into a good one (or two).