Posts in Category: Vermont
3/30/2012: Along Church Street, Burlington VT
I am sure this building has a name, but I do not know it. The distinctive architecture graces one end of the Church Street shopping mall in Burlington Vermont. I chose to leave the lens and perspective distortions as part of the image, since the converging lines add to the composition (which is another way of saying “because I like it.”) The same with the lamppost intruding into the lower left of the frame. As I see it, the lamp makes its own contribution to the convergence, and pins the corner of the frame down for the eye, making the whole composition more coherent. And I wish I could say I thought all that through while framing the image…but of course I just pointed and shot, letting my inner imaging eye (or engine) do the work, just as I let the cameras imaging engine do the work of exposure and focus 🙂
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
3/26/2012: Mt. Washington and the Whites from the car.
My daughter Kelia drove on the way back from Burlington Vermont, a few weeks ago now, and I had the opportunity to enjoy the views of the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I also, for lack of a better option, tried some “through the windshield” photography. This is as close as we got to Mt. Washington, the highest point in the Northeast. I zoomed in to avoid the top of the steering wheel on one edge of the frame and the rearview mirror on the other, shooting just one side of the windshield mounted GPS, at an angle out the little bit of windshield right in front of the driver. Sometimes you just get a better image than you have any right to expect! I even like the car on the other side of the interstate, caught in dynamic tension entering the frame.
This is, of course, one of a sequence of shots taken at 4fps. I would watch for a gap in the median vegetation and the oncoming traffic, and shoot off a burst. This image is from one of several sequences attempting to catch Mt. Washington as it passed. The picturesque Vermont dairy farm was just a happy accident…or an example of my amazing skills…whichever.
I did crop slightly at the left, bottom and top to improve composition and to eliminate a distracting power station just out of the frame on the left, and the shadow of the rearview mirror at the top.
Shooting through windshield glass required some creative color correction…and I would like to take credit, but honestly just hitting the Auto Color Temperature button in Lightroom did the trick. I did adjust shadows and blackpoint more than for a normal image.
Canon SX40HS at 153mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Interestingly enough, there is probably no other vantage point where you could get this particular image of the farm against the mountains. You have to be in a passing car.
3/15/2012: Church Street, Burlington VT
On our short visit to Burlington Vermont, we took our daughter shoe shopping on Church Street. Church Street is an urban mall…a common feature these days of attempting to revitalize the downtown shopping districts in cities the size of Burlington. In New England they all share the closed to vehicle traffic and the brick street and sidewalk ambiance, as well as the trendy shops, art galleries, organic and exotic restaurants, and boutique coffee and tea houses. Burlington has also managed to attract a more main-stream mall mix, from Macy’s and Famous Shoes to Panara Breads and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. All in all it is one of the more vital revitalized downtowns that I have seen.
This shot is the very north end of the mall on a rainy morning. There is nothing like wet brick for atmosphere. It was taken with the 24mm equivalent end of the Canon SX40HS zoom, and then pulled back into plum with the distortion tools in Lightroom. The next two images, taken later in the morning when the sky was clearing, show just how powerful the Lightroom distortion tools are for architectural shots.
With the camera tipped up to frame the church, the vertical distortion makes for a crazy city scene. It seems shots like this, with untreated distortions, are pretty well accepted these days, and it does have a kind of wild appeal…but I think I prefer my buildings standing up straight.
This correction required both the vertical distortion slider (considerable) and the lens distortion slider (just a tiny bit)…and then a custom cropping to keep the walker’s feet in the frame. It is totally amazing what you can do in Lightroom!
1) 24mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/80th @ ISO 100. 2) and 3) 24mm equivalent, f4@ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed (in addition to the distortion corrections) in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
3/14/2012: Champlain Blue, Burlington VT
My wife, daughter number 5, and I took a brief overnighter to Burlington Vermont to visit daughter number 3, who attends Burlington College. By the time we got there the weather had closed in, but we still spent a few hours walking along the shore of Lake Champlain. The Adirondacks across the water were faded to blue on blue, or grey on grey, but the light was soft and lovely, and I had fun playing with simplified compositions.
Canon SX40HS at 84mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Lightroom 4 has changed many of the develop tools I used every day, and I am having to relearn to get the same effects.