Posts in Category: grass
8/2/2010
No Name Creek: iPhone HDR
So I admit to still being slightly amazed and muchly delighted that the iPhone can do this! Such a great toy. Of course it is actually rapidly becoming a tool…just another piece of equipment with its set of inherent possibilities that I can bring to bear on photo opportunities. It is still all about the eye. That is not to diminish the simulative effect of a new toy. Having the HDR program and a decent camera on my iPhone certainly stimulates my eye to look for possible HDR-worthy scenes, and leads me to compositions I might not have attempted with my standard gear. This shot, for instance would have required considerable manipulation in post processing to pull off. The iPhone just makes it easy.
Lots to like here (imho), beginning with the range of tones in the foreground water…the way the camera has captured the play of light across the surface and even where it penetrates the water to bring up the creek bottom. That, to my eye, is way cool! Then we roll back over the various textures and green tones of the marsh grass, lead by the curve of the creek, to the horizon and the little bit of beach balanced between the dark mass of houses on the left and the few trees on the right, and then we shoot out over the ocean under a ceiling of clouds that recedes to infinity, with the blue of the sky pinning us to the top of the frame.
Of course, I did not think or see any of this when taking the picture. I did not get much beyond “I like that. Wonder what it would look like as an iPhone HDR?”
Captured and processed on the iPhone 4. Two exposures in ProHDR, one metered and focused on a bright cloud at the top, one metered and focused on the shadow under the bank of the stream in the left foreground. Levels and sharpen in PhotoGene, and the red channel pulled back a bit. Uploaded direct to Wide Eyed In Wonder in SmugShot.
From iPhone 4 HDR and Pano.
7/24/2010
Hill above Ukiah CA
Crossing the mountains from Mendocino CA to Ukiah somewhere on route 283, I rolled down the window in the backseat and shot the rolling landscape. The roadside grasses are just blurred from the motion. I was on a quick swing through California for work, not in charge of the schedule, and I had to seize every picture op. 
This was my first trip to CA in full summer and the mountains took on a whole new look!
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Cropped in Lightroom for composition. Some Recovery for the sky, Fill Light and Blackpoint barely right, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Zeiss Trip CA 2010.
7/21/2010
On a Lazy River’s Evening Light
The Mousam, in Kennebunk Maine, at high tide, about 7:30PM on a summer evening after a hot damp day. View this larger on the Wide Eyed In Wonder site by clicking the image above. It has much more impact at larger sizes.
Canon SX20IS at 300mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 200. Landscape program.
Cropped for composition in Lightroom. Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and some Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Around Home 2010.
7/12/2010
Evening Light/Tidal Pool
Summer’s late light, going on 8PM with the sun still well above the horizon and seemingly hanging there forever. The slant picks out abundant detail in the sea grass surrounding this tidal pool, here full and reflective with the tide. A bit of mist left from a hot muggy day still floats up-river, thinning toward the coast. Peace. It will repay a larger look on Wide Eyed In Wonder (click the image).
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky, Blackpoint just right, added Clarity and just a tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset. Finally I pulled a Graduated Filter effect down diagonally from the upper left corner to bring up some blue where the mist catching the light had overexposed the area.
From Around Home 2010.
7/6/2010
Mousam Mouth
Just a gentle landscape shot, out across the marshes toward the mouth of the Mousam River…a rarity for the cost of southern Maine these days in that it is a unprotected river mouth…no jetty…therefore one of the last wild, unmanaged beaches.
This is a good example of what a little help from Lightroom can do for a landscape. The original…
has potential but is overall rather dull. Applying my normal processing…Recovery for the sky, touch of Fill Light, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and sharpening…improves the sky but leaves the foreground too dark and still dull…maybe duller since the highlights are stripped from the grasses as well.
This is when I resort to Lr’s graduated filter effects.
Drawing one down from the top across the sky and well into the landscape, I am able to reduce some Brightness, and add additional Clarity and and a bit of Contrast to bring up detail in the clouds. Then, drawing a graduated filter up from the bottom about 2/3rs of the frame, I am able to add Brightness, increase Clarity and Contrast, to bring out both the color and the detail in the foreground. I call it the dualing GrFilter effect. Finally, since the midground right along the horizon was left a little dark, I went in with the Local Adjustment Brush in Lightroom and defined a brush that was mostly feather…then drew an area along the horizon and added Brightness and Clarity. The result is a far different image…but arguably one closer to what the eye sees, rather than what the sensor captures. Mind you, Lr does not add anything to what the sensor caught…it just remaps the tones to a closer approximation of the visual. In that sense, the sensor and the camera did a great job of capturing the scene…since all the information needed to post-process was in the file!
Note that I am working from the jpeg file, and even with the limitations of jpeg, a lot is still possible in Lr.
From Around Home 2010.
6/5/2010
Plantain
Laudholm Farm manages old farm lands, as you might guess from the name, and the open meadows are home to all kinds of plants…both native and foreign. This is English Plantain, which is a weed in a yard, but part of a natural and nutritious mix of plants in a meadow. Song-birds eat the seeds (it is actually grown commercially for cage bird feed). Rabbits love the leaves. One man’s weed is another man’s treasure.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. Lens-hood touching the stem and the flowers inside. F4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Programmed auto.
And here is another view.
This one at F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. This one, to me, has a feel of the open prairies…though it is only a hill top meadow in New England.
Both processed in Lightroom using my standard touch of Recovery, Fill Light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen landscape preset.
From Laudholm Farms.
6/4/2010
Bobolink
For some reason, the Bobolink has been a digiscoping jinx bird for me. Every year I try for new shots at Laudholm Farm, just down the road from us, where they are abundant and very visible during courting season in the spring. I tried two years in a row in North Dakota where they are also abundant. And I have nothing to show for it…or at least, nothing I am willing to show to others. 🙂
So, this year, I gottem! Or at least I got my best shots yet.
Even then, this is still a very hard bird to photograph. White on black is always a hard exposure problem, and the fine-fur like structure of the head feathers is a real challenge to capture effectively. And when they are visible in courtship, they are always moving. After courtship they simply disappear. I have never seen a Bobolink that was not courting or being courted. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough.
Canon SD1400IS behind the eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 65FL for an equivalent focal length of about 3500mm. Exif f5.0 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80. Computed f-stop, considering the spotting scope, f9.6.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the highlights, a touch of Fill Light to open the black plumage, and then a bit of Blackpoint right to intensify the colors. Adde Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
And, though the light on this video is not what I would like (got to leave some challenge for next year), it does showcase the song!
All but the video are from Digiscope Around Home on my Wide Eyed In Wonder site.
5/29/2010
Much Ado About Nothing
This is about a close to a picture of nothing in particular as you can…but I still like it for its undeniable (to me) drama. A little corner of meadowish ground behind the parking lot at Wells Harbor in Wells, ME, some second growth trees forming a corner, the single pine standing lose, that bushy beach-rose on the bottom right with its orangey tones, the light of early morning lying flat out in front of me and picking out all the interesting variations in the grassy vegetated carpet…oh, and of course, the sky above with clouds streaming in from some point stage-right and far behind on unrelated business of their own. Move along, nothing to see here…and yet the eye pauses to appreciate, the heart hangs waiting for revelation, and the mind for resolution.
Or is that too much to make of it. Much ado about nothing. 🙂
All I know is I want a print of this for my wall, because I could look at it for a long time. Look at it as large as your monitor will take.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the clouds and sky, Fill Light and Blackpoint right for drama in the foreground (delicate balance there to preserve detail in the shadow on the right). Added Clarity and just a tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
5/17/2010
Fly-fishing in First Light
We reached the Highpoint/Stokes Recreation Area soon after dawn in our World Series of Birding run on Saturday. One of the advantages of only being there to document the effort is that I had time (and attention) to spare for things without wings…like this angler in a pond in the early light. Zooming in, I as able to catch the arc of the line as he cast. This will repay a view at larger sizes on WideEyedInWonder (click the image for the link, and use the size controls at the top of the window to resize for your monitor).
Canon SX20IS at about 280mm equivalent. F5.0 @ 1/400th @ 1SO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, a touch of Recovery for the glittering water, some Fill Light and Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance. Cropped from the bottom and top for composition.
3/25/2010
And the Sky Above…
Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms is a public/private cooperation. The Laudholm Trust owns the land and buildings. The WNERC operates the facility and staffs the research projects. All in all, it is a wonderful place, with public hiking trails through an old salt marsh farm situated on a hill over, through well grown woods, out across the marsh on an old road, and to the beach at the mouth of the Little River. On the north side it adjoins Rachel Carson National Wildlife property all along the marsh.
It is a varied habitat, and there is always something to see there. This was the first really warm day of spring, a Saturday, and there were quite a few people enjoying the trails.
The main attraction in this shot is, of course, the sky and that amazing cumulous cloud against the airbrushed (literally) backdrop of cirrus. I also liked the gold of the standing grasses and the intricate tip of the little tree just over the horizon. I got down low and used the flip out LCD for an up-hill, ground-level shot that hid most of the tree, and made the grasses more of a subject. A bit of crop at the bottom to eliminate some of the more scruffy grass and place the horizon…and there you go.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky, some Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
And, of course I could not take just one. This is the same shot, from the same position, at about 45mm equivalent…coming in tighter on the cloud and making the tree more of a subject.
