Posts in Category: Lightroom
12/20/2011: Peach Promise on the Horizon, Kennebunk ME
I was surprised to find this lovely peach color along the horizon over the ocean yesterday. The morning held no such promise. A few moments of sun early, and then overcast moved in and looked set to stay the day. Even the weather reports said the same. Still there was no denying the peach…and indeed by an hour after this shot, the overcast had blown over and the sun was shining. It was a peach promise…or a promising peach. On the horizon. (If you view it at larger sizes you will see a “drawing water” effect along the center.)
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent. f4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I also used the dueling Graduated Filter effects trick, with a graduated filter pulled down from the top to darken the sky and graduated filter pulled up from the bottom to lighten the beach.
5/13/2011: Serendipity vs. Triskaidekaphobia
So, it is Friday the 13th, and that very long word in the title that starts with “t” means “fear of the number 13” or perhaps, according to some authorities “fear of Friday the 13th.” Granted these pics were taken on the 12th, but I am posting them here, today, as a antidote to phobia of any shape or manner on this good Friday.
I have been, in my off hours at the Biggest Week in American Birding, photographing warblers with my Point and Shoot camera from the boardwalk at Magee Marsh along the Ohio shore of Lake Erie. Lots of fun, if somewhat frustrating due to the limits of the camera…but probably not much more frustrating…given the difficulty of the subjects…than photographing them with any kind of camera.
Scarlet Tanagers began to come through in numbers on Wednesday. I was photographing members of a small group of them, with the camera set on my own devised flight mode (user setting, which in this case maybe is warbler mode) which includes 5 frames captured at 8 frames per second. I just happened to press the shutter just as this bird’s wings went up. The rest is just mechanics…with, perhaps, a bit of help from Lightroom (I only edited the first shot, and then, for absolute consistency, pasted my edit settings over the next 4). Of course, if I had been trying to catch this sequence, it would never have happened! This is pure serendipity.
There ought to be a word, actually, for this kind of event…which is certainly not dumb luck…considering the amount of time I have spent behind the camera, and the amount of experience and experimentation that has gone into my choice of equipment and settings, and the amount of practice I have had over the past 3 weeks in catching action with my latest equipment. I could not have been more prepared for this sequence if I had actually planned it. And I was in the right place at the right time (which is largely a matter of being out with the camera a lot!) So, while I would not credit it any great amount of skill on my part, this sequence is not really luck at all. We need a better word even than serendipity, which has come to imply simply accidental discovery, or we need to return to the original meaning as Horace Walpole coined it: he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". (Wikipedia, emphasis mine). When you are in the field any amount of time, things do, for sure, just happen…but you definitely have to be ready for them to happen if anything is to come of them.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 668mm equivalent field of view, f6.3 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. User Flight mode.
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness and cropped for composition in Lightroom.
3/6/2011: Sunset, Mission Bay, HDR
Happy Sunday! I have taken this shot many times over the last 8 years on my annual visit to San Diego. I spend most of each day at the Mission Bay Marina Village Conference Center talking optics with prospective ZEISS owners and one of the highlights of the day (no pun intended) is sunset over the marina. This year I have a new tool to apply, since I have begun to actively experiment with HDR. The hard part of a sunset shot is holding any kind of realistic detail in the foreground while capturing the subtle shades and brilliant hues of dominant sky. HDR helps.
Canon SX20IS at about 60mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3 EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
And here we take the closer view, which is even more of challenge for the sensor.
And, since it is Sunday: we love sunsets…sunsets and dawns when the sky takes fire move the most self-centered of us to an appreciation, to an apprehension, of the beauty of nature. But there is something deeper there…sunsets stir something in our souls…we feel them, as much as see them…we are moved. There is a longing in the time between times (as the Celts would say), a yearning, an opening to something other and beyond ourselves. I am not a believer in magic, but I can believe more fully in miracles at sunset. The sunset has to witnessed either with silence or with song…with contemplation or with praise…with supplication and with hope. It is in the truest sense, a holy time. Is it any wonder the camera sensor struggles to capture it…
2/28/2011: Kennebunkport HDR
Looking across the Kenneunk River at flood tide toward Kennebunkport. This is intentionally processed to be more painterly, using heavier than my usual tone-mapping in Photomatix, and, of course, it is scene that might feature in a painting. The variety of light…sky and cloud, reflections in the water, patches of sun and shadow on the trees and the far shore…keeps my interested as much as the scene itself.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3ds EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. It required some noise suppression, distortion control, and just a bit of color temperature adjustment (warming).
2/26/2011: Winter Cold Sea HDR
Another HDR effort, this time form Mother’s Beach in Kennebunk, looking out across a cold sea to the retreating storm. Again it is really about the clouds and the light on the water, but the gulls on the little strip of open beach add an element not usual for an HDR (since anything that is likely to move can be a real problem with 3 exposures). Even the sea cooperated for the most part here, with the high tide and gentle swell working for a good HDR effect.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3s EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Some noise reduction applied also to tame the HDR noise. For whatever reason, this required some color temperature adjustment as well.
2/24/2011: Flood Tide Mousam River HDR 2
A second shot from the river side of Parson’s Beach the other day as the front passed through. Again, a three exposure HDR. The bit of road embankment (causeway really) in the left foreground provides a scale the last shot lacked, as do the visible houses. Still lots of drama in that sky, and the play of reflections and subtle colors in the water to catch the eye.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three exposures bracketed around –2/3EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
Though I moved Pic of the Day from wordpress.com (the wordpress.com has been hidden behind the custom url for quite some time now) to a self-hosted WordPress installation during the day yesterday…and later links in the day pointed here…this is the first official post at Pic for Today (p4td.lightshedder.com). The site design is updated. Let me know what you think. I am still getting used to it and making adjustments.
2/22/2011: Flood Tide on the Mousam HDR 1
While I am not done with the digiscoped birds from Merritt Island, I, for one, need a break. Yesterday morning we had fresh snow, and as the front passed away out to sea in the afternoon, some spectacular skies. Add as high a flood tide as I have ever seen along the coast here and you have the makings of some HDR landscapes, or sea-scapes, or river-scapes…some-scape with a lot of water and sky.
This image walks a fine line, to my eye, between natural and over-the-top. It presents a reality that is there, but that, without the emphasis of HDR and tone-mapping, many people would not see. It is the reality a painter records when painting such a landscape…an image built up in the mind over time, as the details and the colors catch the attention one by one, as the shadows and reflections on the water burn in to the awareness. It is not what you see at a glance or in the moment, and therefore perhaps strikes the eye as not strictly photographic. It is something between a painting and a photograph. I don’t, in fact, know if any such space exists, and, even in my own mind, the jury is still out on HDR and tone-mapping…but I do know that I like this image. I like the drama of it…the vivid world it portrays…the intensity. It is just so alive on an lcd monitor, with the light behind it. I like it.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view. Three exposures centered around –2/3 EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix, final processing for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Some distortion control and a bit of noise reduction (generally needed in HDR) as well.
2/15/2011: Red-shouldered Hawk (im)
It is often windy at Merritt Island NWR, and that can make digiscoping, with its particularly high effective magnifications, very difficult. This shot from late afternoon when the wind was well up, and the bird was 150 yards across a water channel, shows the effects. Being in tree that caught the wind and bounded around even more did not help. Even though the shutter speed was a 500th of a second, The shot is not critically sharp, and required extra processing for sharpness and clarity to approach acceptable. Still, it is a nice bird: an immature Red-shouldered hawk of the light Florida variety.
Increasing magnification only makes matters worse:
In this shot you can see a clear indication of the problem in the eye-light: notice that it is a vertical line, not a dot. That means that the bird was in motion when the shutter opened…or in this case that the whole tree was in motion.
Still…it is a nice bird.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. 1) 2700mm equivalent field of view, 1/500th @ ISO 125, 2) 4000mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 125.
My standard processing in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness, but then both were selectively sharpened, clarified, and contrast boosted around the head and eye using the selective brush tool. The whole image got Fill-light, Blackpoint adjustment, and Contrast boost…and then I backed off the Vibrance slightly to tame the yellow highlights. And still…it is a nice bird is about all I can say.
11/27/2010: Rachel Carson Merriland River
Thanksgiving day morning at Rachel Carson NWR. We are blessed to have RCNW all around us here in Kennebunk, and the headquarters, with its classic little nature trail, just down the road. I have photographed this view in all seasons, all weathers, and all light…so far…I am sure it still has a lot to show me.
This is the season in Maine between foliage and snow. It has a subtle beauty that is easy to miss, and a kind of dull day, light wise, makes it even more subtle.
HDR opens new options for this view, in particular, as the foreground trees are other wise hard to capture in any detail. In fact, this HDR is one of my most satisfying renderings of the view to date…in a quiet way…from the quietly interesting sky to the gentle tones and textures of the marsh, to the subtly detailed textures of the tree bark right in front.
This is HDR at its most subtle and unobtrusive. Certainly in keeping with the season.
Three exposure HDR with the Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent, autobracketed 1EV either side of –2/3 EV set with exposure compensation. Assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix, processed for intensity in Lightroom. (Check out my recent piece on P&S Landscape on HDR and Photomatix Light under the Photomatix link.)
11/4/2010: Cape May Point pond reflections
Just a week ago in Cape May NJ: The front approaching that pushed all the birds in on Friday and Saturday. The main pond at Cape May Point State Park, from the boardwalk behind the Hawk Watch platform. There were birds aplenty and I was there to digiscope, but that does not mean I turn a blind eye to the other splendors nature has to offer. Interesting sky, eye-catching fall foliage, interesting reflections, interesting water, for many layers of interest.
This is a three exposure HDR using auto-bracket on the Canon SX20IS, with the center of the bracket range shifted down 2/3 EV using exposure compensation. ISO 125 at the wide angle (28mm equivalent) setting.
Blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix. Processed with a bit of Fill Light, Blackpoint right, added Clarity and some Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset in Lightroom.