Posts in Category: marsh
5/26/2010
Brim-full of Sky
I have posted two other shots from this same spot on this same day…when the tide had pushed the Little River to its brink, and the sky was caught in the smooth surface. I have to remind myself to take vertical shots. I am such a landscape guy 🙂
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightoom, Recovery for the sky, Fill Light to open the shadows, Blackpoint right for intensity, added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
5/22/2010
Little River Panorama
I tried a pano of this view earlier this spring. The Full Bend in the Little. Since then I have started using PhotoShop Elements Panorama feature, in conjunction with the Easy Panorama mode of the Canon SX20IS. As noted in a previous post, Elements’ pano engine is considerably smarter than the one in the Photo Stitch software Canon provides with the camera.
This shot is 5 shots taken at about 50mm equivalent. Exposure was determined by the camera in Panorama mode, but averaged about F4 at 1/640th @ ISO 80.
Of course I never have a tripod with me. I have started carrying a light-weight monopod, which, for panoramas, is not as much help as I had hoped it would be. I tried this shot three times and every time the last shot was considerably off horizontal. I had to straighten and crop to get a level horizon and lost from every edge to do so. This is the best of the lot. Third try lucky.
Do try it at as large as your monitor will take by clicking the image above and using the size controls at the top of the window that appears.
After processing the shots in Elements for pano, I took the whole thing into Lightroom as a PhotoShop file for final processing. Recovery for the sky, a bit of Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Finally, the left most exposure was just a bit dark, even with Element’s intelligent blending, so I applied a Lightroom graduated filter effect from the left to brighten it slightly.
5/21/2010
A Little Reflected Sky
This is the Little River, and the sky is well reflected, hence: A Little Reflected Sky.
If you follow my posts here you might recognize the view, from the observation deck on the back side of the trail loop at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. I have many images captured from this deck and of this view…no two alike. The tide here was full and the river brim. There is a bit of ripple on the water from the wind, but not enough to really disturb the reflection. I tried the shot with more or less reflection, and more or less sky. I like this version, but others might prefer the more sky shot below.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80. Landscape program. This is one of those rare shots that did not require any fancy metering or exposure tricks. The Landscape program gave pretty close to the ideal balance between sky and foreground.
In Lightroom, a bit of Recovery to bring out detail in the reflected clouds and deepen the sky. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and just a smidge of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Rachel Carsons NWR Seasons.
And, as promised, the more sky view.
5/19/2010
Early Light: Highpoint
During the chase of Team Zeiss for the World Series of Birding we made stops in some of the most beautiful country in New Jersey, and, though I was focused on documenting the Team’s efforts for the day, I was not totally insensitive to the beauty…and since I was not actually competing, I could turn my camera away from the team for a quick landscape, or even a flower shot, or two.
This is somewhere in the Highpoint/Stokes area in the far north-west of the state. The sun was just glancing across the landscape from the horizon. It does not get better than this.
It was a very demanding exposure problem. I tipped the camera up to meter more of the sky and locked exposure. That left the foreground too dark, but I was able to recover the detail in Lightroom. This image will repay viewing as large as you monitor will take it.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/200th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky. Heavy Fill Light for the foreground. Blackpoint well right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
5/7/2010
Over the Dune
I love this kind of moment, with the drama of a storm sky over a briefly sun-bright landscape. This is a shot from just before we left for St Augustine, and I published three from this day on 4/19. Here we look over the dune toward the tidal marsh along Back Creek, behind Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk, Maine. To me this is a close to a naked eye view as the camera can come. The extreme depth of field actually makes it look more like a painting than a photo.
Technically it might be very difficult to capture this image with a DSLR’s larger sensor, but the small sensor on the SX20IS, combined with the short focal length lens at its shortest setting, even at an f-stop of 2.8, yields amazing depth and clarity. And, the SX20s Landscape program hits the exposure just right for post processing for major drama.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F2.8 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky, Fill Light for the foreground. Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
4/1/2010
Birch With a View
By this point in the day, the sun had sunk low enough to warm the light, which was especially effective in bringing out the gold in the winter grasses of the marsh. Add a white birch, catching light and filtering the amazing sky that day, zoom in a bit for framing, and…
Canon SX20IS at 67mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Just a bit of Recovery for the sky in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and a smidge of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
3/29/2010
Laudholm Pond Panorama
I have a detailed explanation of why and how this shot was taken at Playing With Panoramas: sort of… on Point & Shoot Landscape. I was not really after the panorama effect, but I wanted a wider shot than my 28mm equivalent could provide, in order to frame the pond and sky with the white birch stands. Three shots using the Panorama mode on the SX20IS with the zoom at about 40mms, PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool, plus final processing in Lightroom, yields this. Of course, to see it to true advantage you need to click the image and open it in the largest size you monitor will show. For comparison, here is the shot with the unaided 28mm on the Canon SX20IS.
From Around Home 2010.
3/27/2010
Flying Reeds
So who can resist an amazing sky. The combination of the deep blue here, with both cirrus (thin, wispy, and high) and cumulous effects (low and puffy), makes for sky that is unusually deep. Add the winter worn but still upright phragmities reeds and the vista of the flooded marsh behind and the low angle (held below waist level using the flip out LCD) and…well you get what you have here.
I used to have very different feelings about the phragmities reed…when I thought it was an invasive species. Turns out phragmities in Maine, and a good portion of the phragmities nationwide, are descendents of native reeds, or reeds of mixed descent at the very least. Their invasive nature is the result of changes (probably man-made) in the nature of the marsh, not the other way around. Anyway, they add a undeniable dimension to this image.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape program. Cropped from the sides for composition.
In Lightroom, besides the cropping, a bit of Recovery for the sky and clouds, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and just a very small amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
And, as you might suspect, I could not just take one.
3/21/2010
Bright as Copper
Happy Sunday!
I keep going out looking for spring and only finding stuff held over from fall. This vine started out dark red, but the winter sun and cold has bleached it to this bright copper. I had to touch it, when I first saw it, to convince myself it was not a tangle of wire somehow blown up into the bushes. I took many shots at close range before it occurred to me to back off and use the tele end of the Canon SX20IS’ macro to isolate the vine against an out of focus background. Being able to shoot at ~500mm from under 4 feet is one of the more interesting features of the Canon, and I am just beginning to explore the possibilities it provides.
Canon SX20IS at about 475mm equivalent. F5.7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto.
Some Recovery for the background. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
3/20/2010
The Full Bend in the Little
The Canon SX20IS has “Easy Panorama” Mode, which aids in the creation of panoramas by displaying a thumbnail view of your first image beside the second so you can match them up, etc, etc. It is actually pretty clever. They also provide the PhotoStitch application which does a pretty good job of auto assembling the images into one. The only way to get really good panoramas is to use a panorama head on your tripod, which keeps the sensor plane aligned with the segments of an arc so the images really do overlap perfectly. Or you need a panorama camera, which swings the actual lens. I have never owned either. I am not all that into panoramas since I have never figured out how to display or view them effectively. Still, I could not resist trying out Easy Panorama mode on the new camera.
This is four images covering about 100-120 degrees of view. You really do need to view it on WideEyedInWonder at the largest size your monitor will do (click the image to open the WEIW link). The first shot, on the left, is almost due north and the last shot on the right is south of east, tending toward south-east. I used the corner of the wooden rail around a observation deck over the Little River at Rachel Carson NWR as my tripod, and set the lens to 28mm equivalent. You can see the rail at the lower right. Also, if you view it a larger sizes you will see that stitching of the last two images is not perfect. The wooden rail did not make a perfect panorama head.
What is interesting to me is that, long thin format aside, if you looked at the image without knowing it was a panorama, and were not familiar with the location, you might not guess it was a panorama at all. Rivers do bend like that.
For comparison, here is the unprocessed first and last 28mm shot.
Since Easy Pano mode is a mode in itself, set on the control dial as you would Auto or Program modes, you are reduced to the auto exposure the camera provides, but it did pretty well in this tricky light. The last exposure, as you see above was facing pretty much into the sun. I was particularly pleased at how naturally the variation of light in the sky is rendered.
Once stitched, I imported the image into Lightroom for post-processing. Recovery for the sky, Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
Individual exposures were at 28mm equivalent, F2.8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80.
I will never be a big panorama shooter. However, given the tools the Canon provides, I may try one from time to time, just not nearly often enough to buy a panorama head!
From Around Home 2010.