Posts in Category: architecture
9/13/2009
Portland Head Light and Rose
Another view of Portland Head Light from our Labor Day visit. Generally I use the flip-out LCD on the H50 for low angle shots. Here, however, the rose is actually just below my eye-level, and including it in the composition from a normal height makes the greenery obscure most of the Lighthouse building. So I flipped out the LCD, tilted it down instead of up, and held the camera at arms length above my head to capture the relationship between foreground and background that I was after. Score one more for the articulated LCD.
Sony DSC H50 at about 55mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 100. Programed auto with -.7EV exposure compensation for the whites of the Lighthouse.
Recovery in Lightroom for the sky and Lighthouse whites. Blackpoint just to the right. Added Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel. Sharpen landscape preset. This image, like most of my over-the-head shots, required some straightening of the horizon as well.
From Portland Head Light.
9/2/2009
Morning Walk: Carol at the Farmhouse B&B on our last morning.
Our last morning above Kendal at the farmhouse B&B. We moved that day down to Rutland Water in Leicestershire, and the Barnsdale Hall Resort, for a few days at the British Birding Fair (where I was on-duty at the Zeiss booth).
I like the colors and textures and angles of this shot.
Minolta A1 at about 32mm equivalent. F3.5 @ 1/60 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Punch and Sharpen landscape presets in Lightroom.
And that is, for now, the last of the shots from our 2005 trip to the Lakes and Dales.
9/1/2009
Carol in Dent
Dent is known for the “Terrible Knitters of Dent” who, back in the early 1800s turned out terrible quantities of hand knit socks, underwear, and other knit wool garments. The vision is of the whole population of Dent sitting out in chairs, young and old, up and down streets, dawn to dusk, with baskets of wool at their feet, and knit, knit, knit.
Today it is a sleepy tourist town, well off the beaten path (see yesterday’s pic), deep in the Dales. It caters to fishermen and trekkers. The streets are so narrow I have no idea how two cars meet. We made it through town to the parking on the far side without meeting anyone…and back out in the evening as well. That kind of town. It sets up on a ledge overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys in England, so picturesque it makes your shutter finger itch. Public paths extend out from the village in all directions. We hiked a half a day loop up river and down and back to the town. We did not see a single person the whole time we hiked. Peaceful isn’t even in it, as they might say in Dent.
This is the main street between the Church yard and the Post Office. The Church now doubles as a kind of local museum where you can find out all about the Terrible Knitters.
Minolta A1 at 28mm equivalent. F8.0 @ 1/640 @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
Just Punch and Sharpen landscape in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right slightly.
And to round out the experience, here is a bit of the Church Yard.
Church Yard and Bell Tower Museum
8/31/2009
Road to Dent
On our last day in the Lakes and Dales, we took a drive in to Dent. I say “in to” since Dent is at the end of a Dales road, deep in, with no other way in or out. It is a typical Dales road. If you look at the where the road passes round the barn…or rather between the barn and the fence…you will notice it is two lane. At least it has a stripe down the middle. No way could two cars actually meet at that point. Each side is about 2/3s of a car width and the turn is, as you see, completely blind. And, since it is the only road, they drive full sized delivery trucks on this road, at speed, going into and out of Dent. Several times we were only saved because there was a gap in the stone wall right at the moment we needed it where a gate lead into a field. (The roads in the Hebrides are narrower…actually one lane, but they have frequent pull-outs for meeting cars, and everyone drives them like one-lane roads. In the Dales it seems everyone drives like they are on the motorway.)
Dent is beautiful, quaint, remote and worth the visit, but next time I will take the bus.
Minolta A1 at 28mm equivalent. F8 @ 1/640 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Punch and Sharpen landscape presets in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right considerably, and heavy Recovery for the sky (and even then the lightest clouds are blown). Cropped slightly from the top.
From England 2005.
8/21/2009
Kirkby Longsdale
A small village between the Lakes and the Dales, just outside Yorkshire Dales National Park. Home of Ruskin. Lots of famous views and a bridge. We spent a afternoon there with rain threatening the whole time, but glorious light most of the time. This is a view out over the Longsdale River valley.
Minolta A1 at 28mm equivalent. F7.1 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Required heavy Recovery in Lightroom for the sky, a touch of Fill Light, and blackpoint adjustment. Punch and Landscape sharpen presets.
7/26/2009
Angle at St. Anne's
For Sunday…just a little angle in the stonework at St. Anne’s Church, Kennebunkport, ME. Posed on the edge of the sea, above a rocky shore with generally crashing waves, the rugged stonework of St. Anne’s Church is particularly picturesque. The stonework was restored about a year ago. Worth the effort!
Sony DSC H50 at about 85mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the highlights on the stone, blackpoint to the right slightly. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
7/16/2009
Maine Uber Chic
I got several comments on the digital photo groups to the effect that yesterday’s image was too busy and lacked a center of interest. Valid observation. What I see in the image is the riot of color and form, which I see as a subject in itself, but I know what the commenters are objecting too.
Short of physically going back and reshooting, this time maybe taking someone with me to stand in front of the roses, I wondered if overemphasizing the form and color aspect of the shot would improve it. I generally do not do this kind of manipulation, as I like my images to be an accurate reflection of what someone might see if confronted with the same scene, but there is room for pushing the limits of the process to make a point, or to create a vision that captures what you saw in the image, rather than the reality itself. This is, of course, what the whole To Blur or Not to Blur piece was about over on Point and Shoot Landscape.
So, in Lightroom I took the original image and applied a technique I have experimented with before on this kind of image. I slid the Clarity slider all the way to the left, applying what amounts to negative clarity. Because Clarity is essentially a local contrast enhancement, this is not the same as applying, for instance, a blur in photoshop. Negative Clarity produces a kind of soft glow. I then increased Saturation significantly, and boosted Contrast slightly. This all required a bit of added Brightness. Finally, I cropped the image more tightly to place the stair diagonal in a more powerful position in the frame.
The image now is certainly nothing you would see in reality (unless you where operating under the influence…some influence of some kind). Maybe it works better though to convey what I was seeing when I took the image. Maybe.
What do you think?
7/15/2009
Maine Chic
A restaurant on the pier at Cape Porpoise Harbor. What can I say? The riot of color and shape, the contrast of the rose plant and the railing full of lobster floats, the red boat…had to be done.
It was a somewhat tricky exposure and required some post processing for good tonal balance, but other than that…I just zoomed in for framing and shot.
DSC H50 at about 66mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320 @ ISO 100. Programed auto, -.3EV exposure compensation.
Cropped slightly in Lightroom, from the right to eliminate some highly reflective and distracting windows. Heavy Recovery for the rose blossoms, Fill Light to open the shadows. Slight contrast increase, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset. There was slight chromatic aberration (color fringing) showing on the left and right, so I used the CA filter in Lightroom to remove it.
6/8/2009
Little Shed on the Prairie
What is left of a more extensive farmstead on the North Dakota prairie. A large shelter belt attests to the fact that someone used to live here, but farm consolidation moved the dwelling away from this corner of the prairie. The light is the real subject here. Light and shadow, both on the large scale and on the local, as in the molding of the grasses. We are far north here, and the shadows are long even an hour after noon.
Sony DSC H50 at just under 50mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom, cropped from the bottom to improve composition. Added Clarity, Vibrance, Contrast, and Sharpen landscape preset. Recovery to darken the sky.
5/12/2009
Central Park Boathouse (with rock)
One last shot from my rainy morning stroll in Central Park. This might be a study in contrast…the massive rock ledge, the pillared upright architecture of the boathouse, and the ephemeral reflections in the morning still water…or it might be a study of shape and texture, again drawing out the varied surfaces and the geometry of the different components. Or it might be a study in the way light reacts in a wet world with the things it illuminates. In the end it is nothing more (or less) than a second of time, a particular angle, a juxtaposition of elements that caught my eye, and still catches it.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F4.0 @ 1/125 @ ISO 100. Programed auto. -.7 EV.
Minimal processing in Lightroom. Vibrance, Clarity, and Sharpen.
From Central Park.