Posts in Category: ocean
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.
7/14/2010
Song Sparrow
Great light. Evening sun, after a day of rain and fog. Parson’s Beach. I walked out behind the dunes along the river, with my digiscoping rig over my shoulder, to see what I could see. And this Song Sparrow popped up on a little dead branch in the grass to reach the higher seeds just I as passed. Tripod down, scope up, camera to side, focus, camera in, camera on, zoom, and let the shutter run. Sometimes it all just comes together. (And, of course, the harder you work at it, the more time you spend in the field, the more often it all comes together. 
)
This Sparrow fed along the length of the branch, fairly oblivious to me, for several moments before disappearing down deeper into the grasses. I got several keepers.
Canon SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for an equivalent focal length of about 1700mm @ f5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 400. Programmed auto. Second one at something more like 2000mm @ f5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 125.
A touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint right a good amount, added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset. Auto White Balance.
I continued on around the point looking for gulls. When I returned, with the sun even lower now, I caught another sparrow just after his or her bath, while still preening wet feathers. I got a few stills, but the sparrow was in among a tangle of dead branches and never still… hard to focus on. I decided to try from some video just as the sparrow finally hopped out on the tip of a branch in the open.
Sometimes it all comes together.
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.
6/16/2010
Frenchman’s Bay Evening Peace
The further north you go in Maine, the longer the summer light lingers. This is past 8pm on the evening of a stormy day. Storms had passed and Frenchman’s Bay (Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor) is smooth as glass and just about as clear. This was taken from the Narrows, near the Trenton bridge where you come on to Mount Desert Island, looking south east down the length of the bay.
This is really about the light, of course, and the exposure had to be intentional to capture enough detail in the sky while showing the water in a natural light. Landscape program and selective metering (biased slightly for the sky buy tipping the camera up) handled it well. Post-processing in Lightroom helped to extend the apparent range to cover both sky and foreground, and bring out detail that would otherwise have been lost.
I work only in jpeg. This kind of image might be easier to do in RAW…but I can’t say for sure. I know that this processed jpeg is very close to what I saw with my naked eye…to what drew me to the scene in the first place. I was after the peace…and here it is. It will repay a look in larger sizes. Click the image and use the size controls on the top of the window.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/60th @ ISO 80. Landscape program. Landscape program on the SX20IS has an interesting feature: it defaults to infinity focus when it can not find focus, which is necessary in a shot like this with little for the sensors to focus on in dim light.
Heavy Recovery for the sky in Lightroom 3, significant Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint just barely right, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Acadia 2010.
6/15/2010
Bar Harbor and the Porcupines: three views (2 with gull)
It was, as I mentioned a few days ago, a blue day on Cadillac Mountain when I visited late in the afternoon last Thursday. It had rained through noon and was just beginning to clear off. This is the view out over Bar Harbor, Frenchman’s Bay, and the Porcupine Islands. You can see the bar extending back toward land from Bar Island (completely above water at low tide) that gives Bar Harbor its name. Taken from the lowest overlook on the Cadillac Mountain road. The gulls work the scenic views as though they bought the concession. This one was quite bold and actually walked up to me and practically stood on my feet when I failed to offer it any tribute. I took its picture. That will have to be enough. 🙂 The Panorama is 8 shots stitched in PhotoShop Element’s Panorama tool: the longest pano I have done to date. The Pano, of course, really needs to be viewed a larger size.
All with the Canon SX20IS. 1) 28mm equivalent @ f4.0 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80, Landscape program, 2) 80mm equivalent @ f4.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80, Landscape program, and 3) 8 shots at 70mm equivalent @ f4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80, Panorama mode.
In Lightroom 3, Recovery for the sky, Fill light for the foreground, Blackpoint just slightly right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen Narrow Edges preset. The top shot was cropped bottom and top for composition and to remove distracting road surface.
From Acadia 2010.
6/10/2010
Bush’s Through Reeds
Lovely warm evening sun, storm off the coast, the Bush estate in Kennbunkport (Cape Arundel), and a few reeds in the foreground. Moderate telephoto to frame, flip out LCD to get the low angle.
Canon SX20IS at 85mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Recovery for the sky in Lightroom 3, Fill Light for the reeds, Blackpoint right for intensity (gently in Lr3 as the tool is works much faster), added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset. Cropped slightly top and bottom for composition.
From Around Home 2010.
6/9/2010
Cape Arundel Pano
I have quite a few pictures of this house. It was featured as the exterior in a well-known movie. The light of a summer evening in Maine, after 7PM, and the remnants of a stormy day moving off-shore and north, add some drama, and some warmth. This is 4 shots at about 40mm equivalent stitched in PhotoShop Elements Panorama tool to cover an angle of about 120 degrees. I am finding that using a zoom setting near normal focal lengths, rather than a the wide-angle end, gives a very natural looking perspective…so that the result, though super-wide, does not look like a conventional panorama. Ocean panos are always difficult because of tendency of the water to move 🙂 but except for one little glitch (which you might be able to find if you look hard enough), this is pretty good. Especially good as, yet again, I was without a tripod.
Clearly, to appreciate this image you will need to view it as big as your monitor will allow. Click the image to go to Wide Eyed in Wonder and use the size controls at the top of the window.
Canon SX20IS at 40mm equivalent. F3.2 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. Panorama mode.
Stitched, as above, in PhotoShop Elements Panorama tool using the auto setting. Processed in Lightroom 3 after stitching: Recovery for the sky, Fill Light and Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, Sharpen edges preset (used to be Sharpen landscapes). Applied the distortion profile from a Canon Powershot G series (which works until I get my set made for the SX20IS). Lightroom 3 is brand new, and I am going to have to learn the controls again, as everything is subtly (and not so subtly) changed.
From Around Home 2010.
5/2/2010
Sunday Sunrise: St Augustine Beach
Happy Sunday! This was exactly a week ago, give or take an hour, on St. Augustine Beach, right across form our hotel. I got down low at the edge of the tide (using the flip out lcd and staying dry). The random stranger wading gives scale and dimension the shot would lack without her…I know because I too that shot too 🙂 .
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F2.8 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Recovery for the sky and Fill Light for the foreground in Lightroom. Added Clarity and just a touch of Vibrance. Blackpoint just barely right. Sharpen landscape preset.
From St. Augustine FL 2010.
And turning 90 degrees south, this is the view down the beach, again with a lone Sunday morning tourist.
4/25/2010
Fishing Pier: Ruddy Turnstone and a View
Happy Sunday! Still here in St. Augustine Florida. This is the St. Johns County Fishing Pier in St. Augustine Beach, right across the road from our hotel. You can buy a sightseeing ticket to the pier for a dollar. A few years ago the fishing pier was loaded with birds…pelicans, turnstones, terns, gulls, egrets, even, for many months, a Brown Booby!, but on my last two trips to St. A, bird life has been sparse, though I have visited the pier several times at different times of day, just hoping. This Ruddy Turnstone, like most of his kind who frequent the pier, was running along the rail waiting for a handy fisherman to discard some bate or some offal, and incidentally, posing for me. You don’t this eyelevel view of a turnstone too often. I even had to zoom back slightly from the full 560mm reach of the camera to frame this bird. The sun, still low soon after sunrise, also adds to the eyelevel effect, and really brings out the ruddy tones in the plumage.
Canon SX20IS at 520mm equivalent. F5.7 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, a touch of Recovery. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
Of course, there is more to the fishing pier, for the tourist, than the bird life. This is the view of St. Augustine Beach looking south from the pier.
28mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
4/24/2010
Anastasia State Park
Just to prove that St. Augustine is not all about birds for me, here is a shot taken on the amazing white sand beach at Anastasia State Park. Thunder storms were predicted but never came, so the sky is pretty intense. White sand is the norm on the Gulf side of Florida, especially on the Emerald Coast in the panhandle, but it is rare on the Atlantic Coast. That is one of Anastasia Islands, and St. Augustine’s big draws.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the clouds and sand. Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and very little Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. On a shot like this, with lots of blue light bouncing around, I have to be careful with the Blackpoint or the clouds turn really blue.