Posts in Category: reflections
9/13/2010: Marsh Mirror Sky
Taken on Labor Day, when all the parking anywhere near the beach was full of tourists. I wanted this sky, so I hiked out on the Kennebunk Bridle Path, through the marsh along the Mousam River near its mouth. The wind was blowing so hard I had trouble holding myself still, let alone the camera, but I still tried a series of HDRs. A tripod would certainly have helped.
Even though the horizon here is placed in the middle of the image, where I try to avoid putting it, I think it still works because of the power of the sky, and the reflections in the pools. Then too you have the strong leading line of the receding pools and the solid anchors of the posts in the foreground. I particularly like the open shadow at the left along the ridge between the pools and the play of light on the trees. All together there is a lot going on here. Printed large and hung, it would be, I think, one of those images that would catch the eye every time you glanced at it, and that would reward repeated study. I think.
Canon SX20IS. Three exposures using the auto bracket feature on the Canon SX20IS, adjusted to place the dark exposure 1 and 2/3rds EV below center. Assembled in Photomatix Light, using the tone-mapped mode. Final adjustments (Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpen) in Lightroom.
9/5/2010: Jordan Pond and the Bubbles
Happy Sunday!
The three mile loop around Jordan Pond is one of my favorite hikes (walks?) in Acadia National Park, and that is saying quite a bit as there are a lot of hikes in Acadia that I really like. Of course, the fact that we have had a daughter (or two) working at the Jordan Pond House the past 6 summers only adds to the attraction. It does not matter how many times I walk this walk…there is always something new to see, even if it only the angle of the light, or the pattern of the ripples in the sun, or the way fog drapes the cedars on the south shore. Always something new. But then new is a gift we receive from the author all things new, inside, before we can see it outside. Or at least that is the way I see it.
This is another experiment in HDR using two SX20IS exposures 3EV apart and Photomatix to blend them. Final adjustments for Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpness in Lightroom, plus some distortion correction for the challenging perspective.
From Acadia 2010.
8/27/2010: The Dom and the Bridge
It got later and later on my rainy evening walk through old town Wetzlar, but the evening light lasts a long time in Germany. I was headed back to the hotel when I made a last stop for this classic shot of the Dom above the stone bridge over the Lahn. Once more a shot I have taken many times, but never in this light, and never with HDR in mind. The drama of the cloud cap, the last light, the moisture in the air softening color and prespective, and elegant arches of the bridge set in rustic stone, the pastel gables of the old houses, and above it all the tower of the Dom (and that anachronistic blue polyester tarping). Quite a shot, even without the fairy light of the fountain on the trees at the right. 
Two radically different exposures allowed me to capture the light of the foreground and the gray of the sky, and Photomatix Lite put them together for a pretty remarkable effect (if I do say so myself).
A little help from my usual Lightroom routines (Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpen), and some perspective and distortion correction, and there it is.
Canon SX20 IS.
From Germany and England 2010.
8/19/2010
Mill Canal, River Lahn: Wetzlar Germany
I love to walk the old town of Wetzlar, and I never fail to find something new to photograph, or to discover a new light on an old favorite scene, but my only opportunity this trip was between 8 and 9PM at the tag end of day of heavy rain. I took my umbrella, and used it, as I explored what the fading light had to say about the ancient town. This is the mill canal along the old town side of the River Lahn were it separates, for the most part, Old Wetzlar and New. I love this jumble of houses, of many different ages (and that is using ages in its historical sense), along the canal, and the light gave me a good excuse to try an HDR shot where nothing else would have worked. The long exposure required for the late evening foreground would have burned the sky white, and an exposure for the clouds would have left the foreground close to black. I took two exposures separated by 3.5 stops, –2EV and +1.5EV, and combined them using the Detail Enhancement/Tone Mapping mode in Photomatix. The result is actually pretty close to a naked eye view. Presented as an photograph, it might strikes the eye as painterly, since we know, from daily experience of recoded images, that a camera could not have caught that range.
The image is not perfect. I was working, as usual, without a tripod, and trying to balance an umbrella as well…but I still like the effect. You would have to walk along the canal in Wetzlar, on a rainy evening with your umbrella up, to know how well it captures the atmosphere of the place.
In addition to the treatment in Photomatix, I adjusted color balance in Lighroom, slid the Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and used the Sharpen narrow edges preset. I also used the distortion controls, both for lens and vertical perspective, to restore a natural look.
Corrected distortion is actually another reason why the experienced eye sees this image as painterly…we have come to expect, to totally accept, wide angle and vertical distortion in photographs…when it is not there, or when it is corrected as in this image, we miss it!
From Germany and England 2010.
8/12/2010
Water Meadow
Along the Mousam River near its mouth, several little streams come in from the north, generally winding, as this one does, through an open area of tidal mash. These meadows were actually a big attraction for early settlers, who put cattle and sheep on them, and even harvested the hay. They are the reason for the salt water farms of colonial times.
Of course my interest in them is that they remain rich in both plant diversity and wildlife. Many, like this one, are protected by one conservation organization or another. They are one of my favorite summer haunts (despite the mosquitoes!).
This is another Canon SX20IS and Photomatix HDR. Two exposures, at full 28mm wide angle equivalent, one dialed down on the Exposure Compensation dial for the sky, and one dialed up for the foreground. Combined in Photomatix using the Enhanced Detail: Tone Mapping Mode with tweaked controls. Final processing in Lightroom for sharpness, Clarity, Vibrance, and Blackpoint (slightly right). Cropped at the top to eliminate some clouds that were moving too fast for the two exposure technique (they looked shadowed…almost 3D…when over-laid in Photomatix). The sky, of course, makes it (along with the bit of reflection in the stream)! Look at it large on Wide Eyed In Wonder.
From Around Home 2010.
8/9/2010
Summer Morning: River Meets the Sea
Saturday morning I headed out to my favorite birding and digiscoping spot, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it crosses Route 9 by the Mousam River bridge. It was one of those clear, cool, summer mornings after days of heat, with bright sun and broken cloud cover and I was hoping to do some more iPhone HDR experimentation. When I got out of the car to set up my scope, I realized that my iPhone was back home on the charger. No HDR today!
But then, as I mounted my digiscoping camera and walked in toward the marsh I was thinking…all I am really doing with the iPhone is taking two exposures, one for bright (sky generally) and one for dark (foreground landscape generally). I could do that with my SX20IS…and actually it might even be a bit easier since I could use the exposure compensation dial…or even the auto exposure bracket built into the camera.
All the magic is in the software. Maybe I could download the images to the iPhone and use Pro HDR to combine them…or, failing that…surely there must be some software available to do it on the laptop. I just got an upgrade notice from Adobe on PhotoShop Elements 8…and didn’t that mention some kind of HDR?
So I took a bunch of experimental images using both the exposure compensation dial, judging exposure by eye, and auto bracket. Auto bracket on the SX20IS does three exposures, 1EV either side of center (you can shift the center point along the scale but you can not increase the range). By eye, I judged 1 EV to be too little compensation for the sky with clouds, though about right for the landscape, and, indeed that’s how it worked out when I came to process the images.
Back home, I found that even if I downloaded the images to the iPhone, they were just too large for Pro HDR to handle (not surprising since Pro HDR expected maximum 5mp images form the iPhone camera). Plan B.
I always try to find a free program first, and I downloaded what looked like the best of then. No. Did not work. So, after some more research, I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix Lite and gave that a try. Excellent. As easy as Pro HDR on the iPhone, and in “enhanced detail: tone mapping mode” it provides a very similar set of adjustments, and, with care, similar results. Best of all, it does the auto alignment of the images just as Pro HDR does, which makes shooting HDR handheld possible. I bought it.
And after all that…the image for today is my first Photomatix HDR. I still find that Pro HDR produces more natural results as its default, but you can achieve the same results with Photomatix with some tweaking of the controls. On the other hand, it is possible in Photomatix to do the massively overblown HDR thing too. I am not tempted that way, but I can understand the temptation.
I took the Photomatix processed HDR into Lightroom and made final adjustments…Blackpoint right, some added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
So, one more tool…one more set of imaging possibilities to bring to the landscape.
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.
7/30/2010
Marsh by the Mousam
This is another iPhone HDR using the Pro HDR app. Two exposures, tap, tap, one for the sky and one for the foreground, auto processed in the app. Slight adjustment: horizon straightening, levels, and contrast…red channel pulled back a bit…in PhotoGene on the iPhone, then uploaded to Wide Eyed In Wonder (SmugMug) using SmugShot. Could not be easier. Everything was done right there in the field at the time, with the scene before me. Though it is not an intentional feature of the Pro HDR app, selecting exposure areas in the sky and background also alters the iPhone camera’s focus point, which makes for a processed image that is sharp, as here, from immediate foreground to to the distant clouds. Like I have said before…I really wish my Canon SX20IS could do this!! (And there is absolutely NO reason it could not…it is just software.)
As far as the shot itself goes…well it has just about everything going for it. Glorious sky, reflections in still water, strong horizon with the mass of houses leading in on the left, wonderful detail and interesting texture in the swirling marsh grasses, subtle effective color tones throughout…even that bit of stump sticking up to anchor the eye in the foreground. Add the HDR effect and you get a photograph that strikes the eye like the best landscape painting…in the sense that we are not used to seeing this kind of range in a photograph.
It almost makes me laugh out loud when I remember that it was produced completely on the iPhone 4! Who could have imagined it?
From iPhone 4 HDR and Panos.
7/28/2010
Mousam Mouth Pano
Continuing one more day with the iPhone theme, here is an AutoStitch panorama made up of 10 separate images…5 across, and two down. It needs to be viewed as large as your monitor will take it. Click the image and use the size controls a the top of the window that opens. AutoStich could not be easier to use. Take any number of overlapping images with the iPhone’s camera so they are saved to the Camera Roll. Then open AutoStich and select them from within the app. That’s it. AutoStitch then intelligently assembles the images into a panorama, blends exposure, renders the finished image and gives you the option to auto crop. The image is not perfect…but it is very close. Since I often, as in this shot, have to straighten the horizon a bit, and I want to sharpen slightly and maybe adjust curves, I generally do the cropping in PhotoGene, again, right on the iPhone. Finally, I upload the image to my Wide Eyed In Wonder site directly from the phone using SmugShot. Could not be easier.
This, by the way, is the mouth of the Mousam River, seen from the Kennebunk Bridle Trail across the marsh…Great Head, Parson’s Beach, and almost out to Route 9 on the right…close to 180 degrees. Taken and processed with the iPhone 4.
From iPhone HDR and Pano.
7/25/2010
Night Lights and Intelligent Design
Happy Sunday!
With a 6:46 am flight out of John Wayne International in Santa Ana CA, I was up early and outside the hotel waiting for my taxi. The little ornamental lake in the development, surrounded by the early lights of the buildings and with low clouds behind, catching some of the city light…well…I just had to try. Flash off, camera steadied on a convenient concrete post along the shore, standard Program mode. I took several shots.
Though this could have been a black and white shot…I really enjoy the little red highlights in the water!
Which just goes to show that beauty is where you find it. It does make me wonder though, if the architects of this office and condo development in urban Southern California saw this in their minds’ eye when they drew in the lake? Personally, I tend to take things like this as intelligent design, rather than random chance. I think the architects foresaw the possibility of beauty in the nightscape and planed accordingly.
Which is the way I look at creation itself. If I am wrong…well…no harm done. I get to enjoy the beauty either way. If I am right…well…then there is an aspect of respect…an acknowledgement that a beautiful mind has been at work…and a sense of kinship. After all, the architects only created what they thought others would find beautiful. They counted on my being enough like them to see the beauty they envisioned. Otherwise, why bother? And so it is, I believe, with the creation and the creator. If that adds a dimension to my enjoyment of the beauty, well, I think I am the better for it.
Canon SD4000IS at 28mm equivalent @ f2.0 @ 1/13th second @ ISO 1600. Programmed auto. (This is impressive image quality for ISO 1600 on a pocket P&S! Evidently the the back-illuminate CMOS sensor lives up to its hype. And there is another kind of beauty, as I see it, in that!)
Straightened in Lightroom (balancing on top of a round post is not ideal). Corrected for vertical and wide-angle distortion using the new tools in Lightroom 3. Added Contrast and Clarity. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Zeiss Trip CA 2010.