Posts in Category: reflections
4/2/2011: Pool Panorama, Emmons Preserve
For Scenery on Saturday, another panorama from Emmons Preserve in Kennebunkport Maine…this time a somewhat more conventional one. A sweep of the middle pool along the main run of the Baston River through the preserve. With no leaves on the trees the light actually reaches the water in early spring. This is a very different place during summer. Because of the level of detail here, this will benefit from a larger view. Click the image and it should open on a page resized for your monitor.
Three 28mm equivalent captures with the Canon SX20IS handheld. Stitched in PhotoShop Elements Panorama tool, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. f8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
3/23/2011: Low down on the beach
I really like a camera with a rotating LCD. I like to be able to get down low for shots like this without kneeling in the wet sand, or snow, or straining my aging knees in any situation. And for me, the “on the ground” point of view often adds enough impact to the shot to make it worth the effort. Here the sky reflections in the wet sand and pooled water add to the effect.
This Parson’s Beach, about 2 miles from my front door, on the ocean side of the dunes from the past two days’ shots. Great Hill on the other side of the Mousam, and Lords Point in Kennebunk sticking out beyond. If you view it large enough you will see Cape Arundel on the horizon.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. I also used the Distortion tool to flatten the horizon and correct for some vertical perspective distortion from the low angle.
3/22/2011: Mousam Panorama
This has to be seen as large as your screen will allow. Click on the image and it should open full width on your system. It is three 28mm equivalent fields of view stitched in Photoshop Elements 9. The Panorama tool in PE has been pretty good since they introduced it a number of versions ago, but it seems to have been improved again in PE9. I used the Cylindrical tool, which places the images just about perfectly, given that my handheld technique rotates the camera through an arc between shots. With the auto setting I have used before, I generally lost considerable height due to alignment issues. Here the full height of the individual frames is preserved. This is far and away the most natural looking pano I have ever shot or assembled. This is very close to the naked eye view if you were standing on that spot.
And, of course it is really about the expanse and the clouds, the reflections in the river, the texture of the marsh grasses, the grand view and all its little details.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Stitched in Photoshop Elements 9, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
3/17/2011: Little Blue/Liquid Light
Little Blue Herons are great birds…with the range of blues and purples in the plumage, but this image is as much about the reflections that frame, and set-off, the bird as it is the bird itself. If you could pull back you would see that the reflected colors come from the urban surroundings of this pocket refuge at Famosa Slough in San Diego, in the residential area at the head of Point Lomos. Still.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL Spotting Scope for the equivalent field of view of something like a 2500mm lens. 1/320th second @ ISO 125, f7 effective.
Processed for clarity and sharpness 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.
2/11/2011: Big and easy, GBH
A fellow wildlife photographer posted a Great Blue Heron on his Facebook page yesterday with a comment to the effect that “sometimes you have to take the easy shots.”
Always! Always you have to take the easy shots. I don’t believe in a vindictive fate, like “if you don’t shoot the easy shots when they are offered, then you won’t get anymore!”, but I do believe in embracing the gift when it is right there in front of you. It would be ungrateful to ignore such generosity.
So here is yet another Great Blue Heron shot. (And GBHs do figure in a surprising number of the gift shots…go figure 🙂 …big and easy bird that it is…always seemingly posing.) In this shot, of course, it is the light and reflections on the water behind the bird, and the play of light across the bird, the molding, and the light caught in the eye, as much as the bird itself, that holds interest…that makes the shot.
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56 Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of about a 2800mm lens, 1/200th @ ISO 125, effective aperture of f7.5.
Processed for clarity and sharpness in Lightroom.
And the more pulled back, contextual bonus shot at something closer to 1000mm equivalent field of view.
