Posts in Category: Scotland
2/26a/2009
Loch Lochy Improved?
After a few comments on today’s Pic of the Day, please see Loch Lochy, I decided to edit out the gravel heap and tree in the center, just to see how it looked? I used the clone tool in Photoshop Elements 7.0 and carefully painted out the both the pile and the tree.
What do you think?
It is certainly a different image. I am not sure which I like best.
See it larger here. Loch Lochy Improved.
And for a really extreme tweak, take a look at this.
2/26/2009
Loch Lochy
I thought we might dip back into my images from Scotland for a few days here, while I am at home working. My trip to Scotland for 4 days in late August last summer was one of the most amazing and photographically rewarding intervals in my life so far. 1400 miles in 4 days, with a full day on the Hebrides.
This is Loch Lochy, near as I can tell from the map, one of the highland lochs along the road from Glasgow to Skye on what might, at least by my experience, be a typical Scottish summer day. We stopped just long enough for me to pop out of the passenger seat and grab a few shots, as we had a ferry to catch at the end of the day. Still, I could not pass this view up. The brooding sky, the wind ruffled water, the intense green of the foreground and the misty blues of the mountains in the back, all under folded gray…it has a lot of atmosphere. Even the heap of gravel on the shoreline can not diminish the grandeur.
Shooting in Scotland, the most difficult challenge is balancing sky and land, both in a composition sense and in an exposure sense. You don’t want to lose the amazing drama of the sky, but you need to get enough light on the landscape to capture the greatness there too. Lightroom helps, in that I can shoot higher exposures for the land values, and pull back the sky using the Recovery tool. I am always amazed at how much detail there is in the light areas of a digital file if adjusted correctly. And I am working with jpegs. I am sure there is even more in a RAW file.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide angle (31mm equivalent). F4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
It is from the Scotland gallery.
2/13/2009
Saints Preserve Us
Saints preseve us, it is Friday the 13th. (to mix my superstitions).
This is actually taken on the Isle of Lindisfarne in Northumerland, Holy Island in the vernacular. A straight forward shot of interesting detail in the ruins of a 13th century monastery…one of the sites that had a lot to do with preserving civilization as we know it during the dark ages. Not totally inappropriate for a Friday the 13th.
Sony DSC H50 at about 180mm equiv. F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Basic processing (Clarity, Vibrance, Sharpen) in Lightroom. One of the issues in a low light exposure with the H50, especially where you have silhouettes as in this image, is Chromatic Aberation (green and pink lines at the edges of things) and Purple Fringing (a sensor artifact that puts a purple fringe along edges). This image showed both (still shows come on close examination). Lightroom has filters that work well, but in extreme cases even Lightroom can not cure the whole problem. And if that isn’t a a Friday the 13th nightmare, what is?
From Scotland.