Monthly Archives: April 2010
4/20/2010
Daff Looking Up after Rain
My wife Carol and I are in Florida for a week, but we flew in late last night so I am still working on the shots from last week around home in Maine. In that same interval of sun between the storms on Sunday, the Daffodils in the yard were fully open but bowed over and hanging down almost to the ground. I flipped out the LCD on the Canon and got this from ground level looking up.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. F3.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, Recovery for the sky and for the yellow highlights. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and just a smidge of Vibrance (had to be careful or the yellows would have blocked up). Sharpen landscape preset.
From The Yard: Kennebunk ME.
4/19/2010
Interlude
It rained most of the day yesterday (and the day before for that matter), but just before noon we had an interval when the sun broke through. We drove down to the beach for a walk while it lasted. The contrast between the sun on the beach grass and the storm sky was striking, and I took several shots to try to capture the effect. Click on the image to view it larger. The white speck, if you blow it up big enough, is actually a seagull. This shot is at about 100mm equivalent. It was cropped from the bottom for composition.
Pulling back to 28mm equivalent makes the sky the real subject. Again cropped in Lightroom for composition.
Zooming in to 180mm equivalent gives this view, with the gold of the grass emphasized but less of the drama in the sky.
Three different views of the same phenomenon…each with a strength of its own.
All three with the Canon SX20IS and Landscape program. 1) F4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80, 2) F3.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80, 3) F5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80.
All received similar processing in Lightroom. Recovery for the sky detail. Fill light for the foreground and to allow the Blackpoint to more right. Added Clarity and light on the Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. In the wide shot, enough Blackpoint for the grasses brought out too much blue in the clouds and I had to adjust the saturation of the blue channel.
From Around Home 2010.
4/18/2010
Daff on the Rocks
Happy Sunday.
This lonely Daffodil, posed against a granite bolder with its lichen in my daughter’s piano teacher’s yard, somewhat caged by dry stems, caught my eye. The bright yellow, the vibrant green, the texture of the stone and the delicate tracery of the weeds. This is another shot that employs the long end of the macro zoom on the SX20IS to good advantage.
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent and macro. F5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, some Recovery for the yellow in the Daff, a touch of Fill Light to offset Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and just a tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
4/17/2010
Coltsfoot
I am not sure I am done with the NYC images, but we will go back to Maine this morning (appropriate since I am physically back in ME this morning). This is Coltsfoot…a plant I honestly never noticed before this spring. It was abundantly blooming way ahead of anything else out in the waste ground of our local gravel pit. Could not miss it with those bright yellow flowers! I caught this clump by zooming in to 560mm and using the macro setting. It was on a little rise of ground (pile of sandy gravel), and by getting down low I was able to put the flowers against the out of focus background of the far edge of the pit many hundreds of yards away. Hence the bokeh. The dark band is trees. When I got it in Lightroom, I cropped from the top for composition. I am really enjoying saying “this looks even better at larger sizes” (on weiw.lightshedder.com if you click on the image above) with the images from the Canon. I often could not say that with images from the Sonys I was using. 🙂
Canon SX20IS at 560mm and macro. F5.7 @ 1/400th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, besides the cropping already mentioned, I added Clarity and Vibrance, moved the Blackpoint slightly right, and employed the Sharpen landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
This is a more standard shot, which perhaps shows the plant to better advantage, but is a less interesting image. Also at 560mm equivalent and macro. This time taken from on top of a sand/gravel pile looking down on the flowers.
4/16/2010
NYC Reflections
The city that lives in glass houses! Still at Bryant Park but looking the other direction…up as opposed to down. I am always fascinated by the abstractions caused by buildings reflecting in the glass facade of other buildings. Don’t know why, but there it is. I have some shots closer in, of the reflections themselves, but this wider shot has a lot of interest for me.
Canon SX20IS at about 38mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, a bit of recovery for the sky, Blackpoint just right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape preset.
From NYC 2010.
4/15/2010
Bryant Park Color
I had a few moments between the training I am doing and a dinner engagement, so I walked over to Bryant Park, a few blocks from our hotel. It was a beautiful spring day in the city after a hard winter and the park was well populated with New Yorkers enjoying. They are in the middle of a restoration project that includes the lawns and flower plantings. This little juxtaposition was played out in varieties all around the boarder of the park under the trees. Of course, what caught my eye here was the contrast in color and shape.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F2.8 @ 1/30th @ ISO 80. Programmed auto.
Light processing in Lightroom. Added Clarity and just a little Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
From NYC 2010.
4/14/2010
Park Ave at 39th South
Though I still have a stock of recent Maine images to share, I am in NYC for three days. I am training staff at B&H Photo and Adorama in my real job. I was pleasantly surprised to see the full length of Park Avenue in bloom when we came up out of the tunnel and headed for Grand Central. It was a gloomy day, but still, the trees are beautiful, and somehow more beautiful in this setting. This is, as the title says, Park Avenue looking south from 39th Street.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Because of the distortions of the Canon zoom at 28mm setting, and the perspective of the shot….looking up….the first step in processing had to be opening the image in PhotoShop Elements and correcting for both perspective and distortion. Mostly perspective. The Correct Camera Distortions filter works wonders and is both quick and intuitive. Then, in Lightroom, I used Recovery for the sky, thou there was not significant detail there, and then Fill Light for the foreground, with added Clarity and Vibrance, and the Blackpoint to the right just slightly. Sharpen landscape preset. Finally I cropped slightly from the bottom to include as little pavement as was practical. Still had ot leave the man in the lower left room to stand. 🙂
From the so far brief set of NYC 2010.
4/13/2010
Parsons Rays
Parson’s Beach is only 2 miles from my front door, so we visit it often, and it never fails to show a new face. This is late in an iffy day weather-wise. I was after the rays here and the dramatics in the sky. I took a fairly straight forward Landscape program shot, biased a little for the sky by tipping the camera up and locking exposure, and then brought up the foreground in Lightroom.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
In Lightroom, heavy Recovery for the sky (even biased as the exposure was). Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint right. A good deal of Fill Light for the foreground, but even then, to restore it to something like what my eye saw, without removing the dark areas of the clouds, it required a Graduated Filter Effect from the bottom to lighten exposure on the sand.
From Around Home 2010.
A photo friend with whom I trade comments suggested that this might look good in B&W. We often have this discussion as he likes B&W better than I do. So, without further ado, a B&W version.
4/12/2010
Frenald Pond
I stopped to photograph maple flowers growing on tree short enough to reach, but who could resist this clean sheet of reflective water. I would normally never but the horizon across the middle of the shot, but it works here somehow, with the bit of framing provided by the branch at the top and the strong reflections. Or so I think. I got down low to the water with the flip out LCD for the shot.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Recovery for the sky in Lightroom. Added Clarity and a bit of Vibrance. Blackpoint to the right. Sharpen Landscape preset.
From Around Home 2010.
4/11/2010
Sky Hy, Topsam ME
Happy Sunday!
And for Sunday, an image from this weekend’s Men’s Retreat at Sky Hy Conference Center in Topsham Maine. Formerly a ski lodge with a tow-rope slope, Sky Hy is situated in a range of what are, by any standard that includes the Rockies, medium high hills about 20 miles inland from the ocean. This shot was from the third floor balcony. The hill drops away to Bradley Pond, here seen under another amazing Maine spring sky. As you see, the maples in the valley are not leafed out yet, but a close look will show the red tinge of the flowers. Just before this shot was taken we saw a Golden Eagle soaring over the pond. 🙂
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Recovery for the sky in Lighroom. Added Clarity and just a smidge of Vibrance. Blackpoint to the right. Sharpen Landscape preset. Cropped from the top for composition.
From the very small Sky Hy collection.