Monthly Archives: January 2012
1/11/2012: Back Creek and the Mousam under Skies.
This is another experiment with the Dynamic Photo HDR application and another shot from the gloomy Sunday at the coast. DPHDR gives you all kinds of options for fine tuning the tone mapping, even from a single .jpg…and it produces a well rendered image with very little haloing (halo is the light band where dark sections of the image meet light sections, common in HDR work…or it is a similar light band around individual pixels that limits the smoothness of tones in HDR work.) Final adjustment in Lightroom using a Graduated Filter effect to lighten the sky was required to keep the whole thing from going surreal. As you may have noted, I don’t mind hyper-real images, but I do try to avoid the surreal look of overcooked HDR.
For comparison, here is the pure Lightroom version.
The Lightroom version is perhaps a bit truer to the mood of the day. It was undeniably gloomy. But the DPHDR version has more impact as an image. I am going to have to pay more attention…take some shots intentionally to test and challenge my memory for light values before I can say which one is “truer” to reality…to the naked eye view.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processing as above.
And just for fun, here it is rendered as a paining in Dynamic Auto Painter, with the original overlayed in PhotoShop Elements as a grayscale using Vivid Light to bring up more detail.
1/10/2012: Nubble Light in Morning Light
When I went looking for the Snowy Owl reported at Nubble Light last Saturday, I went early. Early is not the best time to photograph the Light itself. The light is behind the Light, so to speak, or off to the south of it considerably, and you get shadows across the face of the buildings and the slope of the island. This shot, while it holds some interest in itself, was helped along considerably by the Dynamic Photo HDR application after the fact.
DPHDR, in my limited experience of it so far, does an excellent job of tone-mapping a single .jpg file to simulate a true multi-exposure HDR image…and it does it without the obvious artifacts of some other tone-mapping software. (It does, of course, produce conventional HDRs from multiple files, but I have not experimented with that yet.)
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f7.1 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
The file was processed in DPHDR, then taken into Lightroom for final processing…Fill Light, Blackpoint, Clarity, and a touch of Vibrance. There was a reddish lens flare (the sun is just out of the frame), over the right end of the island which required some treatment. I desaturated the flare using the selective desaturation tool, then painted a Local Adjustments region over the area and pumped up Clarity and Contrast.
The result is, I think, striking…a bit on the hyper-real side (click for more on hyper-real imaging)…but powerful enough to make up for it.
1/9/2012: Moody on the Beach, Kennebunk ME
I almost did not go out for a photoprowl yesterday, though my stock of recent material for Pic 4 Today is getting low. The day started out with promise, but by the time I got out of church, the sun had gone and banks of heavy cloud had come over. Still, when my wife announced that she was going for a walk on the beach, I decided to break away from the computer and join her. Good choice.
It was indeed gloomy, moody, and atmospheric on the beach, but there was light along the horizon for contrast and interesting reflections of the cloud mass in the wet beach. This is looking a bit west of south, out over Wells and Ogunquit. That little bump on the right is Mount Agamenticus (in case you thought I was kidding yesterday when I said tall hills in Southern Maine are called mountains). It is a low angle shot, taken from about 6 inches above the sand…I am ever thankful for the flip out lcd on today’s superzooms.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Metered on the horizon.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. I used a Graduated Filter effect to lighten both the foreground and the sky. The frame was added in Picasa, something I next to never do, but the tone of the image was just too close to the tone of the background here for effective display.
1/8/2012: Webhanette Falls, in Ice
The Webhanette River flows between Wells and Moody Beach Maine and forms the Webhannet Marshes behind the dunes of Wells Beach. On its way down to the sea it flows over some rocky ledges. Waterfalls of any size in Southern Maine are few enough so that the Town of Wells has created a little park around the falls, not, honestly, much visited. It is a quiet spot just of busy RT 1, on a loop of road that has been bypassed by newer construction, and worth a look most seasons. Here it is in its winter persona, minus, due to our strange winter so far, the usual solid coating of snow that generally buries the rock and the ice itself…so I guess it is a somewhat unusual view.
I like the way the flowing water has frozen…the interesting shapes and textures…and the way the strongest flow has remained free.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 120mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. 2) and 3) 410mm equivalent, f5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 125 and 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: Many places in the world, and even in Maine, no one would even notice Webhanette Falls. It is too small, too tame, too homely. But when you live on a coastal plain, hundreds of miles from real mountains (where in fact any decently high hill is called a mountain) any waterfall is a treat…a reminder of the beauty and the power of falling water. And what is it about waterfalls anyway? Why do we humans, pretty much universally, find them awe-inspiring…why do we drive and hike out of our way to see them? We paint them, we take pictures of them. We are irresistibly and undeniably drawn. Why did the town of Wells, when the new Rt. 1 was constructed, preserve this little park around this vest pocket water fall?
I can ask the questions but I can’t answer them. All I know is that waterfalls make me glad…a bit giddy in fact. They lift my spirit, fill my soul with wonder. They make me happy. There is a sense of play about them…from the smallest to the most majestic that speaks, always…maybe in a whisper at Webhanette and a roar at Niagara…but speaks always to the place in me that feels closest to the creator.
1/7/2012: Branch Brook, Kennebunk ME
As I have mentioned, we are still snow deprived in Southern Maine this winter. We actually have a dusting on the ground this morning, thanks to all day efforts yesterday (a flake here, a flake there), but it will not last. Temps in the 40s today. This shot from was the last dusting a few weeks ago.
I like the early morning light in the trees and the way the snow frosts the little pine…the curve of dark water, etc.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/80th @ ISO160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
1/6/2012: Frost and Thorns
Another shot from New Year’s dawn. It was a morning of heavy frost and the beach rose was coated with white crystals. Added to the texture and color of the thorny rose and weathered hips and caught with a long telephoto setting on the zoom against a deep unfocused background, it makes an interesting still-life study.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 640. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom forbIntensity and Sharpness.
1/5/2012: Wave off East Point, Biddeford Pool ME
This is another shot from my unsuccessful Snowy Owl Prowl down the coast from Biddeford Pool to Kennebunk last week. Unsuccessful in finding an owl that is. From a photographic point of view I found much of interest in the massive waves and lowering sky as a front passed over and out to sea.
Directly off the point at East Point in Biddeford Pool waves coming in from the north east met waves coming in from the south east to create a cross wave effect that I could have watched for hours. The dynamic and the energy of the water was breathtaking. I did my best to catch a bit of that energy in images like the one above.
Canon SX40HS at about 90mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom. Besides my usual Intensity (fill light and blackpoint) and Sharpness adjustments I applied a Graduated Filter Effect from the bottom to bring up brightness and contrast…and then a second GFE from the top to pump up Clarity and Contrast to give the clouds slightly more definition. This is on the edge of being hyper-real, in the way many HDR treatments “go reality one better” and create a scene that is more dramatic than what the naked eye would actually see. (Some HDR treatments, in my opinion, boarder on the surreal. I don’t go there.) I think this image strikes a good balance.
Just for comparison, here is the same image with more intense tone-mapping in LightZone and final processing in Lightroom. This one is hyper-real…but it certainly has impact.
1/4/2012: Frosted Seaweed, Kennebunk ME
According to my internet weather app it is 5º outside in southern Maine this morning. Frosty. This is from New Year’s Day dawn on the beach a few miles from our home, with the frost on the seaweed lighted by the rising sun. It makes a nice abstract study, with the mix of textures and colors, unified by the frosty coating. The contrast in the color temperature from the right where the low sun is striking to the left which is still in shadow is pretty dramatic too.
Canon SX40HS at 212mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
1/3/2012: Lafayette Building, Kennebunk ME
I don’t do a lot of architectural photography, but I could not resist this view of the Lafayette Building in Kennebunk ME. I drive past it, most days, at least once. This was taken from the Cumberland Farms at our end of the bridge over the Mousam River where I stopped to get gas on my way out on a picprowl. The sky, of course, makes the image.
It was taken at 24mm equivalent field of view with the Canon SX40HS, and while the Canon image processing engine processes out most of the expected wide angle distortion, I was still left with considerable vertical perspective distortion. Lightroom’s distortion controls allowed me to pull the building back to vertical. I cropped out some of the road way (bridge surface actually) at the bottom and there we have it. Warm brick with lots of interesting details, the blue sky with massive clouds, and the touches of green from the Christmas decorations, make for a pleasing architectural shot. Or so I think. Feel free to view it at a larger size on WideEyedInWonder. Just click the image and use the size controls at the top of the window.
f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed, as above, for vertical perspective distortion, Intensity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
1/2/2012: Candied Rose Leaves, Kennebunk ME
The very first warm rays of New Year’s sun brought up the red under the frost in these beach-rose leaves, giving them the look of a confection. I backed off and used the long end of the zoom from 4.5 feet to throw the background well out of focus and –isolate the arrangement of leaves and berries. I used a Canon SX40HS super-zoom point and shoot camera with a real focal length only 150mm…so I got the depth of field of a moderate telephoto and the image scale of an 840mm lens. Best of both worlds.
This was just at dawn, so the exposure was f5.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. This kind of shot is not possible without the excellent image stabilization of the Canon lens (handholding 840mm equivalent), and the excellent high ISO performance of the sensor which maintains color and detail without adding a lot of noise.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.