Depth of Field

Brick Corner

One of the things that is fun to play with when taken photographs is Depth of Field, or DoF. DoF relates to the amount of the image that is in focus or appears to be in focus around the subject. The rest of the image may then fade to a blur depending on several factors or it may be "sharp" from front to back. Many landscapes will have large DoF so that the image is sharp all the way through. On the other hand, portraits and close-up photographs will have shallower DoF in order to draw the eye toward the subject and away from any distractions in the background; i.e, the subject will be sharp but the rest of the image will be blurred.

More after the jump.

To get a shallower DoF you can open up your aperture to as wide as it will go (small f/stop #). A smaller aperture (large f/stop #) will help get more of the image in focus. Zooming in to your subject can help narrow your DoF while using a shorter focal length will aid in getting more of the image sharp. The relative distance of your subject to the background is also important. If you are significantly closer to your subject relative to the background, then the subject will be in focus and the background will be more blurred. Conversely, if you stand farther away from your subject relative to the background, more of the image will be in focus. Of course you can use more than one of those techniques as well and it is a good idea to combine them for the best effect. Consumer zoom lenses, as an example, will usually not be able get an aperture wider than f/5.6 when zoomed all of the way out. This can give you more DoF than you might want and lead to background distractions. To combat that, set your aperture as wide as it will go (f/5.6 in this instance) and get as close as you can to your subject. Ideally you want to the background to be quite a bit further way from the subject than you will be to the subject. This will have your subject sharp, but the background fading off to a pleasing, non-distracting blurred field.

DoF is a property of photography that is used to help isolate the subject from the background as well as rendering a busy background less intrusive. Play around with DoF. It is can be a lot of fun.

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Belated Blog Birthday

MG Dreams

I thought we were getting close the the first anniversary of my starting this blog. So, I went back through the old posts and noticed that I started May 20, 2008. In other words, I missed the birthday. Guess I might need to do something special for it next year if I remember to put it on my calendar.

More after the jump.

Today's image is again from the Greenville Scottish Games. In particular, it is from the British Auto Show which was part of it this year. The cars were lined up along the tree-lined drive that leads to the Furman Athletic areas including the football stadium. There were a lot of beautiful cars there. This MG roadster was one of those that caught my eye. I took it using my ultrawide angle lens. Since I knew I was going to be shooting automobiles in tight situations, I thought that using the ultrawide lens would help to get more of the cars. It did, but it also got a lot of bystanders which turned most of my photographs into snapshots. However, a couple of them did work out. I like how the lens exaggerated the perspective in this image. For reference I was only about 2 to 3 feet away from the bumper. I held the camera down low and pointed it upward slightly. The focal length was 10mm (15mm in full 35mm frame equivalent). This caused the perspective to distort a bit, exaggerating some of the car's curves.

When I was first processing it, I didn't like the final result. However, just as I was getting into bed that night, I had the idea of inverting the vignette to white instead of the usual black. The next morning I tried that out and liked how it added a dreamy kind of feel to the image ... kind of like a guy daydreaming during his mid-life crisis. ;-)

Keep shooting.
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Birthday Boy

The New 9-year Old

A portrait of my son celebrating his birthday at the restaurant. I used my flash, but it was mounted to the camera. However, I lowered the power so that it wouldn't look like a flash photo, and used slow/rear curtain synch with a slower shutter speed to get some of the background to burn it. This allows you to set a slower shutter speed on the camera than normal, thus allowing some of the light from the background to register on the sensor/film. Otherwise, the background will be a black void with no detail and the photograph will "look" like a flash photograph. The exposure was 1/25 at f/5.3. My son is relatively sharp at this slow speed for a couple of reasons. One is that I used a stabilized lens which lets me handhold the camera at slower shutter speeds. Two is that he is primarily being let by the flash who's durations is much quicker than the shutter.

It looks like it will be a good weekend, and we have some plans that should make for a good photo outing.

Keep shooting.




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Birthdays

Tickets

My son had his 9th birthday this past weekend. For his dinner he picked a popular children's place with games and other kid's stuff. While he was playing I was a bit bored since I had forgotten to take something to read. However, I did have my camera and flash with me and decided to play around with whatever I could find. I didn't even need to leave the table. There were a couple of pieces of pizza remaining, plus my son would periodically drop off his tickets when they got to be too much for him to carry around. More after the jump.

The shot above is some of those tickets that I arranged on the table after he had dropped off another batch of them. I used my flash unit, but held it off to the side with the idea of "raking" the light across the top of the tickets. The thought I had at the time was that it should give me some interesting play between highlights and deep shadows. I think it worked out for the most part. I exaggerated the colored type and graphics in post processing to break-up the gray tones of the tickets themselves.

Just remember next time you find yourself a bit bored somewhere. So long as you have a camera, there will always be something to photograph. Even if it doesn't result in a work of art, it will give you some good practice with the camera and at jump starting your creativity. For example, the shot above gave me some practice arranging objects for composition as well as practice using an off-camera flash. Plus, it is just fun to try something off the wall sometimes.

Keep shooting.
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A Tale of Two Color Casts

Sepia

Balanced

Light is made up of different colors. Even what our eyes might see as "white" light can be a range of colors. For example, the color of sunlight varies throughout the day. It has a golden/reddish/warm tone to it during sunrise and sunset. It has more of a blue cast during high noon. Have you even taken a photograph indoors and wondered why everything had a yellow to orange color cast to it? That is because we typically use tungsten light bulbs to illuminate our homes. The tungsten filaments in the bulbs emit light that is more to the yellow or orange side of white than toward the blue side of white. Fluorescent lights can cause a green cast. Sodium vapor, mercury vapor or other outdoor lighting have a whole host of other color casts to them. Our eyes are remarkable optical instruments and can adjust to these color casts so that we perceive white light where there may actually be another color in the light. An easy way to see this effect is when you are driving down the interstate at night. Look at the headlights of the on-coming traffic. You will likely notice that most of the cars' headlights have a slight yellowish tint to them. Then you will see some really "bright" headlights, usually BMWs or Mercedes Benz, that look more blueish or more "white" than the other cars. Those cars have the more expensive headlights that burn at a brighter "color temperature" than the other cars which gives them the bluer color. Those bluer lights are not actually any brighter than the normal headlights. Our eyes are just more sensitive to the blue portion of the spectrum than the yellow part of the spectrum. Thus, the bluer headlights appear "brighter" to us simply because our eyes are designed to collect more blue light than yellow light.

This difference in colors of "white" light is what is called white balance in photography. Our cameras only see the light that enters through the shutter. They will record light with what ever color cast might be present. This is why your indoor photographs turn out with yellow or orange color casts to them. The camera's "white balance" wasn't set to consider the tungsten light "white". So instead it recorded it with the color cast you see in your photograph. Modern digital cameras can be adjusted on the fly to whatever "color" light you might be working in via the camera's white balance setting. Digital photographs, especially those shot in a RAW format, can be adjusted to a proper white balance during post processing. When using film cameras, you have to select the proper kind of film that is balanced to the kind of light you will be shooting in. If the light changes, you would have to change your film or your subsequent photographs will have odd color casts to them.

Which of the photographs above was the "natural" light photograph, and which was the color adjusted photograph? Find out after the jump.


Near my neighborhood is a small parking lot with several sodium vapor lights that illuminate it at night. They make it hard to see stars at night from our house. They also cause a color cast when you try to photograph at night. The color cast becomes exaggerated during bad weather such as fog, rain, ice or the snow we had a couple of days ago. In fact, once there is a coating of snow on everything, the color cast gets amplified by reflecting off of all of that white snow and causes everything you see to turn into a sepia tone. Thus, the first photograph above called "Sepia" is actually the "natural" light version. That color is what I saw when I was outside that night. It is a really weird feeling walking around a naturally sepia toned world. Almost like walking around in an old silent film or Civil War era photograph. However, it is also a really interesting light because it is so different than what we usually have to work with photographically.

The second photograph is the very same image after I color corrected it to a more neutral or white color tone in Photoshop. It almost looks like it was shot during the day, doesn't it? The truth of the matter is that both photographs were taken on my tripod with a four second exposure time. The amount of light in the image which is due to both the exposure time and all of the snow-covered reflective surfaces as well as the snow in the air makes for an optical illusion that the image was taken during the day. The neutral color cast adds to this illusion because we expect to "see" this kind of white light during the day, not at night.

While photographers generally strive to get the light to a neutral tone in order to eliminate undesirable color casts, said color casts can also be used creatively for mood and effect. Here, the "natural" sepia tone of the sodium vapor illuminated snow invokes a much different mood than the color balanced version. Which is best? It depends on what the photographer means to convey in the image. I took the image to experiment with the odd sepia ambient light and to compare it to a color balanced version. In the end, I like both images although I am more partial to the natural sepia toned version in this instance. It invokes a stronger mood to me than the color neutral version does. Which do you prefer?

I have to admit, having a source of "natural" sepia lighting like this could have some interesting potential. Plus, walking around in a sepia world is very unique.

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Reflecting on Service

Reflection of Coast Guard Cutter

I love reflections. I love photographing them. There is something about how light and surfaces interact to form reflections that captures my imagination. Perhaps it is how the reflections are changed from the original yet are still recognizable. Kind of like glancing into Alice's Wonderland for a brief moment where the mundane gets transformed or warped into something completely different. Reflections hint at other possibilities that we are not normally aware of in our daily experience. Walk down the street, catch a faint sparkle of yourself in a puddle, and wonder if that other self is as harried as your mundane life or is it in a land of wonder where imagination is made real?

More after the jump.

I also enjoy how light plays off of and through materials in a scientific manner. It obeys very specific laws and can be predicted with simple mathematical equations. Optics has always been an interest of mine. Give me a flash light, some lenses and prisms, and I will play with them for hours. Better yet, add a laser pointer and the potential fun is compounded. I guess that is why I like photography. I get to play with and capture light.

The above photograph is of the decommissioned Coast Guard Cutter U.S.S. Ingham at Patriot's Point. It sits near the U.S.S. Yorktown aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Laffey destroyer, and U.S.S. Clamagore submarine. The Ingham was the most decorated Coast Guard cutter at the time of her decommissioning including being the only cutter to receive two Presidential Unit Citations. It was built in the 1930s to combat the opium smugglers of the time, but soon found itself embroiled in WWII. It escorted supply ships across the Atlantic protecting them from German U-boats. It also served as a flagship in several Pacific Theater island landings. She provided naval gunfire support in Vietnam and rescued Cuban refugees during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Her 52 years of service ended when she was decommissioned on May 27, 1988. Over those years, thousands of sailors served aboard her and were the key to the success of her missions. Remember that she was a Coast Guard ship, yet she served during wartime. During peace she and her crew protected the US's shores while also providing aid on the open seas. For every Ingham, there are countless other Coast Guard ships and service people that have served without recognition. The Ingham's presence at Patriot's Point is as much for those service people as it is for those that directly served on her decks.

That is what I think this photograph captures. While it is the Ingham's reflection, it also reminds us that there are others who serve in the same role with little acknowledgement.

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The Power of having a big, shiney camera

Ducati
I am discovering that having a DSLR camera can get you some opportunities that you might not have had before. The above shot of the Ducati motorcycle was one such opportunity. It was located near some Lotus' which were on display and was the only motorcycle that I saw at the auto show. Anyway, I was interested in the cycle's bright yellow color and was taking some close-ups of it while leaning over the rope that was up to keep people away from it. I had taken one or two shots when a gentleman with an auto-show ID badge came over and offered to un-rope the bike so I could get some unobstructed shots of it. Of course, I said yes. The above is the best that I got. Just wish that I hadn't cut off the front wheel. I think the gentleman thought that I was with the press or something because I didn't notice him offering the same to people with point and shoot cameras.

Also, I got asked questions about various cars by people that saw me photographing them. Again, they apparently assumed I was with the automotive press and knew what I was doing. Little do they know I can't tell the difference from a carbeurator to an injector. ;-) Other times, I have had people ask me about features on their new DSLR cameras when they spot me with my D80. Last year when we were at the SC State Museum a woman asked me about the thing that I had on the front of my lens, i.e. the lens hood. She had just gotten a Nikon D40 and didn't know why the hood was included. I explained what it was and why I was using even indoors. It was nice because I saw the lights turn on in her eyes when she realized that it would help to protect against the inevitable bumps the lens would get with her three or four children around. :-) There have been other times like that too. Rather than people having issues when I have my DSLR with me, I have found they assume I am more than I am and defer to me. People have actually gotten out of my way as I waited behind them to get my chance at a shot. Many times when I'm out with my camera I will get at least one person asking which newspaper I'm working for or I get into a conversation with another photographer or someone thinking about buying their first DSLR. Heck, I even had a security guard in a high-rise building that I was photographing offer to let me up on to the roof anytime I wanted to photograph the skyline. Certainly not the typical kinds of stories that you hear about paranoid parents and guards these days. Maybe it just has to do with the area that I live in though.

Keep shooting.

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Morgan Square Holiday Lights

Morgan Square Lights

Christmas Eve evening I went downtown to photograph the city's holiday light display. I arrived before the sun had set, but it was cloudy with intermittent rain. One thing I wanted to try was a tip I had read over on the Stobist's blog about photographing holiday lights. His tip was to set the camera's white balance to tungsten. This accomplishes two things. It color balances for the holiday lights which are usually small tungsten bulbs, and it also causes a the sky to turn a deep, vibrant blue. Due to the weather conditions, I thought that might turn out better than a bland gray, cloud-covered sky. I like the effect it had in the images. So, I'll have to remember this trick in the future.

The above picture was one of my favorites from the trip (click the picture for a larger version). It is an HDR from three different exposures. I didn't use my tripod as I was working relatively quickly to get out of the rain. The exposures were taken hand held, with the Sigma 10-20mm lens, the camera was set to bracket + and - 2 stops, and the shutter was on continuous. All I had to do was frame the shot, hold the shutter button down and the camera took captured three frames; one frame was properly exposed, one was underexposed by 2 stops, the third was overexposed by 2 stops. The set was then converted from RAW straight to Tiff files with no adjustments and then the HDR image generated in Picturenaut. Picturenaut then was used to tonemap the HDR to a 16-bit Tiff which was then brought into Capture NX2 for final processing and JPEG conversion. A bit of swapping around applications, but it didn't really take very much longer than it usually takes my to process RAW images. Picturenaut seems to be fairly speedy, even on my older desktop PC.

Anyway, I hope Santa treated you well this holiday and that your families are safe, warm and loving.

Keep Shooting.

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Light Painting UFOs in the Backyard

Backyard UFOs

While we were at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, I got to spend some time in the yard playing with the camera. I tried to get some night shots, but those didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Then I realized that the backyard was nice and dark with the small woods behind it being backlit by some street lights. So, I decided to play around with a flashlight I carry in my camera bag and do some light painting.

The shot above is just one of the images I made that night. They are very simple to make actually. How to do it after the jump.


Light painting is a technique where you leave the shutter open and selective illuminate subjects and/or move a light through the scene to leave a light trail. Here is how I made the image above:

1) Set your camera on a tripod.
2) Set your camera on the "Bulb" shutter speed setting.
3) Manually focus your lens so that the background isn't just a blur ... unless of course that is the effect you are going for.
4) Lock your shutter open with either a manual release cable or hold it open with your finger.
5) Run around in front of your camera waving a flash light around like a fool. Alternately, walk around lighting things up with your flash or flash light. You will need a friend to do this part if you are holding the shutter open by yourself instead of locking it with a cable release.
6) Return the camera and let it stay open a bit longer for the background light to burn in. This will cause the "ghosting" effect through the light trails and the background gets recorded by the sensor/film.
7) Unlock the shutter to close it.
8) Review the image and repeat as necessary or wanted.

The first few attempts won't be very good. The idea here is to play around with the long exposure time in a dark / nighttime environment. You can do the same in a darkened room. There are countless variations of this technique from simple light trails like this one to using 1-million candle-power lights to "paint" small hills in the southwestern US. It is a technique that practically begs to be played with as it isn't just your normal image.

If you follow the above steps what you should have is a lot of streaks of white light going through the scene. How do you get light trials with those colors though? Well, I suppose you could try finding a flashlight that cycles automatically through colors. However, I don't have one of those. That is were your photo editor of choice comes in. I used Nikon's Capture NX2 to because it makes this very, very easy.

1) I placed a color control point on the light trail. This selects anything with that "color" in the point's area of influence. It is NX2's version of Photoshop's masking, and is the feature that makes this so much easier than in an editor like Photoshop as you don't have to generate the masks by hand. If you are more comfortable using Photoshop and masks, go right ahead. There really isn't a right way or wrong way to do this after all.
2) I then adjusted the Red, Green and Blue color channels on the control point until I had the color I wanted. To dark the color I lowered the brightness and/or increased the contrast via the control point. You can also adjust the saturation as you see fit.
3) Repeat the above as often as needed until your light trails are the color(s) that you like.
4) Check your background to make sure you didn't inadvertently affect it. If you do, then use NX's selection brush in the erase mode to remove the effect from the affected area. I used a very soft brush, but a harder bush might be necessary at times.

That's it for the light trails. This particular image probably took 10 minutes to process at most, and most of that time was just playing with the colors until I liked what I saw. Capture NX2 did the heavy work of generating the masks, leaving me to make the color changes.

A couple of suggestions.

1) Wear dark clothing if you don't want to appear in the image. The dark clothing with blend into the dark background reducing the chance that you will cause a "ghost" image as you run around like an idiot. ;-)
2) Keep moving. The longer you stay in one place, the more likely that you will register on the camera making one of those ghost images I mentioned above.
3) If you want to add a "ghost", then do the opposite of 1&2. I.E. wear light clothing and move slowly or even stand still briefly. The longer you stay in one place the more solid you will appear in the image. The trick will be to stay long enough to leave an image, but not so long that you completely obscure the background. Remember that you want to see the background through you, so don't stay in one place the entire time shutter is open.
4) If you want a rainbow effect to your colors remember the acronym ROY G. BIV for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. That is the order of the colors that you see in a rainbow.

Anyway, that is it for today. Hope you have fun doing your own light painting.

Keep shooting.
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Stuff on the Web: NASA goes back to the future

I hope that everyone had a good weekend. While I was rummaging through the wilds of the internet this past Sunday, I stumbled on a couple of articles about a NASA project. It is called the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). Basically, NASA is restoring the images that it's various Lunar Orbiters transmitted back to Earth during the 1960s. NASA sent the orbiters the map the surface of the Moon in order to find suitable landing sites for the Apollo landing missions. Those orbiters mapped most of the moon's surface and sent back the first image of the Earth rising over the Moon's horizon. It is perhaps one of the most famous images from the orbiters.

With NASA planning a return of manned missions to the Moon, it is perhaps not surprising that they are restoring those old orbiter images using modern digital processing techniques. There are many old magnetic tapes that they have or are in the processing of restoring. Additionally, they needed to restore the machinery that was originally used to record and playback the data on the tapes. NASA has been restudying many aspects of it's first Lunar Exploration era including examining the Apollo capsules, the heat shields, etc. as part of it's return to the Moon directive. That they are restoring these images really doesn't surprise me in and off themselves. What is notable though, is the quality of these restored images which is due in large measure to the ingenuity of the design of the original Lunar Orbiter's camera systems.

The orbiters had two camera systems, a wide-angle and a telephoto camera. The cameras recorded their images on to film. In fact they used the same frames of film using a complex feed mechanism that synchronized the frames from one camera to another. This accounts for the high quality of the data that NASA can now extract from the original tapes. After the images were captures, the orbiters then developed the film, scanned the processed film and then transmitted that film back to NASA here on Earth where the historic images we have seen for the past 40 years were printed. Quite an accomplishment. I hadn't realized that the orbiters back then used film and had to develop it out in space. Plus, the fact they essentially converted that film image into a digital-type of data stream was really impressed me. Remember that this was all done without the modern digital tools that we are accustomed to using today. It puts the printer/scanner that is sitting on my desk in to a whole new perspective for me.

For further reading about the LOIRP, here are a few articles that I found:

The website MoonViews has several articles about the LOIRP as well as other Lunar Imaging initiatives.

Gizmodo has the first article that I found about the LOIRP and a nice large sized version of the Earthrise image.

CNET also has a good article about it that includes some YouTube video of the NASA press conference.

That NASA is restoring these images makes a lot of sense to me. They should contain quite a bit of information that will be crucial to the current Lunar program. The quality of the images though looks to be astonishing, and is a credit to the original designers of the Lunar Orbiters. That only today are we able to extract all of the data in the tapes shows the ingenuity that made the first Lunar Exploration era the success that it became.

Keep shooting.

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Family Events (updated)

Sitting Down

Note: I had clicked the "Publish Post" button a couple of times instead of the "Save Post" button. Just in case you saw the post before I had finished writing it.

I was under the weather last weekend and didn't get out of the house for any photography outings. However, my son did have a couple of things early in the week where I managed to capture a few photographs.

First was his Cub Scout meeting. His den has been learning how to handle, raise, lower and fold the American Flag. This week they walked to Connor's elementary school which is just a block away from where the den meets and practiced raising the flag and lowering the flag on the school's flag pole. Since I take my camera most places I go, I decided to practice some nighttime flash photography. There was really only one shot from that evening that I liked, and it could be better. However, it does capture the moment of these boys learning something that many of us take for granted because other people do it for us. Here is the shot:

Folding the Flag

More after the jump.

For this photograph, I did several things that are kind of different from what most people would do. First, I held my flash unit off to the side with my left hand. I tried to hold it a bit above the boys' heads, but not pointed directly at them. Basically, I was trying to "feather" the light so that they wouldn't be too over exposed compared to the background. I used my Stofen diffuser on the flash to try to soften it as much as possible, and I triggered it with the camera's built-in flash set to "Commander mode". The built-in flash was only providing the light signals to the external flash. It didn't supply enough light to add to the exposure.

The trick in this kind of setting is having a slow enough shutter speed to get the background light to expose so that the subjects aren't in a sea of black while keeping the shutter speed fast enough so the subjects won't be blurred. The flash will freeze the subjects, but there could still be some motion blur due to the background, street lights. I also used the wide angle lens for these shots so that I would have a smaller focal length to minimize camera shake blurring. The longer the focal length of the lens, the more magnified camera shake becomes. Thus, for this shot I used a combination of several things: ISO 800 to increase the camera's sensitivity in order to allow the exterior lights to expose the background while keeping reasonable shutter speeds, external off-camera flash held at arms length to the left and above the camera, slow (1/20 second) shutter speed for background exposure, slow synch/rear curtain flash to aid the background exposure, and a wide angle lens i.e. a very short focal length of 17mm to minimize camera shake as I was holding the camera with one hand and the flash with the other. The wide angle lens is also why the vertical lines are going all over the place. If you look closely, the verticals in the wall behind the den leader are vertical. However, if you look at the flag pole it is tilted at an angle. This is due to perspective distortion of pointing the camera down with a wide angle lens. Actually, I suppose that it will happen with most lenses. The wider angle focal lengths just magnify the effect more.

Looking at the photograph and thinking about it, I could have done some things better. I could have use an umbrella or a soft-box on a light stand. This would have softened the flash better and given better light coverage. However, I don't have stands, umbrellas or soft-boxes yet. Plus, I'm not sure if I could have used them very well here as I was constantly moving around to get different angles as the boys' practiced with the flag.

I could have also used some colored gel filters on the flash and set my camera's white balance for the exterior lighting. Again, I don't have any gel filters yet so I had to make due with what I had without them. The reason the gel filters and white balancing would be important here is because of the color cast you see from the exterior lights. If you look back at the photograph, notice how the background is sort of an orange to reddish color but the boys' and the flag seem to be "normal" colored. That is because the flash and exterior lights are not the same "color balance" and since the camera was set to "see" the flash's light as being white the camera "saw" the exterior lights as a different color.

Our eyes can compensate for these sorts of color difference remarkably well. Cameras, however, record the actual colors of the lights and unfortunately all types of lights emit different colors of the spectrum to a greater or lesser degree. When photographers talk about white balance, what they are discussing is the variation of the color of the light from a "white" light, i.e. a colorless light. The process of color balancing lights is to determine what you have in the environment, what light is going to be dominate and filtering the other lights to get them into the same color range so you don't end up with odd color casts in different parts of the photograph. This is something that all photographers and videographers deal with to great or lesser degrees. It can be as simple as putting a colored gel filter over your only flash, or as complex as geling windows and multiple light types for a movie set. Color balancing is one of the reasons professional photographers charge what they do. It is part of the technical knowledge they have learned and can apply to situations that an untrained photographer wouldn't consider. In other words, it is why Joe McNally shoots for National Geographic and I shoot for myself and this blog. ;)

Anyway, I suppose that is enough about that photograph. Connor is also in his school's Fitness Club. Earlier this week there was a Red Ribbon Fun Run that several of the area elementary schools participated in. The Red Ribbon events are part of the local police and sheriff's departments' anti-drug and alcohol awareness programs. This event was sponsored by the local YMCA chapter and was held at the track facility of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind here in Spartanburg.

The kids were divided into groups based on grade levels as well as boys and girls. Connor's group ran a 400m which was one lap around the track, a 100 yard/meter dash, and a long jump. All of the kids got red ribbons for participating in the event. There were no awards for the winners of the events since it was a "Fun Run" and a track meet.

The event was scheduled for after school. So, I was shooting with contrasty mid-afternoon sunlight. To compound this, I was normally on the shadow side of the kids due to the arrangement of the track and the events. In the end, Connor had fun and I got some nice memento photographs. My favorite of them is the lead photograph at the top of this post. Here are a couple more of them:

Connor Finishing the 400m

Special Athlete
This runner was one of the students at the SC School for the Deaf and Blind. He was being cheered for as he crossed the finish line for the 400m.

3rd Grade Girls' 100 yd/m Dash
This shot was when the 3rd grade girls were running the first of their 100 yd/m dashes. They were on the other side of the field from me so I had to use my telephoto zoom lens.

There are a few more shots from the Fun Run over on the Zenfolio site.

Thank you for reading all of the way down to here.

Keep shooting.
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All in the Details

Z

It is very easy to get caught up in trying to get "the BIG picture" when we are out with our cameras. However, sometimes situations are conducive to getting everything in the shot. At times like that, sometimes zeroing in on distinctive details can make for a more interesting image. The shot above was taken at an automobile show this past January. The show was held in one of the local convention centers. The lighting wasn't very good for photography as you can imagine, plus there were lots of people in the venue admiring the cars. They were also trying to stay inside and out of one of the only days of snow we had last winter. I got several wide shots that I liked of various cars, However, I think some of the better images from that day were details of the cars. Those shots tended to encompass some important design element, or the car's badge, or other identifying feature. This made them easier to frame, easier to control the lighting, and easier to remove the background crowds from the composition.

Next time you are out with your camera, look for interesting details that can fill the frame. A potter's hands as he turns his clay might be more interesting and tell a better visual story than then a long shot of the potter stooped over his wheel. The colors in a subject might be visually more intriguing than the subject itself. Or you might find an exceptionally intricate texture that just demands some attention. Shooting details can begin to introduce you to abstract images and see things in ways that you didn't before. Plus, it can be a lot of fun to turn a blah "big picture" into a series of "Wow!" detail images.



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Nifty Fifty Goes to Town

Enjoying the Day

This weekend, the city of Spartanburg hosted a festival called "Spartanburg Creative Tastes". The city is undergoing a downtown revitalization and this festival was conceived as a way to highlight the town's growing cultural and artistic communities. It was a combination of art fair and restaurant fair. Local artists had their works on display and for sale. Several downtown restaurants had concessions so people could sample some of their cuisine. Plus, several local musicians and performing arts groups gave performances through the afternoon and evening. We had a lot of fun there, sampled some good food, and heard some good music. The city hopes to turn this into an annual event if it was well received, and judging from the turn out of both vendors and festival goers I think it will be back again next year.

One thing I decided to do while we were at the festival was to travel lighter than I usually do. So, I took the battery grip off of my camera, mounted my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens instead of my usual zooms, and packed the camera with a few essentials into my smaller camera bag. I still carried my 18-135mm zoom in the bag as well as my flash, but as it turns out I didn't need them. The 50mm lenses are sometimes called "Nifty Fifties" by photo-hobbyists. They are affordable, well made, sharp, professional quality lenses. The 50mm lenses used to be the "kit" lenses packaged with consumer SLR cameras prior to the advent of good quality zoom lenses. It approximates the angle of view of the human eye on 35mm film and is a simple yet robust little lens. Nifty Fifties are perfect little lenses when you are wanting to travel light. Their small size makes them easy to pack into a corner of your camera bag. Yet they are excellent low light lenses for the average person due to the wide f/1.8 aperture. The 50mm f/1.8 is frequently the second lens that many photography hobbyists get after their initial camera kit.

I had not been using my 50mm very much lately, so I thought this little festival downtown would be a good time to take it out and use it. All of the photographs I took at the festival were taken with it. Something that I'm kind of proud of is resisting the lure of the zoom I took with me "just in case". With just a little moving around on my part, I could generally get compositions that I liked. A prime lens like the 50mm does force you to think about your photographs a bit more before tripping the shutter. It's small size also made for a very unobtrusive profile in the crowded downtown festival.

If you don't have a 50mm lens yet, I do recommend you get one for yourself. They are very affordable at around US $100 and generally have exceptional image quality. This gives them a very good "bang for the buck" as they say and opens up low light as well as shallow depth of field situations that your kit zoom might not be very good at.

During the festival I took a mixture of festival and architectural photographs. There are a many older, restored and unrestored buildings downtown that have a lot of character. My budding interest in architectural photography was tempted by the many details in these older buildings. The full gallery can be found here on my Zenfolio site. A couple more photographs to whet your whistle after the jump.


Architect's Building

The Windjammers - Clarinet Solo

In Need of Repair

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The Power of Photography

Rather than post another shot from my archieves, I found something better to direct your attention too. Over on his blog, photographer Joe McNally has an inspirational article about how he helped a father fighting MS achieve the photograph he had in his head but couldn't shot himself. It is a good read. It shows how photography can touch and inspire us no matter who we are. I have nothing better to say about photography today.

Blogging from Both Sides, Part One by Joe McNally

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Smooth

Smooth

Today's photograph is from a set of smoke images. This is a really fun little project to do. First find an area that you can make as dark as possible. Set up a black background; I used a black, three fold project board like you would use for a science fair display. You can get project boards at any craft store in a variety of colors. They make handy backgrounds for table-top subjects and are easy to store. Put your camera on a tripod or other firm support. Place some incense or smokey candle on the table with the background. Make sure the incense is not right up against the background because you don't want light spilling on to the background. Place a flash to one side of the incense with a gobo/flag to block light from hitting the background. Line the flash up with the incense/candle. Light the incense/candle, manually focus your camera where the smoke is and use an apeture to give you a deep enough depth of field to make sure that the smoke is in focus whereever it meanders. An apeture of f/5.6 to F/8 should be good. Your shutter speeds should be set within your flash's synch speed. You can us a long shutter speed if you want, but remember that the smoke is going to be frozen by the flash.
(continued after the jump)


Now all you need to do is to turn the lights out and start taking photographs. I remote trigger is useful for this; I use the IR remote for my camera. You can use a wired manual release if you have one, or the shutter button with the exposure delay function turned on. You might need to fine tune the exposure at first. Simply increase or decrease the apeture until you like what you see in your viewfinder. Then release the shutter whenever you see an interesting pattern in the smoke. If the smoke is too smooth or not interesting enough, disturb the air near it by blowing lighting, snapping your fingers, clapping, anything to add a touch of turbulence to the air. Don't be surprised if you get mezmerised by the smoke patterns and take a couple of hundred photographs. It is such an interesting dynamic that you are capturing, and it will be infinitely varible.

After you have finished taking the photographs, bring them into your image processing software of choice. Adjust the black point using Levels and Curves to blank out the background if any light managed to get on it. You can then apply color to it by using a gradient layer and playing around with the layer blending modes to get the look that you want.

I hope you enjoy the making your own smoking photographs. I can be a lot of fun and isn't very difficult.


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Photo of the Day

Forgotten

Here is something new for me. I will try to post a photograph a day during the week. There may or may not be photographs posted during the weekend since that is when I usually do my shooting and processing. Plus, there's that whole spend time with the family thing. I think I have enough of a collection now to be able sustain this for awhile. Sometimes there might be a shot from a new set of photographs that I've taken, or it might be a previous shot that I haven't posted here before.

Anyway to start things off is a photograph that I call "Forgotten". It should look familiar since it is the photograph I used to make the banner image. (Note the use of an extreme crop in the banner as discussed a couple of posts ago.) This was taken on only my second real photography outing with my D80. I took my son to a downtown park that is bisected by a small river and it's picturesque waterfall. The town grew up around this river and waterfalls so there is quite a bit of development around it. One of the features of the park is the skeleton of an old 19th century carriage factory which is now used as a special events pavilion. The pavilion is used for everything from corporate parties, to town events, to wedding receptions. When it isn't reserved for an event, it is open to the public as it was when we were walking around that day.

As we looked around, I found this one single, dried out rose sitting on the sill of one of the windows. It was illuminated by beautiful, late afternoon light and looked as if it had been left there from a wedding reception. I thought that it seemed like a forgotten symbol of love. I framed it in my viewfinder and took a handfull of photographs. It is just as I found it on the sill. I didn't rearrange it or stage it in anyway. At the time I knew I had one of those special pictures. Each image looked great in my LCD and I think it was at that particular moment that I really got bit by the photography bug. So this rose may have been have been forgotten by a newly wed bride or groom, but it is was the spark for my photographic passion and thus will not be forgotten by me at least.



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Extreme Cropping

A Wish

One of the most common pieces of advice that new photographers are given is to get your framing correct when you take your photograph. This saves you having to "reframe" or crop a shot afterwards to take distracting elements out. However, there are times when you might not want to do that, or even can't get the framing the way you envision the photograph. Sometimes you get the framing right at the time, but you see other possible compositions within the photograph that you have taken.

This is when you may be tempted to use an "extreme" crop. By that I mean one that has an unusual composition and/or aspect ratio. We tend to think or conceive of our images in standard aspect ratios like 4"x6", 5"x7", 8"x10", and so on. Are those the only allowable aspect ratios? No of course not, but they certainly are the most convenient if we want to eventually frame our photographs.

More after the jump.

When should we feel free to change our framing in post processing even to the extent of breaking conventional aspect ratios? Well, I think the answer is anytime that we feel that we can get a stronger image. Breaking conventions is something that artists have been doing for centuries. Before they can do that however, they learn what those conventions are, why they exist, what their strengths are, and what their weaknesses are. When the image we envision would be weakened by conventional framing, cropping, or aspect ratios, then we should feel free to stretch into other framing formats.

That was the case with the photograph at the beginning of this post, A Wish. This was a penny that my son had thrown into a fountain. I wanted to capture it, but when I looked at the original image it wasn't quite what I thought would be a strong image. Given the location and arrangement of the fountain, I didn't think that I could really get a correct framing at the time of photographing it. So, I framed it in such a way that I would have plenty of latitude to consider other framing or cropping options later. Here is the original image:

A Wish (original)

It is a nice enough photograph, but I don't think that it has quite the same impact as the cropped version at the beginning. This one is also straight from the camera, so no levels & curves or exposure work had been done to it yet.

What I wanted to convey was this penny's ripples stretching out to affect events after the wish was made. The sharp angles of the ripples make them fade to the edges of the frame quickly and the depth of the water slightly obscures the penny and thus affects the ripples' quality. By cropping the photograph in such an extreme manner, I brought the attention back to the penny and it's ripples. With the ripples leading out of the frame to hint at the Wish's influence rippling through space. Or at least that is how I view the image. ;-)

Study and learn composition. There are reasons that certain ways of arranging image elements work, and others don't. Also, don't be afraid to break those rules if it makes a better image. Rules work. Breaking the rules can work if you do it for a reason. Ignoring the rules due to laziness doesn't help create a good composition.

Another time when you might want to make an extreme crop is with landscapes. Doing so can give a panoramic effect without taking a true panoramic photograph. You might not have the time to set up a tripod, but you can still get the effect of a panoramic image0

Also, you might want to use a portion of an image as a texture filter for another image. In that case, crop the texture you want to use.

Vignettes are a kind of "virtual" cropping that focuses attention to a particular area of a photograph while retaining a convenient aspect ratio for framing.

Try it out on some photographs. You might find some pictures with-in a picture that are just as strong or stronger than the full image.
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New Nikons

Well, after a week or so of leaks Nikon has announced the new D700 pro/enthusist level camera. They also announced a new Speedlight flash, the SB900.

More after the jump.



The Nikon D700 is a full frame digial SLR camera that is situated between the D300 and the D3 cameras. Indeed, for all intents and purposes it is a D3 scaled down into a D300 sized form. The D3 retains some features over the D700, while the D700 has some refinements that may or may not make it into the D3 via firmware updates. There are a couple of D700 features that are hardware related that are not on the D3 like the Info button and a built-in pop-up flash with remote Commander mode for the Advanced Lighting System. All-in-all the D700 is expected to have the same image quality as the D3, with a slower frame speed and fewer of the bells and whistles of the D3. The D700 is estimated to retail at US$2,999 compared to the US$1,700 for the D300 and the US$4,999 for the D3.

The camera fills a similar place in Nikon's line-up that the Canon 5D did in Canon's camera line. Until now the 5D was the only smaller form factor full frame DSLR on the market. It is also a three year old model that is expected to be upgraded soon as well.

The specifications and speculations are flooding the photography sites, so instead of retyping them here I will just link to some of the better ones.

DPReview D700 preview
Thom Hogan's take on the D700
Rob Galbraith's D700 page
PopPhoto.com's D700 page
... and last but not least Nikon's Official announcement.

Nikon also announced the release of a couple of perspective control, i.e. "tilt-shift" lenses that were previously announced to be in development. These types of lenses are very expensive and meant for very specific professional applications. If you don't know if you need one or not, then get a Lensbaby instead. Similar capability for a fraction of the cost for a hobbist.

Finally, Nikon announced a new flagship Speedlight flash ... the SB900. This flash improves on the current top of the line SB800 in a number of ways. It has a new, more intuitive interface, it zooms from 14-200mm, it auto detects DX or FX lenses to control power output and light spread, it rotates 180 degrees both left and right, and it has controlable light shaping. Another new trick is that it can auto detect gel filters and adjust the camera's white balance automatically.

Joe McNally has already been playing around with the SB900s and has a post about his hand's on with them here. The lucky guy gets all of the new toys first.

So what do I think of all of these announcements?

I wish I could afford them ;-)

Seriously though, the D700 looks like nice camera and I would consider getting one when I need to upgrade my D80. However, the D300 is very similar and quite a bit closer to my needs right now, thus likely it would be the next camera I get if something should happen to my D80. The D700 would pair well with either the D300 or the D3 depending on the photographer's needs.

The SB900 looks like a great flash. I will wait to see some more hands-on with it, but I can easily see it being my next flash.

The new PC lenses are well out of my budget and needs. Don't need them, so they have no lust factor for me. If I start doing professional arctectural photography, then I'll change my mind.

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Epic Edits and Your Weaknesses

Brian Auer over at Epic Edits Weblog has an interesting article today. One of his readers, photographer Neil Creek, asked him what he thought was his weakest area of photography. It seemed like a good question to me. More after the jump.



Mr. Auer broke his weaknesses into a technical weakness and an artistic weakness. I think that is generally how I'd describe my weaknesses as well. Please understand that I am a hyper-self-critical Virgo, so I don't think anything I do is ever really good enough. Thus, my first answer would probably be that I'm weak at everything. ;-) Looking a bit closer and distilling the issues down, there a couple of areas that I don't feel comfortable with right now.

Technically, I really am still learning how to use the camera, but let's not hold something so general against me for the purpose of this discussion. I would say my biggest technical weakness would be judging good light from bad light and using lighting to my advantage. By lighting I mean both natural and artificial sources such as flashes, strobes, modifiers, etc. Photography is all about the light. A good understanding of how light works, how it affects contrast, how it can change appearances and so on is vital to good photography. This is part of the learning process of photography. We need to become as conversant in understanding light and it's nuances as possible. I think my photograhy is just starting to get to the point of taking light into consideration, rather than simply copying the scene in front of the lens.

How will I work to improve this? Practice. Light is everywhere. I will try to observe how light reflects, refracts, highlights and shades the scenes that I photograph. I will try to extend that to observing the world around me even when I don't have a camera with me. Becoming more aware of light and it's intereactions in general should help improve my photography. Working with artificial lighting will require some additional equipment. I will try to get or improvise the equipment to work with artificial lighting.

Now what about my artistic weaknesses. There are a couple of things that I think I need to work on. The first being composition or perhaps more precisely graphic design. I come from a technical background and have little formal education in graphic techniques and design. Actually, a lot of us probably have very little formal education in this area as it is not a subject that is emphasised in our educational system. While I have learned to follow certain rules for techical issues in my careers, the artistic side of thought hasn't gotten as much exercise. How am I working to improve it? I have been reading some books on the subject in to better understand the building blocks of graphic image design. In addition to that, I try to think about what might be good compositional elements for a given photograph and apply the ideas presented in what I've read.

The other artistic area I need to work on is people. Many of my photographs are taken of landscapes, flowers, or even still lifes. Relatively few of my photographs are taken of people. The people that I am most comfortable photographing are of course my family. I am very hestitant to photograph strangers. Street photography looks like an interesting genre of photography, but when I'm out with my camera I have a very hard time pointing my camera at strangers. I don't like to intrude on people, and some people consider having their photograph taken very intrusive. I am also a fairly introspective person, and like to keep to myself. Approaching someone to ask permission to photograph them is also difficult for me. How will I work on changing this? That is probably going to be a bigger issue than the others. Indeed, it may be one that I don't improve at all. There are certainly enough other things that interest me photographically, that I still would have plenty of subjects available if I don't practice street photography. Maybe I could try wedding photography. That should give me a good kick in the gut to be more intereactive with people, eh?

In the end how would I improve any of my weakness? Practice, Education, and more Practice.

What do you think are your weakest areas?

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Shutter Painting

Two Worlds

I'm reading Bryan Peterson's new book, Understanding Shutter Speed. In it he mentions a technique he sometimes calls "shutter painting". Basically, it is using a long shutter speed of about a second or so, and jiggling, spinning, rotating, zooming or otherwise moving the camera. This can give you some interesting abstract images if you're lucky. If not, then you only looked crazy in front of your friends for a couple of minutes. Anyway, here are a few more after the jump.



Water Color

Ice Crystals

Sunbeams

Hurricane

Take-Off!

There are some more over on my Zenfolio Gallery.

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