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It has been a very slow weekend from a photography perspective. I have been sick since Thursday and with the snowstorm on Saturday, I haven’t gotten out to shoot at all. So I may have to pull from the archives for something to post to the blog this week. But before I do that, let me indulge in a little bit of creative silliness. I did spend a few minutes out in the backyard yesterday and I happened to have my iPhone tucked away in my pocket. So in the few minutes that I was out there, I did end up making a few images.
When I got back into the house just a few minutes later, I dumped them on to the iMac and started to play around with processing using the Nik Complete suite of plug-ins for Photoshop. Here’s what I came up with.
This image is of three Maine Harbor Bell wind chimes that we have hanging from the corner of the garage. Processing was with Nik Dfine for noise reduction; Nik Viveza for brightness, contrast, structure; Nik Silver Efex Pro for the conversion to black and white and the antique sepia look; and finally just a touch of Sharpener Pro.
It’s not the Mona Lisa but it was fun to create.
If you’ve come via the home page or wandered through the galleries, you may have seen these images before even though they are barely 24 hours old. I took some time yesterday and worked on making images of the Gerbera that were different from what I often see and interesting to me from a compositional perspective.
This first image is a single image zoom blur made with my Canon 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens w/ a 500D close-up filter/lens; tripod mounted. I set up for a long exposure (2.0 sec @ f/20; ISO 100; -2/3 EV), started with the lens at 70mm and a brief pause before zooming to 200mm where I ended on a brief pause before the shutter closed. The result can be seen above.
The second image here is a 10-image zoom multiple exposure. I focused in on the flower at 70mm and following each exposure, I zoomed in a little more ending at 200mm. As I zoomed in shutter speed varied from 3.2 sec at 70mm to 1.6 sec at 200mm @ f/20; ISO 100; -1 EV. The images were combined in Photoshop using a script written/designed by Uwe Steinmueller & Tony Sweet. The result can be seen below.
The third image is a 4-image zoom multiple exposure created the same way as described above. The four images were shot at 70mm, 100mm, 135mm, and 200mm. You can see the resultant image below.
Slam on brakes; swerve to the right. Every once in a while, I’ve got to try something different. I hadn’t touched a camera since last weekend so this morning before we headed out for a quick visit to Barnes & Noble, lunch at Panera’s and a trip to the Farm Market; I packed a small backpack with the unlikely arsenal of my 30D with the Lensbaby and accessories and my IR-converted Rebel XT with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. By the time we hit the Farm Market, I had yet to hold a camera or, obviously, take a picture.
But that was soon to end not with the 30D and Lensbaby nor with the IR-converted XT but rather with my iPhone camera. I made a series of fruit and veggie images with the iPhone and when I got home, processed them using Nik filters in Photoshop CS4. This particular image was processed with Nik Dfine for noise reduction and Viveza 2 for some global brightness, contrast, saturation and structure adjustments. I then moved into Color Efex Pro where I ran it through the Glamour Glow filter followed by the Vignette Blur filter. And I finished with just a touch of Sharpener Pro.
I kinda like the results. Your thoughts?
January 2010 Version Above/June 2009 Version Below
RAZORBILLS ABOVE/PUFFINS BELOW
January 2010 Version Above/June 2009 Version Below
Over the past several years I upgraded to Photoshop CS4, added then upgraded Lightroom, added plug-ins like Neat Image and the complete Topaz Suite, none of these has impressed me as much as the Nik Software Complete Collection. For those of you unfamiliar with Nik’s series of plug-ins for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture, let me say this: they are pricey but oh so very impressive in what they allow you to do with an image.
Nik Dfine is the noise reduction plug-in and works almost automatically. Click on it, it opens, assesses the image, filters the noise and all that is left to do is to hit OK. And then it is off to Nik Viveza 2, the color, brightness, contrast, texture enhancing plug-in. A little more work than Dfine but the results are well worth. Color Efex Pro is a plug-in with over 50 different filters that allow you to create all kinds of wonderful effects. Silver Efex Pro may be the best black and white conversion software available. And Sharpener Pro is an excellent image sharpening plug-in.
I don’t work for Nik. I am not a Nik professional. I am not an expert with Nik. I bought Nik Complete out of my own pocket. I’ve only had it a month but it has wowed me. Many, probably all, of my posts from the past month have been touched, in one way or another, by Nik.
The images above were made back in June of 2009 on our trip to Machias Seal Island. In both cases (Razorbills and Puffins), the first image is the image reworked with Nik while the second is the image that I had posted back in June (processed in Lightroom and CS4). To my eye the differences are dramatic. I reworked both images using Dfine to reduce any noise; Viveza 2 with their control point technology to selective manipulate colors, tones, brightnesses and textures; and Sharpener Pro to… well, sharpen the image.
This has got me thinking about the possibility of adding another feature to my website – a “How do you do that?” page where I would select an image and take us through the process, often fairly simple but sometimes not, of getting from Point A (in camera) to Point B (ready for print). That may be coming in the not too distant future so if you are interested, keep an eye out.
(1/2 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 43mm)
Image was made yesterday morning at Lake Galena in Peace Valley Park (Bucks County, PA) in the minutes before sunrise. The lake obviously was frozen.
Used my Canon 50D; 24-70 2.8L w/ a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter; all tripod mounted.
When I got home and looked at the images on the big screen, I felt they were cold, desolate, lonely and boring. I wanted cold, desolate, lonely and less boring. So I went to work. I started with cropping out some of the excess ice in the foreground in order to provide a better balance. Then I ran the image through Nik Dfine to remove any noise that may have presented itself. Moving on to Viveza 2.0, I opened up the blacks in the trees on the left and right and reduced brightness while adding saturation to the ice and sky accentuating the blues and reds. I also reduced structure a bit in order to start smoothing the ice blemishes. After contenting myself that I did what I wanted to do in Viveza, I moved on to Color Efex Pro. I said that I had used a 3-stop GND while shooting but felt it could use a bit more so I used the Graduated ND filter in Nik and finished it off by softening and smoothing the image using a filter designed, I think, for portraits called Glamour Glow. Finally I used Sharpener Pro to, believe it or not, reduce the structure and focus a bit more in order to reduce the impact of the ice blemishes even more – much like a portrait photographer would do to remove skin blemishes.
“Fire and Ice” is the result. Remember… cold, desolate, lonely. Let me know what you think!
Yet another image from last weekend’s trip to Sandy Hook, NJ. I was drawn to this scene by the way the ice had formed on the rocks. After getting home and processing the image, I found that I wasn’t really pleased with what I had. There was, believe it or not, too much blue. Blue sky, blue water, it all seemed to detract from the ice on the rocks. So I decided to work on a black and white conversion and this is what I came up with.
I use Nik Viveza and Color Efex Pro to whiten the whites and brighten the brights. Then I went into Silver Efex Pro to make the conversion beginning with the “high structure” preset and making adjustments from there. Finally, I added a yellow filter to the black and white conversion with the final result what you see here.
Image made with my Canon 50D; 24-70mm f/2.8L lens; and tripod.
(0.8 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1/3 EV)
(0.8 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1EV)
These were the only blurs that I did during our recent (weekend past) trip to Sandy Hook, NJ. The layers of water/ice followed by reeds followed by more water/ice and more reeds before finally reaching the sky just seemed to beg for a horizontal pan which helped eliminate some of the messiness while keeping and emphasizing the layers of color unfolding from front to back. Processing with Nik filters (Dfine, Viveza, Color Efex Pro and Sharpener Pro) brought out just enough reed detail in the reflections to accentuate the reediness.
Image made with my canon 50D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens w/ Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to help provide the longer exposures for the pan.
8.0 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1/3 EV
6.0 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -2/3 EV
Barb and I were up at 0400 and headed off for Sandy Hook. We arrived before sunrise, actually before civil twilight, and I set up on Chokecherry Beach to photograph the sunrise. The morning was tad cloudier than I had hope but I was still able to capture some nice color in the early morning sky. We ended up having a very nice day at the Hook and came away with a number of nice images (at least to my eye). But the day started pre-dawn so that’s where I’ll start with the images. Additional images from Sandy Hook will follow through out the upcoming week.
Images made with a Canon 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens w/ a Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to lengthen the exposures. Camera and lens were tripod-mounted.
I really like Teasel throughout all the seasons. This is an image I shot on the fly this past weekend and had/has a background that I really don’t like. Actually, I can say that I hated the background on the original image. So with nothing else to do when I got back home, I started to play with the image in an effort to compensate for the very busy and distracting background. I played with different crops; different size, color and opacity vignettes; and different filters in Color Efex Pro and Viveza2. Everything I did, and I did a lot, was designed to soften the background. The actual Teasel was pretty much just sharpened a bit and left go.
Ultimately, I ended up with this image. I don’t hate the background any longer even though I still don’t like it. And I do think the image now works. Do you?
Canon 30D and Lensbaby Composer, handheld.
1/1000 sec @ f/8.0; ISO 400; 0 EV
What can I say? That title pretty much sums up my yesterday.
We had decided earlier in the week that, weather permitting, we would head down to the Jersey shore and visit some of our favorite lakes and ponds in search of wintering ducks and such. Yesterday’s forecast was the better of the two days, so yesterday it was. So far, so good. Actually weather-wise, it wasn’t terrible. Cold… yes, particularly in the early morning but it did warm to the upper 20s by early afternoon. Windy… oh yeah! But it was sunny and the sunshine felt good beating down on us.
When we got there, the first thing we found was that the lakes were all about 90% frozen over. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In years past, a frozen lake just meant the ducks were gathered into a much smaller area. It was like, dare I say, shooting ducks in a barrel. Except this time, unlike years past, there were very few ducks to shoot. It seems to be a very bad year for wintering ducks along the Jersey coast. Don’t know why. Anyway, I did get a few images (Cormorant, Hooded Merganser, American Wigeon) before moving on in search of other non-avian subjects to photograph.
Switching cameras (to the 30D from the 50D) and lenses (to the 24-70 and 70-200 from the 300 w/ 2x TC), I was off making images for sandwiches, blurs, multiple exposures, etc. Things seemed to be progressing well.
To make a very long story a little shorter, I got home and started to import the images. The few bird images uploaded into Lightroom fine. Then I moved on to the images made with 30D and the memory card went rogue on me again, corrupted and locked up Lightroom. This was exactly what happened a month ago. Same camera, same card (I had reformatted it and it seemed to be working fine) and even the same kind of shots (multiple single images for a 10-image multiple exposure). This time, I lost most of the images on that card and had to spend most of the evening trying to get Lightroom up and running again. I did. It is. But what a pain in the backside.
Anyway, this is one of the few images that actually imported (I have since tossed the card) before the corruption set in.
As we walked through this area along Shark River Inlet (Belmar, NJ), we saw these pine cones and were really taken by their beauty and by the light at that particular time of day. I ended up doing a digital sandwich with the image as I described a little while back in this blog. Then I processed the sandwiched image using Nik Dfine for noise reduction. Nik Viveza 2 for color and brightness control. And Nik Color Efex Pro where I used the Darken/Lighten Center filter to brighten the center even more while darkening the surrounding areas and finished by adding a black vignette which further served to draw the eye to the cone’s center. The effect, I believe, is to create the appearance of a spotlight shining on the single cone.
Anyway, the image above is what I came up with. Your thoughts/comments are always appreciated.
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