It's My Nature » in-camera blur

An Inside Look into the Life of a Nature Photographer: The Weekend in Review – Day 1, Saturday

Ed — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:46:09 +0000

I was contemplating what, from this weekend, I wanted to add to my blog. After thinking about it a while, I concluded why not take you through the entire weekend. So let’s start at the beginning, Saturday morning.

Saturday more was a “late” start for us. We were up at 0530 and out of the house at 0630 headed for Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve. If you love wildflowers (and I do), Bowman’s Hill, just south of New Hope, PA is wonderful place to be. And this time of year, it is doubly good because they also have early morning bird walks on Saturday mornings. So my wife heads out on the guided bird walk (she has seen life birds her last two walks) and I wander about looking for wildflowers that just somehow speak to me. It funny (and a bit painful) but I always lug around my entire backpack arsenal of camera bodies, lenses, filters, teleconverters, extension tubes, etc. etc. And I always seem to use just a single camera body (this time the 50D), a single lens (my Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro because to me wildflowers tend to beg for close-ups) and, of course, my tripod. And so it was on this day. As I said, I tend to look around for those special flowers as opposed to opening fire and shooting everything in sight. The entire morning, I only photographed five flowers. This Virginia Spiderwort image is an example of what I came away with on Saturday morning.

We stopped for breakfast/lunch at a favorite little roadside cafe and were home for the afternoon during which I processed images from the morning shoot. After dinner, we decided to head out for a ride. Barb always takes her binoculars and I have to take along at least a camera and lens. And that’s what I did. After dragging along the 30+ pounds of camera gear in the morning, I went out with just the 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Heck, I didn’t even know where we were going at this point. And the 24-70 is my basic walkabout lens. We ended up at a small county park along the Delaware River just south of Easton, PA called Wy-Hit-Tuk (don’t ask; I have no idea what it means). We walked through the park and along the Delaware Canal towpath where I came across these stands of bright yellow flowers. I’m not even sure what they are but as soon as I saw them I knew I had to create an impressionistic abstract of them. The key to making any type of blur abstract is to lengthen the shutter speed so that you have time to move the camera. Sometimes that movement is a vertical pan, sometimes it is a horizontal swipe and sometimes it is just a slight little bounce or jiggle that creates the blur. I dropped the ISO to 100 because that will lengthen the shutter speed. I happened to be in AV mode so I stopped down to around f/18 which in combination with the ISO 100 gave me a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds and I was ready to shoot. (Note, it just just as easy, probably easier, to switch to TV mode and set the exposure of 0.8 sec and let the camera select aperture.) Then I started to shoot – handholding the camera and introducing slight little movements to get the effect I wanted. What effect? A Monet-like photo-impressionistic effect.

Upon returning home, I surveyed the images made (maybe a dozen), selected the few that I liked and processed them. And thus ended Saturday, Day 1 of the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Stay tuned for Day 2 (Delaware Water Gap) and Day 3 (Back to Nockamixon) coming to you tomorrow and Wednesday.

A Different View of Sunrise

Ed — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:36:40 +0000

Yesterday I was up at 0400 and out of the house by 0420 in search of a sunrise to shoot. When looking for as close to sure thing as I can find, I always seem to return to the marina at Lake Nockamixon (Nockamixon State Park, Bucks County, PA). And yesterday was no exception. I think I mentioned that I will be hanging a small exhibit in a local bistro in June. It looks like it will be 10-12 images and I’ve adopted the working theme “Sunrises & Sunsets from Your Own Backyard”. All images were made within one hour of home and the bistro. Anyway, as I looked over my images I realized that I could use one or two more vertical (portrait) images to best fill the space available. So my goal yesterday was to make a few more verts to choose from.

What I relearned the hard way is that vertical sunrises are not necessarily easy to shoot unless you have a really full sky or something to hold the foreground. I had neither yesterday. The sky, while brilliantly colored at the horizon, ended fairly quickly as we moved up. And the foreground was just a lot of water. And this even if I zoomed in with my 70-200 mm lens. In hindsight, I would have been better off staying in the marina per se where I could have used sailboats to hold the foreground. Oh well!

So I made some verts and I made some horizontal (landscape) images and then decided to take the camera off the tripod and go for some blur abstracts using a horizontal pan/blur/sweep/swipe (whatever you want to call it). I came up with two images that I really like (and I may include one or both in the exhibit to change things up a bit). The images were made maybe 10 minutes apart and “focusing” on slightly different parts of the sky. So without further ado here is a different (blur abstract) view of sunrise.

“Pre-Sunrise Abstract #1″

“Pre-Sunrise Abstract #2″

Hope you enjoy this different view of sunrise.

Riverblur

Ed — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:10:35 +0000

This series, well it’s only two images, is from an evening walk along the Delaware Canal towpath (Delaware Canal State Park, PA) which, for much of its length, runs along a narrow spit of land between the canal and the Delaware River. I have often joked that it is a state park that is nearly 60 miles long and about 10 feet wide. It is also a state park that was absolutely devastated by two 100-year floods several years back when two hurricanes (Ivan and another) flooded the river and destroyed much of the towpath. Slowly, it is being rebuilt.

The images are obviously both blurs. The first is the result of a horizontal blur with a 0.6 sec exposure. The second is the result of a vertical blur also with a 0.6 sec exposure. Both were made with my Canon 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens.

“Riverblur 1.0″

“Riverblur 2.0″

Hope you enjoy! While I enjoy creating all types of nature images (see the sunrises, sunsets, flowers, water images and others below and in my website galleries); these blurs and other images like them say more about me as an artist that almost any other type of image I create.

Pushing the Envelope

Ed — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:05:09 +0000

As many of you already know, almost every time I wander out with my camera I end up tacking on (which isn’t really the right word since it makes it sound like an afterthought and it isn’t; it’s pre-planned) some shots that are meant to push the boundaries of my photography. In fact as I pointed out in my artist statement, it is where I see my photography going and where I feel most creative and comfortable. I love doing flowers and birds and landscapes but I have the most fun doing abstracts.

Anyway, we were at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve back on Saturday. It was a lovely day albeit a bit cool and plenty windy. Dealing with the wind was quite the challenge and after a bit I decided to follow my own advice and “become one with the wind”. I decided to slow the shutter speed and allow the wind to create a natural blur to the images. Then I decided go beyond letting the wind take me where it wanted. I started working on some more unusual blurs.

The first image is the result of a “zoom blur”. I slowed the shutter speed (through the use of a Vari-ND filter) to 1-sec and with my 70-200 lens zoomed from 70mm to 200mm during the period the shutter was open. Just a little note here. If you compose at the widest focal length (70mm here) and zoom in (to 200mm), you have total control over what is in your frame. If you do the reverse and start tight (200mm) and zoom out to 70mm, you can end up with extraneous stuff in the frame that you really didn’t want and didn’t consider starting with the tighter composition. Just a tip.

The second image is the result of a “radial blur”, sometimes referred to as a “twist blur”. I used the same set up as above – Canon 5D Mark II; 70-200 2.8L IS; Vari_ND and tripod. I also used loner exposures of around 1-sec. The key here is to loosen the tripod collar on the lens so that you can freely rotate the camera. How far you rotate can vary and will give different effects based on degree of rotation and speed of rotation. I find that I tend to prefer a little detail in my blurs and have found that I like about 90 degrees in one second. Here’s an example.

Birches

Ed — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:01:39 +0000

(Vertical Pan; 1.0 sec @ f/14; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 70mm w/ Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L and my 5D Mark II)

There was a short break in the rains this morning so we headed out in search of something to photograph. I followed the fog to the top of South Mountain and Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Campus. I made a few fog images which I may post a little later but then I came across a pair of birches just off the side of the road. I pulled off the road and on to the shoulder, got out and started to work the pair of birches. I made images from several different perspectives but ended up liking the one above the best. It is a very busy image and it is that busy-ness that really appeals to me here.

With birches on my mind, I decided to return to Trexler Park in Allentown, PA where I had spotted a couple of real nice birches a couple of weeks back. The light wasn’t what I wanted that day so I filed these trees away in the back of my brain with a promise to return at a later date when the light would be more diffuse. That was today. Again my objective was to work the trees with both motion blur and multiple exposures. The first example below is a 10-image multiple exposure made with my Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens, tripod-mounted.

(10-image Multiple Exposure; 1/125 sec @ f/4.0; ISO 400; 0EV; FL 140mm)

As I was working the multiple exposures, the rains started up again. So I finished up by taking the 5DMk2 and 70-200mm f/2.8 off the tripod, stopping down to f/22 and dropping the ISO to 100 in order to lengthen the shutter speed to 1.0 sec allowing me to make some images with the vertical pan technique. Same trees, same perspective, different technique and different look.

Sandy Hook (NJ) Back Bay Wetlands (Horizontal Pan)

Ed — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:08:08 +0000

(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.

Just about when you are ready to give up…

Ed — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:39:37 +0000

Cold (17F), blustery (20-30 mph winds) but we decided to go out this morning anyway. Admittedly most of the morning was spent in the car driving from site to site looking for birds for my wife (we found the albino hawk she wanted to see) and anything for me to shoot. After two hours, I hadn’t even taken my camera out of the bag when I mentioned to my wife that I hadn’t seen a single thing that I had wanted to shoot. Not a minute later, we rounded a curve in a local county park and there it was… a most interesting (at least to me) stand of trees, cypress maybe, I don’t know for sure.

I pulled over, got out the camera and made several images. This is one that I like.

Image made with Canon 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens, handheld

0.8 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 55mm

Image processed in Nik Dfine, Viveza 2, and Color Efex (Polarization and Lighten Center filters).

Of Moss and Lichens

Ed — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:55:37 +0000

These are two more images from last Sunday morning’s walk in Jacobsburg State Park (PA). Very early in our walk along the Henry’s Woods Trail, we hit an area where every tree trunk was covered by either lush, bright green moss or scaly, lighter green lichens. I couldn’t resist the photo opportunity so I took a series of shots using a vertical pan technique (shutter speeds of 1.0 to 1.6 seconds) to create in-camera motion blur in my images.

Here are a couple of examples processed with Nik plug-ins (Dfine, Viveza, Sharpener Pro). Hope you enjoy them and are able to share in the vision.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a happy and prosperous New Year. And keep on shooting.

Picks Among the Pans

Ed — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:57:12 +0000

My wife and I went out a bit just before sunset yesterday. She went in search of Piliated Woodpeckers and Great Horned Owls and I went in search of some interesting photo opportunities.

She found the Piliateds and we heard the Owls.

And I found some interesting compositional opportunities for vertical pans/in-camera motion blurs. The first image is one that I’ve entitled “Blue Light Special”. No, not the K-Mart Blue Light Specials. Remember those? I was just really struck by the blue tonality to the light as it reflected between the tall pines. The color, the contrast, the verticality all seems to really speak to me here.

The second image is one that I really would like to hear your opinions on. The image I have posted here is exactly the image I envisioned out in the field. As I looked at the very thick stand of pines, I noticed the setting sun peeking out among a couple of the tree trunks. I immediately thought that a vertical pan would cause the sun to create streaks descending through the image – like fire balls hurled earthward. And sure enough I got what I was looking for. I like the resultant image but I’m not sure how much appeal it has to others. That’s where I’d like to hear your thoughts. I entitled this one “The Fire Gods Have Spoken”. It was nearly sunset and I really like those beams of light/fire reaching down toward the earth in what is an otherwise subdued scene.

Images were made with my Canon 50D and 70-200 2.8L IS lens, handheld.

ADDENDUM: I posted these images in the “Out-of-the-Box” forum on BPN where comments to “The Fire Gods Have Spoken”, similar to those made here, led me to make the following response. Trust me, this should not be viewed as defensiveness. Rather I would like it to be viewed as opening a discussion of “abstract photography” and the creative process underlying it.

Here is the brief critique from a photographer whom I greatly respect and my response:

…the hot streaks really overpower the rest of the image. Your other blurs have seemed more precise and controlled – this one seems more “out there.”

And my response:

There are really two issues here, artistically speaking. But they are related. Let’s take the second first – the “out there” aspect of this image. It is indeed a pretty radical departure from the “order”, if you will, that is exhibited in my other blurs. One only needs to look as far as “Blue Light Special” to see that tidiness or neatness or orderliness in an image. This image is meant to bring a sense of chaos in that orderliness – to capture hellfire and brimstone, if you will. I wanted the juxtaposition of chaos created by the light superimposed over the quietness and neatness of the twilight seen in the background which Denise pointed out as what she really liked. Creating that feeling of bringing chaos into order was my purpose in panning the sun that was peeking through the trees.

Which brings me to the second (first) point. If the “hot streaks really overpower the rest of the image” as you say then the juxtaposition is lost because the background get lost and all we have is the chaos without the orderliness. In that regard, the image has then failed to create the “tension” in the viewer that I had wished to create.

I think what we are discussing here is the very nature of abstract art. In many respects a bird on a stick is a bird on a stick and a sunset reflecting on a lake is a sunset reflecting on a lake. I’m not saying capturing either is easy. But when I look at it, it is what it is. Abstractions are, I believe, different.

Your thoughts?

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Morning…

Ed — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:40:19 +0000

right around sunrise.

So we had a change of plans. We were going into NYC today. Nothing special. Walk around a bit. Visit B&H. Pick up a couple of small things. Window shop. Visit Rockefeller Center. Have lunch. Stuff like that. Barb wasn’t overly excited about going. Weather tanked. And I could get the Fisheye optic for the Lensbaby which I was planning to pick up at B&H and the Soft Focus optic (which I was going to wait on) direct from Lensbaby and still end up spending over $100 less than I would have spent on the NYC trip. More than you wanted to know but it explains why I am here and not pounding the pavements of the Big Apple.

Since I was here, I went out just before sunrise and was looking for “snow on trees in early light” opportunities. I came up with a few right along my local creek. I burred some, sandwiched or Ortoned some, Topazed some, and some I left be just as out of the camera. But this just may be my favorite from this morning. And of course, it just happens to be a blur.

Image made with my Canon 50D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, handheld.

0.6 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; Sunny WB; FL 65mm.