It's My Nature » abstract

Coneflower Meets Macro

Ed — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:48:16 +0000

The ebb and flow of our photographic lives always seems to have us moving from subject to subject, from technique to technique, from favorite lens to favorite lens as time moves incessantly forward. The past couple of years (prior to this one) I tended to do a lot more macro and flower photography. This year not so much as my attention has turned more to landscapes and sunrises and such.

I found myself at home today, not really feeling well but getting bored of sleeping the day away. So I one point I grabbed my Canon 30D, put on a Sigma 70 mm macro lens and ventured out into the backyard for a little while. Nothing fancy. No tripod. Just the camera, the backyard and me. In the back corner (of a small backyard) behind the (very small) made-made pond, in amongst the native shrubs and wildflowers was a small stand of purple coneflowers that looked like they could be fun to work with.

So I did. All images were shot handheld at f/2.8. I shot wide open because I was really looking to create some soft images with very soft backgrounds. For the third image, I purposefully took the entire image out-of-focus in-camera in order to create an entirely soft image. Images of that type aren’t to everyone’s liking but hey, I like it and that’s what counts!

“Coneflower #1″

“Coneflower #2″

“Coneflower #3 – Perchance to Dream”

Shooting the Works… Fireworks, That Is!

Ed — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:39:26 +0000

We finally had an opportunity to meet up with some Facebook friends this past Friday evening and photograph the weekly Friday night fireworks display offered up by the town of New Hope, PA. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, New Hope, and it’s sister town across the bridge spanning the Delaware River – Lambertville, NJ, are both very artsy villages filled with galleries, antiques shops, boutique-type stores, restaurants and bed & breakfasts. Our friend who invited us said quite frankly that even though she lives in New Hope, she just can’t see the attraction. Well whether you can see it or not, there were fireworks and there were a ton of people on both sides of the river.

We actually set up on the New Jersey side where we had a better angle on the fireworks. The first rule of photographing fireworks is location, location, location. It helps to know where the fireworks will be exploding in the sky and it helps to scout a good location from which to shoot them. Fortunately for me, both had already been done on prior Friday nights by Sharon and her entourage of photographers. She took us to the spot and pointed out where the fireworks would be. Heck at this point we could mail it in. Well almost. There were five of us and we had the spot to ourselves… for two hours until about five minutes before the start of the fireworks when a horde of kids and parents descended upon us. We were along a wall above the river and I am still amazed none of the kids (or parents) fell into the river. Be that as it may, I had everything set up and ready to go so once the fireworks began I started shooting.

The set up was really pretty simple. While the other folks were shooting with 24-70 mm lenses, I went with a 70-200mm. In hindsight, for this particular location, a 24-70 would probably have been a better choice. I expected to be a little farther from the fireworks than we were at this excellent location. I set up the camera and lens so that everything was manual. AF was turned off in favor of manual focus and the camera was set to manual mode. At this point, I just set the ISO to 200 (but 100 would work just as well). White Balance was left on AWB. I was on burst mode. I set the aperture to f/11 but again you could go anywhere between f/8 and f/16. I chose to land right in the middle – f/11. Shutter speed is dependent on the look you want. About 0.3 to 0.5 seconds worked well, I found. But I did go as far as 1.0 sec on a couple of occasions. I set everything ahead of time and adjusted the focus basically to infinity by focusing on the edge of a cloud.

Once the fireworks began, I made sure I had the tripod adjusted properly for where the fireworks were exploding and, using my remote shutter release, I started firing away. Now with a 70-200, I was looking to fill the frame with the fireworks. (Those using the 24-70 were getting the fireworks within the setting of the river, the bridge, town.) I was getting fireworks and black sky. Wanting to fill the frame as much as possible left very little margin for error. Many of the fireworks went a little left or a little right and weren’t framed properly. So this becomes a bit of meatball/shotgun photography. Take lots of pictures and hope some turn out. Ratio? Well I made around 150 images and kept about 50.

Here are a few of the images. I feel like I should have sound effects or at least the “1812 Overture” playing in the background!

“The Opening Salvo”

“Lighting the sky with color #1″

“Lighting the sky with color #2″ (This is a longer, one second exposure.)

“White Light” – (Well not exactly but as close as it’s going to get.)

“Abstractus” (Converted to B&W with Nik Silver Efex Pro and then Solarization filter applied and adjustments made.)

There are many more where these came from but I hope you enjoyed this small sampling. Fourth of July next weekend. Get out there and shoot the works!

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.

Reflections

Ed — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:06:21 +0000

I had a great weekend of shooting all within one hour of home. Friday was the day to visit Lake Galena in Peace Valley Park (Bucks County, PA) for sunrise. Saturday, my wife and I headed for the Delaware Water Gap NRA for sunrise and a morning of shooting and hiking. Sunday, being Easter, was spent close to home where I did an early morning walk along my local creek.

As I looked back over the images from the weekend, I realized that I spent quite a bit of time focusing on reflections in the water. So I thought I would share a few of them with you.

This first image was shot shortly after sunrise on Hidden Lake in the Delaware Water Gap NRA.

The second image was shot at the Pocono Environmental Education Center also located in the Delaware Water Gap.

And the third was shot along my local creek early on Easter morning.

What can I say? I love reflections and hope you do too.

Branching Out

Ed — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:14:57 +0000

This is another 10-image multiple exposure image that I made recently.

I have been giving multiple exposures, pans, digital sandwiches, etc. a lot of thought lately, particularly after reading about some different techniques in a book entitled Photo Impressionism and the Subjective Image by Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. I would highly recommend the book if you have any interest at all in impressionistic photography. It really got my creative juices flowing and I am looking forward to “branching out” (thus the title of this post) into other types of multiple exposures and impressionistic photography now that spring is upon us. I like images like the one above but am even more excited about the prospects of introducing a lot more color into my multiple exposures and pans.

Keep an eye out for some (hopefully) exciting new stuff from “It’s My Nature”.

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.

ZOOM – Blurs and Multiple Exposures of a Gerbera Daisy

Ed — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:48:32 +0000

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.