It's My Nature » Digital Sandwich

Making the Best of a Bad Day

Ed — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:22:25 +0000

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.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Morning (Version 2.0)

Ed — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:17:30 +0000

Most of you have seen my pan/blur version of this composition, immediately below on this blog. I did work this comp with several different techniques in mind. This particular version, Version 2.0, utilizes the digital sandwich (or Orton, if you prefer) technique. I took a single image, duplicated it in Photoshop, blurred the duplicate image and then sandwiched it and the original to create the above image. (It is a technique that I learned from Tony Sweet. Thanks, Tony.) A different look. A different feel. A different mood. I like it! But I must admit, I like the blur more. But that’s just me. This is your opportunity to compare.

Four Images/Four Techniques

Ed — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:48:11 +0000

It was just that kind of day yesterday. When I got up yesterday the forecast was for overcast with fog. I was really interested in shooting in the fog so I got charged up… until I looked outside and saw clear skies and no fog. Yep it was a cloudless morning with bright sun. I wish I could be wrong as much as meteorologists and still keep my job!

Anyway, we went out to a local community park/rail-trail where my wife looked for birds and I looked for interesting compositions. It wasn’t a particularly interesting morning so I found myself trying some different things. When we returned home, I realized that I really only had four images to speak of (multiple versions of each) and each, as it turned out, highlighted a different technique.

#1 – So here goes. Not 60 seconds from the parking lot, I came across a tree with multiple trunks rising from a single base. So I stopped and decided to make some motion blur images. Here is one example.

#2 – Next we moved on to the old quarry hole now filled with water. As I said the sky was cloudless, the sun bright and the reflections on the water were mirror sharp… actually way too sharp for my tastes. So first I broke out the Lensbaby and tried some selective focus images of which this is one.

#3 – But while there I also shot several images with my 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, tripod-mounted and at f/32. As I said the reflection was so sharp, so crisp, so detailed that it almost hurt my eyes so I decided to tone it down by creating a digital sandwich in post-processing.

#4 – As we were returning to the parking lot, I stopped by one of the abandoned buildings left over from the heyday of the cement industry in the area. This building was empty but I was taken by the stonework in the walls that still remained in remarkably good condition. It was dark and dirty with bright light shining through the windows. Perfect for HDR. So here is a 7-image composite HDR image of the inside of that abandoned building.

So maybe not the most exciting subjects I’ve ever encountered but an interesting morning nonetheless.

Fall Foliage – Two Ways

Ed — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:46:02 +0000

These images were made back in mid-October before my trip to Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the Tony Sweet Workshop. I wanted to test out my 70-200mm f/2.8L IS with a Kenko 1.4x teleconverter so I took the lens and TC along with my 30D to the office and went out into a local park (Lehigh Parkway in Allentown, PA) at lunchtime. I remembered this particular pair of trees from years past and knew they would make a perfect subject.

After shooting some very straightforward images of the trees and seeing that the 70-200/1.4x combo would work just fine (giving me 98-280mm at f/4.0), I decided to work on some motion blurs and came away with several images like this.

(1/25 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 98mm)

I know I am kinda partial to motion blur images like this but I really liked what I had here. And I left it at that basically forgetting about the straightforward images that I made before and after the blurs… until now.

Using the digital sandwiching technique that I learned from Tony Sweet and described two entries below, I reworked one of the straightforward images by sandwiching it with a copy which I blurred pretty significantly (Gaussian Blur of around 24). I also like how the sandwich turned out.

(1/100 sec @ f/11; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 98mm)

So there you have it. Fall Foliage – Two Ways. You have your choice of in-camera motion blur or post-processed digital image sandwiching. The choice is yours!

Digital Sandwiching

Ed — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:11 +0000

This is another technique that I picked up over the weekend from Tony Sweet. It is the digital equivalent of the slide sandwich where two images (one sharp and in focus and the other soft and out of focus) are superimposed on one another. In this digital equivalent, I am using a single sharply focused image and creating the second softer image using Photoshop filters.

The actually process is really very simple (thanks Tony!).

1) Open an image in Photoshop

2) Create a duplicate layer

3) Go under IMAGE to APPLY IMAGE and select BLENDING SCREEN then OK out

4) Make a copy of the Background layer

5) Go to FILTERS to BLUR and to GAUSSIAN. Select a level a blur you want to try. I am usually in the 12-20 range.

6) On LAYERS PANEL switch from NORMAL to MULTIPLY

7) If satisfied with result, FLATTEN image.

Make any necessary post-processing adjustments to the image as you normally would. Here are two examples of digitally sandwiched images.

The first is a simple aster image that was shot at f/20. The sandwiching makes for a much softer image as can be seen from the edges of the petals and the flower’s center. Just another look, if you will.

The second image is from last weekend’s workshop and was shot at f/22. The reflections in the water appeared razor-sharp and seemed to need to be softened a bit. So I created a sandwich to accomplish the softening. Again, just a slightly different feel to the image. Nothing super-dramatic.

Let me know what you think?