We live in an extraordinary universe. Nature’s gorgeous creations are all around us. Photography is about sharing a small part of the beauty we each experience with others.
One of those mornings
Scenes worth photographing aren’t only at iconic photo spots. And images from those might be over shared anyway. Go out wherever you are and find inspiration. And make photos. And show us what you’ve seen. The hardest part is getting up and going out.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. If you can, show up for the show, make some photos, and share them!
Hurricane Ida is expected to hit Louisiana today – it’s a very dangerous storm. Be careful out there and please take care of yourselves and each other.
In Picking a Print, I wrote about deciding on one more photo for our family room. Lynn re-organized things for us and I thought you’d like to see how they look.
The Prints (photo by Lynn Rosack)
I used to have a very high quality photo printer and printed many of my images. But I didn’t use it enough and had problems keeping it going (running out of expensive ink, clogged nozzles, color calibration, etc.). It was very frustrating and I eventually gave up and gave it away. Since then we’ve switched to ordering metal prints. They’re a bit expensive but I like the quality, and they’re not as pricy as they seem if you factor in the cost of matting and framing paper prints.
Printing photographs that you look at (and really see) every day is a much different experience than looking through them every once in a while on a computer. I’m sure each of you have images that deserve to be seen. If you haven’t printed any of your photos lately, you should think about doing so.
Actually, you should think about printing every time you make a photograph. If your camera / settings / technique / workflow is optimized for prints it will result in high quality image files and you’ll have the option of printing them if you want to.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Please take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, put up some prints!
Sometimes when I’m out photographing at dawn, I’ll see someone stop, hop out of their car, make a single photo, then get back in and leave. Will they get a good image? Maybe. But they’d have a better chance if they could invest some time trying different compositions and settings to see what works best.
Brewing Storm: 6:24 am, 20 mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, Blended exposures (2.5 and 0.8s)
On a recent morning at dawn, I photographed a photogenic thunderstorm from the St. Johns River boat ramp on SR 50 for about an hour. As the light changed, I tried different lenses and techniques and I’m pretty happy with the images I came home with.
Sunrise through a thunderhead: 6:52 am, 39 mm, ISO 100, f/11, Blended exposures (1/125 – 1/30s)
I thought you’d like to see these examples from that morning. In each caption, I’ve listed the time I made the photo and the settings I used. Maybe you can take away some ideas for your next dawn photo excursion. If you have any questions or want more details about what I did, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.
A storm across the river: 7:24 am, 160mm, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/320s exposure, 5 frame panorama
The light and colors varied tremendously while I was there. I enjoyed watching them evolve and using different settings / focal lengths to capture the changes and include or isolate parts of the scene.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Be careful out there and please take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, work a scene!
I suppose we all occasionally struggle with photography – finding something to point our cameras at can be difficult. Other times, it seems easy and images almost make themselves. My last trip to MINWR was like that – I came home with more than a normal number of landscapes I really like.
Across the marsh
I felt like I was really in the “zone”. Every composition I tried looked good to me. And they still looked good when I got home.
Wide Water
Anyway, here they are.
Fun fact: These were made with three different cameras: A Sony full frame, an Olympus Micro Four Thirds, and an iPhone. Can you tell which is which? If you’re interested in the answers, you can click on these to see larger versions (and EXIF data).
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Covid cases in Florida are at an all time high. Be careful out there and please take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, make some photos!
We’ve been slowly (Lynn thinks too slowly!) making prints for our family room. We like metal prints and have been pleased with ones we’ve ordered from MPix. When they sent us a 25% off coupon last week, it was time for another order.
Having images tagged and organized in Lightroom is a big help for something like this. Using its filtering capabilities helped me quickly come up with some (too many) candidates. It was also easy to choose images based on size. I needed enough pixels for a quality larger print.
Candidate images
I spent a few minutes converting some I thought would look good to monochrome. I sorted them based on which ones I liked the best and then asked Lynn to help. We narrowed our B&W choices down to the ones you see below. They’re in date order, along with info about each.
Anhinga – full length portrait; Gatorland, FL; March 2016; 5 frame panorama; 7665×11204
Field of Flowers; Advance, WI; August 2017; 3 frame panorama; 5167×4134
Cocoa Beach Pier before dawn; Cocoa, FL; October 2018; Single frame (Olympus Hi res mode); 10196×6797
Who are you lookin’ at? Viera Wetlands, FL; January 2020; 2 frame panorama; 8312×5541
In the end we liked the photo of the deer the best. I think we can appreciate looking at it for a while. Our print should get here next week – I hope it turns out as well as the others we’ve ordered from Mpix.
Do you make prints of your photos? Have you tried metal prints? How do you pick the ones you hang on your walls?
Header image: Lake Eola in downtown Orlando; January 2013; Single frame; 7348×5046
It looks like tropical storm Elsa is heading our way. If you’re in the projected path, stay up to date and stay safe.
And for those of you in the US, Happy Independence Day!
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, make some prints!
I was using a Nikon D-90 camera and my telephoto lens at the time was the 70-300mm f/4.0 – 5.6 lens. To get the shutter speeds I needed, I had to set my ISO between 800 and 1000. The D-90 sensor was good for the time, but at those ISOs, overcast skies, fast action and small apertures made for challenging exposures. While I like the photos I came back with, I’ve always wished the image quality was a bit better.
Fast forward to this week when DxO Photo Lab Version 4 was announced. It advertises a new RAW conversion approach that uses machine learning to combine demosaicing and denoising into one step. They say:
“The resulting photo quality is nothing short of spectacular, especially for photos taken in low light conditions that require brightening certain areas, photos with small pixels, and photos taken with early-generation cameras.”
That sounds like just what I needed for those old photos, so I decided to reprocess a couple of them. In addition to DxO Photo Lab, I also have new versions of Lightroom (with very nice texture, clarity, and dehaze controls) as well as Topaz Sharpen AI.
Would the new software improve these photos? Let’s see. Here are the results in image compare frames so you can see the differences (newer versions on the right). You’ve seen the first one in the blog before.
Breaching Humpback 1
I think the reprocessed version has better detail / focus, less noise, and improved contrast / colors.
The next one hasn’t been in the blog before. I’ve always liked the action / viewpoint / composition and “flight aspect” of the whale, but the noise, color and focus were disappointing.
Breaching Humpback 2
After reprocessing, I think the image quality is more than acceptable.
My workflow for these was:
Raw conversion using DxO Optics Pro 4 with “Deep Prime” noise reduction and export back to Lightroom in RAW / DNG format
Adjustments in Lightroom: exposure, highlights, shadows, texture, dehaze
Sharpening with Topaz Sharpen AI
If you’re interested in more detail about the steps I went through, just ask in a comment and I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions.
I’m very glad that I’ve been shooting in and saving RAW format images. It takes up more storage space and requires more post processing work than using jpg files. But having RAW files for my favorite photos lets me take advantage of new technology and algorithms as they become available.
Keeping up with all these new capabilities requires time, effort, and money. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the software we have today is vastly superior to what was available 11 years ago. What do you think?
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Please stay safe out there and take care of each other. And if you can, make or reprocess some RAW photos!
sur·prise: noun: an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing verb: cause (someone) to feel mild astonishment or shock synonyms: astonishment, amazement, incredulity, wonder
One reason I like photography is because it often pleasantly surprises me. If you do a search on this blog (https://edrosack.com/?s=surprise). you’ll find I’ve used the word many times. Today I have a couple more examples, so lets discuss photo surprises again.
Jumping fish sunrise
The title of this one gives away the surprise. Of course, it’s not unusual for fish to jump out of the water. I was set up for landscape photography, not wildlife or action and I didn’t notice the fish that morning so I hadn’t tried to time my shutter to include it. When I started processing the photo on my computer I was amazed that my camera recorded the fish (a mullet?) mid jump. I think it adds interest to the photo. A small wonder, but a good one. Here’s a closer look.
Mid-jump Mullet
This second image is a different kind of surprise.
First Light on Wetland Wildflowers
I was on Black Point Wildlife Drive and saw that beautiful light on the clouds. When I got out of the car to make a photo, I noticed those nearby wildflowers and wanted to include them – it was a difficult task. The exposure for the flowers would be very different from the sky. And getting everything in focus in one frame would also be hard. I decided to make three vertical frames (adjusting focus and exposure in each one) and then try blending them together into a single panorama image when I got home.
I wasn’t hopeful. On top of capture issues, I knew the blending would be hard too. The flowers were very close and would change perspective against the open marsh when the camera moved. And any motion from wind would cause ghosting or other issues. I made the frames anyway – it was worth a try. I didn’t think it would turn out this well – an unexpected success!
You can click on the first and last photos to view larger versions on Flickr.
Changing the subject, Tropical Storm Isaias is heading toward Central Florida. Our skies are blue and cloud free right now. Later today it’s expected to be a lot closer and we might get some strong weather beginning this afternoon. Lynn and I have done our hurricane prep and are hoping it stays out to sea and doesn’t get too bad. We also hope all of you anywhere near the projected path are prepared too.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Hang in there and take care of each other. And if you can – make some surprising photos!
Yes, this is an unusual post for Central Florida Photo Ops – but it is camera and photography related so I’m going with it.
A while back I received this kit as a gift (thanks kids!). It sat in my camera cabinet for a long time waiting for me to ‘get round to it’. The forced stay at home time during the pandemic lockdown provided an opportunity to pull it out and get started.
The Konstruktor is a complete, ready to assemble, plastic kit. It’s a 35 mm, Single Lens Reflex, film camera. You can find out more about it at the Lomography site here: https://microsites.lomography.com/konstruktor/
When you first open the box, it might be intimidating. There are a lot of small parts and they aren’t well marked.
And to be honest, the instructions are a little sparse, although after getting through to the end of this I think all the necessary info is in there. Before I started, I did some research on line and found this helpful YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxLMpNfRUeI&list=WL&index=18&t=0s.
The camera ends up looking very usable. It has a fixed F-stop (f/10) and shutter speed (1/80s) so you’ll control exposure by choosing and loading it with an appropriate film speed (ASA / ISO). The detachable 50mm lens can focus from .5 meters to infinity. The viewfinder is okay but as you might expect with an f/10 lens, works best in bright light.
I probably won’t run any film through this for a while, but if you’re interested, you can see photos people have made with them as well as other examples of the camera on Flickr at this search link: https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=Konstruktor
The kit’s supplied with decorations you can use to customize your camera. I chose the black ‘leather’ wraps and the ‘Leica’ like red dot for mine. This is an afternoon project and teaches a bit about how a camera goes together and works. if you want to get back to the basics with some film photography, give it a look.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Stay safe out there and take care of yourselves, your families, and your friends. And if you can, make some photos – or even a camera!
in·cred·i·ble, adjective: Very difficult or impossible to believe; extraordinary
There’s been a lot of buzz on the web recently about sky replacement – a genre of compositing. You take the sky from one photo and substitute it into a second photo. I first tried this way back in April of 2007. I wanted to make the Great Egret family in this nest at the St. Augustine Alligator farm stand out against the sky. You can compare the before and after in this slider:
Before on the left, after on the right – Use the slider to compare
The latest version of Skylum’s Luminar photo editor comes with a capability called “AI Sky Replacement. This “automagically” replaces the sky in your photos with a single click and will even adjust the rest of the lighting in the scene to better match the new sky. You can read more about it on their site: https://skylum.com/luminar.
Here’s another before / after slider showing my recent effort with their software. The original photo was made on Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. It was a very pretty morning, but the sky was a bit plain.
Before on the left, after on the right – Use the slider to compare
Here’s the whole completed image (click to see it in much higher resolution on Flickr).
Good Morning
I like how this one turned out too – the sun in the new sky is in the right place and the light direction, intensity, and color match the foreground nicely. It adds interest to the image. And it was easy – Luminar worked well in this case.
But it makes me a little uncomfortable. I guess because in this blog I want to tell you about what, where, and how to photograph. So I think you should expect to see things here that you can also see when you go to these places. This image is a composite, not a photo – you wouldn’t have seen this on that morning. I won’t say that I’ll never do compositing, but I do promise that I’ll disclose it if I do.
Now, am I going to criticize you if you replace skies in your photos? No, you can do whatever you want with your images. They’re your art. But in general, I do see folks on Flickr doing this a little too much. And if you do it you should disclose or tag it. And you should do it right – the results should look natural, not artificial. The light direction and color should match. The lens used in both photos should also match so scene elements are at the proper relative distance from each other. Go for the second definition of incredible (extraordinary), not the first (Very difficult or impossible to believe).
Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. And if you can – make some photos!
As for everything that’s going on in the USA and the world right now … I’ll try to keep politics and non-photo opinions out of this blog. But if you’re interested in what I think about things, feel free to take a look at my Twitter feed (link on the right). Peace out.
Generally (and especially in Florida) clouds are good for landscape photos. And when water is part of your composition (like it often is here), wind can add interesting motion effects to longer exposures. If you can’t use those two elements in your images, can you still make landscapes? Of course, but you may need to use mirrors!
Mangrove Mirror 1. Infrared, Olympus HiRes mode.
Our winter weather fronts bring cooler temperatures and often very clear skies to Central Florida. And winds can be especially calm in the early morning. When I run into situations like this, I don’t put my camera away. Instead I watch for mangrove trees and other reflections.
Mangrove Mirror 2. Infrared, Olympus HiRes mode.
Compositions that minimize the sky and maximize the patterns their branches and roots make in the glassy water appeal to me.
Mangrove Mirror 3
How do you approach landscape photography at daybreak, when the wind is dead calm and the clouds are few and far away?
One of those mornings
Mid-jump Mullet
