Category Archives: OUTSIDE FLORIDA

Using Selective White Balance to Fix Problem Photos

October 30, 2011INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Washington D.C.Potomac River, sunrise, sunset, white balanceEd Rosack

I thought about going to Orlando Wetlands Park on Saturday before it closes for the winter (in mid-November), but the weather was quite bad. This morning, I wanted to get up early in search of a sunrise but instead had to deal with a migraine headache (I need to be much more careful about restaurant MSG). So anyway, no new shots to post this weekend.

Instead, let’s go over a technique that can be quite useful in certain situations. Normally I shoot in RAW format and use Lightroom to adjust color balance globally over the whole photograph. This works well in most situations, but sometimes a photograph can be improved substantially by correcting white balance selectively.

How do you do this? The way I do it is to open the photo in Photoshop, duplicate the image in a second layer, and adjust the white balance globally in each layer, but for different areas of the photo. So in layer 1 the sky may look good, but the ground may be off – while in layer two the opposite is true. Then I blend the two layers together using a layer mask, taking the best portions of each. If you don’t already use layers and layer masks in Photoshop, you should really learn about them. They provide a very useful tool in many situations and the ability to paint in (and erase) from one layer to the other gives you a great deal of flexibility and control over the results.

In this first example, I initially used a “day light” color balance and this brought out the sunset colors in the clouds, but the clear sky and terrain are a little too warm.

: Neighborhood Sunset – before selective white balance adjustment

In Photoshop, I left the color balance as is in one layer, and in the second layer, I made it much more neutral. I then painted the clouds from the first into the second.

Neighborhood Sunset – after selective white balance adjustment

This second example is even more dramatic than the first. The scene included both the pre-dawn sky and artificial lights along the far shore of the river. No matter what I did with the global white balance adjustment, I couldn’t get it to look right.

: The pre-dawn Potomac River – initial white balance

Again, duplicating the image into a second layer and blending with layer masks allowed me to neutralize the color balance of the lighting on the far shore and still make the sky and water more natural looking.

The pre-dawn Potomac River – after selective white balance adjustment

You owe it to yourself and your photography to try this technique. It some situations it can save a photo.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Mount Evans Redux

July 10, 2011Colorado, Must do listBristlecone Pine, landscape, Marmot, Mount Blue Sky, Mountain Goat, Mt. Evans, people, travel, tree, vacation, wildlifeEd Rosack

I’ve been to Mount Evans before and written about it here. I got a chance to go back this week and my second visit was as good as the first. Maybe even better, since I showed this wonderful place off to Sara, Mike, and Julie.

The highest paved road in North America starts in Idaho Springs, Colorado and winds for 28 miles around tight switchbacks to an altitude of just over 14,100 feet. There’s a small parking lot near the summit, and a short (but vertical) hike to the very top at 14,270 feet. The road is quite narrow in spots, and is exciting or scary depending on your attitude and its altitude / slope. There are many places to pull over that offer outstanding views of the surrounding landscapes and wildlife.

Bristlecone pine: This species of tree is the longest lived single organism on earth

Take I-70 west from Denver and exit at County Road 103. The first half of the drive from there is pretty but not too out of the ordinary. The fee station is around the halfway point, and this is where most of the excitement begins. Pick up a brochure so you’ll have a map and information about the park.

Both times I’ve gone have been in early July so I can’t say much about the rest of the year. Try to visit on a weekday to avoid crowds, and if you can’t go on a weekday – leave early. The only day we could drive up was the 4th, so we left around 7am. When we asked the ranger at the fee station, he said it wasn’t crowded yet but would be, and recommended we go up to the top and stop at places on the way down. If you don’t, you might not get a parking spot – they get very limited at the top as the day goes on. We saw lots of cars headed up as we were leaving.

Wildflowers are abundant in July. Even above 14,000 feet where the terrain seems barren – you can see flowers in between the rocks. July is also a great time to view wildlife. On this trip we saw a Deer, Chipmunks, Elk, Mountain Goats, Marmots, and a Pika.

Baby mountain goat – There were several families of mountain goats near the summit. This little one posed for me so I could frame him against the out of focus mountains in the background. It’s amazing to watch them scramble from rock to rock and never slip.

Pair of Marmots

At the summit, the average summer temperature is ~44 degrees (F) and the average wind is ~30 mph, so we were particularly blessed with a low temp of 55 and very calm winds. The winds were so calm that on the way down we decided to stop and hike to a couple of pools of water, hoping for a photo of the clouds reflecting in the ice melt. It seemed like a really short hike downhill from the road to this pool. When we turned around to go back uphill, the car looked really, really tiny and far, far away.

Catch pool reflection and Mike admiring the view

If you’re ever in the Denver area, you just have to visit Mount Evans. It’s spectacular and very accessible. Flatlanders like me shouldn’t do the trip on their first day at altitude. I’m not in the best of shape and at 14,000 feet I found I was out of breath even after short walks. A few days to acclimate at around 5000 feet may have helped.

Click on any of the photos above to go to Flickr where you can see a larger version. You can see the rest of my Mount Evans photos from this trip here, and you can see photos from my earlier trip here.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!
©2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Washington DC

March 19, 2011Must do list, Washington D.C.Arlington National Cemetery, cemetery, landscape, Lincoln Memorial, panorama, Potomac River, sunrise, travelEd Rosack

I’ve written about photography on business trips before (for instance here). If you’re willing to put up with the hassle of carrying your photo equipment (or you can travel “photo light”), and if you have an opportunity to leave early or stay late, then you may be able to enjoy some of the photo ops at your destination.

The pre-dawn Potomac River, Georgetown, and Washington DC from the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Rosslyn, Virgina: Getting up at 5:30am and leaving my warm, cozy room to walk down to the river with my tripod and camera in the cold and dark wasn’t easy. Timing the 4 – 8 second exposures between vibrations from passing cars was also a bit difficult. But I like the result.

I had a business trip to Washington DC this week and needed to be there first thing on Monday. Instead of flying in Sunday night, I made arrangements to get out on the first flight Sunday morning (whew, that was an early alarm!). This gave me few hours in DC to act like a tourist. The weather was cloudy with some rain, but that actually turned out to be an advantage for some of the things I photographed and I did manage to make some images that I like in two or three different places while I was there. Washington is a target rich environment for photo ops – where to start?

At the first place, birds sang as I walked paths through the area. Looking up and searching for them, I could see trees beginning to bud out with leaves and flowers, signaling the start of Spring and triggering many thoughts about nature. As I continued, my eyes were drawn back to earth where the sight of graves triggered thoughts about sacrifice by many brave people. I also thought about predictions of the decline of the USA, and it occurred to me that these don’t take into account the power of our belief system. Our economy is large, and we are creative — but our true strength is that so many believe in our rights and freedoms and are willing to defend them with their lives.

Tomb of the unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery: I’d never been to Arlington before last Sunday. As a US Navy Veteran and a patriot, I have to admit it made a huge impression on me.

Arlington National Cemetery is located on a hill across the Potomac from Washington DC. It’s the former home of Robert E. Lee and was taken over by the Union when the Lee family failed to pay taxes. Arlington house (his former manor) is surrounded by grave sites of union soldiers so that if he ever tried to return, he’d have to cross that line of soldiers to enter his home. [4/16 update: Here is a good article about Arlington house: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/04/arlington-house-home-robert-e-lee7966]There’s a good view of downtown DC and the country’s power base from up there. I hope that Congress glances up at Arlington occasionally before it makes decisions that may result in more grave sites. Arlington is only a few minutes from downtown Washington, and close to Reagan airport. There’s plenty of info on their web site for visitors.

After Arlington, I drove into downtown DC. Since it was Sunday and raining, there weren’t many people around and I was able to park about two blocks from the Lincoln Memorial and walk over for a few photos. Unfortunately, there is a lot of construction going on right now – the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument was drained, and this limited the compositions available.

The Lincoln Memorial and me: Last Sunday in Washington DC was cloudy with a bit of rain, so there weren’t too many people out and about in the city. I circled around to the south west side and set up my tripod for this shot. I think it’s pretty rare that you get a chance to capture an image of the Lincoln Memorial without people in the photo.

The view of the Lincoln Memorial above is a multi-shot panorama / HDR using 27 individual photos. The full resolution result is about 45 Mega-pixels in size. The power of the software we have available today always amazes me.

Take advantage of your travel opportunities. Turn them into photo ops. You might like the result.

If you click on the photos above you can see larger versions on Flickr. You can also see these photos and a few others from this trip in this set on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by, now go make some photos!

In Defense of Post Processing

February 5, 2011Cameras and Photography, Indiana, Techniqueblack and white, Cars, MayberryEd Rosack

This is another article on technique. It’s not so much a “how-to”. It is more of a defense or justification.

The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (final B&W image)

We have a few people in our Photography Interest Group that are relatively new to high end DSLRs. They’re used to point & shoot cameras and one question I hear quite often is “why post process?”. Their argument seems to be that the photos “straight out of the camera” (SOOC) are much better than they were with their old cameras and they don’t understand why anyone should waste time learning about software and processing photos on their computers. I even have one friend that uses the “I’m feeling lucky” button whenever photos need some adjustment.

Now, I’ve been using Photoshop since sometime in the ’90s, so I really have to stop and think when someone questions why they should use photo software. My answer comes down to: Control, Quality, and Change.

Control: If you understand post processing, know what your software is capable of, and have the skills to use the software, then you can take control from your camera and choose how your photos will be processed and what their final appearance will be. You decide exposure curves, fill light, sharpening and noise reduction levels, etc. Or even color vs. black and white.

Quality: If you want the best results, post processing allows you to optimize things (e.g. selective noise reduction and sharpening, various filters). You also can try different approaches and use the one that works best.

Change: Especially if you use RAW format, you have the ability to modify many of your settings after you make the photo. And if you need to adjust some parameters (e.g. white balance, saturation, exposure) you can do so after the shot. Also, software constantly improves – witness how much better recent noise reduction algorithms are today than even a few years ago. As the software improves you can apply the updated versions to your existing photos to keep making them even better.

Here’s an example that might illustrate the possibilities. I like to make photos that are “timeless” in the sense that they could have been made a while ago, or don’t give away when they were made. I saw this dinner and old sheriff’s car as I drove through a small town in Indiana. I thought the scene might make a good photo and since I had my camera in the car, I went around the block and made this image hand held through the open window as I passed by a second time:

The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (SOOC)

This copy above is SOOC – nice, but too much clutter, and kind of drab. I post-processed it to remove the clutter, selectively reduce noise in the clouds, adjust white balance and exposure, add saturation, etc. Here’s the result:

The Mayberry Cafe – Danville, Indiana (post processed)

This is a lot cleaner, the clouds and sky are brought out, and the colors and contrast are better. Could I have done this in the camera? Some of it. Would the results have been as good? I really doubt it. And if I want, I can keep reprocessing a photo whenever I learn a new technique or get some new software. Should you reprocess every photo? Of course not – if you did you wouldn’t have time to make any more photos. But you definitely need to make an effort when a photo shows some promise.

Finally, I thought this image would be more “timeless” as a black and white photo, so I converted the image above to get the result at the beginning of this post. If you’d only seen the B&W photo, when would you think it was made?

Goodbye, Kodachrome – we'll miss you.

December 31, 2010Cameras and Photography, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, VARIOUSFlowers, Germany, Kodachrome, Madonna, MunichEd Rosack

Kodachrome slide made in Munich, Germany in May of 1980.

Kodak discontinued the manufacture of Kodachrome slide film in 2009 and yesterday, the last Kodachrome film processing machine in the world (at Dwayne’s Photo in Parson, Kansas) was shut down. You had to be careful with it – but when well exposed, Kodachrome rewarded us with wonderful, detailed slides that exploded onto projection screens.

Kodachrome is also known for its storage longevity. I re-scanned one of my Kodachrome slides today to see how well it’s held up since I made it over 30 years ago – quite well, I think. I don’t have many other things still around that I owned that long ago. Do you?

Madonna, Child, tulips

A post of many questions

September 18, 2010Cameras and Photography, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, Techniqueblack and white, Flowers, Japan, Mt. Fuji, warEd Rosack

Something a little different this week. I have some guest photography along with many questions and some information about our photographs and the future.

Cherry blossoms, moon and Mt. Fuji, photo by Edward V. Rosack

Why do you make photographs?

Is it because you see something (interesting, beautiful, unusual, …) and would like to share it with others?

Are you documenting memories so that you can revisit them later?

Are you using the camera as a tool to let you see something you couldn’t see or didn’t notice at the time?

Will your photographs be lost to you or others in the future?

What steps are you taking to make sure they survive? Do you backup? In multiple places? Online? Outside your house?

Are your photos safe from:

Equipment failure? If you Google “Hard Disk MTBF” you’ll find hard drive failure rate predictions are between 1% and 14% a year. And this doesn’t count bit errors that can corrupt single files. And then get copied to all of your backups.
Media failure? DVD lifespan is predicted to be anywhere from 2 to more than 100 years.
Technology obsolescence? Have you tried reading data from a Floppy disc lately? How many years into the future will we still be able to read CDs?
Natural disasters? How many people in New Orleans were able to take their photos to safety during Hurricane Katrina?
Getting hidden in the shear overwhelming number of photos that are made every day? 4,974 photos were uploaded to Flickr in one minute before I wrote this sentence. What about all of the rest of the photo sharing sites? How about the ones that weren’t uploaded? How will someone (even if they’re interested and trying hard) find your photos among the incredible (and increasing) number that exist now?

Pacific Island, photo by Edward V. Rosack

Do your photographs stand alone?

What will people think of them when you aren’t around to explain them and provide some background? Will they even think of them?

Will people look at your photos after you’re gone and wonder where and when they were made and who the people in them are? Will they even know who the photographer was?

The gang at Shuri Castle in Okinawa, Japan; photographer unknown — "The gang at Shuri Castle" in Okinawa, Japan; My uncle is 2nd from the left in the top row; photographer unknown.

Do your photos need words and information along side them so the viewer can understand them?

Do your photos have meta data associated with them? Do you keyword and caption them? Is the EXIF data recorded by your camera and the IPTC data entered by you intact, or stripped away by one or more steps in your work flow?

Do you organize your photos into a meaningful folder structure to make them easier to find?

Do you rename them to something that makes sense?

Do you organize your photos using a proprietary program that may not exist in the future?

Conclusions and Credits

Ted Rosack, Macarello, Henley, On the wing of a German Aircraft after WW II; Photographer unknown.

The photographs in this post belonged to my uncle – Edward V. Rosack. There’s very little information to go along with them. I recognize my Dad and my Uncle, but none of the other people. I can tell from the context more or less where they were made. A few have short captions. I imagine that to my uncle, these photographs were important because they are a record of people and scenes that had a large impact on him as he helped fight WW II.

They were made and printed more than 60 years ago and although they are not in very good shape they’ve lasted until today. Will they last another 60 years? Will any of yours or mine?

Badly damaged church, photo by Edward V. Rosack

There’s a lot to think about and do if you want your photos to last, and people to look at them and see and feel what you want them to see and feel. If you don’t take steps to make them last, no one else is likely to do it for you.

Sharing sights and vision – Goats on a roof

April 25, 2010OUTSIDE FLORIDA, WisconsinGoat, travelEd Rosack

One of the things that makes photography so interesting is the ability to share sights and vision. We photographers love to capture the sights we see so that we can revisit them later and show them to others. We also love to capture the sights we see in a different way so that even if someone else has already seen something, we can show our unique vision to them.

This morning, I revisited some photos I made in September of 2006. Before Sara and Mike took Lynn and I to Wisconsin’s Door county, I’d never seen (or heard of, or even thought about) goats on a roof. But on N Bay Shore Dr in Sister Bay, you’ll come across a small herd of goats on the roof of Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant. Not only that, but a Google search will reveal other goats on other roofs. And – a search on Flickr returned 143 images this morning (actually this is a surprisingly small number) of goats on roofs. I wonder if this is a trend? You really do need to pay attention to keep up.

Door county is a beautiful place. And it has goats on a roof too. I don’t think I captured them in a unique way, but they’re certainly worth sharing with others. What unique or unusual things have you seen and shared lately?

Goats on a Roof – 1

Goats on a Roof – 3

Around Denver over Thanksgiving

December 6, 2009Colorado, OUTSIDE FLORIDAastronomy, Bison, Buffalo, Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, sunrise, Thanksgiving, travel, vacation, wildlifeEd Rosack

We had a family reunion of sorts in Denver last week for Thanksgiving. Mary, Mike and Sara met Lynn and I at my mother’s place and we were able to see most of the Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and in-laws. We had a great time and the Thanksgiving dinner was especially good, with 25 relatives at my sister’s house to consume two turkeys along with various gourmet attractions including sweet potato stuffed oranges.

We also had a chance to visit some Denver area photo attractions: Buffalo Bill’s grave and museum at Lookout Mountain in Golden, The city of Denver’s bison herd, Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak. We also got in a few minutes of browsing at the antique store along I-70.

Here are some of the photos from our visit – I’ve only posted a few of them here on my blog. Click on any of them to go to Flickr, where you can look at a higher res version. You can also see the rest of this set on Flickr at this link.

We drove up to Lookout Mountain last Monday to visit the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave site, which is only about an hour from my Mom’s place. The museum is nice, with a lot of information about Buffalo Bill and the wild west. We especially liked the dress up area, where you can don chaps and a cowboy hat, climb up on the legless horse and rope a plastic calf. There’s also some very scenic overlooks from the parking area.

A little further up the road (I-70, exit 254), the city and county of Denver has a herd of bison that you can stop and see.

On Thanksgiving morning, Lynn and I got up very early and drove down to the Garden of the Gods before sunrise. You might remember my earlier post about this place. Let me just say that it’s even more beautiful at sunrise and well worth the early trip.

Saturday, we drove down to Pikes Peak and rode the cog railway to the top and back. The visibility was much better this time than it was the only previous time we did this. That time we had heavy fog and weren’t able to see much of the landscape. This time, in spite of clouds – it looked like we could see forever.

It was a wonderful trip, we really enjoyed ourselves, and we’ll cherish the time we spent visiting these places with our family forever.

Veteran’s Day, 2009: Thank you for your service

November 11, 2009California, VARIOUScemetery, Politics, San Francisco, veteransEd Rosack

On this day I would like to thank all of our active duty military and and all veterans who have served in our Armed Forces.

You chose to answer the call. Your commitment to freedom and your courage and sacrifices have brought the blessings of liberty to the people of the United States of America. Most of the world will never know liberty and freedom like we know it.

It may not be possible for our gratitude to match the enormity of your gifts to us. We are grateful that you stand between us and those who would do us harm. We appreciate you giving our children a hopeful future. And we pay tribute to those who offered their lives in defense of our freedom.

A view of San Francisco National Cemetery located in the Presidio, on Christmas Day, 2005 in the rain. Minolta Dimage 7Hi @ ISO 100, 28mm eq., f/4.5, 1/45 sec.

Our Alaskan vacation – Ch. 2: Glaciers

September 27, 2009Alaska, Cameras and Photography, Cruise Ships, Must do listglacier, Glacier Bay, landscape, panorama, sunrise, travel, vacationEd Rosack

This is the second installment of our Alaskan adventure, where I’ll show you the glaciers we visited. Chapter One is here and describes the wildlife we saw on our trip.

Our ship, the MS Westerdam left Seattle on Sunday, September 6th and headed north to Glacier Bay National Park where we arrived on Tuesday. Glacier Bay was one of the main reasons that we picked this itinerary and we were looking forward to seeing it. The morning started out beautifully, with a very nice sunrise.

While cruising in Glacier Bay, we visited Lamplugh, Johns Hopkins, and Marjorie glaciers. Several cruise ships had been unable to reach the Johns Hopkins glacier this season due to ice, so apparently we were lucky. Here’s a panorama I made from the 4th deck of the Westerdam at Johns Hopkins glacier.

One of the first things we noticed is that the color of the water close to the glaciers is a very distinct greenish blue. According to ~~this article~~ (sorry – no longer available) on wired.com (which also has some stunning photos of glaciers taken from space) the color is due to the very fine silt that is ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the water. This “glacial flour” can be very reflective and turns the water this color.

At Marjorie glacier, I was in the right place at the right time to photograph the ice calving. Here’s the middle photo of a three photo sequence (you can see the others when you visit the gallery for this post).

When we exited Glacier Bay, we headed for Juneau where we also visited Mendenhal Glacier, among other things.

When we were back on board in Juneau, the captain made an announcement about gale force winds and 40 foot seas that were expected off of Sitka, which was supposed to be our next stop. To avoid this weather he decided instead to cruise through Tracy Arm fjord, where we spent all of the next day (Thursday, September 10th). Tracy Arm is a truly spectacular place that isn’t often visited by cruise ships as large as the MS Westerdam. We were able to get in there since our Alaskan waters pilot was very familiar with the place. It was amazing to watch the ship maneuver in such tight waters — at times we were within 30 yards or so of cliff walls and we must have seen hundreds of waterfalls. There was quite a bit of fog and haze, which made photography difficult, but I did manage to get some good shots. Here’s one example of the scenery:

I also put my Canon G9 on a Gorillapod, mounted it to the balcony rail and made some movies. Here’s a time lapse video (one frame per second) that I made in Tracy Arm. It has a sequence of clouds forming and moving along with the ship. We saw this same phenomenon several times that day. Was it perhaps the great spirit of the northwest accompanying us on our tour?

That night after exiting Tracy Arm fjord, our course carried us back into the Pacific Ocean in order to get to Ketchikan. It was still pretty rough with about 25 foot seas. We had a great view of the ocean from the second deck during dinner. It was like eating on a roller coaster! The next morning, when we arrived in Ketchikan, we had seaweed on our 6th deck balcony!

You can view the rest of my glacier photos in two places. I added a set of glacier photos here in my photo galleries. You can also look at all of our Alaska photos together in a single time ordered set here on Flickr. Clicking on one of the photos above will also take you to Flickr, where if you click on the “all sizes” button, you can see the photo in a higher res version.

Coming next: “North to Alaska, Ch. 3: Miscellaneous photos. I’ll also probably wrap up with a Chapter 4: Photo hints.

Central Florida Photo Ops

What and where they are and how to photograph them.