Domain move complete

VARIOUS

Hello everyone.

The move from ed.rosack.com to edrosack.com is in effect and I’ve installed a “301 re-direct” from the old domain to the new.  This will automatically forward you to the new domain if you accidentally use the old one.  There is a potential problem with the re-direct due to the continued poor performance of my old hosting provider, so it is much better to go ahead and use the new domain name.

Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to use:  https://edrosack.com.  By the way, I plan to manage the whole site now using WordPress, so you might notice differences depending on which pages you’re used to visiting.

Thanks for your patience and understanding during this move and update.

Ed

Washington DC

Must do list, Washington D.C., , , , , , ,

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

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 Cemetary

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

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!

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

A few more updates

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Ravine Gardens, Viera Wetlands, , , , ,

Sorry for not posting last weekend.  Much to do and little time to do it.  Here’s an update on three recent Central Florida Photo Op topics.

Ravine Gardens:  We made another trip up there and I’ve refreshed the main Ravine Gardens post with a few small revisions and two additional photos following our visit yesterday.  Bottom line:  A nice place for spring flowers.

Dogwood blossom in front of azaleas

Dogwood blossom in front of azaleas at Ravine Gardens

Viera Wetlands:  Kevin M. and I went by last Saturday.  Highlights of the trip were the White Pelicans in the click ponds (migrants in Florida) as well as getting images of 3 new (for me) birds.  By the way, the Tree Swallows are very difficult to photograph.  They never seem to perch and their flight patterns are very erratic.  But they are good practice for flight shots!

Least Bittern in the reeds

Least Bittern in the reeds

Tree Swallow?

Tree Swallow

European Starling

European Starling

Sigma 150 – 500 OS:  I did use this lens at Viera last weekend.  It worked well, but started to  “chatter”  one time.  Then it stopped and worked fine after that.  Not sure what to make of it, other than to keep an eye on it over time.

Thanks for stopping by!

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

The Sigma 150 – 500 returns and more flowers

Cameras and Photography, Technique, ,

I mentioned at the bottom of this post that I was having trouble with my Sigma 150 – 500mm OS lens and that I’d let you know how it turned out.  I said that I’ve been very happy with it and one of my few complaints was that the Optical Stabilization was a bit noisy.  Lately, it’s developed a “chatter” where it sounds like the OS motor is vibrating back and forth.  While it does this, you can see the image vibrating through the viewfinder.  I sent it back to Sigma to have them check it out.

Sigma called after about a week and said that it tested OK for them.  I described what I’d seen happening in detail and they agreed to look at it one more time.  They called again and said that it still checks out OK and that they were sending it back.  They did mention that cold weather (which can lower the power available from the camera’s battery) might make this happen.  But I shoot in Florida, so I doubt that’s it.  They also said that hitting / knocking the lens can make the OS oscillate.  I’m very careful with my gear and don’t remember hitting it at all, much less the several times when it’s done this, so I don’t think that’s it either.  It arrived late on Friday (after work, so I actually was here for the UPS guy!).  I’m under the weather with another bad cold, so I haven’t had a chance to try it out.  But I will.  I do have two more years of the extended warranty remaining, so I’m not too worried.  If I learn anything more, I’ll update you.

And just so this poor blog doesn’t go too long without an image, here’s one that I reprocessed this morning.

Composite Black and White Image

Composite Black and White Image

The original photo was made in October of 2004 with a Minolta Dimage 7Hi.

Source image

Flowers in glass water bowl

This morning, I ran it back through Nik Silver Effects Pro with four different settings and re-arranged the results into the single B&W image that leads this post.

© 2004 and 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Borrow the Bouquet

Cameras and Photography, Technique,

If you’re a photographer, one side benefit of romantic relationships can be residual bouquet photo ops.  Just be careful to make sure your significant other doesn’t think too hard about why their arrangements are so photogenic. You are, of course getting the flowers for them.

Flowers are an easy photo op, although many of us don’t bother since so many flower photographs have already been made.  But there are reasons to try:  It’s good practice with your equipment and technique.  Maybe you’ll come up with a different and beautiful approach.  Maybe you can learn a new lighting or processing technique.  And maybe it’s a convenient subject when you don’t have several hours to load up and go out in search of birds or other wildlife.

Tulip

Tulip

I bought Lynn some tulips for Valentine’s Day and wanted to make a few photos while they were still looking good.  Please don’t tell any Strobists out there, but I used a flashlight for illumination in these images.  Using a constant illumination light source instead of a strobe, allows you to see exactly how the light looks on your subject before you make the photo.  In this case, I was trying to “spotlight” the front tulip to isolate it, but at the same time leave the tulips in the background just visible.  I tried various positions for my light and no one single position worked.  The ones that looked best had blown highlights on either the right or left side of the front tulip.  I ended up making two exposures, intending to spend some time blending them by hand in Photoshop.  Here are portions of the two exposures showing the front tulip:

Source photos for image above

After loading them as layers in Photoshop, I made an attempt to blend them by hand without much success.  Instead, I hit on the idea of changing the layer blending mode to “darken” instead of “normal”.  The lead image in this post is the result, with no hand blending at all.  I like the effect and I like the smooth, out of focus definition of the tulip in the background on the left.

I also wanted to try one more thing before these tulips had to be retired.

Tulip two

Tulip two

For this second shot, I wanted to make the flower look like it was illuminated from the inside by shining the light up from the bottom.  I also wanted to make the stigma / stamens as sharply focused as possible to contrast them with the out of focus flower petals.  The outline of the petals framing the inside was a bonus.  I’ll let the reader figure out what other techniques I used in this image (hint:  I’ve written about it before).

So – go ahead.  Ask your significant other if you can borrow the bouquet.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Ravine Gardens Update

INSIDE FLORIDA

You can read my previous blog entry about Ravine Gardens at this link.  In that article, I recommended that you visit this unique state Park in Palatka, Florida in the spring time so you can see the many flowers there in bloom.  January through April is supposed to be the peak blooming season and Lynn and I wanted to check and see what’s happening up there so far.  We’d hate to miss the peak flower time.

Blooming Tree

Eastern Redbud Tree in bloom at Ravine Gardens

There are a few flowers and trees in bloom already.  We noticed the very pretty tree above right away.  Most azaleas had buds, but there were very few so far in bloom.  The 15th annual Azalea Festival is planned for March 5th this year, and we think that the azaleas will be at the beginning of their peak about a week before then (end of February).  So if you want to see this place at it’s best, start planing your visit!

Two trunk palm tree

Unusual two trunk palm tree at Ravine Gardens

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

In Defense of Post Processing

Cameras and Photography, Indiana, Technique, ,

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, In.
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?

© 2007 & 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Catching up

Cameras and Photography, Circle B Bar Reserve, INSIDE FLORIDA, Merritt Island NWR, , , , , ,

Hello again, readers!  I apologize for a somewhat lengthy post, but today I wanted to catch you up on photo related happenings over the last couple of weeks – so there are several topics worth mentioning.

Circle B Bar Reserve

A week ago (Saturday, 22 Jan), I returned to the Circle B Bar over in Lakeland Florida with the Photography Interest Group.  The first time I wrote about this place, I said: “I’ve only been to the Circle B once, and need to go several more times to get an idea of how consistent the photo ops there are.”  Well, the second visit lived up to the first, starting with a quite pretty dawn:

Dawn at the Circle B Bar Reserve

Dawn at the Circle B Bar Reserve

One of the highlights of this trip was seeing a Barred Owl and getting a relatively good photo of it.  The owl was high in a tree and ended up attracting quite a crowd before it got tired of us and flew off.  The lighting was a bit tough – I’m glad I had my flash and Better Beamer ready.

Barred Owl watches photographersBarred Owl watches photographers

We also sighted Ospreys, Red Shouldered Hawks, a Red Bellied Woodpecker, Whistling Ducks, and many other birds.  Unfortunately, the beautiful yellow sunflowers that were all over the place last time are no longer there.  They are seasonal and to see them you’ll have to return around mid to late November next year.  All in all, a very nice trip and the Circle B definitely lived up to its reputation once again.  You can look at more of my photos from the Circle B in this set on Flickr.

Black Point Wildlife Drive

Yesterday, I visited Black Point again.  I’m not sure why, but this place seems to be really great for photos with reflections.  Quite often the water is extremely calm and you can see scenes like these:

Clear day, calm water 1Clear day, calm water

Spoonbill and reflectionSpoonbill and reflection

There was a lot of activity at Black Point.  We spotted an otter, Hooded Mergansers, Belted Kingfishers, Hawks, and many other species.  We also paused for a while to watch a pair of Ospreys fishing.  They were too far away for good photos, and never came closer even though we had fish jumping out of the water right in front of us!  You can look at more of my photos from Black Point in this set on Flickr.

Scrub Ridge Trail

A couple of weeks ago on Flickr, I saw some very nice photos of Florida Scrub Jays, made by “moonfloweryoli“.  I commented on them and she mentioned a trail in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where she saw them.  This led us to an add a second expedition to yesterday’s  Black Point visit.  We wanted to try to observe this unique species that only lives here in Florida.  To make a long story short, we tried hard, but we never saw any.  We’ll have to go back and try again.  Kevin K. did make this image to document our search:

Wilbur and Donuts looking for the hard to find Florida Scrub Jays“Wilbur” and “Donuts” looking for the hard to find Florida Scrub Jay (image courtesy of Kevin Krause);  Your humble author is the one on the left.

Alligator Farm and Gatorland blogs

A quick update for those of you looking for info on the St. Augustine Alligator Farm or Gatorland.  I reported back in November that Gatorland was canceling its photographer early entry program.  The Gatorland Blog hasn’t been updated since then, so it’s a bit hard to find out what’s going on at that park.

Meanwhile, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm announced they would continue their photographer early entry program.  They’ve been running a mailing list on Yahoo where you could find information, and last week they announced that they’ll be discontinuing this and starting a blog of their own.  It’s now up and running, check it out.

Sigma 150 – 500

Finally, here’s an equipment update.  I’ve been doing much of my bird photography since early last year with a Sigma 150 – 500 OS lens.  I’ve been very happy with it and one of my few complaints was that the Optical Stabilization was a bit noisy.  Lately, it’s developed a “chatter” where it sounds like the OS motor is vibrating back and forth.  While it does this, you can see the image vibrating through the viewfinder.  I called Sigma and they said to send it back.  So I’ll be without it for a while.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

That’s all for today.  Thanks for stopping by.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking

Cameras and Photography, INSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, Viera Wetlands, , , ,

Intro

It’s been a while since I posted an in depth technique article, so I thought I’d do another one.  Warning: Major photo geek out ahead.  If you’re not into HDR, panoramas, post processing, etc. please move along.

…

OK, now that it’s just us photo nerds left, wanna see some sausage made?  Let’s get started.

My question to you:  What if you want more pixels in your final image, more dynamic range in both highlights and shadows, and better depth of field, all by using a much simpler technique than you might normally use?  How would you go about it?  I’ll explain one approach I used recently to make this lead photo from my previous post:

Sunrise at Viera WetlandsFinished image (click to view on Flickr)

I made this with a 12 megapixel Nikon D700, but my final image file is 4238 pixels wide by 5776 pixels tall (about 24.5 Megapixels).  It has good depth of field with objects from very close out to the horizon in focus.  It also has good dynamic range with both the ground and the sunrise & clouds well exposed.

Details

If you were going to create an image like this using conventional techniques, it could require 6 or more exposures.  You’d mount your camera on a tripod and manual focus. You might analyze the scene to decide on an optimum exposure.  Then you’d make three bracketed exposures around that, first of the lower portion of the image, then shifting your camera viewpoint up toward the clouds – three more bracketed exposures.  Then you’d use panorama software to combine the three pairs of images at each exposure value, followed by HDR software to combine the three resulting panoramas into an HDR file and tone map it.  You might have to play with the result quite a bit to eliminate noise, ghosting, etc. introduced by the HDR software.  And if you wanted to stretch the depth of field, you might go through this twice with different focus points, and combine them too.  In some situations, you could also try using graduated neutral density filters to control dynamic range.

Whew – that could be a whole lot of work!  I didn’t do all that.  Instead, I used a much simpler idea.  Basically, I just combined two images manually in Photoshop.

If you’re still with me, read on (it might look complicated, but it’s actually harder to read about than do).  Here are the details.

  1. I hand held my camera and used an image stabilized lens so I didn’t have to worry too much about longer exposures.  The camera was in landscape orientation.  I used aperture priority, with matrix metering auto exposure, and auto focus using the center focus point.  When I made these, I held my camera very carefully to make sure there was no side to side movement and that the horizon was level so there was no rotation between shots, and I made sure there was at least 30% vertical overlap between the two images.  I also shot in RAW mode for the best dynamic range and control over processing.
  2. For this first photo, I pointed at the sky and let the camera auto expose for the bright clouds and sunrise.  It also auto focused on the clouds in the middle of the frame.  It’s at 16 mm, ISO 200, and f/8 @ 1/160 sec.  Here’s the unprocessed RAW source image for the sky:
    3. RAW source image for the sky
  3. For this second photo I pointed down at the ground and this time the camera exposed for the dark foreground.  It auto focused on the ripples in the water just short of the first coot  (again in the middle of the frame).  It’s at 16 mm, ISO 200, and f/8 @ 1/25 sec. (almost 3  stops more exposure).  Here’s the unprocessed RAW source image for the ground:
    4. RAW source image for the ground
  4. Then I processed the RAW photos.  I used Capture NX2 and converted them to TIF, but you could use Photoshop to convert them and not need CaptureNX2.  I set picture control to neutral, white balance to daylight, enabled distortion correction, and tried to bring both photos closer in overall brightness.  Here are the two processed images:
    5. Sky image after RAW conversion
    Ground image after RAW conversion
  5. Next I loaded the files into Photoshop as separate layers in the same file, and used Photoshop’s Edit / Auto Align Layers function to place the two images relative to each other.
  6. At this point, I added a layer mask (reveal all) for the sky image and then painted black to remove the portions below the horizon that I didn’t need.  It was fairly easy to blend the images by changing the brush opacity and either erasing or painting in until it looked correct.
  7. The final steps then are the same ones used for any photo:  crop, sharpen, levels, apply any creative filters you like, etc.

Once you go through this a few times, it’ll be easier and you can, of course vary some of these steps based on your own preferences.

Conclusions

I think this “Two Image Pano / HDR / Focus Stacking” technique can be really useful and it has several advantages over standard approaches normally used for this kind of image.

Benefits

  • It’s simpler than conventional techniques, and yields very good results.
  • You can hand hold in many cases, especially if you use an image stabilized camera or lens.
  • It uses the camera’s auto exposure effectively to expose correctly for the different areas of the image.
  • You can post process with just Photoshop – other software isn’t required.
  • It greatly increases the dynamic range of the final image without requiring HDR processing or software.  It doesn’t require a straight line horizon like graduated neutral density filters would.
  • Depth of field can be increased over that in a single exposure or in a conventional pano / HDR approach.
  • It also substantially increases vertical field of view.

Limitations

This technique is situation dependent: It’ll only produce portrait or perhaps square orientation output images (although you’ll have lots of pixels to crop to other formats).  It only works where the scene is easily divided into two portions where the brightness varies vertically.  Also,the dynamic range increase available from just two images may not be enough in all situations.

So, should you use it?

Why not?  Under the right conditions, it can generate very good results with minimal effort.  Now that you’ve heard about this technique, you can watch for scenes where you may be able to use it.

Then you can try it – and please let me know how it works for you.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.