I was lucky enough to go on a business trip to Denver last week. I stayed with my Mom and got to visit a bit with her and her friends. I also got to see my sister LaDonna and brother Jim and their families in Denver and my brother Rob and his family in Colorado Springs.
On the way to Rob’s, I stopped by the Garden of the Gods for a couple of hours. (Note: you can click on any of these photos for a larger version).
The Garden of the Gods park is run by the city of Colorado Springs and is about an hour south of Denver. You take I-25 south and exit right onto Garden of the Gods road. I hadn’t been there before. The rock formations are spectacular and unlike anything we see in Florida. If you go, early morning probably has the best light. I wasn’t able to arrive until around 10 am and by then the lighting was pretty harsh. I wish I had been there earlier or that there had been some nice clouds in the sky to work with, but you take what you get and I was happy to be able to see it. I did some bracketed exposures to work with in HDR and converted some photos to black and white. I like the way they turned out.
Rock climbing is allowed and I made a few photos of a couple of climbers.
While in Denver, I also took a walk through Waterton Canyon and made a few photos.
And one night, my nephew Jared and I made this panorama of the night-time skyline visible from my Mom’s place.
My other photos for this post are here
This is the story of a photograph that I made a couple of weeks ago when we were in Wisconsin at the Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary, and how I eventually made a print that I was happy with. Along the way, Lynn laughed at me for taking so much time to print a single photo and my photo friends gave me all sorts of suggestions on techniques to make this come out right (some of which I even used – thanks, Keith).
I knew when I saw this scene that there was a photo here. The lighting conditions were overcast and gloomy – exactly right for the kind of image I wanted, but this made capturing the photo a little difficult. And, it turns out – made printing the photo even more difficult.
I had my Canon G9 with me and used the built in flash in fill mode. I had visions of a 13×19 inch print, so I kept it in ISO 80 and saved it in RAW (like I always do). The skull on the ground looked like good foreground material, so I cranked the lens to the most wide angle setting and got up close to make this exposure (this is straight out of the camera, with no re-touching other than conversion from raw in Lightroom 2)(click on this image for a larger version).
Original photo - straight out of the camera
This is an interesting scene, I really liked the concept of this photograph, but the initial image left a lot still in my imagination. The sky is washed out, the skulls on the pole are way too dark, and the foreground skull is too bright. Also, the grass in the foreground is too bright and distracting (among other things).
I tried various methods over several days to make it work using mostly Lightroom2 and some Photoshop tools. Lightroom2 has some very nice new local adjustment tools which I played around with along with the usual curves, etc. to darken the sky and lighten the pole skulls. I also used the black and white conversion tools in Lightroom2 and generated the version of the photo that is posted in my previous blog entry. This was a lot better than the initial photo, but I thought it could be better. Here’s where Keith comes in. “Why not run it through Photomatix?” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I said. And so …
Here are the steps I went through over several days (some of the steps multiple times – it’s a good thing Lightroom is a non-destructive editor)
1. Basic exposure, clarity, curves, etc. adjustments
2. Create 3 virtual copies of the image – one for the sky, one for the skulls on the pole, and one for the foreground. Adjust each one separately: First adjust the exposure and then convert to Black & White to highlight the appropriate features. Export these as 16 bit .tiff files.
3. Use Photomatix Pro 3.0 to create a combined HDR of the 3 B&W .tiffs, then tone map the HDR file and save.
4. Load the tone mapped file into Photoshop. Clone as needed from the appropriate B&W conversion file to highlight the skulls on the poles. Clone out a portion of the horn on the foreground skull. Crop to the final dimensions. Adjust levels, sharpen for output.
Here is the final image (click for a larger version):
The image after a "little" editing
If you want more details on the steps I went through, I’ve posted the intermediate photos for each step at this link .
It is quite a bit different from the original, and it looks pretty good enlarged to 13″x19″ (especially for a point and shoot camera). So I think it was worth the extra effort. What do you think?
We stayed an extra day and a half after Sara and Mike’s wedding to make sure everyone got back to the airport OK and all the tuxedos got returned, etc.
We also wanted some time to ourselves to relax a little bit. The weather on Monday was a bit sporty, so we didn’t want to spend all day outside at the Wisconsin state fair. Lynn did a little research on the web and located a wildlife sanctuary about 50 miles north of where we were staying, so we decided to drive up there and take a look. We wanted to see a little bit more of Wisconsin and ended up taking mostly back roads on the way up. It was a very pleasant drive (until we ran into some construction – but we routed around that easily enough). One place we went through was Port Washington, on the coast of Lake Michigan. It is a scenic little town, although they seem to have been hit pretty hard by the slow economy. This first picture is their lighthouse, built in 1860.
Port Washington Lighthouse
The Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bend Wisconsin was our main destination for the day. They have elk, bison, big horn sheep, several variety of deer, wild turkey, and other animals. You can drive through the property in a golf cart and if you’re quiet and the animals cooperate, you can see quite a few of them. The day we were there it was very overcast and in fact started to rain fairly hard by the end of our visit. Photography was quite a challenge due to the low illumination. I was traveling light with just my Canon G9, which is not a good low light camera, so my photos of the bison, are a bit blurry. Oh well – there’s always next time.
I do like this photo of a native American animal skull display. I’m thinking about making a large print for my office at work. I’m hoping it will warn my enemies to stay away. The rest of my photos from this trip are at https://edrosack.com/Port-Washington
On this Memorial Day, 2008, I would like to thank each veteran who has answered our call to defend our country.
I had a few hours off one afternoon during a recent business trip up to Rockville, Maryland so I grabbed my Canon G9 and took the subway into downtown Washington DC. It was just a quick stroll — my main photo hint for this is to take a lot more time and a lot more pictures.
The World War II memorial is new since I was there last (many years ago). This is a photo of the Florida section.
The Vietnam Memorial always affects me deeply each time I see it. The gifts and tokens placed at the wall by loved ones of our fallen veterans, even after so many years is profoundly moving.
A section of the Vietnam Memorial – Washington, D.C.
Now, I apologize in advance for getting a little political on a blog that is devoted to photography. Here are some statistics taken from the Veterans Administration, U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (originally from an article on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site – no longer on line):
The suicide rate of veterans is at least three times the national suicide rate. In 2005, the suicide rate for veterans 18 to 24 years old was three to four times higher than non-veterans.
About 154,000 veterans nationwide are homeless on any given night. One-fourth of the homeless population is veterans.
There are more homeless Vietnam veterans than the number of soldiers who were killed during that war.
It takes at least 5.5 years, on average, to resolve a benefit claim with the Veteran’s Administration.
More than 600,000 unresolved claims are backlogged with the Veteran’s Administration.
Approximately 18.5 percent of service members who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq currently have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression.
19.5 percent of these veterans report experiencing traumatic brain injury.
Roughly half of those who need treatment seek it, but only slightly more than half of those who receive treatment receive at least minimally adequate care, according to an April 2008 Rand Report.
As a citizen and a voter, I am ashamed of these numbers. Taking care of those that protect our country is a fundamental obligation of government. Each and every one of us should demand that our elected officials honor commitments we have made to veterans who have honored us with their service. Until we do so, Memorial Day seems a shallow honor at best.
If you ever travel through Dulles International, it is well worth scheduling yourself in early or out late so you can take a short side trip. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex of the National Air and Space Museum is located a few minutes south of the airport. You can take a shuttle to and from the airport, or follow Highway 28 (the first exit as you leave the airport) south until you see the sign. It only takes 10 – 15 minutes to get there from the airport. Entrance to the museum is free, but parking is $12, so take a few friends (all in one car).
Wright Brothers Pano
The Smithsonian needed additional space to display items that they don’t have room for at the downtown Washington, D.C. location. This is very good news for traveling photographers. For a small investment of time (2 – 3 hours) you can see a lot of aviation and space history. They have Wright Brother flyers (click on the photo above for a larger version), an SR-71, a Concorde, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer and much more. Some of these items are beautiful, and all are historic.
Equipment: I took my Canon G9, which did very well. You’ll mostly want a wide angle lens for the interior shots – these things are big and you can get close to most of them. The light is pretty dim, so use a fast lens and plan on at least bracing your camera for longer exposures as I did. Flash won’t be too effective due to the distance involved.
On May 5th, I was able to go to Yosemite for a day during my visit to San Francisco. The drive from where we were in Dublin, California (east of San Francisco) is about 120 miles. We were on the road at 6 am, and it took us about 3 hours to get to the park.
Two waterfalls: El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks and Merced River
May is a good time to go – The snow is melting and the waterfalls are in full force. There are some wild flowers blooming, but not as many as later in the year. We did see some nice Pacific Dogwoods in bloom. In early May, school’s not yet out, so the traffic is not as bad as it gets in the summer. We were there on a Saturday and I was very surprised by how little traffic there was.
They’re hiring at the park! While we were checking out in the gift shop, I talked to the sales clerk. He lives in the park and explores every chance he gets. He told me they need 200 people. They pay minimum wage, but room and board is incredibly inexpensive (~$70 / week!). It was very tempting, but Lynn would’ve probably been upset with me if I didn’t come home all summer.
I wish we could have spent more time in the park. We were only there for a few hours before we had to head back. There’s so much more to see.
The National Park Service website for Yosemite is here .
Please take a look at the rest of my Yosemite photographs, posted here.
Mary also took some very good photographs of Yosemite and Muir Woods which are posted here. (no longer on-line as of 2019).
Rock climbing is allowed and I made a few photos of a couple of climbers.
Two waterfalls: El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks and Merced River
Bridalveil Falls through dogwood tree