Daily Image - Feb 2011 Archive

If I try hard, I believe I can come up with just two photographers who, in the days of film, expected each frame they shot to be fully usable. You are likely familiar with one, Ansel Adams, but not the other who is a local Seattle resident. I was always taught that one usable image per roll was a good average and something to shoot for, no pun intended. So when I did get that type of result I was most pleased. Then along came the era of the digital image and cameras, and all that changed. Now we all shoot far more than ever before (something like the computer era will make for less work and do away with paper) because we can easily throw away, or at least we should, all those images that didn't turn out as we had envisioned in the viewfinder. But then there is always the idea that maybe you should keep those not so good images and do something creative with them. That's right along the line of if its a digital image we can always fix it in the computer. Two bad ideas; regardless of digital or film, we still need to compose and create carefully in the camera. That's not to say that we can't shoot some images with the idea that we will be reworking them later into something we envision but can't fully capture at the moment. So although we are now shooting without concern of cost, as in the film days, we still need to be very selective in what we do. Of the images you see from me, those 250 or so represent roughly just 1% of what I've shot. Of course I try to pick and choose carefully what I share, but even if I sent twice as many images it would still represent a minuscule proportion of what has been shot to get there. The image for today was shot with the idea that it was to become something it wasn't originally. For those of you who enjoy thrillers, Jurassic Park was among the best ever written even though there was a bit of playing with the science. Of course the author, an M.D., knew exactly where he was playing with reality, but he did it in such a manner as to make it fully believable. Part of his story dealt with genetic material being wholly preserved in amber, and while I have no idea where I might actually find such material, I can imagine some other type of rock such as sandstone, which might conceivably contain a fossilized specimen of some age old entity, such as a plant. So let's start with a nice image of a plant, clean up the background a bit, and then apply an artistic filter to it such that the resultant image looks as if it might actually have been a fossilized plant. Does it work? ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f/5.6.

Traveling up to Rockport to shoot the eagles as we did on that last Friday in December offered us a sight we have never before experenced, and that was to see a herd of wapiti free roaming on this side of the Cascades. Now to be sure we have seen signs warning of elk crossings in many areas in our lives, as well as having visited elk reserves in eastern WA, but to actually see the critters we've been warned about lo these many decades free roaming was a real treat. We were driving along highway 20 outside Concrete by perhaps 10 miles when I noticed a truck on the side of the road so I slowed down, tourist-like, to see what had caused the driver to pull off and noticed the herd crossing a farmer's field. I quickly pulled to a stop with Jan telling me I'd never have time to get a photo but I persevered since I had nothing better to do and besides, the dog needed a road stop as well. So out I hopped, grabbed as many shots as I could before they crossed over into a more secluded area, and then, nearly frozen in the low 20 temps and ever brilliant morning sunshine, tried to coax the dog into doing whatever it was she thought she needed to do which it turned out was to sniff every blade of grass available and then get back intothe vehicle. And that was the first and last time we've seen a wild herd of wapiti. ISO 320; 1/125 sec @ f / 10.

Two images for today, one virtual and the other physical. First the virtual for which it might help a bit if you refer back to Monday's image of the Olympic Mountains. Walking from the main building to my portable Wed morning I was awestruck by what was unfolding in front of my eyes. The top third of the entire Olympic range was bathed in pink light while the middle third was a bright white and the base of the mountains a dark blue; the American flag unfolding right before my eyes!! I have to admit I stopped my morning preparations and simply watched! The pink then turned to a golden cream eventually becoming an oyster white before returning to the more common display. Then a few minutes later yet another show as the sun bathed the peaks in a golden hue for the next 10 minutes or so before once again returning to the more typical display of magnificent beauty. Take a moment and try to envision such in your own mind. O.K., now back to semi-reality. The physical image for today has been titled halftone, a play on words with which all of you who are familiar with anything graphic will immediately identify. The shot is one from the series of the January full moon shoot and one in which I've employed just a subtle one click alteration. Try to imagine just what I may have done from the title before looking at it. Were you close? ISO 200; 4 sec @ f / 11 on a tripod.

In my secondary school years I remember there was an add for Memorex magnetic tape which had as it main theme "Is it real or is it Memorex?" There was usually a "live" performance of some woman singing and then a repeat with the question being is it once again the individual singing or a playback of her voice recorded on Memorex tape. Of course the implication was that the second performance was a recorded one and that it was so good that you couldn't tell the difference. My cousin's farm is laid out such that not only do you have a reasonable view looking west toward the Olympics, but there is a resident flock of Canada Geese who daily provide for some potential image enhancement. The question of course now is whether or not the image for today is exactly as it occurred or has there been some hanky panky employed to get what you are seeing. Could there have been the simultaneous sky, sunset, and transitioning geese, or was there something added to something else. There are three options of a) it all happened as seen, b) just the geese were added, or c) both the geese and the sunset were added. A real close examination will likely not help you come to your conclusion, so it will have to be a gut feeling. And so it went today with second class session of the after school class in photography. A full 5% of the students did the assigned homework in preparation for the class, 5 thought it would be more fun to try and talk over the teacher (they were offered a pass out) and one other was more concerned with her phone, just in case "her mother was trying to text her." Doubt we'll see her again. So, not having done their homework, I do believe that they lost out on a lot as we covered, somewhat thoroughly, the subject of composition with roughly 50 images presented and analyzed. In at least two instances it was a question of "real or Memorex" but I think most of the class just didn't get the concept. Next week we'll do likewise dealing specifically with light and lighting; here's hoping for a slightly more responsible group of students. Meanwhile, what did you decide? ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 4.5.

Depending upon whom you ask, Seattle has many different monikers. If one were to ask them as a question for a classroom exercise, it might something like Seattle is known as: (a) rain city; (b), jet city; (c) music city; (d) emerald city; (e) light city. And there are likely one or two I've either forgotten or not yet heard. For today's exercise the more correct answer would be (b), the jet city. While we were participating in the January full moon event from West Seattle I was aware of numerous aircraft on final to SEATAC International airport and thought it might be fun, as a diversionary exercise, to see if I could incorporate one into a photo in an interesting way. While I shot several, one in particular met my definition of interesting, and I share it today. The aircraft is in the direct line of light that is illuminating the buildings, and as such is also illuminated in that same warm light. There were many aircraft passing as we waited, but this was the only one that I caught with light on it. If you look closely you should see another that is not in the path of the sunlight. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f/ 11.

On the days when the weather is clear, I get to look out my classroom window(s) at the Olympic Mountain range and watch the absolutely delightful play of light on the Olympic peaks. It is a mid-morning show, starting around 0730 and fully over by 1000, with varying acts every hour. As I have a front row seat I have been asked by others to give them a ring on the tele when I see something really nice so they too can take a minute out of their mornings to charge their batteries. This is something I'm truly going to miss when this particular subbing job completes. Such shows are obviously not limited to seeing the mountain peaks, but apply to just about any subject that may be directly impacted by the rotation of the earth as it basks in the rays of sunlight. All too often of course we just can't be there at the proper moment or we simply miss the shot due to some other circumstance. Depending on the subject, all that may be overcome by the proper application of some digital manipulation. Such was the case for the image shared today in which I "helped" it just a bit to create what I was seeing in my mind when shooting some cacti at a local conservatory. The sunlight was filtering in through a less than clean window and was additionally disrupted by the plants in its path on the way to the cactus in which I was interested. The shot I was envisioning was something not unlike the glow of sunlight along the rim of earth such as seen in many of the shots taken by the astronauts. So I set to work and with a little thought came up with my vision of the sun creeping around the edge of the plant. ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f/14 on a tripod.

When we moved into our current house back in the very early 70s, we found that we were in for several very pleasant surprises, in that upon removing the paint off various items in the home that the fireplace bricks were comprised of two different tiles, one plain and the other, inlaid images. Likewise, when we cleaned the paint off some old lamps on the wall, to find that they were solid brass that needed only a little work to make like new. Such surprises are the kind you like to have every once in a while; those kinds offset those other kinds, like what I'll detail below. In a somewhat similar manner, as I paid closer attention to some of the images I took at the railroad exhibit in Snoqualmie,WA last summer, I noted that there was more info available on the side of the cars than I had originally envisioned. One such is the image for today of something called the Inland Empire Paper Co., a business of old I thought since I had never before heard of or seen anything about it. But curiosity, as they say, . . . . so I did a search for the Inland Empire Paper Co and was amazed the find several references to it, including one about the recreational opportunities they provided on company land. So not such an obscure company afterall, just one with which I wasn't familiar. A little bit of work on the image provided some idea as to how the original painting on the side of the car may have looked, and, to my way of thinking, it was likely quite attractive in its youth. ISO 1000, 1/100 sec @ f / 8.

If you are not into the HDR approach to capturing all the light as seen by the human eye (recently suggested as being 27 full stops by researchers at Stanford Univ.) and approximated by the merging of several images each of which has captured a portion of that light, you will have to settle for the shadows, mid-tones, or highlights. Depending on how you've elected to set your camera's metering, you will have varying degrees of success in getting exactly what you want. For absolute control one might select the spot metering option, metering on the specific light level that is the most important. Another approach would be to allow the camera to do it all for you in center weighted where you decide on how much of the center to use, or, giving the camera total control, go for matrix metering. All three methods are capable of yielding a very nice image, but you as the photographer must make some decision as to what you want as the final product. The morning of the shot which I'm sharing today wasn't providing me all that much light, I didn't have a tripod, it was relatively early, AND cold. So I elected to go with spot metering, chose the sunrise as my center of interest, and allowed the foreground elements to go very dark and become silhouettes. With the sunrise as my theme, going with the loss of detail in the foreground not only doesn't matter, it provides for a striking contrast against the sunrise doesn't have compete because the eye is not looking for unimportant detail. The use of this technique often works well, and in fact, might just save what might otherwise be an overly busy image. ISO 400; 1/160 sec @ f / 8.

I had the privilege of listening to Tim Grey speak last night in his final presentation as a west coaster prior to his departure today to begin taking up residence in N.Y. For those of you who are not familiar with Tim's work I recommend you visit his web page and look into some of the things he offers, among them a daily Ask Tim Grey message discussing digital photography that is free service just like this mailing and also his Digital Darkroom Quarterly to which I subscribe. Not expensive, and totally worth the charge. Tim gave a very good review of some of what's new in CS5 and it was fun to see him in action. Those who have seen his presentations will know what I mean and for those of you on the east coast who likely haven't, do take the opportunity to do so if the opportunity presents itself. While Tim showed some nice tools in the relatively new CS5, I thought I'd share an older one that you have been able to do for several years in any version of CS but one which I haven't seen in any book to date. While I was still working at the camera store, we would occasionally get a customer or two, - actually more than that as it is becoming a fad - who would ask us to intentionally cross process film ( we wouldn't), which is to say, process print film in slide chemicals or much more commonly, slide film in print chemicals. The result of such a process is some rather hallucinogenic colors, much as those I imagine some in my age group experienced in the 60s. On a computer using software such as Photoshop, or any other similar program, all one has to do is to grab the gradient tool, select a foreground and background color of choice, select the linear option, and then change the blending mode to overlay. Then draw some gradients across the image. Your options are unlimited, and not only is it a lot of fun, you don't have to get real accurate in the drawing process although you might opt to in order to achieve a specific effect. The solutions are limitless and today's submission is one example. For those of you who ordered the Christmas DVD, that was what I did to create the red/green pattern on the final slides. ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f /11.

There were two crowning events of last week, and both were related to photography. One was the talk presented by Tim Grey and the other the after school camera class I got to teach. First Tim, then the class. Tim put on his usual excellent presentation, then opened up the later portion of the evening for questions. Always answering questions with a bit of humor mixed in with the needed info, it was fun to listen to him deal with the seemingly never ending discussion of how large an image, in terms of ppi, should one provide for digital display. The answer of course, as I written about plenty, is it has no bearing on the presented image at all as the computer and video card will use what they need to make full use of the hardware available, and ignore the rest. None the less, there is always the hard core group who just cannot fathom the physics of the problem and who continue to put forth the old 72ppi max. A few months after I had written four lengthy articles on this, and freely shared them, a full page article to the same appeared in Photoshop User Magazine. It was almost too much a coincidence to not notice. Tim handled the question with great aplomb, but I know some in the audience were not convinced. So for me it was a bit entertaining. That was Wednesday evening, followed by a Thursday late afternoon camera class. Thursday's attendance was substantially smaller with two official dropouts and a few more absent, such that I had only 13 kiddies. But 13 who wanted to be there. I offered to cut my presentations for the night short and was resoundingly told no way, the presentations were too good to cut short (they are my photos to which I talk about what is good and what is not). With that done, we went outside to shoot for about 30 minutes. With a little encouragement, the kids caught fire, were doing things photographically they never envisioned, and it was close to herding cats to get them back into the classroom to finish up for the day. The next morning I even had them running to the portable to tell me what they had done with their images once they got home that evening. (A real nice break form the daily classroom on-goings). As they left the building to hurry home after class, I found myself hurrying to Sunset Hill Park to see what might be image worthy. Much to my delight there was a nicely placed fishing vessel hurrying home itself to Shilshoal Bay Marina for the evening, so I pressed the shutter for a couple clicks and hurried home myself. ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 10.

After a series of events last week at the school, I gave notice this morning of terminating my long term sub job which means that I'll now have the time I need to get back to my photography, which has been sorely neglected for these past 5 months. It felt like a major burden had been lifted off my back. But the photography class will continue as well as a potential follow on for the Spring quarter. I realized in my preparation for these classes that in as much as I don't do people photography, I was lacking in examples of portrait photography. So while I was in the progress of "sorta" helping - a trained ape may have been more productive - move some building materials on Saturday in the pouring rain, I found myself in a situation where an opportunity for portrait photography was simply screaming out at me. At first I didn't see it, but with a wee bit of encouragement it suddenly dawned on me and I grabbed a couple of mother & daughter images that I think I'll share with the class. If you look closely you may recognize the fact of the downpour. ISO 800; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.

I had an indirect request for a sunset picture today and so I did a scouring of what I had available and decided that the sunset images I might share were more likely not exactly what the requester had in mind (I'm just guessing at this point) and elected to substitute a sunrise instead. Now, for those of you who have been paying close attention to what I've been sharing, you will recognize this as a spot from which I've taken many images, though perhaps none so red as this image. This is one of those examples of the golden hour of light of which the students were supposed to take advantage of for this week's class. Two more days and I'll know if they did. It is another example of a scene that lasted for just moments and is part of a sequence that goes from dark to light in roughly 15 minutes. I love to shoot this kind of stuff - anything in that golden hour, morning or evening, when each shot is uniquely different and often equally beautiful. If you are around anything that you like to photograph, but especially landscapes, find some time and get set up about 30 minutes before sun set and then shoot for that hour afterwords, or 90 minutes before sunrise and then shoot for that hour preceding. You'll be glad you did. ISO 800; 1/100 sec @ f / 10

It's been said that the devil is in the details, and nothing could be truer than the inner - we'll be polite and say - workings of educational systems which is the reason that tomorrow's wake up is the conclusion of the long term subbing. I had struggled with making that decision for weeks, but then last weeks events made it all to clear, and, the decision to leave was cemented. I'm truly looking forward to having my time as my own. Now it is subbing only on days when photographic opportunities are not prime, but there are a lot of "opportunities" that have gone missing that are soon to be consummated, and there are three that should be happening next week. So with just a wee bit of cooperation of the weather and the critters, we should have some nice stuff with which to play. At least two of those will deal with water fowl of differing sizes and kinds, one north and the other south, to an area that I've visited before but which was closed for a year for "renovations" and is now open once again with a full face lift. I guess I could more accurately say with a full new body and wardrobe. The visit will hopefully confirm the accolades I've been reading concerning the environment providing for some shots like today's only taken on the water vice a finger pier. But the devil is in more than just institutions and in the case of today's image also in the plumage of the animal. It is all too easy to just look at a bird and think, gee, that's pretty. Instead, we need to look very closely at the detail that comprises the feathers in order to develop a full appreciation for the intricacies that go into that plumage. Then realize that these lovely colors will soon be transformed into a drab wardrobe to match his mate while raising the children only to be returned back once again to the dapper apparel you see here once the kids have left, not only the nest, but the neighborhood as well.If all goes well I should be able to share with the group in the after school camera class. Trying to get the kids back into the classroom after being out with their cameras today reminded me of attempting to herd cats, so I think we may have some new candidates for providing images for the school yearbook. It was really fun to see them come alive and share with me the new things they were trying out on their own! ISO 400; 1/250 sec @ f / 14

With the weather for the weekend looking good, we set off Saturday morning to go across the sound for a meeting on the house. We left the house in some strong winds, got to the terminal to find the line backing up, waited at the fare booth and then once we got the fare paid scurried to our place in line. Got to the police control point and were told to wait; then finally motioned to continue. I switched boarding lanes because I prefer the exit in the right hand lane once the ferry docks. Got on the approach and was motioned into the overflow lane. After sitting there for perhaps five minutes, we were motioned to move forward; ours was the last vehicle to get on board. The crossing was very stormy and I got some great images, only to loose that Saturday night due to being so tired I failed to account for what I did and wound up not dong the transfer before formatting the card for a Sunday shoot. But at least I have the memories. Worked on house projects all day till dusk, then left for home hoping for the possibility of a few sunset shots. I wasn't to be disappointed; the sunset was of the golden orange variety and by the time we reached the ferry terminal it was becoming quite a show, both in the west and the east. So for today a shot of the show in the west. ISO 400; 1/400 sec @ f / 10.

With the weather looking to be quite nice on Sunday, I made the decision to leave early and get to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge for sunrise. The drive down was quite spectacular with an almost full moon sitting over my right shoulder all the way and the Cascade Range beautifully silhouetted against a creamy pre-dawn glow. It couldn't have been more spectacular unless I had elected (I didn't) to pull over and attempt to cross 6 lanes of I-5 to get the picture. That could have wound up being really spectacular and maybe even made the news. By the time I arrived at the refuge the moon was just beginning to sink behind the horizon and offered some interesting shots some of which I'll share later in the week. I had dressed expecting it to be cold, but not well enough to keep the lower half of the not-so-youthful bod warm in the 24° F temp. Apparently I wasn't the only one feeling the cold as I saw just one Kingfisher, one woodpecker, about a dozen Mallards, three Red Heads, one nesting pair of Canada Geese, perhaps a dozen little birdies, plus several hundred departing Canada geese. Not one mammal, reptile, insect, or any other form of life except for the plants. Overall a very disappointing trip, especially considering all the hype about it in the local rag. But one is supposed to make lemonade out of lemons so I did find a couple of images that might be worth your time. Walking along the boardwalk I noticed the sun attempting to sneak in through some of the undercover and I thought that its sneak preview might just make for an acceptable image. ISO 500; 1/160 @ f / 7.1.

As snow falls over much of our nation, including multiple flurries here today that were fun to observe but didn't do anything more than provide for entertainment, I thought I'd switch gears a bit, go with a close-up (not quite close enough to be considered macro) image of spring. Sitting on our front steps are a number of pots containing a myriad of different flowers, and one pot is currently adorned with narcissus. This morning during a couple of short sun breaks, the kind designed to lure you outside on false pretenses, I noticed the sun teasing this small grouping of the plants. So between making and eating the morning mush I grabbed the ol' camera and shot several frames. I was unable to edit my favorite shot satisfactorily - likely few if any on this list would have caught what I found offensive in my editing but I really didn't like it - so I tossed it in favor of this one which did edit acceptably. Now you are no doubt wondering what did he do, so here it is. I cropped about 30+% off the right side that was competing with what you see remaining, likewise about 5% on the left, and then erased a couple very small annoying plant pieces off the top and bottom left corners. Then of course I added a small amount of contrast by employing a curves adjustment layer. Otherwise, it is a pretty straight image. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 10.

With dire predictions of perhaps a snowflake or two falling tonight, I may as well stay with the cold theme and go with another shot from the 24° F visit to the Nisqually Delta. Having studied the brochure for the reserve after having visited it, I believe that there was more boardwalk than I found, perhaps because I was so cold that I wasn't watching as carefully as I should have, or maybe because it wasn't yet marked which is what I believe to have been the case. In either event, I now feel required to go down again, when it is both warmer and greener, next month perhaps, and give it another go. In that there are a couple of others who have mentioned a desire to go there, maybe I'll make it a group trek. As I was nearing the end of the existing board walk I couldn't help but notice a shot that reminded me to some degree of a set of goal posts, so, with a bit of maneuvering, I was able to put some snow capped mountains between a couple of leafless, because they are dead, trees. Actually three such trees, so you can decide how you want to work the goal post angle. The mountains are of course the Olympics from a perspective I don't believe I've shared prior. It is a bit busy on the right side; I thought about "cleaning" that up but as this is actually an HDR image, the layering aspects of so doing were presenting more of a challenge than I wanted to deal with, so you get it busy. Five shots, all one stop apart; 2 stops under, 1 stop under, "correct" exposure, 1 stop over, and 2 stops over. Merged together, you get proper exposure in the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. Just like with our eyes. ISO 640; 1266 sec @ f / 9. And yes, I should have reduced the ISO and used a slower shutter speed.

Friday turned out to be one of those perfect days, beautiful blue skies, a few puffy white clouds, bright sunshine, and, on Fir Island, as it turned out, thousands of birds. So I elected for an early afternoon departure and ventured forth to find the shooting condition in prime condition. Stupidly, in my opinion, the last couple of years it has seemingly been determined that having folks come up to the island to shoot birds and spend money is a bad idea and the local gestapo is now ticketing anyone who dares to even stop and grab a photo. As I approached the Fir Island Farm/Hayden Reserve I noticed the main flock of c10K Snow Geese right up next to the road about a half mile away, so I parked the SUV at the reserve and walked back to where the birds were located. After having been working with the birds for about 20 minutes an individual in a fish and game department jacket came up and began to hassle me. We had an exchange of words that came close to more than just words. He then proceeded into the field and shooed away all the birds so we couldn't get the images we were trying to capture. At first he really POed me, but then I got to thinking, I always wanted a trained eagle to make the birds fly, and here at my disposal was this semi-trained ape, so why not just let him keep scaring the birds (since they were obviously smarter than he as they just kept coming back) while I shot away. So, when he finally tired of trying to move them away, I had several hundred shots in a 30 minute period of time that would have otherwise required a couple of days. A case of turning lemons into lemon juice, sweetened of course. I then returned to the SUV to review the capture of not only the Snow Geese but many shots of formation flying Trumpeter Swans and some Bald Eagles just for good measure. I was really pleased and feeling pretty good about the start of my afternoon shoot when the driver's side window popped off the tracks falling down into the door bringing about a sudden and disappointing end to the day's work. A return to the city got all taken care of but with a somewhat bummed out dave who would have liked to have fully taken advantage of such an opportunity. The shot you see today was one of those from the geese being harassed, shows them from a different perspective than I've normally been able to get, and has had some of the birds in the very top removed so as to give you a clean view of what it looks like when they launch as a group, except, in this case about half of the birds just couldn't be bothered. Zoom in, it will withstand considerably enlarging, and look at the lower right hand side.The image is a bit busy, but nowhere as busy as being there! ISO 200; 1/1600 sec @ f / 9.