Daily Image - Oct 2011 Archive

04 Oct 11. As a major part of the mural I shared yesterday was a series of cows, not to anyone's surprise I hope as it was a mural of a dairy on a working dairy. In addition to the cows in the mural there are other images of cows by themselves, and adorning the wall joining the left hand side of the mural is a painting of an individual cow with the Darigold logo at the bottom right. Now as I know there are several cow lovers on these lists I thought I'd share this individual cow as starters, maybe more later, because I had some fun with both the logo, which will be a separate mailing so save this image for a couple of days, as well as removing all the clutter from the wall that included a camera, a light, and several tubes holding all the wires for both the camera and light and something else I couldn't identify. That required matching the texture of the bricks plus putting the mortar back in where it got removed in the process of cleaning up the bricks. A bit of a task but sort fun to do it. If you haven't seen this mural in Issaquah and you live in my neck of the woods it is worth taking the time to go see it and then walk across the street to the XXX Drive-in Restaurant, an experience all its own and worth the drive even if you don't view the mural. ISO 400; 1/500 sec @ f / 5.6.

03 Oct 11. The annual Salmon Days Festival is held the first weekend in October in Issaquah, WA and has as its theme the return of all the salmon to their spawning grounds in the rivers of Western WA. We've attended the last couple of years and for the most part I find it just another mass of folks roaming up and down the streets looking at all the stuff the hundreds of vendors have for sale. We've been looking for a piece of art for the new abode and I think we've located two likely sources, but we will wait until we get into the house, someday. Meanwhile it is fun to look for things photographic while there and although the throngs of people make it hard to photograph almost everything, there is one nice advantage in that just a couple blocks before the vendor area begins is the Darigold Creamery Plant which has a historical mural painted on the side of the block long building. With no traffic to get in the way, it is a golden opportunity to set up and get a few shots of the wall. I had to shoot hand held as I didn't bring the tripod having forgotten that the traffic was closed in the area, so I didn't get everything quite as I would have liked, but the results were still satisfactory if you accept the fact that the street is cut off. Not a big thing in my mind, but for the purists perhaps. This is a composite of three images merged together and then cropped for best composition. Had to perform a bit of perspective correction as I didn't hold the camera as straight up and down as I thought, but that shouldn't be noticeable. Next couple of days will be sections of the mural. ISO 400; 1/800 sec @ f / 5.6.

05 Oct 11. Picking up from yesterday, we now look at the Darigold Logo a bit more closely. Of course, what I'm sharing isn't quite the logo as you saw it in yesterday's image. For starters, the logo image I'm sharing today started out as its own close-up, so it hasn't actually been cut out of the cow shot. Then I did a few small adjustments to it that go as follows: after making a copy of the background layer, I selected just the letters and put them on their own layer, then I added a black stroke around the letters, then added a color overlay for a bit of color adjustment, then a bit of bevel & emboss followed by an outer glow and a drop shadow to complete that layer. Then followed a curves layer with mask to keep the curves adjustment limited to selected areas, and then another curves layer for further adjustment of the shadows and highlights. Those four layers were then flattened, a copy of the flattened layer made for removal of the mortar seams, and then a final layer was created for employing a creative filter called glow100. Then all that was flattened once again for the final image. A relatively easy manipulation but it took about an hour to get it just the way I wanted. Now you can go back to yesterday's image and compare the two logos. I like the manipulated one better and am planning on mailing it to Darigold to see how they like how I've adulterated their namesake. ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 5.6.

06 Oct 11. I had planned to move on from the Issaquah Dairy images today to a different theme but a late email from a list member lead me to decide to share just one more. One of the fun things about sharing these images with you is that I frequently get very interesting replies back which are often a learning experience for me and for which I am most appreciative. In quotes is the comment that made me change my mind and switch to the image I'm sharing. I haven't asked permission for the quote but I'm fairly confident the writer won't mind: "Dave: A bit of history- Many years ago the Darigold plant in Issaquah was "Alpine Dairy". I milked a lot of cows in my high school years and was involved in sending thousands of gallons of milk to the Alpine Dairy. Alpine dairy was owned by a man with Swiss background named Hans Forester who was convicted of income tax evasion and sent to prison. Soon after it became "Darigold"." Now just what are the chances of something like this happening. :-D So, since we are talking about a dairy, what could be more appropriate than an image of a cow, only this cow has been artistically altered to look a bit sinister; perhaps she, or one like her, was the reason for the nefarious behavior of the former Alpine Dairy owner. ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 5.

07 Oct 11. The Saturday we ventured to Mt Rainier only to get drowned in the weather, having unsuccessfully attempting to wait out the weather, which, if we had waited another hour would have turned in our favor :-( found us looking for a garden location or something similar to render the day not a total loss. We did a smart phone search - not mine, I don't have one - and came up with a few options. We opted for one that sounded very nice, Rockcreek Gardens, and eventually found ourselves at the dead end of a dirt road in Puyallup, WA which just happened to be the right location. Only it wasn't a garden in the sense of what photographers would normally seek. Instead it turned out to be a wedding venue with fortunately lots of photo ops. We just happened to run into the caretaker who allowed us to freely roam the premises as he took down all the stuff for that evenings wedding as the "groom" apparently got cold feet earlier in the day and opted out!! A small $15K loss to the bride's family we were told!! The couple of hours we spent there were rather enjoyable and although it wasn't what I had intended for the day, it did tend to sorta make the day fairly worthwhile, if only for the farm implements section of the "campus." One nice section was a large dining/dancing area covered in some very attractive material, which serves for today's submission. Lots of texture to play with as well as some fun shapes. ISO 200; 1/ 15 sec hand held @ f / 7.1

10 Oct 11. Our Saturday trip to Mt Rainier not being exactly what I had hoped for, and not yet having time to make it back up there, although headed to Mt Baker for a 3 day shoot this coming weekend, I decided to take it into my own hands and bring Autumn to me. So beginning with a 5 shot sequence of Sunbeam Creek, I combined the images and tone-mapped them to give me a basic HDR image. That was then brought into an editing program for touch up and played with until I liked the final composition. Then I decided to play god and began to carefully and selectively grab the plants that should have been red and turned them into red from the actual green that was present when I made the shots. A few manipulations of the brightness and hue type and I had pretty much what I had wanted to get originally. The original shots having been taken in some very overcast weather (raining) resulted in an entire blue shift to the colors, so that had to be adjusted first in order to get the water looking somewhat white; the cottony look being achieved by two different and simultaneous processes; slow shutter speeds to soften the water and the joining of several different "pieces" of water, meaning the water looked different in each of the five combined exposures. If you are trying for this soft look in your waterfall shots and the lighting is too bright to be able to use really slow shutter speeds (1sec - 1/20 sec) you can achieve the same thing by combining several shots and simply masking out all but the water in everything save for one image. The overlapping layer of water will give you the silky look. ISO 500; 1/4 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 18.

11 Oct 11. Coming home from Barber School on the night of 12 October 1962 I barely averted being crushed by a falling mature oak that missed my vehicle by less than 5 feet. It was a "memorable" moment in my life, but not as memorable as it was for many, some of whom lost their lives in the Columbus Day Storm of 1962. A major storm it was, and I was reminded of same Monday as we celebrated Columbus Day with another storm, this time with winds gusting below 50 mph. But it did move some trees around nicely and blew the clouds and rain about such that it brought back memories. Not much blew down as far as I could tell, save for a lot of leaves. Some rather brightly colored, and others not quite so. But the redistribution of the leaves made me decide that an image of fall leaves might just be in order, and so that is what I'm sharing today. Now not just your ordinary image of leaves, but one that has be "slightly" reworked. A few months back - March time frame to be specific - I started sharing with you some B & W images that had started out as color HDR and which I then converted. At the time, I was the only one of which I'm aware doing that, as I had come across the idea on my own while trying out new photographic interpretations; within a few months I was reading articles and seeing presentations on how to do it in several publications. Now I'm sharing my latest approach to digital imaging and once again, I've seen it being done by no one else. Lets see how long it takes for this to become popular. Starting with the desired image, in this case some leaves, I've worked the image over in digital editing software to the point where I specifically want it ( it would look like most other leaf pictures I've shared across the years). Then that image is duplicated, and that dupe layer is brought into other software to be highly manipulated ( like the manipulations you been seeing lately.) Then the manipulated layer's opacity is reduced so that the manipulation is "painted" lightly onto the underlying original image. Then the manipulated layer is blended with the underlying layer using the desired blending mode to arrive at the final composite image. This is how the image for today was created. ISO 400; 1/60sec @ f / 5.6.

12 Oct 11. While one generally thinks of brightly colored leaves as the epitome of the fall season, there are other flora that do an outstanding job of brightening the season, and in particular some of the grasses. I frequently like to visit the local nurseries, particularly after a rainfall, which means most days around here, and play with the various grasses they have available. But some of the local landscaping works just as well, as the shot for today was taken in the corner of a yard across the street from where we buy gas. Just a simple sidewalk planting, but a plant that really caught my eye and served well for competing with the neighboring trees and their colorful leaves. Of course having a resting spot for a few drops of water didn't hurt any. Unlike yesterday's submission, this shot is basically straight out of the camera with nothing but a slight curves adjustment added and a dead leaf removed that was adding nothing to the composition. ISO 320; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.

13 Oct 11. There is a plant whose name I don't know for sure but its flowers look like small pumpkins and which, if I were to name it, would be the Jack O Lantern Plant, but I think they are just called Chinese Lantern Plants. They are very attractive no matter what you call them and our neighbor has a very attractive one on her porch. Seeing the plant sitting there made me think that some nice orange leaves would make for a fun autumn image, perhaps best suited for Halloween, but something I'm sharing today. The original was taken just up the street and I can't identify the tree so I won't try, but the shape of the leaves is rather close to that of a slice of pumpkin, so it serves my purpose. I played with the image a bit to get it close to what I wanted, then used a filter to create a bit of texture for the leaves, which was then painted on top of them in a "diluted" form (greatly decreased opacity) and then blended with the underlying "original" of the leaves. This is basically what was done for the image of the pink leaves, the pink color of those leaves coming from photographing the under sides of some red maples whose leaves were very deep red. This image was created as an exercise in color and texture, just to see what I could come up with, that although creative, would still fairly closely represent the real thing. In the late afternoon light the leaves on the tree are not too far from looking like this final result. ISO 320; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.

14 Oct 11. This weekend will see me at Mt Baker for a 3 day (50 hour) shoot of what will hopefully be fall colors in the mountains. This will be my first trip to this part of the Baker National Forest region and I'm looking forward to what I hope will be my first trip there sans rain. I shouldn't say anything as it will likely jinx the weather, but since I have here's hoping. Having never been in the specific area where we will be staying I'm not sure quite what to expect, and I rather doubt that there will be anything like the image for today, but I'm always ready for a surprise so I'm looking forward to what the weekend brings my way. With a little luck Monday's submission should be from the weekend shoot and while I can't speak for any of you, I'm more than ready for some good mountain scenics! I know there will be lots of trails to travel, so at a minimum I'll be looking for some nice water related shots and who knows, perhaps some nice wildlife thrown in to boot. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /10.

17 Oct 11. The weekend trip to Baker Lodge with the Mountaineers was a fruitful 50 hours, not so much for the local area, but due to two of us taking Saturday afternoon/evening off and going to Picture Lake to try our luck. Saturday marked my 10th day trying to get the desired shot and 6th trip in so doing; Saturday's effort turned out to be equal to the prior 9 days combined, and we really had some truly fantastic weather, at least lighting wise. Color wise it was a pretty big bust, but according to the Rangers the best day so far this year and expected to be the best day for the year as the huckleberry bushes were already dropping their leaves. So I am still trying to get the exact combination of weather/lighting/snow/color that I want for my "perfect" Picture Lake image. The road to Artist's Point did not open for a single day this year due to the colder weather pattern and failure of the snow pack to melt; snow was clearly evident completely covering Mt Baker from the summit down to roughly 5000 feet and Mt Shuksan was snow covered from its peak down to ground level, so there was lots of snow to see even if we didn't actually get into any. With what I can only call perfect lighting, the opportunity to play with the lake and mountain combination was simply a delight. I've selected a series of 5 images taken at 1 stop intervals from -2 to +2, combined them in an HDR program to produce a single color image, and then converted that color HDR image into B & W. For those of you familiar with the Zone System of photography, this image has zones 0 - 10 represented. Overall I think it does well as a B&W image, perhaps even a wee bit better than the original color image. ISO 200; 1/125 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 14.

18 Oct 11. Just short (walking distance) of the turn off to the Baker Lake Lodge run by Puget Sound Energy there sits what appears to be a former Ranger Station although I'm only guessing at its prior function based on the design of the small building. In front of it, parallel to the highway, is an aging split rail fence that is now covered with lots of colorful mosses, and along side of it sits a stone wheel on its own pedestal. Although of moderate interest from a distance, the stone wheel becomes more so the closer you get to it. If you take the time to get down on the ground very close to it, you realize that it is carpeted with various forms of small life, some of it readily recognizable, and some of it not. Or at least not to my untrained eye. I found it enticing enough at the time to take a couple of shots but after initially getting one into the computer decided that perhaps it wasn't as interesting as I had initially imagined, until I did a bit of enhancement to it. Then it suddenly began looking quite different. Each little additional "improvement" I made to the image reminded more and more of why I took the image in the first place, and while I still don't know anymore about it than I did when I pressed the shutter release, I now find the resultant image to be something that holds my eye and piques my curiosity. Some of you with a bent towards botany may be able to enlighten me. ISO 320; 1/25 sec hand held @ f /10.

19 Oct 11. Animals without internal skeletons often have their armor on the outside, and it is commonly referred to as an exoskeleton. An animal of this type with which we are all familiar might be a crab. Whenever a crab outgrows its exoskeleton, it "molts" meaning that it climbs out of its current shell and forms a new, bigger one more appropriate the the individual's greater girth. When crabs do this and are caught in the process of hardening the new shell, they are referred to as soft shelled crabs. This replacement of a body part is found in many critters, and in reptiles we call it shedding. Something my python does regularly but for the last several years he has done it poorly and we now ever get a fully intact skin. Likewise I have seldom found what might be called a fully intact exoskeleton of a crab, that is, until this summer when I came upon one during the June low tides that was very close to being fully intact. So I took several shots of it and while I liked at least one which I prepared for this list, it really wasn't good enough as it was, so I decided to run it through a filter to see if I could improve on it. What resulted is in my opinion much more interesting than the original, albeit very abstract. See if you agree; the head is facing towards the left, and all the legs are visible although you may have to study it a while to locate them. ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 9.

20 Oct 11. One of the most challenging things to do in photography is to capture a frequently photographed subject in a manner not previously done. As time goes by, and more and more photographers work on the same subject, that task becomes increasingly difficult. A good example of what I'm addressing is Picture Lake with Mt Shuksan in the background. This shot is supposedly the most taken photograph in WA State, and based on the number of photographers I've seen there each time I visit, I certainly wouldn't want to argue the point. Last Friday I shared a shot of that area that, for lack of better words, one could say was the cliche shot. No question about it, but something I keep taking hoping I can come up with something new. Monday's submission of that very thing in B & W was one attempt at presenting the "standard" shot in a new way, and I can truthfully say I've never seen it in B & W before. To be sure, there must have been millions of shots taken of this very same thing in B & W, it is just that I've never seen one, and as such, felt like it was time to try the old way again. I think it turned out well, and several folks have commented on the fresh approach to an old topic. Today's submission is another approach to the same thing, but this time in a creative way. You should be readily able to identify the location even without me telling you that it started out as the image from last week. But even without that knowledge, it should be able to stand on its own. If you still have the image from last week you might like to compare them side by side assuming you don't outright reject the creative material. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f/10 for the original.

21 Oct 11. The image for today is not what I saw, but rather, what I would have liked to have seen last week while on the Mt Baker retreat with the Mountaineers. What was there was a bit on the cold side, both weather and color wise, so while I had a chemical pac to keep my hands warm, I had to use a filter, after the fact, to get the color warm. Now in the days of film one would have placed a filter, either glass screw in or plastic mounted in a one size fits all bracket, in front of the lens. In today's digital world the easier way is to use a piece of software to accomplish the same although one can still use the old tried and true hardware approach if desired. Mt Baker sits immediately to the right of this image and the rocky area you see on the right hand side of the image is the lower slope of that mountain. The "clouds" are a fog bank sitting directly above Baker Lake which we had to drive through (the clouds) to get to the site where this shot was taken. All the area you see with white above it is a part of Baker Lake which was formed by a couple of dams, one very large cement version, and another small earthen version. I saw very little of the lake as it was mostly covered in fog while I was attempting to get a shot of it. However, I think the fog actually has added to the overall scene as I saw a couple of images of the lake without the fog and to be rather blunt they were somewhat boring. So I think I captured the better part of the deal. That said, I found the location to be significantly lacking in what I like to shoot, so just prior to lunch a couple of us headed out to Picture Lake for the rest of the day. ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f /14.

24 Oct 11. It being that season of the year when all things bright and beautiful put on their finest display of color, I like to spend a fair amount of time attempting to capture as much of it as I can. Most of the time we generally turn our attention to the trees and shrubs for their brilliant displays, but many of the flowers do likewise, and one of our favorite fall flowers is that of the Princess Plant, Tibouchina urvilleana. For the past couple of years we have been admiring this plant in the local nurseries and finally purchased one in the Spring of 2010. It sat on our steps doing nothing (we actually thought we had bought a dud) until early September when it rather suddenly began putting out flowers for perhaps two months; not realizing we had bought a semi-tropical plant we left it outdoors and the first frost, sadly, killed it. So Sunday we decided on another copy and now we have it indoors for the nights and will be putting it outdoors during the days as long as the weather permits. It would be nice to keep it indoors all the time, but as the beast completely fills up our front porch entry, it needs to find a spot outdoors during the day, if possible. The main thing that attracted us to this plant is the absolutely beautiful purple flowers that for some reason photograph as deep blue, so I've adjusted the color in this image to actually match that of the plant as close as I can, plus I've done a "bit" of gardening so that all you see are the petals and not the competing materials surrounding it. Otherwise this is a straight from the camera image. ISO 200; 1/60 sec (with flash) @ f /10.

25 Oct 11. Taking a chance that I may disappoint those of you who don't appreciate the macro/flower stuff and sharing another image of that type for today.As a child I was terribly allergic to roses and as such really had no appreciation for them. Through the wonder of modern medicine I am now only minimally allergic to them and as long as I'm not around a concentration of them, such as photographing in a rose garden, which I don't, I'm O.K. As the allergies subsided I began to appreciate roses initially just in their bud stage, but now I can appreciate them transitioning between bud and full flower, but I still don't quite enjoy the fully deployed blossom. For most of my life I considered them a late spring early summer flower, but since returning to our neighborhood in the PNW I've come to realize that a lot of roses put on their show in the fall, and now as I walk around the neighborhood I'm seeing more and more of these beautiful plants which I occasionally try to capture while either as buds or just slightly more deployed. This image started out as a grab shot over a neighbor's cyclone fence, then was cropped to get just the flower and eliminate a lot of other garden "vegetation," had some noise removal applied but no sharpening of any kind as I rather liked the soft approach to this thorny plant, and finally underwent some cloning out of a few leaves in the lower left that had just enough presence to make you wonder what was actually in that corner and I didn't like that distraction. ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 8.

26 Oct 11. Arriving rather late in the afternoon, early evening if you prefer, at the Baker Lake Lodge last Friday I decided to try my hand at getting a shot or two of Baker Lake as one of the participants said the light on the lake, just across the highway, was quite nice. I headed out taking some time to shoot along the way and in the process rousted up a couple of Ruffled Grouse, the first I'd seen in over 4 decades in this part of the country. Eventually I made it to the lake and was very disappointed to see this very tiny body of water situated below a small earthen dam. But I met a gentleman from one of the local communities with whom I had a nice conversation, and then, after he departed, tried my hand at capturing the lake with Mt Baker in the distance at its far end. The lighting was harsh, and it was disappearing fast, so I elected to use the HDR approach to getting the image(s). That evening at dinner I was informed by other participants that what I shot wasn't the "real" Baker Lake, and they invited me to join them the next morning to go shoot it. I eagerly accepted the invitation and we tried that very thing early Saturday morning; the picture I sent a couple days ago was what we saw of the "real" Baker Lake. While we were trying our luck with the morning shoot a somewhat spontaneous discussion arose concerning the use of HDR photography that took the better part of 15 minutes. Part of that discussion had some intense moments and I'll pick up tomorrow with that topic along with a shot taken during the discussion. ISO 200; 1/13 sec @ f /18 (middle of 5 exposures).

27 Oct 11. Having gone about as far as we could up a local "hill" and still have a view, the three of us were each working on our individual approaches to capturing the moment when I made an offhand comment about the lighting being a good time to employ the HDR approach, which you will observe I didn't for this image (dark area in LRH corner). One of the other photographers immediately stated that such photography was gimmickry and that real photographers shouldn't have to compete with them. In that I like the approach, and think it a valid way to show what the eye can capture and photography can't in a single exposure, asked him to explain himself. He stated that images shouldn't be manipulated but be required to be just what comes out of the camera. I then asked if he was shooting the RAW format and he said no, he was shooting jpeg images. The third photographer then made the statement that jpeg images were manipulated by the computer in the camera. That tended to really irritate the other individual, and when I then asked about how making an HDR image was any different than the manipulations done by Ansel Adams on ALL his images I got a red faced reply that what Ansel did was different. To which when I asked how, the response given was that Ansel used chemicals, not a computer. Both of us who were asking the questions then did a bit of "education" about how the modern cameras manipulate the images for him, sometimes considerable amounts over which the jpeg shooter has no control, as compared to the total control available with a RAW image, and things shortly returned to normal. All-in-all I found the conversation to be somewhat amazing considering the digital age in which we are all shooting. The image you see today is a composite of 10 shots that I've stitched together. Mt Baker at 10,781 feet is on the left and Mt Shuksan at 9,131 feet is on the right. In the very ULH corner you can faintly see the moon. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f /14 on a tripod.

The adjusted version.

28 Oct 11. Since I've been discussing the HDR approach to imaging for a couple of days I thought I'd comment on one aspect of this form of photography of which a lot of individuals find less than appealing, and here I'm not addressing the "grunge" look, but rather, the generally flat, i.e., lacking in contrast, appearance to the images. This should not be surprising as the HDR process is one of toning down the bright highlights and brightening the shadows, hence the term "tone mapping." While this process allows the photographer to capture a wider dynamic range in the original scene, it does leave the final image looking somewhat synthetic. Newer HDR programs are offering controls to overcome this, but many users apparently either don't understand their use, aren't aware of what the controls provide, or just imply like the flat look of the HDR output. There is obviously nothing wrong with the flat look, or the grunge look for that matter, it is simply a matter of taste. But for those individuals who prefer there be more contrast, and thus a somewhat livelier image, the solution is simple, either use a curves adjustment layer to brighten the highlights and darken the shadows, or use a shadows / highlights adjustment tool to achieve a similar effect. The two approaches differ a bit in how they achieve the goal, but either tool works equally well. To illustrate the point, I'm including two images for today's mailing. The copy of the photo that says "adjusted" has had a curves adjustment made to it; the other copy is the direct HDR output without enhancement and is much flatter. My intent is not to place emphasis on either image, but rather to illustrate why some folks don't like the HDR "stuff" and a simple solution to the problem; you pick what you prefer. There is no correct choice. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 7.

31 Oct 11. Nothing fancy for today, just a simple pumpkin with a greeting. The pumpkin is an HDR composite of 5 shots, with a creative overlay to add some texture, while the stem and water at its base have been highly sharpened for attention. The text was played with just a bit to give it the impression of floating above the pumpkin. Other than those small adjustments, this was just a pumpkin sitting atop a box of other squashes in our neighborhood mom and pop food store. It sorta looked like it needed its picture taken while we were there a few days ago, and so here it is. Happy Halloween. ISO 200; 1/ 80 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 10, hand held.