Daily Image - Mar 2013 Archive

01 Mar 13 While we were watching "The Killing of Lincoln" last week - the movie is good but the book far better - I was interested in the piece devoted to photography. Likely most of the folks who have seen the movie paid little or no attention to that aspect of the show, but for me it was perhaps the most interesting part of the story. I guess that won't surprise too many of you. Of course, back then everything was done on glass plates and that was what held my interest. The image I'm sharing with you today was going to be my attempt at producing what I think a glass plate negative might have looked like, but I realized after I started working on this that the image I had converted was far too busy to serve as a good example, so I've elected to go with the "original" instead. Well, not exactly the original, in that I thought what the camera recorded was somewhat boring, likely the photographer's fault, so I decided to try my hand at colored chalks instead. No filter as such employed here, but rather selective enhancement of the fine detail to give the texture I felt that colored chalks might offer. I've done my best to hold the colors true, putting my emphasis on just the structure to make the final image. If you like to play mind games, or just manipulate things, remove the color (de-saturate it) and then flip the back and whites, remembering that a negative is just such. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 8.

04 Mar 13. After three weeks of basically being cooped up in the house following the surgery, we broke out Sunday afternoon to visit one of the three forts relatively close by, and spent the afternoon visiting Fort Flagler. The fort was part of the Coastal Defense system located in Puget Sound known as the Triangle of Fire in operation from 1897 -1953. It's not all that impressive as old forts go, but we hadn't visited it before and thought we'd visit the last of the three forts in the triangle. From the northern end of the fort one can look directly across to the town of Port Townsend which is home to the second of the three forts, Fort Worden, making up the triangle, the third of which is located on Whidbey Island, Fort Casey. Looking across to Port Townsend from this vantage point one has a view of part of the location where the film An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed. The motel where Sid committed suicide (smaller white building at the left edge) is clearly visible from the beach on Fort Flagler and Fort Worden, where most of the film was shot, is just beyond the bluff but out of sight. The quality of the view of the city of Port Townsend varies based on atmospheric conditions, and on Sunday afternoon it was more O.K. than great, so I converted the shot I took to a water color which I think does the setting justice. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

05 Mar 13. It being B&W Tuesday, we of course will be looking at something in that venue for today. Now if Port Townsend is the view from the north end of Fort Flagler, today's shot, albeit at least in that direction, is the view from the south end. While we were visiting there was a bank of some rather spectacular clouds hovering over the Sound, so I thought it prudent to try and capture them. The original shot is rather nice in its own right, but shooting - well, converting in reality - in B&W, and using a red filter to make for a bit more drama, resulted in what I thought was a rather nice shot. All of this is of course nothing different from what could be done in the days of the wet darkroom and film. But I employed one additional step which wasn't possible in the wet darkroom and added a bit of fine structure enhancement to the clouds. Now that gave them some real punch which I hope you might appreciate. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec (needed the speed with one hand in a sling) @ f /13.

06 Mar 13. I was watching a webinar Tuesday afternoon on blending reality and fantasy. The presenter spent far too much time patting herself on the back and the presentation was so enlightening that I fell asleep shortly into it. But it did serve to remind me that I had done some playing with a couple of images shot on the Rockport trip we took back in mid January. In particular there was a grouping of back-lit moss shots that looked really nice in person, not all that bad in the viewfinder, but not quite so good on the big screen. There was however something about them that suggested they had some potential, so I first applied a creative filter to the one I selected for today to totally distort it into more of a design than a photograph, then brushed out the effect on the portion of the image that was the back lit moss that I was initially trying to capture .The resulting image is more of what might be considered wall paper but it has a pleasant aspect to it and I thought I'd share it as an example of working the real in with the abstract to create something simply pretty. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f / 5.6.

07 Mar 13. If you are anything like me, I feel rather certain that at one time or another in your life you've wondered how somebody ever figured out how to do some specific thing for the first time, say, for example, use a wheel or perhaps two connected together to move something. Seems rather obvious when you have seen it done, but somewhere along the line such a thing didn't initially exist. Then of course, when you see that something done, it all seems so obvious. I'm sure your list of such things numbers more than one. Photography might be in that list of things, or glass, or painting, pottery, jewelry, and so forth. While we were driving along the road leading to Baker Lake I stopped several times to shoot the mountains in various settings, including through the bare tree branches. Upon return home, while looking at all the images, a couple with the bare branches simply jumped out as if to say, it was a view similar to this that gave the Egyptian artists the original idea for a stained glass window. I've emphasized the leading aspect, (the tree branches), of the original to help convey the idea, and simplified the original to make for more of the stained glass feeling. Nikon D300s; 18 -200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.

08 Mar 13. Living in an area where the sky is predominately overcast and grey for the majority of the year, I tend to grab shots of clouds anytime I see some that are even moderately interesting to use as backgrounds to replace the more typical grey. Sometime however we are presented with some spectacular clouds that are part of a general scene that suddenly makes the scene something more than it would have been all on its own. Last Sunday's trip of which I've shared a few images already was one of those cloud days, and as you've seen already, I took advantage of it. Now back in Dad's darkroom days if we wanted color it was applied to the black and white print after it dried, and was, to say the least, a painstakingly tedious process. Ahhh, but now we can do it easily with the aid of software, so after making this the best color image I could, I converted it to B&W and then did a fair amount more work on it before adding back just a tint of color, mostly to the sky and water, but a hint of ground cover as well. Two weeks back one of the local camera clubs had an assignment of B&W plus one color; I would have entered this had I had it available at the time. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f /13. Needed the speed to counter the effects of one arm in a sling.

11 Mar 13. During my Ph.D. years at Drexel University I became very interested in fractal mathematics, in general because they could generate some rather beautiful patterns, and in particular because many of these patterns directly imitate patterns seen in nature, such as the venation of leaves, the branches of plants, or the layout of the vascular or neural networks. I would have loved to have spent a lot of time studying this branch of mathematics, but a 3 year time limit imposed by the Navy in which to complete the degree left precious little time to complete the requisite courses, let along branch off into a personal area of interest. But that hasn't kept me from continuing to look into the field, and as software has become available I've spent some time looking into the fractal nature of things. Those of you who have been paying attention to my creative stuff may recall that I've mentioned software produced by Redfield Plugins, and in particular, fractalius. This piece of software looks at the fractal nature of an image and tries to exploit that information. While I look at many images with it, I share only a few. Growing up there was a large pampas grass plant near the back end of our property, and I was always enamored by its graceful movements in the wind. To this day I still love watching that plant undulate in a breeze. Last year while visiting friends in the S.F area I came upon a large ditch that was populated with many of the plants. As there was a bit of a breeze, they were putting on quite a show. I took a few shots of which a couple turned out O.K. I worked up one for sharing but then decided to look at it with fractalius. What you see today is the original with the fractalized version overlayed and then rendered slightly transparent hopefully providing for the best of both worlds. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority.ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

12 Mar 13. Driving around the greater Juneau area last September I passed numerous little curves in the land which had bodies of water associated with them and each, I'm rather certain, if anything like the peninsula on which we reside, had its unique name. Unfortunately I failed to see most of them and that includes the image for today. In the original there was a rather interesting play of red and green color on the patch of land at the bottom of the scene where the creek enters the bay, as well as some foreboding clouds. It was the contrast of the clouds against the strip of color that caught my eye. But as much as I liked the color, I like it even better in monochrome, so it became this week's entry for B&W Tuesday. I've brought out the detail in the clouds just a bit, and of course converted it to B&W, otherwise, this is how it looked on a cold, windy, temporarily rain free morning. D800; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /8.

13 Mar 13. This is another of the images I sent a couple years back that I've reworked using the newer pieces of software that are available. The biggest difference is in the manipulation of the micro structure that results in far greater definition, and for those who like to print, far sharper and clearer prints. This was taken in Escalante, Utah during a short side trip one afternoon. Had I done my homework better, we would have spent a couple of days there photographing a number of sights I wanted to shoot, but was unaware at the time that that was the location of them. Shame on me, but this year, if our planned 4+week tour of the Colorado Plateau comes off as we hope, we won't miss them again. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

14 Mar 13. Today we'll go with another of the tinted B&W shots, this time of one of the fish ponds and the light house complex on Fort Flagler. This is obviously a manipulated image in several aspects, but none of them being beyond the realm of the old wet darkroom, save for the clouds. The clouds were enhanced by a small amount of micro contrast added by brushing it in, on only the clouds, after first having converted the image to B&W. After the cloud enhancement, the image was masked and the blue and red areas painted out allowing for the underlying color to show through. The color would of course have had to have been painted onto the print in the wet darkroom, but in the digital darkroom we can work right on the image. Very simple and easy to apply effects, but with some dramatic results. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /13.

15 Mar 13. Jan has recently discovered Pandora internet radio, a web based application that lets you program your own choice of music, commercial and DJ free. Having grown up in the 60s era of music, she has programmed to play folk, classic light rock, and a bit of stuff I'm not totally sure how to classify. Not surprisingly one of the groups we hear a lot of is Simon and Garfunkel, and to be sure they were among our favorites. Now, I obviously have to like one of their songs over all the others, and you've probably already guess its title: Kodachrome. Having listened to it a number of times this week, I thought I'd produce my version of it. Now, if you are really familiar with the song, you know that there are two versions of it; one stating that everything looks worse in B&W, and the other that everything looks better in B&W. Soooo, why not take a color image and convert some of it to B&W and then decide. The original shot is from Kodachrome Basin in Utah, not far from where I took the picture I shared earlier this week in Escalante. The full manipulation took many layers to achieve the final outcome, but the quick and dirty is I took the original, did some contrast enhancement to it, made a B&W layer, painted out the B&W on the mountains, and finally, breaking all the rules, painted with black over the sky on the main image, not a mask. The result is what you see but to give you a bit of an idea as to the original and why the area is likely called Kodachrome Basin, the sky was a vibrant dark blue, the mountains and ground shades of red and orange, and the flowers a brilliant yellow. But no longer. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f /11.

18 Mar 13. With the cherubs visiting with us over the last 3 days, we had a hard time finding something suitable for them to watch on the tube, either because of content or behavior. It seems that today's children's shows allow vocabulary that as an adult I consider inappropriate to say nothing of the behavior of the characters. So it was with some delight that we happened upon Hugo. Not being one to have much good to say about anything displaying on the silver screen, I was very impressed with this movie. Only now as I write this do I learn that it was nominated for 11 Oscars and won 5! Two of the Oscars were for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. It was a combination of these two thing that primarily held my attention, but there were other aspects as well, but they have nothing to do with photography. From the opening scene and continuing throughout the show was a particular approach to showing off the city of Paris, and I'll leave it to you to watch and see if you notice anything different in the presentation of the city scenes. Now watching this show made me think that it might be time to return to the collection of material I have been acquiring over this past decade to see if I might significantly improve on what was originally captured thanks to the myriad of new softwares that have come out since then. So today I went through two months of material from 2009 and selected about 300 to start with. Not being able to do anywhere near the amount of capture work I'd like with this shoulder situation, the reworking of older material seemed to be a good tradeoff. Today we are looking at a section of rock that was right alongside, meaning about 1 foot off the roadway, on the Logan Pass road in Glacier National Park. I'm sharing it as an HDR with a bit of structure enhancement. Driving by it it kinda catches your eye, but you really have to stop, get out, and look at it closely to appreciate its innate beauty. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 11, middle of 5 exposures.

19 Mar 13. A very short walk from the location of the lighthouse grounds on Fort Flagler one finds a couple of enclosed bodies of water called fish ponds although we saw no evidence of fish and just a few water fowl. It really isn't all that impressive, and in fact, the entire area near the defunct lighthouse compound, which itself is off limits probably due to some aspect of home land security, is hardly worth visiting. But since we were there I of course took a few shots. But what wasn't all that lovely in color looks quite different when rendered in B&W. Simon & Garfunkel may have been on to something. Now we have texture and form rather than color to direct the eye, and what remains, at least to my eye, is pretty impressive. Of course, a few nice clouds don't hurt the scene. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 9.

20 Mar 13. With a day that began bright and sunny, and concluded with gray skies and rain, I spent the afternoon working on images and listening to the songs of the Canadian troubadour, Gordon Lightfoot. I really like his music and often wonder, simply based on his recordings, if he hasn't had a somewhat less than happy life. Whatever the case, his music tended to influence a bit of what I created today, and the more melancholy of his songs were what provided for the image I'm sharing. You have seen similar shots taken from this location, but this time I endeavored to tease out every last bit of information contained in the original. I actually made several versions, each one stacked on top of the other, and then settled on this particular presentation. It began as a 5 shot series from which I created the base HDR, then spent some effort teasing out the finer details as well as providing a little adjustment to the lighting balance. It suffers from a bit of the Dutch period influence in that I elected to work with (emphasize) the dark colors of the pallet. If you like that style of painting, you'll likely appreciate this one. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 (middle of 5) @ f/ 5.6.

21 Mar 13. Today we are looking at just a piece of the action, in fact, just enough to force your eyes to scan the complete scene. Once you see it, the very tip of the mountain, it will be quite obvious, but until you do, I think you will find yourself scrutinizing the image to locate it. It is actually quite obvious once you recognize it, but until then it can be a bit mysterious. The peak you are searching for is, I believe, Sloan Peak sitting at an elevation of 7,835 feet, and bears a striking resemblance to the Matterhorn sitting on the border of Switzerland and Italy, though obviously not nearly as impressive at roughly half the Matterhorn's height (14,690 feet). Still, it is a rather pretty sight either in full display, or when playing hide and seek with the clouds, as it is here. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.

22 Mar 13. I got to thinking this week that I hadn't shared very many macro images this year only to realize I've shared none. So today we break the trend and start with the first macro of the year. Jan brought home a bunch of cut daffodils earlier in the week and I thought they would make a nice subject for a few attempts at something macro/close-up. I tried a few different approaches of which I'll share more than one, starting with the image for today which more than anything else is simply a view of the edge of the horn and part of a single petal. It is intentionally soft save for a small portion of the single petal, with the emphasis being on the fine texture of the flower as well as its color. This might well be how it looks to a small insect traversing the expanse of the full bundle of flowers. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @f/3.2 with fill flash.

25 Mar 13 Here is another of the older images from our trip in '09. We are at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in SE Idaho, and if you haven't visited this piece of the National Parks system you should put it on your list of things to see the next time you visit the area around Yellowstone/Grand Tetons National Parks. In fact, it should be the first stop on your visit to the three areas, as it sets the stage for what you will be seeing in the other two. Broken Top Mountain, the summit of which is the setting for this shot, is a easy to moderate climb up a 45 degree angles climb composed mostly of cinders, so while it is not really difficult, it does take a bit of time if you are not in your teenage shape. The view from the top will vary of course depending on atmospheric conditions which were rather nice on our first visit and snowed out on our second visit 8 days later. But both visits were equally nice, we saw different things on both days, and I'm anxious to visit it once more. You are looking east toward Big Southern Butte, about 25 miles distant. The Apollo astronauts trained here in preparation for walking on the moon. That should give you a hint of what it is like and what you could see. I've used some of the newer software tools to present this lovely location in a manner that I hope may entice you to visit. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /16.

26 Mar 13. With weather almost perfect, we took advantage of it and made a short trip over to the Olympic Peninsula to see what we might find. What we found was nothing but one beautiful sight after another and after about 300 frames we returned home in the nearly dark to a most spectacular sunset. All-in-all a day to remember and one which will be providing several shots over the next couple of weeks. One stop was at Madison Creek, a spot we've visited a couple times before but never with the amount of water that was spewing over the top like it was today. After shooting many frames we returned to the vehicle preparing to start the trip back home. Now there is an old adage in photography that says, after you've taken the shots you want, turn around and see what you missed right behind you. That phrase coming to mind, I did just that to get today's offering. It being B&W Tuesday, I've added in some noise to simulate the old B&W films as well as to add a bit more realism to the water vapor. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 9.

27 Mar 13 As a big fan of writing about the early Americans, meaning the peoples of maybe 10,000 years ago who populated the two continents, it is always fun to come across items that are believed to have been left by their cultures. I have only seen such in a couple of locations, the majority of which were located on the confines of the Naval Weapons Station in China Lake, CA, with the remaining sightings in WA State along the Columbia River on Highway 90. The art work is quite interesting to see, and even more fun to try and photograph such that one can realistically capture its simple beauty. Even more fun is to try and identify what, exactly, the artists were trying to convey. I'm sure there are some who think they know but I would wager such is not very likely as we have nothing that captured the actual items and/or events being portrayed. If you've not visited anywhere where there are petroglyphs to view, I would encourage to try and take in such a location next time the opportunity presents itself. This is one of many shots taken back on the '09 trip to Montana. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

28 Mar 13. Thought I'd switch modes for today and go with a watercolor. This is another of the images taken at Baker Lake and it just sorta called out for being converted. On our first tour in the military the Wives Club hosted several art auctions wherein a major art dealer from N.Y. would come down to Warminister and auction off art work of many kinds. We bought several pieces and among them were 3 or 4 water color prints. I didn't really like the form at first but it has been growing on me ever since such that I'm now enjoying finding those shots that I think are rendered well as watercolors. See what you think. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

29 Mar 13. On Monday I shared a shot taken from the top of Bald Mountain in which I attempted to depict all the weather that we experienced as we spent a few hours roaming the park. As you should have noted by the mares tails it was a bit windy as well as warm, the convection currents coming from ground level no doubt contributing to the weather. The change in the color of the ground should also have provided a little hint as to the temps we experienced. Today we are looking at the same area, albeit not from the top of Bald Mountain, courtesy of a Park Ranger who was unable to maintain control of his vehicle and therefore wouldn't allow others to drive around in the park, 9 days after the first photo was taken. Now what you are seeing is a snow covered plain as opposed to that hot desert like environment of just a little more than a week prior. I have intentionally changed the feel of this image to one which is much softer in appearance, trying to simulate the experience of utter quiet provided by the frozen ground cover. The feeling was not unlike that which one experiences as snow flakes float to the ground silently engulfing everything around them. If you kept the image from Monday, place them side by side and see if you can "sense" the difference. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /11.