Tag Archives: photography

Panoramic Photography and Stitching “Errors”

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Hi Folks:

In a previous post I rambled on a bit about panoramic photography – basically a system where one combines several images into one using software designed for that purpose. One can also take several images of the same scene at different exposures and combine them into one HDR image using the same software. Mostly I use Autopano Pro for stitching, although I’ve also used Hugin, and since I work extensively in Lightroom I’ve been playing a bit with Photoshop CS5‘s HDR Pro and panorama tools as well. To create a stitched image the software looks for the same points in two or more images and assigns them as ‘control points’. The combined image is then mapped around those control points. Usually this works very well, but in my previous post I talked a bit about parallax errors and things like that, and sometimes these images don’t get mapped together perfectly. This can create situations like this: Continue Reading →

Deleting Old Lightroom Backups

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Hi Folks:

I still remember a computer teacher of mine from… let’s just say more than twenty years ago… telling us of a project where he gave everyone in the class several pages of text to type in, set them to it and waited until they were about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way done, then turned off the power to the computer system.  Amid the groans of everyone who was sitting in front a terminal he said, “Let’s talk about backups.” Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month

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Hi Folks:

Well, since yesterday was the last day of the month this post may be considered an ‘April Fool’s’ joke, but the only fool in this case is me. Besides, yesterday was Wednesday and Marcia’s ‘Poetry Corner‘ post and I didn’t want to compete! Yeah, like that’ll work. Oh well… 😉

So. March has been a busy month, photographically speaking. I made close to 2000 images this month, and while there are those who will shoot that and more in a day, I come from a world of 36 and even 12-exposure rolls of film so I’m still not used to the scattergun approach when it comes to imaging. Of those 2000 or so images, many were used as the basis for panoramas, or more specifically stitched images, since not all stitched images are panoramas, nor need be. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month

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Hi Folks:

It’s been a busy month of writing and blogging and other things, but I have managed to sneak out with my camera for a time or two!  This month I thought I’d make the focus (pun intended) of my ‘photo of the month’ page an HDR image.  The image below is a combination of nine photographs made at different exposures.  Now most photographers today are at least somewhat similar with HDR, but in my experience most people associate it with the grungy, grainy look that HDR is most famous for.  It has its place, but in my experience it’s overused.  Besides, HDR stands simply for ‘High Dynamic Range’ and is quite useful as a technique for expanding the dyanic range (the number of tones, from white to black) in an image where the tonal range of the scene is beyond the camera’s ability to capture it.  There’s an excellent article on HDR by Alexandre Buisse here.

That’s certainly the case with this image.  It was made in a local park called ‘Christmas Hill‘, and it’s one of my favourite places in this area to make photographs.  Capturing the detail in the shadow areas without blowing out the highlights where the sun strikes the moss was beyond the camera’s sensor.  I uploaded the images into Lightroom, and then used Timothy Armes’ LR/Enfuse plugin to combine them into one blended image.  Post processing included the usual (white balance, black point, white point, etc.) as well as some graduated filters to highlight the sun spot.

Click on image to see a larger version

So, that’s it for now.  Go out and make some photographs!

Mike.

P.S.  I came across this great tutorial yesterday by R.C. Concepcion on using Shadowbox JS to integrate a Lightroom web gallery into a WordPress blog.  Maybe next month…

P.S. II, the Sequel: You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.

Becoming a Better Photographer

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Hi Folks:

I actually wrote and posted this yesterday, but I’ve felt compelled to come back and add an introduction to it (perhaps solely for my own edification) as to why I wrote it in the first place.  In a way it began when I read a comment on a photography forum by someone who said s/he could never use ‘Camera A’ because it doesn’t have ‘Live View’.  Now s/he has a valid point in how s/he sees photography and how it works for him/her, but it got me thinking… if you went back in time 10 years and said to the people at any of the major camera manufacturers that you wouldn’t buy their camera because it doesn’t have live view, they’d look at you funny and ask, “Live what?”  Now live view certainly has value and I’m not trying to demean it by any means, but it brings back to the surface the question of, “Is is the camera or the photographer that matters?”  Asking that question among any group of photographers will cause either discussion or riots depending on the group, and I’m not going to pick one side or the other because I think they’re both important.  On one hand, one can’t expect to make the same images with a Holga as with a Hasselblad.  That’s not to say that one can or cannot make good pictures with either a Holga or a Hasselbad, only that the type of images made with each will be quite different.  A photographer is not bound by his or her tools.  At the same time, if someone starting out were to drop $50K on camera equipment with no understanding of photography, s/he’d probably find it a frustrating experience getting the images s/he imagined making with this equipment.  Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month

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Hi Folks:  As I mentioned back in November, I thought  I’d dedicate the last day of each month to a ‘Photo of the Month’ page.  This has been a very busy month of writing and posting and holidays and family and… but I have managed to make a few photographs.  I’ve made more photographs this month than I’ve had a chance to run through Lightroom; truth be told I’m still processing LAST month’s images, but anyway.  Of the photographs I have processed, I had a few choices I was happy with.  But of all of the images I’ve made this month I wanted to dedicate this month’s ‘Photo of the Month’ page to an idea more than a specific photograph.  It’s a project idea I’ve been playing with for a few years now but never got around to… yeah, one of those.  This particular project I call ‘Leaf Shadows’.  When the leaves fall from the trees in the autumn, they cover the ground and line our streets and some of them at least fall on our sidewalks.  I’ve found that in the right conditions (I’ve asked, but Mother Nature isn’t sharing Her secrets), the rain leaches the tannins out of the leaves and ‘leaves’ behind an imprint of the leaf on the concrete.  I was out Christmas shopping in Langford a few days before Christmas and came across some wonderful impressions.  All I had with me was my walk-around camera, a Fuji FinePix S1500fd, and I didn’t have my tripod, but I made a few shots anyway.  I think they cover the concept pretty well, and I’ll take a more serious look at this idea, maybe next autumn.  Fortunately this whole leaves falling from the trees thing happens every year!  I’m going to post three of the images I made that day.  Of the three, the last one’s my favourite.  Different people see different things in them.  Are they in clouds?  Are they skeletons of leaves left behind? Are they stories unto themselves?  You decide…

Mike.

(click on the images for a larger view)

Photography Links

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Hi Folks:  There are about a bazillion websites on photography today… I’d hate to hazard a guess on how many of them I have bookmarked, so I won’t try.  However there are some that I visit daily or at least regularly, so I thought I’d add them in here (in no particular order):

  • Luminous Landscape: This site is run by Toronto photographer Michael Reichmann.  News, reviews, product updates and assessments, and a forum with probably the largest collection of amateur and professional photographers from around the world.  Michael’s store has a number of downloadable videos for sale – well worth checking out!
  • The Online Photographer: A daily blog by Mike Johnston.  Lots of useful (and sometimes fun 🙂 ) information here.
  • National Geographic Shot of the Day: ’nuff said.
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day (from NASA).
  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips: Matt Koslowki’s site, with presets, tips, videos and more about Lightroom.
  • Joe McNally’s Blog: One of my favourite photographers.  I haven’t met him (yet) but he seems like such a down to earth guy.
  • John Paul Caponigro’s Blog: Another of my favourite photographers.  There are hundreds of pages of free .pdf files available through his site.
  • Light Diary: Craig Tanner’s photo blog.
  • PhotoWalkPro: Jeff Revell’s photo blog.
  • Digital Photo Experience: Rick Sammon, Juan Pons and friends provide tips and information on digital photography.
  • Alltop Lightroom News: A collection of the latest blog posts related to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
  • Alltop Photography News: A collection of the latest blog posts related to photography and photographers.
  • Analog Photography User’s Group:  Remember film?  I shot it for a lot of years.  Kodachrome was my favourite.  This is a user forum for those not digitally-inclined.
  • Canon Digital Learning Center: Tips, techniques and information related to all things Canon, although some of it can be applied to those with other camera systems.
  • TrekEarth: Phototographs, critiques, discussions…
  • David Farkas Photography Blog: David’s most recent posts have been about his experiences with the Leica S2.
  • Camera’s View:  Not a very active blog, but there is a set of calendar templates there for Lightroom and some other useful information.
  • Focus on Singh-Ray Filters:  Because you can’t fix everything in Photoshop.
  • The Mindful Eye:  Tutorials, critiques and other useful tidbits by Craig Tanner and friends.
  • The DAM Forum:  For every time you’ve asked yourself, “Where did I put those DAM-images on my hard drive?”
  • Leica User Forum:  The place for all things Leica.
  • Lightroom-Blog: Sean McCormack runs this site as well as Lightroom-News and provides great Lightroom information.
  • Lightroom-News: see above.
  • Hasselblad Forum: User information for both analog and digital Hasselblad cameras, lenses, etc.
  • Rangefinder magazine:  Do rangefinder cameras have a place in the world of auto-everything?  I think so.
  • Tao of Photography: Andy Ilachinski’s blog.  A unique combination of photography and philosophy
  • Flickr:  our Flickr site… couldn’t resist!

Mike.

P.S.  Someday I’ll add these and some other links to the main page.  Someday… I promise.

P.S. II, the Sequel: You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.

Photo of the Month

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Hi Folks:

I’ll get into the philosophic issues of pride and narcissism in another post perhaps, but since one of my great loves is photography, I thought I’d dedicate the last day of each month to a ‘Photo of the Month’ page. Basically this will be my favourite image of those I’ve made during the past month. If I go a whole month without making any photographs it will likely mean I’m in a coma or something like that. So, below is my favourite image for November, 2009. It may not be your favourite image from my work (you can see more here), and you don’t even have to like it. On the other hand, if you think it’s the best work you’ve ever seen I won’t be offended by that either!

Without further ado…

Driftwood Sculpture

Driftwood Sculpture

(click on the image for a larger version)

As humans we see the world in colour (or at least most of us do), but as photographers we can train ourselves to see the world differently – not just in terms of composition and ‘rules’, but we can begin to appreciate how to ‘see’ in black and white as well.  Some colour photographs are good specifically because of the colours contained in the image itself – the photgraph at the top of this page for example has a whole mix of colours from deep oranges through yellows and blues and into violet hues (although these show up better in a print than on screen) – but with black and white we strip away those colours, and the cues that we get from the colours themselves.  What we’re left with is form, shape, texture, hue, highlight, shadow…

This image was made along the shoreline at Dallas Road in Victoria, BC.  When I first saw it, this jumbled pile of bits and sticks reminded me of this story, one I wrote several years ago.  Using the power of the wind and the waves, with ocean water and stones for tools, a living sculpure is created.  If I’d come the previous day, or the following one, the image would have been different.  Sand castles are magical like that too.

Mike.

P.S.  As for the sign thrown back by the ocean, that’s closer to this story.