Winning Images

So I can't help but blow my own horn (if I don't do it, who will?). Tonight at the Richmond Hill Camera Club, 3 of the 4 images I submitted won placements in the club competition. In increasing order:

"Water Hazard". This scored the most points of the three, 8+8+8=24 but it was not on the assigned topic so it came 3rd in the advanced class under "Pictorial" images. The judges thought it had great timing, great flow and movement, rich and strong colours. They wondered if it had been over-sharpened.

Canoe in the Mist. No specific comments but they loved the image. It tied for 2nd place in the advanced group, assigned category. 7+8+7=22 points.

Beached Canoe at Dawn. This tied for 1st place in the advanced group, 8+9+6=23 points. Note the low score from the "Russian Judge". The assigned category was "landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes" and he thought it was off-topic because it was a picture of a canoe, not a landscape, so he down-scored it.

The 4th image I submitted was the Blacksmith shot (below a couple of days). When it was shown at the judging, there were some artifacts on the left and at the top but when I reviewed the image later, they were not there. It may have had something to do with the computer setup at the judging. Anyway, the image was marked down for that reason.

I'm rather pleased: 3 out of 4 images placed.

FacZen Photography Tips Straighten that Horizon Time and again, competition judges have been heard to say, "The horizon isn't level, so I deducted a point from the score." Is that only in competitions, or is it also important in other applications? Truth is, it's always important. It's one of those rules of composition, like the "rule of thirds" where it's something to be watched for. If the horizon isn't straight, the viewer has the immediate feeling that there's something wrong with the image. That's if it's a little off. If it's 'way off, perhaps the maker had a reason to make it that way -- to unbalance the viewer? To change the perspective? To force the eye in a certain direction? So how do you do it? Well there are some great tools in both Camera Raw and PhotoShop CS3. Here's an example and how to fix it in Camera Raw. Here's an image where the horizon is slanted. Open the image in Camera Raw. Select the "straighten" tool from the row of icons at the top of the image (it's the 6th one from the left, looks like an angle thingy), and drag a line along the horizon (or any object in the image that you want to be either horizontal or vertical... if you blow up this picture you can see where I dragged the line. As soon as you let go of the mouse button, Camera Raw rotates the image to match the line you drew. It also crops it automatically as big as it can within the frame. Now when you open the image, PhotoShop takes the cropped, rotated piece as its own! Voila! Straight horizon with no pain. I wish everything would be so easy. By the way it also does the same thing with vertical lines. Incidentally, no, I didn't take an image at an angle like that -- I fiddled it so that it would be obvious how it works. Neat clouds, though! In my next post, I'll show you how to do the same thing in PhotoShop CS3, and we'll talk about resizing images.

Cleanliness is next to...

Well you know. Today's tip is about cleanliness. It's about cleaning your DSLR's sensor. Specifically, the D70, but the technique applies to pretty well any DSLR.

(OK, that's frustrating. I just wrote the entire article, clicked "Publish" and it wasn't there. Grrr.)
So here goes (again):

FacZen Photography Tips Clean your DSLR Sensor Unless you're really new to the DSLR world, you know what this is all about. If you do know this stuff, you may want to skip the following couple of paragraphs, or read them then post a comment criticizing all my little inaccuracies! Here's the deal. Every time you change lenses, you open the camera body to the air. The air, which is full of gunk like dust bunnies, pollen, sand, greasy smoke, pollutants, and well-meaning camera owners' spit. In fact, unless you have one of those high-end lenses (you know, the Canon "white L-glass" ones or the Nikon lenses that cost you over $1000), every time you zoom or focus your lens, you're sucking dust inside. Now that doesn't get directly on your sensor. See, unless you’re taking a picture, the mirror is down, covering the sensor, airtight. Anyway, the sensor itself (which is a really, really precise Integrated Circuit which costs more to replace than you paid for your camera), is covered with a protective glass or mineral crystal cover, so dust and gunk gets on THAT, not on the sensor itself. Still, even the old D-70 has 6 million little points on it that detects light, so a flake of dust smaller than you can imagine can cover a bunch of them. No, it doesn’t get on the sensor protector when you change lenses, it gets on it when you take a picture and the mirror, moving in that compartment, moves the air around inside and the dust floats everywhere. The newer generation cameras, like the D300, have built-in automatic sensor cleaners which essentially vibrate the sensor assembly and shake the dust off. Still, it’s in there, and eventually you’ll be bitten by the dust bunny. You can’t send your camera in to Nikon every time you get a fleck of dust. First of all, there’s shipping costs and time, and Nikon charges about $80 to clean it for you. But Nikon (and Canon) say in no uncertain terms, DON’T TRY TO CLEAN THE SENSOR YOURSELF. So you’re standing there in Africa, and that lion is charging that herd of wildebeest, so you’re going to tell him, “hold it right there – I have to mail my camera back to Toronto for cleaning. Don’t move, I’ll be right back”. Or it’s your sister’s wedding and you say the same thing to the reluctant groom… nah. I don’t think so. You’ve got to do it regardless of what Nikon says. So it’s time for me to say this: If you do anything as a result of this article and you damage your camera, IT’S YOUR FAULT. It’s not my fault. I told you not to do it. I told you to send your camera in. Don’t come crying to me. That said, it ain’t Rocket Science. That sensor protector is HARD stuff. It ain’t diamond, so you CAN scratch it or damage it, but it isn’t that easy to do. Still, if you’re going to do anything, be gentle. Be careful. I do want to caution you, though. • DO NOT take the lens off, flip the mirror up and blow on the sensor. Spit makes it worse. • DO NOT use a Kleenex or Q-tip or even a lens tissue to clean your sensor. You’ll scratch it. • DO NOT be afraid. A proper, clean PecPad and soft brush or swab won’t hurt your sensor (see disclaimer above!). How often do you have to clean it? When I first got my camera, it was very dusty. I did take it to Nikon, they gave me the first cleaning free then said it would cost the next time. That’s when I decided to find a method to do it myself, and searched on the Internet for a solution. I cleaned the camera again about 2 months later, and I figured cleaning it frequently was a chore I would have to live with. Believe it or not, I’ve hardly cleaned it since. I noticed a couple of spots on an image the other day, and since I had some time, I decided to do it. This after many outings, lots of images, in rain, snow, on sandy beaches, in blowing fields and stormy days. It’s been about a year and a half.... That said, I’m using only Nikon, high-end glass, lenses that focus internally so they don’t suck dust in. I’m not particularly careful about where and when I change lenses and usually my lenses are in my Lowenpro backpack, NOT CAPPED (well, always back-capped). It’s not as much of an issue as I first feared. How do you know if you need to clean your sensor? • If you see dark spots on your pictures, it might be dust on the sensor. They will appear as darker, transparent spots. You can also check by doing the following: • Put your camera on manual focus and move the focus ring to the closest setting • Find a blank area to point the camera at – sky, or snow will do • Shoot a picture at nominal exposure. • Open it in PhotoShop and use the levels control to make the histogram cover the whole black-to-white area, then move the middle slider to emphasize the midtones. Spots will be obvious. You will also need this technique to see how you’re doing in the cleaning process. Where do you get a sensor cleaning kit? I started with some research on the Internet and learned that I should use a nylon brush, and blow air through it to statically charge it, then cautiously swipe the sensor. However I looked further and found what I think is an easier and a better method. I found “Copper Hill Images” at http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning (that’s an underscore between “ccd” and “cleaning”). I bought their “Basic” kit which cost me about $35 including shipping. You get a “SensorSwab”, a package of PecPads, some Eclipse liquid and lots of instructions. Preparing to clean your sensor • You’re going to need to lock up your mirror. Learn how. On the Nikon, it’s in the menu and the instruction book cautions you to us an AC power source so it doesn’t snap down in the middle of the procedure. I think that’s overkill – but I do make sure I have a fresh battery in the camera when I’m working on it. • Follow their instructions about mounting a clean PecPad on the SensorSwab. You don’t want to add or just move the dust around, and you certainly don’t want to scratch the sensor. • When I cleaned the sensor today, I opened the bottle of Eclipse, only to discover that it was empty. It had all evaporated, even though it was in a closed bottle in a sealed ziplock bag. So I cleaned it with a dry swab. It worked anyway! • Get some powder-free medical examining gloves. You won’t leave oily fingerprints on things if you use them. They’re good to have around anyway – see me if you want to buy some (we sell them in my First Aid company). • Find a nice clean, bright place to work. Best if there are no fans blowing air and dust around while you’re working. Actually cleaning it Follow the instructions they give you. Basically, you want to lock the mirror up, then swipe the swab across the sensor once, then back the other way (using the other side of the tip). Don’t give into any temptation to scrub things. Swipe with about the same amount of pressure you would put on a felt pen. Put the lens back on, shoot another test picture, and see how you did. If there’s still objectionable dust there (there will always be some...) do it again. If you’re really cautious, change the PecPad. The bottom line It’s not difficult, you just have to be careful. You don’t have to do it as often as you think, but it is a necessary task from time-to-time. As I said, it “ain’t rocket science”. There are some pretty good articles on the Internet about this. One of the better ones is by Thom Hogue and you can find it here. So have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

Resistance is Futile

I’m like a kid in a candy store. No really, I’m JUST like a kid in a candy store. And I’m not even talking about chocolate which has been and will be my downfall and will definitely contribute to my demise, although I’ll enjoy every bite along the way.

No, I’m talking about taking pictures of the fall colours up here in the Haliburton Highlands. How can I NOT take pictures of the colours when they’re so spectacular? So forgive me for posting a bunch of postcard type pictures, I couldn’t help myself.

What’s different about these shots, compared with most of my previous work, is that there is virtually NO PHOTOSHOPPING done to these images. I may have cropped the odd one a little, but I didn’t push the colours, didn’t clone anything out (well I think there was one where I didn’t like the green bush in the lower corner so I did). No Hue/saturation layers, no meddling with curves. I will admit to a few adjustments in Camera Raw – for instance, I increased the saturation of the blue sky in a few images, but I never touched the leaves.

Anyway, enjoy the images. If you want to see them full-sized, go to my gallery, click on monthly photos and then on October 2008.

Did I tell you I LOVE my 12mm wideangle lens? I LOVE my 12mm wideangle lens. Sometimes I point it straight up…
Straight up! That's what a super wide angle lens is for!

This is the same image, but I did a little "perspective cropping" to straighten the trees, just like you would in an architectural shot. Boring, isn't it? I like the first one much better.

This is right behind my house. Two doors away. I always loved old barns, the texture of rotting wood.

Here's today's photo tip. Thanks to Bob Fowler for the idea (he presented a similar one at the camera club a while ago).

FacZen Photography Tips Reset to Square 1 Right after I got my D300, I started having some problems. I experimented with all kinds of things (as well you should with a new camera – learn how it works!), and then I wanted to shoot some pictures and they came out lousy. Exposure was off, focus sucked, even the colour balance was off. I couldn’t understand why for a normal daylight shot the camera chose 1/8000 sec at f/8. Then it dawned on me. I had played with the ISO setting and it was at 3200. Want to see colour noise? Try shooting at that kind of sensitivity level. I was demonstrating the Gary Fong Lightsphere to a fellow photographer, and the exposures were all off. Well not all, about 1 in 3 were OK. What was the problem? I had been trying out “bracketing” and I still had it on. Every time I pressed the shutter release, I got a different setting. So here’s what to do. Make a mental (or even a written!) checklist and reset your camera to the defaults at the end of every shoot. ISO back to normal (for me that’s 200). Metering back to matrix mode. Autofocus set to “single exposure” (not continuous), focus mode back to weighted average or whatever it’s called in your camera. Bracketing off. Exposure compensation back to zero. White balance to Auto (for me). Shooting mode to aperture priority. VR on. Quality back to RAW. Put in a fresh battery and reformat the memory card. ANY ONE OF THESE SETTINGS CAN SCREW UP YOUR NEXT SHOOT. Tell me you’ve never come back from a shoot and said, “damn, that didn’t work the way I thought it would”. So reset all your camera controls to default as soon as you finish a shoot. That way you’ll know where you are when you have a chance for that magic picture.

First Light... revisited

I went back at dawn to the same spot. Liz had said it was a lousy sunrise, I should come back on a better day. So how do you know if it's a better day when it's black out?

It wasn't. Cloudy, no sunrise. Well the sun did come up, the Earth did turn in its orbit, but no spectacular colours today. It was, however, very cool. Not the temperature, the ambiance. The word "Tranquility" comes to mind. "Peacefulness".

Somehow pictures do have a different feel to them when there's a person in them. I shot one with and one without and there's no doubt which one I like better. This one:



As a regular feature, I'll be providing some photography tips here. I hope you'll come back frequently to read and comment on them.

Here's today's tip:

FacZen Photography Tips Explore your light meter. The modern DSLR (or even a point-and-shoot) camera has tons of computing capability but in the end, you have to make the decision whether your image should be exposed according to the light on a spot, on an average or on some computed combination (often called “matrix metering”). The best example is a backlit subject. If you expose according to the average, you’ll get a silhouette. According to the spot meter, the subject will be well exposed, and matrix metering will give you some compromise. “Digital Film” is cheap. Bracket your shots or switch metering modes and shoot several frames.

As a regular feature, I'll be providing some photography tips here. I hope you'll come back frequently to read and comment on them.

No pictures taken today -- I spent the day organizing all the stuff I had shipped up here last week. My office (3rd bedroom) is now more-or-less habitable. The trouble with going through old stuff is that you get sidetracked. I spent a lot of time looking through old pictures instead of unpacking.

Anyway, here's today's tip:

FacZen Photography Tips Throw an old pair of socks in your camera bag. If you decide not to take the bag with you on a walk-about and you want to carry an extra lens, an old sock is a good thing to put it in. You still have to be careful not to bang it around, of course. If it rains, you want to protect your equipment. Now your camera is probably pretty water resistant - most of them are well-designed - but water in or on your lens can be a problem, anything with moving parts should be somewhat protected. You can use a plastic bag in a pinch (shooting THROUGH it is not a great idea), pinch the open end under your lens hood or use a rubber band to keep it in place. You might have to cut the bottom out to see through it, but maybe not. I use a commercial product called a "Storm Jacket" that I bought at www.stormjacket.com or you can find them on eBay. Reasonable, easy to use, packs up small and light. Here's the kind of photo you can get if you are not afraid to take your camera out in the rain (or snow or…)

Pictures of Rocks (Not!)

It has been said that I take great pictures of rocks. And trees. In fact, when we did the Rob Stimpson workshop, I was told several times, "no pictures of rocks!" Not only by Rob, but also by the other participants!

The purpose of the exercise was to move out of your comfort zone. Definitely, I'm not comfortable taking pictures of people. So I've been working on it. Here are some examples, I hope you like them.



I took this picture of "George" at the Deep Gorge Center near Lake Placid New York where we stopped for some photos. George was having lunch and I commented how much I liked his beard, and asked if I could photograph him. I got him to stand near a window and used natural light.

The exposure was handheld at 1/25 sec (thanks, Nikon, for VR!), one stop underexposed so that I didn't blow out any of the detail. Really the only PhotoShop work I did was to blur the background (easy to say, not so easy to do: I "extracted" his image and put it on another layer), and some small hue/saturation adjustments.

I only took one image, interestingly.



Nella is a motorcyclist, she's a member of the Acme Motorcycle club. They went on a ride today and I met up with them for lunch in Coboconk. Afterwards, I took a few pictures including this one of Nella.

People think I do too much Photoshopping. Maybe, but I like it and I think I'm getting better at it. This picture only needed a little work, because Nella's skin is soft and smooth, the lighting was great, she has a great smile and I love her hair. Still, I sharpened the eyes, desaturated the whites of the eyes, fixed up a few blemishes and did some work under her eyes. I softened the skin with a blur layer although I didn't really need to. I liked the above image, Nella didn't see it, I hope she likes it. She saw the next image on the camera and said she liked it so I worked on it as well.





Vanessa is Nella's cousin. She was along for the ride (as a passenger, her first time on a bike, BTW) and I tried to get some shots of her both inside and outside the restaurant. Not that successful, until I got home and saw this one on the computer. It was taken inside the restaurant at an ISO of 1600, which made it very grainy/noisy. Also there was some kind of lighting from her left side (stage right!) that was green in colour. So I managed to colour correct that (hue/saturation adjustment layer, select "greens" instead of "master"), then I looked at a crop of the image and loved it. I worked on the whites of the eyes a little, desaturating them, and I turned up the sharpening on the eyes. I also lightened their colour a little.

Before finishing the photo, I looked at it blown up and didn't like the noise on the lips. So I selected them and applied a gaussian blur to smooth them. The same for the whites of the eyes.

Speaking of her eyes, I loved them so much that I had to do a tight crop. Like it?





One more: This is Tom, the blacksmith at Fleming College in Haliburton. He cooperated with us for our workshop, acting as a model and we experimented with various lighting solutions. I used a Gary Fong diffuser on my SB-600 flash, but set it a couple of stops down so that it would act as a fill light not overpower the image.

Wde also ran into a couple from Toronto on that weekend, who coincidentally handed one of us a point-and-shoot camera and said, "would you take our picture for us?" Sure thing, since we were working on "outdoor portraiture"! I haven't worked on those images yet, so I'll have to put them up later.

Reminder: you can see most of my work on my gallery site here, or click at right.

L8R...

By the Dawn's Early Light

Said I was getting up early! I did and ventured out for some sunrise pictures.

Liz, who works at Gonyea Eavestroughs, told me about a spot across from her house on Horseshoe Lake Road. I scouted it out yesterday and came back around 6:40am. I set up the camera on the tripod and captured this first image:



This one was taken at first light. It was about a 10 second exposure. I decided to put a person in the picture so I set the self-timer and walked into position, but I didn't realize that the timer was set for only 2 seconds, so I actually walked in in the middle of the exposure! Kind of a cool effect, huh? I named it "Ghost at First Light".



About 12 minutes later (ain't metadata useful?), exactly at 7:00am (plus 9 seconds), I got this shot:



About 45 minutes later, driving home, I was struck by the light filtering through the trees and stopped to take another photo. The camera decided on a weird White Balance: 3800K with -22 tint offset. Who knows why? Anyway, it took a bunch of colour correcting to come up with this shot.



Then I did a duotone out of it. I was thinking of using this photo to illustrate a short story that I wrote a long time ago, and which I'm thinking of reviving. Watch this space (not yet... too much other stuff to do first!)



By the way, I've taken to reducing the sizes of the images I post here. First of all, my internet connection is quite slow up here in TrueNorth. I have an Xplornet satellite hookup which only gives me about 128K upload speed (and download is blindingly slow at about 500K), and it takes a long time to post a 3Mb image. Also, there doesn't seem to be any copyright protection here. So if by any chance you want a print of any of these images, visit my gallery and you can order one there for a very reasonable price.

Hi from up North!

I'm in my house in Minden -- "TrueNorth", I call it. I came up with another carload of "stuff" and I have my work cut out for me this weekend. All the stuff I moved last week is sitting in my computer room, needing putting away, organizing, etc.

I did manage to find my Creative Zen Vision M which is a good thing, because I forgot my 1Tb backup drive at home, and I only have 8Gb available on the laptop hard drive. I'm waiting for the drive upgrade (apparently Vista makes it difficult to "Ghost" a drive and they want my computer for a couple of days to do the job. I'm going from a 100Gb drive to a 250Gb drive. That should be good enough for a week or two...

I took some time out at dusk to shoot some images. Just a few, I hope you like them:



You know what's interesting about this image? I didn't do ANYTHING to it. OK, I cropped off the bottom a little, but that's all. No PhotoShop. No extra saturation. That's really what the colours look like up here this year, I told you they're spectacular.



This one was enhanced a little bit, but not the trees! I exposed for the trees, so the sky was blown out a bit and the dock was too dark, so I darkened one and lightened the other.

I have to downsize my images a bit... uploading from this location (I'm on satellite here and it's slow) wait right here, I'll be right back.

OK I'm back. These took a lot less time:



I couldn't get this guy to turn around. He was across the water and couldn't hear me. 200mm lens, of course.

Now the following are 4 different treatments of the same subject -- not the same shot, 4 different ones, but handled differently. Which one(s) do you prefer?



I used PhotoShop's "Cutout" filter -- twice. This image was really noisy because I shot it at ISO 3200 just to see what it would look like. Right. It's noisy. So the cutout filter converts it to "art" and the noise is gone.



I kind of like this composition. I dodged the underbrush under the trees a little, and except for sharpening and cropping, that's all I did.



Tight shot, landscape orientation...



...and portrait.

OK, I'm setting the alarm for 5:55am tomorrow and going to try to get some sunrise pictures. I scouted out a spot, let's see if it'll be what I think it looks like.

a demain!

I never promised you a rose garden...

But I did promise you waterfalls. I love taking pictures of waterfalls.



So that red leaf on the rock really adds to the photo, doesn't it? Wasn't it lucky that it happened to fall exactly in that place? Especially since there were no maple trees around? Seems it happened to appear while Linda, or Kate, were taking their pictures. Amazing.

I took these two photos during the workshop with Rob Stimpson that I've mentioned earlier. He actually took us to 3 different waterfalls. Here's another one:



There are lots of ways of shooting waterfalls, but I like to use a slow shutter speed (somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 second seems to work best for me). Doing this in bright sunlight is difficult: even with the lens stopped down to f/32 and ISO of 100, you still can't get there. So I add a "Neutral Density Filter" to the lens. My favourite one is an 8x, which gives me 3 stops more to work with.

Here's a waterfall I shot in Vermont last July. It's one of my favourites:




THere are more shots in my photo gallery, mostly in the July 2008 and the September 2008 folders (look under "monthly". Click here to go there.

Backups, backups...

Today I want to talk to you about backups. The subject usually only comes up when you have a scare, right?

Yesterday I sat down to work on the Humber College Motorcycle website (it's at http://www.motorcycle.humber.ca if anyone is interested). I did a photo shoot there some weeks ago because they wanted to update the website, and what with moving, working, etc, I didn't get to it until yesterday.

Well that's not quite true -- I edited the photos right after I took them, created a concept and sent them a couple of samples of what I was planning to do. They liked it, so here we go. Now retrieve the samples I sent them... where are they? Not on the desktop hard drive... maybe the laptop? No... that was full so I deleted a bunch of stuff, but I know I backed it up... it must be on the 1Tb portable drive... no... maybe on my USB key... no...

I had to email the customer to send me back the images (montages, actually) that I had sent him. Pretty embarassing. I suspect the files are on my former backup drive, a 500Gb device that I gave to Iris when I got the 1Tb drive. Yes, I have folders in multiple places with the project in them, but not the current latest version.

So I'm not going to preach at you that you need to back up your work. You already know that. But you need to keep your backups current. Find a system. There are lots of them that work, but you need to be diligent about using it.

I used to do a backup by dumping my "my documents" folder (and later under Vista, "my pictures" as well), once a month, onto the backup drive. Not good enough for me. Now I find myself working on the files right on the backup drive. Not smart -- I don't have current copies in the computers -- essentially, I've eliminated my safety net by shortcutting my procedures.

So what do I need to do? First thing is to go back to working on the computer hard drive instead of the backup drive. Then I need to back up each project as I work on it, then I have to burn DVDs so I have a "hard" copy of my work.

Now my friend Jim is working on an article about proper backup procedures, so I'll post a link to it when it's available. He talks about keeping ALL your photos in one place -- that only works when you back that up somewhere else. In the meantime, I have to save my work one way or another, even if it isn't ideal.

What do I use for backup drives? Western Digital "MyBook" external USB/SATA drives. They're available at Costco -- 500Gb is about $100, 1Tb is about $200. Not a lot of money when you need some peace of mind.

All Right! Tons of visitors

I'm honoured (Canadian/British spelling!). 80 distinct visitors so far, and from all over the place. The Philippines, New Zealand, Belgium and of course all over the US and Canada. I attached a neat hit counter that lets me see all that stuff.

Remember, you can see most, if not all of my images by going to my photo gallery. Click here, or at right.

I know where a lot of you are from -- VROC. For those not in the know, that's the "Vulcan Riders and Owners Club", a group I've been a member of for several years and although we're all joined by the common link to the venerable Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle, we're an eclectic group including some members with discriminating taste (demonstrated by the fact that they're reading this!).

So since there are motorcyclists here, it behooves me to give them something to look at. Here you go:



Now Luc is an RCMP Sergeant (maybe Staff... I'm not sure). I met him at the Police motorcycle competition mid-August at Humber College. He's a friend of a friend of mine, Lori (Twuble) who rides a little Ninja 500. I'll have to find a picture of Lori to post later. Anyway, the layout that Luc was riding -- successfully I might add -- was really really tight. I tried it later on a little Virago 250 and was generally able to do it, but not a chance on my ST-1100. Here's me on the ST-1100:



I'm not as skilled. I'm trying, but I can't do what these folks can do. Of course they can't take pictures... this photo was taken by "Killboy" at Deal's Gap in North Carolina. Quite the place: 318 turns in 11 miles. (I just read that the record amateur time on the Dragon was 11 minutes. I did it in 14. Not as bad as I thought!) here's a couple of links: a video of still images from Killboy and a link to the "Tail of the Dragon" website.

Here's me on a dirt bike last June:


A little Orton effect for you photographers. I didn't take the photo (obviously) but I did do the PhotoShopping! I have to tell you, I was SORE after that day. I used muscles I didn't even know I had! But was it ever fun. Oh, and I did end up planting my face in that puddle!

And here's another friend, Shawna Aron, a couple of years ago on her R6. I took this at Shannonville racetrack right after I got my 70-200 lens. Shawna was the Canadian Women's Superbike Champion that year.



OK, so I promised you waterfalls. Be patient, they're coming! First I wanted to show motorcycles to my loyal followers!

Some more images

First of all, you can see most, if not all of my images by going to my photo gallery. Click here, or at right. But since there seems to be an increase in the activity level -- more people reading this blog -- I thought I'd add some images for y'all to look at (too many Southern friends. I'm starting to talk like y'all).

Also I've been getting comments (mostly good, keep it up!) by direct email and in some newsgroups, but did you know you can also comment here? So other people can see them?

Try this image on for size:



My friend Kevin sent me a link, or I found one on his photo site, to some similar shots, and they stuck in my mind. So I wanted to see how I could do. I deliberately went out one afternoon up in Minden, to try to shoot this kind of picture. I found a slough (that's pronounced "sluff" and it means a swamp or a shallow lake. See? And you thought you were too old to learn anything!), I put on my chest waders and ventured out to where I saw some weeds. With every step, my feet sank about 6" into the muck and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to pull them out. There I was, carrying a camera which I REALLY didn't want to drop in the water. It didn't work out. I didn't get the shot I wanted. I took a few lily pad pictures which were "OK" but not great.

Anyway, the following week, we were on the workshop with Rob Stimpson and we went to a spot called "Wren Lake". Rob wanted us over on the south east side but as I was walking there, I spotted these weeds and with his permission, hung back long enough to get this shot.

There is some PhotoShop in it: I cleaned the water a bit (not much), then I used the threshold tool to create a silhouette. Next, using a couple of adjustment layers, including hue/saturation and a graduated screen mask, I added the colour back in the way I wanted it.

What do you think? Does this look like a saleable image?

The following day, Rob got us up before dawn and we watched the sun rise across the lake behind the Frost Centre just south of Dorset. He took a canoe out and told us to yell at him to position himself where we wanted him. OK, so I did! My favourite shot is the background for the header in this Blog, and here's another one:



Yes, the light did look exactly like that (although I may have pushed the saturation up a tad). The sun didn't look good, though. As Rob pointed out, digital still has a ways to go before equalling film for smooth rendition of wide dynamic ranges, so I had to play with some adjustment layers and Gaussian blurs to make it look better.

OK, one more image for today:



I wanted to frame Sally with the trees, but since it was backlit, I had to overexpose to get the detail in the tree bark and a reasonable exposure of Sally as well. So all I did was to create an adjustment layer which I masked, then reduced the exposure on the Sally part. The sky was blown out, so I decided to play with rendering clouds, but I didn't like it until I transformed the sky selection by growing it and laying it softly over the trees to make it look like a low cloud or fog. I was told it didn't look realistic because of the sun on Sally, but hey, there could have been a hole in the clouds, no?

PS: if you blow this up (by clicking on it), check out the detail in the tree bark on the left. I LOVE the new D300!

I'll show you some more images tomorrow. Waterfalls. I LOVE shooting waterfalls!

New PhotoShop

If you're in the digital photo world, you know that Adobe has announced PhotoShop CS4. This just after I upgraded to CS3, of course.

There are some interesting new features in it, but not enough to make me run out and plunk down my money anytime soon. I got a glossy bonus issue of Photoshop User magazine (if you're not a NAPP member, you should be) that described all the new goodies in CS4. Most of them are 'way too high end for me -- doing videos and animations and 3D and small stuff like making the dodging and burning tools easier to use, a new adjustment panel and better layers and vector masking. All beyond my needs.

There were a couple of neat things in it, though -- especially that "content aware scaling function". Now here's a picture that could have used that new function perfectly:



What's wrong with this image is the position of the firefighter (it's not as if I could have told him to move...). If he had been much closer to the burning car it would have been a killer image. The new function in CS4 would have allowed me to seamlessly move him closer by cutting out the dead space in between. Of course journalistic ethics would not allow that anyway, but it would have been a much better photo.

The Toronto Star photo editor liked the following picture, by the way, but they didn't buy it because they said the smoke would not have rendered well on newsprint and besides, there was a plane crash that day and they didn't have space. I named the picture, "FireBug". It won an "Honourable Mention" in the annual Greater Toronto Council of Camera Clubs (GTCCC) competition that year.



There are some improvements in Camera Raw (version 5 ships with CS4), most notably some tools that work on selective parts of the image unlike the current RAW programs that will only work on the whole file. So you could darken a sky, for instance, without touching the foreground. Now you have to do it in PhotoShop instead of in Camera Raw. OK, useful to improve workflow, but not that essential unless you're processing lots of images.

Anyway, that's my take on it. It's not worth it to me to upgrade at this time. Perhaps if I learn about some other functions and get much better at using PS, it might be.

I'm impressed

No photos today, folks (I can just FEEL the disappointment wafting through the ether). Not to worry, there are lots more to come!

However, photographically related (I think I'll start labelling paragraphs "NPR" for "not photographically related" when it's about my grandkids or something else personal. If you're just reading this for the photo stuff, you can skip those paragraphs).

PR: The guest speaker at the camera club, as I said yesterday, was Richard Lautens from the Toronto Star. He's an eloquent and communicative speaker and certainly a talented professional photographer. Sometimes people like that hold back -- that's what's wrong with mentoring because the mentor generally wants to maintain his advantage over his student -- but I got the impression that Richard didn't. He was secure in what he does and he knows he's good at it.

You had to be there to get what he was saying. You'll have the opportunity because he's going to be presenting again at the Digital Imaging Show in a couple of weeks. See him if you can.

A few tidbits:

• You really really need to know your hardware inside out. You can't shoot creatively if you have to think about which button controls the aperture setting or how to switch to manual focus.


• You can have a $15,000 lens but it doesn't do you a damned bit of good if you don't know where to point it.


• Think about the shot you want to get BEFORE you shoot. Yes, luck plays a part, but there's no substitute for hard work and planning. I am AMAZED by all the forethought that goes into his pictures.


• While the "rule of thirds" and other compositional elements are important and can add to an image, the purpose in journalistic photography is to tell a story. Inter-club competition rules go by the wayside when you're trying to communicate a feeling with a picture.


• Put people in your pictures. They make your viewers connect with the images much better.

I'm inspired to go out and shoot some more pictures. It's hard to find the time -- perhaps next weekend.

TTFN...

Hockey & Stuff

We moved my furniture yesterday, as I previously posted. We stopped to watch Ryan (my grandson) playing hockey and I brought the camera and the 70-200, planning to try the predictive focus tracking function of the D300. Good test! Hockey is TOUGH to photograph. I'm guessing for every photo in the newspaper there's a couple of hundred rejects -- and that's what motor drives and fast frame repeats are for.

It's not my style -- so I really didn't get into it. The most I shot was a 3-shot burst, but I did get a couple of useable images. Here's one:



Pretty sharp. I tracked this kid all the way from the blue line. Even at ISO 1600, I only got 1/160 sec at f/5.6 (depth of field at f/2.8 would have been too shallow). There are a few more images in my October gallery.

I also took a few pictures of my granddaughter running around. I have to study more about the facial recognition and predictive focusing functions, I'm not sure I got it right. Anyway, this shot was under arc lamp lighting and I let the camera choose the white balance. It was a touch too yellow, so I colour corrected it a bit. Kind of a good feel to the shot, though.





The only other image I took yesterday was of my odometer on the bike, showing "55555" km. I had to take it: my friend Styles obsesses about the number "555", so this shot was for him. I'm impressed with the crisp sharpness of the D300, something that the 6Mp D70 seemed to lack a bit. You had to work at it with that camera. The D300 just does it.



I spent the best part of the day today addressing computer issues. Seems my mouse didn't want to do its thing when I reinstalled my desktop in this location, so I replaced it and the keyboard at the sanme time -- the old keyboard had worn out lettering, so it's a good thing I can touch type! This one seems better. The Microsoft mouse I bought has a neat "magnify" function which is tied into the little sub-button on the right side. Makes it easier to see small type with these old eyes! It's a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 5000, by the way. $60 for a wireless mouse & keyboard. Not bad, they've come down a lot. I had to disable the left sub-button because I kept pressing it by mistake. The trials and tribulations of being left handed...

I had to get an external wireless thingy for the desktop since I don't have a wired internet connection here. The one I bought was $20 at Staples and looks like a typical little USB key. Took a bit of work to get it going. It's not as sensitive as the laptop receiver -- the laptop says 99% signal and the new thing only about 52%, and they're side by side right now.

I still have some technical stuff to sort out. I don't have a TV yet (the TV card for the laptop doesn't work well enough to keep it so I brought it back), and my cellphone reception sucks here so I'll have to look at those two items tomorrow. Maybe I can get some photos of the new place by then.

The camera club meeting tomorrow should be interesting: guest speaker is Richard Lautens from the Toronto Star. I saw him at the Digital Imaging Show and he was pretty good -- he had a lot of tips for photojournalists. You can learn a lot from guys like him.



See Y'all!