Three

Okay, so the crappy weather and my return to work today seem to have stimulated me to go back and look at some of the stuff I shot over my holiday to see what I should be posting, since I posted just one picture during the 6 weeks!.

For the first one up I'm going to try something a little different - these are three versions of the same image. One is the original image, without any post-processing at all except cropping. The next is an identical crop of that image, with considerable processing in Photoshop - playing with it if you will, and the last is an almost identical crop first processed in Photomatrix pro as an HDR then with some secondary processing in Photoshop.

I'd be curious to know what everyone (anyone?) thinks, and which you like best (if any).

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Fraser River Wreck

I've been on holiday for a little over 4 weeks now, so I figured that it was about time that I posted something!
I actually haven't taken all that many pictures thus far; I was sick for most of the first two weeks (still coughing), then out of town where I only took a total of 5 pictures (all of the same subject and all sucked). I've been a little busier with the camera for the past week but just not overly happy with much of what I've shot - I guess I'm a little out of practise.

Anyway, this was captured on Saturday afternoon, shortly after the start of our little thunderstorm. No captured lightning in this shot (or any of the others I took of the wreck), but you can certainly see the nasty clouds looking east-north-east. It was actually pretty gloomy most of the time I was there - the sun peaked out behind me just at then end of the shoot, producing this image.

This was processed as an HDR (high dynamic range) from a single RAW file using Photomatix Pro and tweaked in the process to bring out the clouds, with a little additional touch-up in photoshop. The regularly exposed shot isn't bad, but lacks the ominous sky present in this result.

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Chain Mosaik

Whilst browsing through my files this evening I came across this image, taken almost a month ago, that I'd completely forgotten about. It's a bit of a cheesy over-produced HDR image, but I do kind of like the extreme over-saturated colours.

At least it's a new post (I think I just set a new personal record for time between posts), and if nothing else, it's not a bird...

As regards birds, if you take a look in the right margin of this blog, you'll find a new "Birds" gallery. While I will probably still post the occasional bird picture on the blog, many will just find their way into the gallery so it'll probably be worth checking out from time to time for updates. When you get to the gallery, you can check out individual pictures or view a slide show. Even better, if you have Cooliris for Firefox installed, use that to view the lot - it's a very good way to view a web album. If you use Firefox and haven't yet added Cooliris (and Cooliris previews)... well why not do it now?

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Another Two-fer Sunday

I've been out with the camera several times over the last couple of days... getting lots of exercise but very few photos. Over all it's been a pretty disappointing weekend.

As a result, here's a shot taken last Sunday of a pair of juvenile bald eagles.

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Blue Sky

I think that this will be the last image that I'll post from last Saturday at McDonald Beach.

Like the other two, this one is an HDR image; this time from five photos. When I set up to take this one I thought it would turn out well. However, my first attempt with this one yielded a so-so result and I put is aside in favour of the others. This evening I decided to revisit it and came to the conclusion that what I really needed to do was reprocess it from scratch. I'm glad I did as I'm much happier with the result now.

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Rust(ic)

Second shot from McDonald Beach on Saturday afternoon. This one is also an HDR image, but created from a single RAW photo, rather than the five used to create my previous post.

Processing an image like this as an HDR allows a lot more of the detail and colour to pop out. It's actually quite a bit brighter than the actual scene - it was the last shot of the day - but that was courtesy of a nice long exposure and not really a factor of the post-processing.

As for the subject matter... I've spent a bit of time puzzling over the particular arrangement of metal plates, washers chain and nut/bolt. Haven't come to any conclusions yet as to why they're arranged the way they are.

[still no word on my lens...]

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Beach & Barges

I got out with the camera for a couple of hours on Saturday, not really expecting to shoot anything interesting just out for the exercise more than anything.

I ended up at McDonald Beach where I found the lighting a bit of a challenge, but hey, no problem - I'd taken my tripod along (more weight to carry so more exercise...) so I just did some multiple exposure magic and pulled the result together with photomatix pro.

This shot (composite of 5 exposures) is looking south-east, and is just across the river from FRP, where Sherlock was barking up a storm as he played in the water with his usual tree trunk.

This is actually the second effort at this picture. The first, which I possibly liked better, was accidentally corrupted in Adobe Bridge so I had to redo it in photomatix; unfortunately I hadn't saved the settings I used and couldn't remember exactly what I'd done. There are enough variables to set in the detail enhancer that unless you have a really good memory or have saved the settings it's almost impossible to get the exact same result. I don't know how much that really matters though, as I played with it some more in photoshop anyway...

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(last of the) Fall Fungi

This will, I think, be the last of the shots from the great fungi field trip; this view is actually just a foot or two to the left of the previous post. I'm not actually sure if they're the same kind of mushroom or not - I don't know enough about mushroom be able to identify the different varieties.

While I think the previous post is probably my own favourite, each has something a little different that appeals to me. You're of course welcome to leave your thoughts/comments on which you like best (or least).

[For those who might be wondering... no word yet on whether my lens is repairable, or what it will cost, but then I'm not expecting to hear anything until sometime next week at the earliest.]

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(more) Fall Fungi

This is another shot from last weekends' trek through the trail at UBC - a.k.a. the fungi field trip. There's still maybe a shot or two from that afternoon that might find it's way here. Hopefully this won't bore anyone too much. There won't be any new bird shots for a while though, because...

Although late in the day, I did get out to shoot a bit on Saturday. Unfortunately, when I was packing up my equipment at the end of the day my wonderful long lens (100-400mm) fell from about 5½ feet and now doesn't work - it won't focus (auto or manual). I can adjust the 'focus' near or far, but it won't focus even remotely sharply.

I've always known that sooner or later some piece of my equipment would get damaged. I've fallen with it a couple of times (broke my own ribs once as a result, but saved the camera from harm), and once had my camera with lens attached fall out of my backpack onto asphalt, all without any significant damage to any of it. I guess my luck had run out though... Of course it had to be the most expensive lens in my bag! It's now at the camera shop waiting to be shipped out to the wizards at Canon to take a look at and see if it's fixable or not - for a hefty fee, of course. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to get reacquainted with my other lenses for a while (they say 4-6 weeks).

[Oh, forgot to mention - this shot has been sized/cropped a little differently than normal. It has been properly sized to fit a 1024x768 screen, making it more suitable for a desktop background, for those so-inclined. Click on it first to bring up the full-size image though.]

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Two Worlds, Apart

Sorry, once again, for the long delay between posts. Last weekend I was busy doing a little shoot for the Friends of the VPL; some of the pictures might end up on their website - if I ever get finished processing them. The woman who runs their store doesn't seem to have discussed the matter with their web master so what I shot doesn't seem to be quite what they both want, though I think I can pull enough together from what I shot. Regular visitors here will recognize that I like big pictures, so one of their late specifications came as a bit of a surprise: none of the images is to be larger than 350 pixels on a side. That's a tiny image, given that my raw images are 4300+ pixels wide!

Anyway, I did get out twice this weekend to shoot something for myself. This shot was taken on Sunday afternoon on the Salish trail in Pacific Spirit Park (UBC Endowment Lands). It's an HDR image, created from a single RAW image - this is possible with RAW files as they store more exposure data than a .jpg though it's not as effective as shooting multiple exposures and combining them.

Technical aspects aside, it struck me as a fitting image to post as we're about to go to the polls in just a few hours. Why? Maybe because of the strong Us/Them symbolism. Personally I'll find it hard to vote tomorrow; once again it will be a matter of selecting the lesser of the evils, the party which I think will do the least harm. A minority government isn't what this country needs right now, but with the current crop of politicians so totally out of touch with reality it's what we're likely to end up with.

Vote well!

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Britannia Mines HDR #2

This is the second HDR image taken at the Britannia Beach-BC Mining Museum, and I think my favourite of the day. It's impossible to get the detail in this image from a single exposure. In fact, even the human eye can't see all this detail at once. I think this is way cool [though I noticed that Alison didn't leave any comment on yesterday's post but did leave comments on the previous two... c'mon Alison, don't you think this is kinda cool? :)].

Every once in a while, time wasted, er I mean spent, stumbling the internet (if you haven't discovered Stumbleupon yet, consider yourself lucky - it's an absolutely addictive time black hole) can yield something useful. Today, I stumbled across something about working in different colour palettes in photoshop which led me to something else (can't remember what) which led me to a very simple way to check what your image will look like under different settings - like as an sRGB image in Windows... just exactly the thing that's been driving me batty for quite a while. It's so easy to do this now. I still have to do extra processing for images that I want to post here, but now I can see what they'll look like while I'm working on them!

Can't believe I didn't know this sooner; it made my day. And just might mean more regular posts, since that irritating stumbling block has largely been removed.

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Britannia Mine Concentrator #1

Two years ago I did a day trip to Shannon Falls and stopped off at Britannia Beach on the way back. While there I took a brief look at the mining museum but didn't do the tour as it was too late in the day. I made a note to go back there again though as it looked interesting. Yesterday I dragged along my old friend (and long-time photographer) Derek and finally made it back... but I still didn't do the tour.

Instead, I paid extra for a tour guide to accompany us (required) in order to spend some time in the concentrator (the big building on the side of the mountain) - though we were only allowed on the lowest level. All the tours go through this area, but they only stop there for about 3 or 4 minutes while the guide gives their spiel. I needed a little more time so I paid for an hour; I could probably have spent the better part of a day in this room alone...

Mike, our assigned guide, patiently waited while I set up equipment and moved around the big area and even let me briefly climb up to a forbidden area at the far end on the right (it was actually quite safe) while I grabbed a few shots from a better viewpoint.

None of those single shots, however, has the punch of an HDR image such as this one, which I'd planned on taking long before I got there. This particular HDR (High Dynamic Range) image is a composite of 7 different exposures (from 1/8 of a second for the shortest to 6 seconds for the longest) of the same image then combined together later using special software which allows the retention of detail both in the darker and lighter areas.

Hope you like it - there`s probably a few more similar shots on the way. At least they`re a change from birds...

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