Flat-decked Tug

When I was out at Steveston almost two weeks ago I spent a bit of time watching the activity on the river - there was quite an elaborate bit of business going on with bouyed pipes zig-zagging along the breakwater, leading up to but not quite reaching a large vessel/barge. While I watched, the crew pictured here appeared to complete the connection, though the 'plan' behind the odd pipe arrangement was still hard to figure out.

The barge-thingy (well out of picture to the right) was probably the base for a dredging operation, but alas it must have been the end of their working day (it was about 4:00) as once they had connected the last pipe they returned back to the barge and things started to shut down and get quieter, rather than noisier as one would expect if they were going to commence dredging operations.

There are quite a few things about this picture that I don't like:

• the composition is clumsy,
• only one of the crew of 4 (I think) is actually visible, and you can't really see how the tug operator is maneuvering the pipes into position. I'd moved around several times to try to get a better vantage point, but each time I moved so did the tug, and due to the distance involved I had to move quite a ways each time to make a noticable difference.
• It's also a little too tight, in hindsight I wish I had zoomed out a little to capture a bit more of the scene, although that would have meant loss of other detail in the tradeoff.

That said, here it is anyway

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Wreck in Fog #2

This is an alternative shot of the wreck on the Fraser: this time it was a longer exposure and flash was used to light up the fog rather than allowing it to be cancelled out by the long exposure. The vignetting was added in post-production.

This isn't the type of shot I have typically liked in that past - a year ago I wouldn't have considered posting it at all. I do, however, like it, so I guess you can chalk it up to changing tastes as I develop as a photographer.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the change to this blog, please see my previous post for a bit more information.

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Sunrise - Three Bridges

I've been sea-sawing back and forth over these two shots, trying to decide if either one was worth posting as I'm not completely happy with either. Then I figured, what the heck, I haven't done a two-fer Sunday for a while and surely if neither is up to standard individually, together they're post-worthy...

These were actually taken almost a month ago, early in the morning from the parking structure above Front street in New Westminster.

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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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Unreal Blue

Sometime back I started experimenting with LAB colour in photoshop, and I'm starting to regret it, I think. You can take an average image and play with it until it comes out just the way you want it and looks awesome... until it gets converted back to sRGB and the colours get shifted way out of whack and you then spend more hours trying to make it look like it did in LAB colour.

I spent a lot of time fiddling with this image, trying to take it from mediocrity and make it into a possibility I'd imagined when I shot it.

I have not been completely successful.

It hints at what I'd imagined, but falls short in ways that I can't explain. Of course, if I could, then I'd probably know how to fix it and I wouldn't be writing this...

That said, I wish I'd taken the time to climb down the rocks a bit to get closer to the water level, so that the horizon was better placed in frame, even though the jet trail was drifting rapidly to the right and within about 30 seconds had moved out of frame.

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300

No, this is not Sparta... This is, in fact, my 300th post since I started this blog. Not the 300th picture mind you, since some of my posts have had more that one picture (and only one, to my recollection, didn't have a picture). Anyway, I apologize for the long lag between posts but I was hoping to have something more unique for the occasion but that just hasn't come together yet. It's a great idea, and I'm sure it'll show up here eventually but I've decided in the meantime not to hold things up anymore. Which means that maybe I'll get back to posting a little more often now.

As for this shot, I'm pretty happy with the final result. I think is something to do with the textures on the side of the barge, or the colours or heck, I don't know, maybe there's some symbolism in the hand/foot holds going up the side... whatever it is, it works for me. Does it work for you?

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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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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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Post-Sunset Sunday

One of the great things about the Canon 5D (and it's successor, the 5D mark II) is the phenomenally low ISO available - 50. Not perhaps the setting most people would think of when taking a night shot, but it's what I used for this one nevertheless. Absolutely incredibly smooth image with fantastic detail - and no detectable grain whatsoever.

Most people tend to be impatient and want their shot done as quickly as possible. But once you've set up on the tripod for a long exposure, why not make the most of it and use the lowest ISO available?...

Well, the longer the exposure, the more you have to worry about some rogue wind puffing by, or in this case, a wave hitting the pier, or some stranger deciding to walk out on the pier while in the middle of the exposure. Any of these would have created vibrations on the pier, which would have been transfered through the tripod to the camera, which would leave everything looking at best, unsharp, and at worst an unrecognizable blur.

This is a 25 second exposure, which came out remarkably well considering in addition to the aforementioned problems I had another guy standing beside me, a fellow photographer with no gear who just stopped to chat, and we both basically had to hold our breaths and stand completely still until the shutter had closed.

Oh. This is the Knight St. bridge, of course, looking west. The bright line along the top of the bridge is from the headlights of cars driving at 80Kmph across it. I have no idea what the two dark spots are in the foreground of the image.

I've posted a larger version (click on the picture) than usual so that you can get a bit better of an idea of how clear the full-size image is.

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Sunday Sunset

Sure, there's still a bird in the picture, but it's really not a bird picture. Taken out at Iona late on Sunday evening.

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Boardwalk

The boardwalk and beach at Fraser River Park on Sunday afternoon weren't very busy - it was too cold. Nothing compared to the weather back east or up north to be sure, but the brilliant sunshine was doing it's best to lull everyone into believing that it was warmer than it really was. There were people around - it is a dog park and it's rarely totally empty during daylight hours - just not when I took this picture. I suppose I could have waited for someone to walk into frame, but like I said - it was too cold!

There was a real surf on the river that day - when I first got there the swells were up to 4 feet - a combination of change of tide direction and the high wind I suppose. It was the roughest I've ever seen it in the 3 or 4 years that I've been going there. It had settled down considerably by the time this shot was taken, though you can still see some of the whitecaps.

I've been more and more intrigued by some of the black and white pictures that other photographers are posting, and still not sure how to get the same result with my shots. This one, although it's not a true black and white (it's a slightly translucent black and white layer on top of the original colour image, allowing just a hint of the original colour to show through), isn't too bad, but there's still some quality that I can't identify that I'm not getting quite right when processing for black and white. But that's the beauty - I can always try again tomorrow...

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Searching for a Shot Amidst the Fog

Back to something from early last week. I'm not totally sure that I achieved the result I was looking for from this image, but as my computer is sick I can't work on it any more at the moment and I'm trying to keep this string of posts going, so I'll have to do as is.

I had a pleasant chat with this gentleman shortly after taking this shot, and he seemed pleased and more than a little surprised as he hadn't noticed me taking it.

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A Stream Runs Through It

Although I'd thought I might post another picture or two from up around the Cleveland Dam, and indeed it's always possible, I confess I find myself getting tired of looking at that particular batch of photos at the moment, so I'm going to put them aside for now and post this, which was taken a week earlier and sat in the camera for most of that week and had mostly been -unfairly- ignored.

This is the Woods Island Marsh which seems to me oddly named for several reasons as it's located within MacDonald Beach Park which in turn is located on Sea Island. Although I've wandered around MacDonald Beach a few times I don't recall ever having noticed it before. It's a no-go area of the park - a part of the ecological reserve, so this is one of the few views that one can conveniently get, dependant on the tides.

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The Other End of Cable Pool

Where is this? Well, the stairs on the right lead up to the viewing platform that can be seen on the left in yesterday's post. There's a gate at the top of the stairs which was locked; I suppose that was intended to indicate that the stairs were closed. But there was also a very conveniently placed rock beside the railing to stand on which made it so simple to hop over...

Actually the gate was probably locked for good reason, as just behind where I'm standing the rocks were covered in snow, which made them extremely slippery. But not, as it turned out, as slippery as the ones that were bare! I've managed to slip and fall a couple of times when out with the camera (broke some ribs once) so I was particularly careful picking my way among the rocks; happy to say that I didn't add to the fall-count this time 'round.

As you can see, the afternoon was brightening up nicely. But don't be fooled, the trees were still dripping huge drops of rain, which presented a bit of a challenge for keeping the camera dry.

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Capilano Gorge

Not quite as dramatic as yesterday's post, but this one is pleasant enough all the same. This is looking downriver at Cable Pool which is located a little below the fish hatchery, which is itself located a kilometre downhill from the dam.

I actually processed two versions of this shot, the other being a black & white with a green overlay. It was a bit of a toss-up which one to post, finally decided on the true-colour version.

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Yep... Part II

Taken standing in the same spot as yesterday's post, facing the downriver this time.

I've posted this for two reasons:

• I thought it'd be a nice companion to yesterdays' shot;
• I used it to do some testing of picture quality before and after upload.

Results of the testing: as suspected/expected, there's a very noticeable loss of colour tone; I presume due to a forced conversion of adobe RGB colourspace to sRGB. I'm sure that are very valid reasons for this, but it's irritating. As I learn more about picture processing and refinement techniques it is disappointing to have all the hard work stripped away.

In the case of this picture, there was a loss of subtle cloud detail in the sky which itself was a much more pronounced blue. Alas, it's just something we'll have to put up with... unless I eventually move on from Blogger to some other blog-hosting site with better image support.

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Yep. It's Winter.

Go over the turquoise coloured wooden bridge to Westham Island and take the first left and you'll find yourself on a very narrow strip of asphalt that runs for maybe ½ a kilometer before dead-ending at this place. This shot was taken about mid-way off the side of the road (which is on a dike) early on Saturday morning. The white stuff was, I think, a mixture of left-over snow from the previous weekend and ice. I was a little surprised to find this snow/ice: although it has been 'cold' (by local standards) for the past week or two I'd have thought that there'd be at least some salt content in the water here (thus preventing it from freezing) so close to where the Fraser mixes with the straight of Georgia.

One thing I noticed when I took a look at the full-resolution shot (not visible in this version) was that some of the homes across the water have docks/boats within feet of their front doors - talk about convenient. Wonder what they do in stormy weather though - some of them look to be extremely vulnerable to flooding.

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Un-Frenzied Fraser

I like the lines of this shot, taken this afternoon from the small pier at Gladstone Park (about a block east of Victoria Drive on Kent Street). Not sure just what the green structure is in the distance - as I left I drove toward that direction but didn't stop to check it out.

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Riverbank Industry

I've been playing around a bit with processes for converting an image from colour to black and white (monochrome), which has left me with a number of monochrome images and not much else.

No surprise then, that this post is one of them. It's from along the Fraser, on the north side of the Iona Beach park. I'd like to think that this image has a bit of a timeless feel to it, that you can't quite tell if it was taken two days ago or two decades. Let me know what you think.

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