Into the Deep Blue

I’m pondering for something interesting to say… but I keep getting losing my thoughts in the serenity of the scene.

The image brings you right up to the edge of the pond’s shoreline and brings you out to the deeper, but perfectly still waters where the reflection of the trees and blue sky dominate.
Exposure: 1/200″
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 42mm

The Eye

So what if cats are the most cliché photographic subject in history? They’re still painfully cute and adorable.

This is straight out of the camera, no cropping or editing.

Exposure: 1/60″
Aperture: f/5
Flash: SB-800

Hayden Planetarium

I’m kinda under the weather today, so this will be short and sweet. Taken inside the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.

This photo, incidentally, is one of my few that’s every been published by someone other than myself, having been featured in the Shmap New York Guide

Exposure: 1/160″
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 28mm

Light and Shadow

I can’t think of anything interesting to say today, so here’s a picture of a leaf. It’s a pretty straightforward shot, backlit by the sun so all the details of its structure are visible… those that hadn’t yet fallen victim to the fall weather, at least.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been completely dazzled by Piclens, which I just discovered. It’s a cross-platform, cross-browser extension that offers a 3-D visualization of Flickr Photostreams along with a full screen slide show. Pure eye candy, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Check it out if you have the time.

Exposure: 1/200″
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 300mm

Great Falls HDR

Those who follow my Flickr Photostream (a far more chronological display of my work than this blog) know that I’ve been playing a bit with HDR lately. Whereas earlier images were really just experiments so I could learn what worked and didn’t and how to use the technique, I think this is the kind of image that HDR was really intended for.

To look at it, you probably wouldn’t immediately recognize it as an HDR photo. Most photographers (at least in the HDR group on Flickr) who utilize the technique seem to do so for the look – which I’d describe as tossing a bucket of paint onto a photo, making it look more like an illustration than a photograph.

But the idea behind HDR is really to make a scene more realistic, not less, by capturing more of the dynamic range between shadows and highlights. The problem is that while we can take multiple, bracketed exposures and combine them to get a fuller dynamic range, computer monitors can’t display that range. So we tone map them, resulting in the high detail, low contrast image that’s more reminiscent of drawings than the photographs we’re used to seeing.

Properly utilized though, the technique can be used to get that detail from the highlights and shadows that would normally be impossible to get from a high contrast scene like this originally was – the left side was completely in shadow, the right not, the falls reflected a lot of light, and the sky is of course a lot lighter than anything below. The non-HDR version developed from a single RAW image isn’t bad, but I think it doesn’t compare to the HDR version. This is a lot closer to what the human eye sees when it looks at this scene, and I think that’s the point.

The image is taken from three exposures at 1 EV apart, and mapped using Photomatix.

Exposure: Varies
Aperture: f/32
Focal Length: 52mm

Overexposed Chestnuts

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I’m quite fond of these kind of chestnuts*, photographically at least. I just love their shape and form. But usually my attempts at shooting them fail, for one reason or another. Case in point, this image was originally underexposed, flat, boring, and dull (I was going for a silhouette… didn’t work out as well as I thought).

The only edit I made here was maxing out the exposure level in developing the RAW image, and I think that alone was enough to transform it into an interesting image

Exposure: 1/160″
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 48mm

*I’ve always assumed that’s what they are, but I’m not 100% sure. Feel free to correct me.

King of the Hill

So I was driving around when I spotted this thing – I thought it was kind of neat perched up on the dirt pile like that and would make a good addition to my construction site HDR series that I’ve been shooting lately.

So I pulled into a parking lot, got out, and shot it through a gap in the fence surrounding the site. I wasn’t there long – ten minutes perhaps, but just as I was finishing, a cop pulls up beside me.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Just taking pictures,” I answered.

“For who?” he asks.

“Myself,” I answered. I then I asked the quintessential “Is there a problem officer?”

“Well, you’re trespassing, for one.”

(I was standing in a parking lot, outside the fenced construction site. Technically, I suppose the parking lot is private property – but who ever heard of someone “trespassing” on an open parking lot?)

“Where do you work?” he asks next.

I really can’t fathom why that could possible be relevant to anything, but I answered truthfully.

He then asked for my information “for his own records”. I’m not entirely sure he had the right to demand this of me, but I cooperated. He seemed to be nice enough by this point, having realized I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I chatted a bit about photography while he made his notes.

Before he finished, he offered a quite absurd “You can’t be too careful, lots of stuff gets stolen from construction sites.”

Rationalize much? As you can see from the photo, the yard consists of dirt and a steam shovel – and I can’t quite imagine anyone making off with the steam shovel. Further – it was broad daylight in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

“Well you’re fine, as long as no one complains,” he finishes, before driving off.

(Who would complain, I wonder? They clearly weren’t doing any work that day, and I can’t imagine the store cared that I was using their parking lot for ten minutes.)

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been questioned for standing around taking photos, nor do I suspect it’ll be the last. But photography is not a crime, at least not yet – so I’ve no reason to act like it is.

I just find it remarkable how overzealous security guards, suspicious cops, and other power tripping authority figures seem terribly afraid of cameras. I won’t dig too deeply into that here, other than note that in a truly free society photography would be a non-issue.

The image above is an HDR composited from 9 frames at 1 EV separation using Photomatix software.

Focal length: 18mm

Beyond

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It’s funny that no matter what I do, this photo looks crooked. Of course, that’s because nothing in it is actually parallel or straight as it ought to be. The sidewalk had a bump, the parking meters didn’t stand up straight, and the fence was uneven, and altering that in Photoshop is just more trouble than it’s worth. So instead I just try to view the crookedness as part its charm.

I took this from across the street of a rather large construction yard, on a beautiful, colorful, clear, too-hot summer’s day last August. I miss those kind of days. I’ll confess I upped the saturation of the sky in Lightroom, as it was a little washed out in the original and I think it’s a lot better with the color.

Beyond that, there’s just something I like about this one. Can’t quite explain what it is, but it’s one of my favorite (and in my mind, under appreciated) photos I have on Flickr.

Exposure: 1/400″
Aperture: f/10
Focal Length: 35mm

Forest Winter

I hate winter.

First of all, it’s cold. I hate the cold.

Secondly, my creative output always takes a dive this time of year, and this year is so far proving to be no exception. The months of January and February are months of perpetual gray and dullness, with little to no usable sunlight anywhere to be found. The landscape just transforms into this dark, muddy, ugly thing – even uglier than NJ normally is.

Thirdly, on top of that there’s SAD, brought on by those short, cold, gray days, which really cripples motivation and creativity, as well as just makes me feel funky for weeks on end.

And fourthly, as photogenic as snow often is, it’s more a pain in the ass than not. There’s the whole digging your car out thing only to drive on icy roads, which really lowers any enthusiasm I might feel about getting pictures of it. And by the time it’s safe enough to actually go out, it’s already turned black anyway. Plus, it’s cold.

The above was shot in the winter, a few years ago. If the white balance seems off, it’s because I hadn’t yet learned to shoot in RAW – but in this case I actually like the cool colors.

Exposure: 1/100″
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 38mm

Purple

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I am not an artist.

Art has many definitions, and whether something is or is not art is generally held to be a completely subjective judgment.

So let me go on record with my own completely subjective assessment of my own body of photographic work: it’s not art.

Art, to me, is used to communicate an idea. It has meaning, depth, and purpose. But in my case, I just try to take interesting pictures, most often because something is pretty.

The above is simply something pretty. No more, no less.

Exposure: 1/80″
Aperture: f/3.3
Exposure Bias: -2/3 EV