A Tale of Two Waterfalls

Title: April’s Floods by Me

Title: Waterfall by Me

Actually, it’s the same waterfall; the bottom picture was taken several years ago in either July or August. The top picture was taken a few weeks ago in April, just after the snow melt. Quite a difference, eh?

River in the Woods

Title: River in the Woods by Me

This is quite possibly the most heavily processed photo I’ve ever posted to Flickr.

It’s frustrating, because this brook is actually a very pretty place, and one of my favorite places in fact. But it’s notoriously difficult to shoot – a gust of wind will cause a lot of movement amongst trees, branches, and leaves, as well as change the alright tough lighting from moment to moment. (The contrast between direct sunlight and shadow is pretty extreme, especially when accounting for the water).

So this is a nine frame tone mapped HDR. This is why the background looks a little less than sharp – the wind blowing through the trees caused some movement from frame to frame. Also, this lens doesn’t do a great job with sharpness around the edges. In this case I like the effect though – gives the whole scene a sense of movement.

Anyway, when that was done, I wasn’t particularly happy with it – mostly because the water looked all splotchy and uneven after the HDR was processed. So I tonemapped a single frame long exposure, and copy and pasted the water from that onto the original HDR image, for a much nicer waterblur. So it’s really a composite of two HDR composites.

Self Portrait of a Hiker

Title: Self Portrait of a Hiker by Me

Wide angle lens, pointed down at my feet during a walk in the woods. The forest floor, in m humble opinion, is one of the most beautiful things in the world.

Grr, Arg, I’m a big scary monster!

Title: Grr, Arg, I’m a big scary monster! by Me

A rather simple image – a photo of a tree, shot up the trunk from near the bottom, and converted to black and white. The way it’s framed just reminds me of a monster about to grab you.

Inside the Museum of Modern Art

Title: High Above, by Me

I guess it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Museum of Modern Art would have an interior design that really lends itself to being photographed. The building is as much “art” as anything in it; no doubt that’s intentional.

The key to this shot though is the people; I wanted to make sure that every part of the shot had someone in it. So there’s a guy on the catwalk, a figure in each of the windows, and a bunch of people on the floor. Luckily it was crowded enough that it only took a couple of minutes before I was able to capture that.

My, what tall buildings you have!

New York City, midtown. There’s simply no other city like it.

Things Have Been Kind of Slow Lately…

Footprints by Me

I haven’t been taking that many photos lately, I haven’t been very active on Flickr, and I haven’t had all that much to say here. I lay the blame squarely on Super Smash Brothers Brawl. But these things ebb in flow, and especially as the weather is improving daily I expect to get back into the swing soon.

The photo above, I think, is about as perfect a winter photo as can be imagined. Amazing blue sky, pristine white snow, and a trail of footprints pointing to someone who’s been there before you.

Photographs and Reality

Title: What’s Real?

I don’t get into art history (or art, for that matter), so my apologies if the rest of this paragraph seems an overly simplistic and consequently inaccurate description of it. From the renaissance through the end of the 19th century (more or less), art strove for realism – the accurate depiction of a scene as it exists in reality. Then photography came along, which could do this better than paint on a canvas could ever achieve*. Art’s response was to veer away from realism, towards the surreal and abstract, stuff that didn’t exist in reality and therefore a camera could not capture.

Anyway, what’s interesting to me is how that initial perception of photography is just wrong. A photograph is not reality. At best, it’s a thin slice of reality, but more accurately it’s a perception of reality. There’s all sorts of interpretations and compromises being made in the creation of the photograph. A short list:

1. Reality is three dimensions, photographs are two.
2. Photographs offer but a thin slice of the tonal range seen in reality – real life doesn’t have black shadows or blown highlights.
3. Real life is color, not black and white, not sepia, not toned. And the color in real life is a far broader range than most cameras can capture, displays can show, or printers can print.
4. What we see is our brain’s interpretation of very imperfect image data being constantly fed through the optic nerve from photoreceptors in the back of our eye and filtered through a lens at the front of our eye. Cameras don’t do this.

So a photo might look “realistic”, but that’s only because we’ve come to define “realistic” as what a photograph looks like. In reality, they’re anything but.

Just some food for thought.

The photo is an inverted reflection taken in the same parking lot I mentioned yesterday, hopefully underscoring the point above.

Freezing!

Told ya it was cold.

This is actually a two frame panoramic, stitched for a wider view.

Exposure:1/250″
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 12mm

Frozen Plains

For those who are probably getting sick of them, rest assured I’m almost done with Niagara Falls shots – I know it can seem monotonous, but hopefully the images I’ve shared are varied enough not to bore you all too much.

Anyway, here’s another shot, this one taken more towards the base of the river, and I think really shows off what the place is like in the middle of February. It’s a nine exposure blended HDR, and the blue cast is achieved simply by adjusting the white balance for cooler tones.

Focal Length: 20mm