Capturing Photons

Boston at Night

2011-01-01T19:03:00.001-05:00

I have gone into Boston twice to shoot at sundown/night with very acceptable results. The first time was back in July of 2009 in and around the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common. The second time in the summer of 2010 was along the Kennedy Greenway from the Aquarium down to Rowe's Wharf. I enjoy being able to not only get the more typical landscape dusk shots but also the full on night shots. The city lights allow you to still get an interesting image by taking advantage of the lights and the scatter up into the sky.

In July, 2009 a group spent some hours shooting the Boston Public Garden and later on in the Boston Common. The first picture is a HDR shot looking back at the Swan Boat docks and the bridge over the duck pond. We were fortunate in that it had been raining earlier but the front was beginning to rapidly move out leaving an interesting sky.

One of my favorite pictures that evening was an HDR rendition of the Hancock buildings at sunset. I was very pleased with the level of detail that came out. It may not be as evident in the smaller picture, but when you zoom in there is an amazing amount of details in the trees that doesn't show up at all in the single normal exposure. I try to generate as natural a HDR conversion as possible using Photomatix Pro. This means keeping the Smoothing high and insure that there is a well defined black point. This will keep the details while not getting into unnatural colors. The main problem with HDR that can crop up is halos that appear at high contrast areas and unnatural light sources. By this I mean that when you look closely it appears that the scene is lit from more than one location giving an unnatural look.

On the Kennedy Greenway where the Central Artery used to be, there are a growing list of attractions to bring people out. One of these is the jump fountains just past the Aquarium. The summer night we were there there were dozens of kids and their parents running in an out of the water. To the right is a shot I love showing the pure joy of those kids as the fountains shot off randomly, completely surprising them each time. This was processed to bring out the kids and also to brighten the water so that it sparkled.

Finally, there are those urban landscape images you can get well after sunset. The beautiful lights from the city play well with the dark sky and you can use the sky shine to your advantage. The 30 second exposures blur the clouds giving an interesting streaked effect. The final image comes from Rowes Wharf looking back towards the hotels and docks on the Greenway. You have the classic foreground objects from the wharf and then the illuminated city in the background. One important thing I have found is that it's important to correct for keystoning in the buildings. Correcting the tilted buildings is important to give a more interesting picture.

These images and others can be found in my Boston After Dark gallery found on my SmugMug website. I hope you come and visit. The images are all for sale,

Haleakala Sunrise

2010-12-16T07:40:00.000-05:00

In October I visited Maui again after many years away. The last time I had been there was over twenty years ago for work I was doing at Science City on top of Mount Haleakala. This time was purely pleasure and I saw many of the sites I had been unable to see when traveling for work.

One of the things I went out of my way to see was the sunrise at the Haleakala National Park. Sunrise was about 6:15am and accounting for travel time and setup it meant I had to get up at 3:30am. When I got to the summit it was a balmy 40 deg F with 40-50 MPH winds, giving sub-zero wind chill. I was able to setup at the crater edge with a few hundred of my closest friends. At the summit altitude (10,000 ft) it is truly black because of the significantly lower air pressure. Not as much air to bounce the light around so you have to be careful not to fall when walking around.

It is a spectacular view from the top. You are looking down on the clouds which gives you an entirely new perspective. The sky begins to brighten well before sunset and you are treated to the orange and blue skies with the clouds picking up the light all around their edges. This 30 sec exposure reveals the details you just can't see with your naked eye. The floor of the crater is lost in the darkness and all that is really visible is the small amount of light showing up from the sun.

There are details in the crater that look completely different with the pre-dawn light. Here you see the crater with just the scattered light from the sun that hasn't appeared yet. Very low contrast that can be brought up with processing reveals all the colors that are present.

The light continues to build until you begin to see the edges of the clouds begin to glow with the gold light. The sun begins to make an appearance at the top of the clouds and fills the crater with light.

Finally the sun rises above the clouds and you realize it was worth the wait. Even if you can no longer feel your hands and you lost your hat an hour ago when a 50 mph gust took it right off your head.

Other pictures can be found in the Maui Gallery at my website where they are for sale. There is also a calendar of the sites of Maui found here on RedBubble.

HDR and the Pursuit of Mystery

2010-07-02T11:13:00.003-04:00

Many photographers lately have experimented with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. This technique involves taking multiple exposures of the same scene but with different exposures to capture the full range of light in the picture. These are then blended in software and possibly tonemapped to produce an image with a wider range of brightness than any one image.

Your eye has a dynamic range of about 16 million:1. In contrast, a digital camera has a range of about 256:1. What that means is that you can see a much wider range of light in a scene that what can be reproduced in a camera. To overcome this limitation, we can use today's digital cameras to stretch their range. This involves taking multiple exposures. Typically this involves three, a normal exposure (0ev), a dark exposure (-2ev) and a bright exposure (+2ev). The theory is that these three pictures should be able to cover the full range of light in a high contrast scene. These three exposures can then be blended in post processing to produce a picture that captures a wider range of lighting. In essence, you can now see the darkest and brightest parts of the picture. These are the blown out white skies and/or totally black foregrounds that show up in so many pictures.

These techniques can be used to produce surrealistic effects. One website that has promoted HDR is Stuck In Customs. Going there you can see how he processes his images and produces a particular style. HDR processing can produce unrealistic results with overly vibrant colors, halos, moody skies, and lighting seeming to come from multiple directions at once.

For those who haven't completely fallen asleep, I am really going somewhere with this (I think). Personally I have run through the gamut of HDR processing, starting with the high contrast vivid colors that look like they were taken on planets with multiple suns to my currently more realistic bent. The first picture is a sunrise in Monterey, CA. I started with three images, preprocessed in Photomatix and then continued in Photoshop. Bright colors with the shadows filled in substantially and it looks like there may be another lightsource to the right with the way the foreground is lit. This is tonemapped in Photomatix with further adjustments in Photoshop.

But I have been experimenting with blending the exposures by hand. The second picture uses the hand blending. This doesn't have as strong a color set and the contrast is toned down in the front. The vertical rocks have substantially more shadow which is what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to retain the dark shadows but produce enough detail that the viewer could see some of what was hidden. Currently I like the second better. The reason is the sky shows more subtlety in the colors and the shadows are more pronounced. But I did dodging in Photoshop to bring up the shadows somewhat but not completely. Just enough to show a little detail and then stop.

My point (if there actually is one) is that I'm trying to convey the scene but give the viewer a glimpse at all the detail that may not be evident even when standing on the shore. That requires HDR but I don't want it to look like I've lit the scene with a nuclear powered flash unit. I wanted to retain the darkness but still show the details.

I have been reading a book lately that actually says in a coherent fashion what I was trying to do with the recent pictures. It's "Landscape Beyond" by David Ward. Besides talking about taking 'small' landscapes he also has a chapter titled "A Sense of Mystery". If you can get it from your local library take a look. There are some interesting ideas. But his point (made directly) and my point (made in an extremely roundabout manner) is that a photographer should try and maintain a sense of mystery in their work. This requires making images more than taking images. To leave some things unsaid or somewhat hidden so that the viewer must engage in the picture and come to grips with the ambiguity or inability to see everything. The viewer then adds their own interpretation of the image.

If you have an opinion, let me know.

Monterey Peninsula

2010-04-29T12:59:00.001-04:00

Because of an unscheduled business trip, I was able to go to Monterey, CA in April. This gave me an opportunity to shoot a beautiful area of the country. I was only going to be there one full day so I decided to take full advantage. I got up early that morning (about 5:00AM) to be able to properly catch the sunrise which was scheduled for about 6:30AM. That meant being at Ocean View Boulevard by somewhere around 6:00 AM to find a spot and get ready. I had gone the previous afternoon after the 1 1/2 hour ride from San Francisco to check out the area. There was some rain but it came and went so made for some nice clouds and light.

Here is what I saw that afternoon. Great wave action with nice clouds to accent the view. Even though it was about 3:30p I was happy with what I was seeing.

The next morning I was up at 5:00AM to the sound of rain. I decided to go out anyway as the rain was sporadic and I have seen things clear at dawn enough times to go ahead and try.

The weather did clear as the sun came up to a very nice sunrise. I did a variety of shots for HDR and just wave action. Here is a shot towards the sun looking back at Monterey.

I was pleased with how the light was coming up and the shots I was getting.

As there was nothing going on at the conference until later in the afternoon, I went out again around noon for about an hour. Got a few interesting shots even with the direct light.

Finally, when I was done at the conference I gathered my gear and headed over the Point Lobos State Reserve. A really beautiful area in Carmel. Wandered from the Cypress Grove down to the beach area and back again.

From high on the cliffs in the Cypress Grove

To down at the beach near sunset to show the light on the rocks

Here is the Smugmug site where I post my pictures. More will be posted and I hope you can come and visit.

And So It Begins..

2009-11-01T18:28:00.001-05:00

I decided to try to communicate some of my thoughts on photography. I intend to give some background on techniques I use or new ones I pick up. I hope to also talk about site locations and share a few pictures. More can be found back at my SmuMug account for those that are interested. I hope that for those who read the posts there is something new you learn or maybe you can teach me new techniques and pass on recommended shooting locations. We'll see how this all turns out..