Winter Post

Despite living in the 'warmest place to be for the world cup' I was able to get away and chase some snow. Here's my winter shot for this month's theme. This was taken outside Matatiele on the way down to Barkly East for a Winter Mountain Photography workshop that I was running. The shot is a 7 image panoramic shot at 80mm on my 80-200mm zoom (all verticals). I had a .6 (2 stop) hard ND grad in place.

Any c and c always welcome and appreciated.
Cheers
E

New Theme - Winter

The blog has been really quiet over the world cup period, so to kick off again here's the theme for August - Winter. Pop in a pic or two taken over the winter period, or even one that you like from last year, or the year before...or before that.

For anyone interested, I've just posted a new tutorial on HDR blending using tonal masks (at long last). Click on the link to go through to the article.

Cheers, E

Eyes II

So Festival and football are over.
Felt it!

Thanks to The Giant Match's visit to the frontier, eye grabbed this shot of a puppet.
I toyed with cropping the puppet's eyes out altogether trying to make it more abstract but in the end stuck with this more traditional version. The original contains the eyes (of the puppet) in entirety.

Specs: EOS 7D, sigma 18-50mm at 35mm (crop factor = 56mm) iso 100, fill flash at 1/2 power.

As always comments welcome!

Paul.

seaing eye

The eyes have it. Or do they? Clearly it was the eye that drew me to this gull but there is something that troubles me about the framing.... Maybe I needed more head and less ass? ;-)





Okay, keeping it clean.... Any ideas? I sense there is an inprovement needed but can't quite put my finger on it...?

The image is from the archive, last year eye think! Specs: iso 100; f8 at 1/250th; 350 mm (560approx crop factor); shot off a tripod at about 2m. Meter read off the sky then added about 1/2 stop to keep the whites clean.
Paul.

HDR in the mountains

It's been a while since we've had any activity on the blog. I know there's been lots of shooting out there so it would be great to see some of it (Paul...what about some of your PAWs, Neil what about some street candid's with your new toy :-) ).

Here's a shot from a recent workshop in the Berg that I'd like some feedback on if possible. It's a 5 image HDR (there were more shots but I've only used 5. One of the more complex HDRs that I've done requiring basic as well luminosity masks to get the tonal range that I wanted (a pic of the layer palette before flattening and doing final touches - I had to flatten as the computer wouldn't allow more steps). The problem is that I'm worried that it looks too much like an HDR.

then there's the flare. Yay or nay? Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Hard to decide really.

so any comments or suggestions would be great as I'm finding myself on the fence on this one.

Cheers
E

The Eyes Have It

So I took these pics while on Emil's St Lucia photography course (sign yourself up! It's great!). It was for our last day's project and the only speficationa were that it had to have a common thread and you had to present it. The people in these photo's are all staff members, it's black and white and they're portraits. I'm interested to know your thoughts..

Mixed Bag!

Hi all,

I've not posted for ages (not been shooting at all of late) but here are three new images - no real theme, just some recent shots that I quite like. As always, comments welcome.

Cheers,

Neil.

New article and theme (The Eyes Have It) for the month

Hi All

It's been relatively quiet for the past month in the group. Hopefully we can change that with this month's image theme, 'The Eyes have it'. Interpret that literally or metaphorically but please send in images.

On another note, I've been asked a number of times about my macro lighting and have now written a tutorial regarding this which can be found by following the link. As usual, any comments or suggestions are always welcome.

Cheers
E

Sharpening Part II

Hi All

If anybody is interested I've posted the second section to my sharpening article. You can get there by hitting the link.I look at an advanced mask that allows for the sharpening of only areas that have detail while leaving the o-o-f portions unsharpened. as usual, please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions to improve it.

Cheers
E

Nick's HDR

Dear all,

Better late than never, my HDR entry. It is the first HDR I ever made, so there is lots to comment on. I see now I have a halo of light around the vegetation, so I think I should have made my selection slightly different. Please give me your comments and let me know where and how I can improve.

Cheers Nick

Bark Spider

Dear all

First of all an apology for not submitting an HDR image last month. I was so much looking forward to actually try and experiment with this theme, but it just didn't happen. Couldn't find the right time, moment etc. Perhaps we can extent this theme another month?

As I have been lecturing in a game reserve for a couple of weeks, I have had a chance to do a little bit of photography in between the lectures and field exercises. One night I found a bark spider, which is a really cool thing. It is a well camouflaged, beautiful looking, but yet freaky looking too, spider that in appearance mimics the bark of trees. Some even go as far as having thorn look-alike protuberances from their abdomen. As soon as it is dark, it descends from the branches where it has been hiding all day, and makes a classic orb web, where it sits throughout the night catching insects. As soon as the sun comes up, it eats its own web again, to recycle nutrients and energy, and sits on a branch for the rest of the day. When night falls, the cycle starts over again...

I took a few macro shots (Nikon D80, Nikkor Micro 55 prime lens set at F22, 1/200 sec, ISO 100, fill in pop-up flash and a sb800 flash with softbox from the side) at night, and the next morning I looked forever until I found the spider on a branch somewhere, and took another couple of shots during the day (same camera, same settings, softbox flash etc.)

Please let me know which image you would choose from these four, if you could only choose one to send in to a competition. Your feedback and C&C will be much appreciated. If you think none of these images should be submitted to a competition, let me know too, so I don't embarrass myself...

Kind Regards,

Nick

Durban ICC HDR

Hi All

Another entry for the HDR theme this month (where are all the others?). Same technique as the previous, this time shot this month though. I was covering the Power Indaba for the organising company on Tuesday and when I left I quickly took the opportunity to grab some frames of the ICC itself.

Any c and c are always welcome.

Cheers
E

New tutorial on basic HDR blending

Hi

I've posted an image that I've used to illustrate a recent tutorial. The new tutorial can be seen by clicking the link.

Cheers
E

New tutorial on sharpening

For anybody interested I have just posted part 1 of a 2 part series on sharpening on my website. You can click the link to go there directly. Any comments or suggestions on improving the tutorial will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
E

February theme - blended images

We got some really great weather images last month. Thanks for those who posted. Keep posting and if you know someone who might be interested in taking part send them the details to the blog.

February's theme - Blended Images.
blending images is rapidly becoming a recognized and valid post-processing technique to obtain images that are simply impossible to capture with standard current equipment e.g. panoramics (with lots of resolved detail), Huge depth of field and of course HDR. BBC wildlife doesn't accept them yet (I think) except for their 'digital vision' category, but every other major international salon does. So it's obviously a technique to learn and practise. For those wanting to learn a more advanced blending method for HDR take a look at the latest NPN article on blended images. For a more basic approach read my quick and dirty layers tutorial. The posted image was a blend of three images using my approach in the tutorial.

E

Weather entry Nick

Dear all,

I was struggling with this months theme as I didn't get any great chances to shoot amazing thunderstorms or strong contrasts between wet & dry and stuff. Found an old image though of a line of dark clouds coming in and looking very threatening which was a stitched panorama. But after looking at it I realized it was actually a very poor image from a photographic point of view.

Then last week, whilst surfing and taking photos of the guys, I noticed that the wind had changed and was blowing from the east towards the shore. And when that happens, hundreds of blue-bottles usually get washed ashore. I reckoned that would could as a weather shot, took my macro lens and started to play around with my newly made soft-box (Emil's design). Indeed, plenty of blue-bottles stranded in the next half an hour, but then the difficulty only started... How on earth do you take an interesting photograph of a blue-bottle?!? I tried dozens of options, but couldn't get a 'interesting' shot, a shot that would capture the viewer. Eventually I was even digging a man sized hole in the sand with one hand (the other hand was holding the camera) where I could lie in in a skew yoga position, to get to eye level with the incoming sea in the background, and risking having that stranded blue-bottle being washed right into my face with the next incoming wave. Not even to mention the risk for my camera...

Yet, still I don't think I managed to take extra-ordinary photos and hence would like to ask for your advice. What would you have done to make the images more interesting? Below are three shots that are somehow okay.

Nikon D8-, Nikkor Micro 55 mm, f22, 1/200 sec, ISO 100

Here I wanted to portray a 'battle field of victims left behind'.

Here I like the front one, leaning to one side as a stranded ship would do. Shame on me for cutting of a edge...

This one looks somewhat vulnerable, lost even. Leaning on one side, helpless, with a 'tail/line' reaching for the ocean. Wish I could have had the ocean in this pic too.

Let me know your thoughts please.

Cheers Nick

Mo' weather!

So last night there was a threatening thunder storm, which for the Eastern Cape is not that common. My last attempt (many years ago..... shudup!) at shooting lightening resulted in a lengthy string of hazy grey slides. Not surprising since I had no cable release and no tripod! My how we have blossomed :)

So I shimmied up a hill and took a few exposures, this time opting for the use of a cable release and tripod. Whilst experimental, this was probably the best result. I opted to shoot wide as the storm was moving quite quickly and looked like it had a fairly long head. I noticed there was a tendancy for horizontal flashes in one area and vertical in another so set up with the intention of capturing both. It was some distance away so I knew that I would be going panoramic, cropping blackness out the top of the frame. Sadly this is roughly a 50% crop so would be great for postage stamps, perhaps a community newspaper somewhere ;) or perhaps a website or two.

Notice the needles of light to the right of the frame. Not sure why they rendered like that instead of the usual 'star' or periferal glow.

Specs: f/8 at 2mins.

Post Processing: temperature adjustment to bring in the blues. Added a little contrast.

Paul.

Working with E's weather

Having commented on E's pic being a cracker I decided to dabble. (Sorry E!)

I loved the complexity and colours in the posted image and 'surreal' was the adjective that immediately sprung to mind. So... flying with this I decided to see if I could bring it out a bit. I still love the colours and 'surreal' is still my adjective.

I HDR'd two images, the original and the original +1 stop. Brought in the greys a teeny bit using curves and warmed it up a little by selecting the yellows in a hue and saturation layer. And that was pretty much it. Took about 5 mins.

Downsides? There is some blow out at the lightening and of course the noise becomes more noticeable. I think it now has a different feel to the original, but the core elements are fore fronted. Couldn't do anything about the text at the top I am afraid ;-)

Be interested to see what everyone thinks (unless it is some drivel about art/authenticity/ 'real' or some such claustrophobic commentary - yawn!) ;-)

Paul.

Drakensberg weather

Admittedly I'm cheating a little here and the shot wasn't taken in the last month. I could say it was discovered in the last week though as i completely forgot about taking it. This is from a receding storm as seen from Witsieshoek while on a photography workshop in the Drakensberg last October.

tech: Iso 200, f5.6 for 6 and 1/2 minutes.

Whether or not...

Sorry bout the title but someone had to... .

At first I thought this was gonna be (yet!) another non contributing month for me, but then I was phoned by Business Report at lunchtime asking for an image of any dry river beds in the Eastern Cape due to the drought. So once I got looking ('cause I didn't much feel like whipping out to the Kariega and trying to get something to them by 4pm!) I found some stuff of the storms river and then I remembered that I had taken this on New Year's day. (It rained! And there was a full moon! Or would have been if the clouds weren't a gazillion gallactic kilometers deep!)

So I figured I would post this, knowing that it is pushing the brief ('s no snow I am afraid!) I have been wanting to try a few panoramics for a while and especially some vertical ones. So here is a first attempt. It is a merge of two images taken at f16 at 1/4 sec and at 38mm focal length (non full frame-sigh!). I don't know whether or not it works (for weather or not). Personally I would have liked more mud and more foreground, but I like the conflict between drizzly clouds, wet weeds and cracked mud. Let us know your thoughts (well, the ones pertaining to this blog anyway..!)

And one day soon I will post a comment on Neil's documentary stuff. There was so much bowing and passing (you can get up now ;) how can I not?
Paul.

January's Theme - WEATHER

Greetings for the new year all!

I thought that since everyone is either reveling in or moaning about the weather at the moment it would make a good theme for this month. So grab a pic of the snow (Mandy - check), brave the rain (anyone in KZN) or simply photograph meteorological chart. Have fun...but do be careful about your camera getting wet. I theoretically wasn't and am sans favourite image making machine at the moment as my precious camera lies gutted and under the surgeon's knife in Joburg. Sigh.

I trust 2010 will be wonderful for us all. Get out there and get shooting

E