Puddles of Fun

I started photographing my (almost) daily walks about 6 week ago, Over COVID-19 restriction allow us yo "exercise" close by for an hour. In particular I was closely observing what was under my feet. The original intent being to create a photo easy of my walks but from a very different perspective. Well the project is still ongoing and I don't see any need to finish it to soon, I think we have a few more weeks of "lockdown". I enjoy the walks and always carry my camera.

The wet weather has created a lot of puddles and wonderful reflections and with some floating Autumn leaves. I am reminded of a couple of the lithographs that where displayed in The M C Escher  X Nendo exhibition at the NGV last year.

PhotoEditingTools :: HDR well After the fact

 

Some time ago I used to take 5 photos in my bracketed sets. I was experimenting with different EV steps and this set remained unprocessed. Further these are all jpeg not RAW. Its not a gripping image but has a little potential as an abstract composition. I came aross the set when I was checking through my photos and thought I should give Aftershot Pro”s HDR merge a try out with 5 images rather than just 3. There was no need to worry it worked perfectly. The only item of note was, it is very important to run the feature based align when you are merging 5 hand held images, but Aftershot did a great job.

Not yet a great photo but a pleasing improvement none the less, much closer to what I feel I would have seen and attracted me to take the photo. These days I normally only take three photos but 1.5 EV apart and in RAW on my Pentax and 3 photos 2 EV apart on my Canon. There is lots of well meaning advice of the right settings for HDR, most of it apparently given with authority but totally prescriptive and usually without explanation. If you have decent software I suggest you experiment for yourself and find those settings that best suit you and your camera, and be gentle with the sliders during tone mapping (aka avoid the lurid colours).

PhotoFriday :: My Favourite Location (this year)

My all time favourite photographic location is still probably South Walkerville, but over the past year I have been taking a lot of photos just down the road in Jells Park. The scenery may not be  world shattering but I am enjoying capturing the migrating birds, the subtle changes of light and reflections.


For PhotoFriday‘s topic My Favourite Location

ThePatch :: Self Portrait with a Unique Perspective

My plan to do all self portraits for this months ThePatach themes, gives me a lot of scope to be more artistically inspired with the curly topic of a unique perspective. I had been experimenting with conical mirror projects for my “handmade” little planets of the Queenscliffe Observatory and immediately thought of MC Escher’s Infinite Reflection. Yes its all done with mirrors, a cylindrical one, and an anamorphic transformation to produce the image the mirror is sitting on. The resulting image you see in the mirror appears to magically floating above the otherwise very distorted drawing on the table.

I started with a very simple front on self-portrait, rather than a profile, as in Escher's drawing. I deliberately keep the background and table simple and pretended to sketch. Then with a minimal tonal tweaking and a basic conversion to a greyscale, I had my starting image to transform. Whilst I wanted colour in the final photo I felt staying in grey tones for the reflection would be truer to Escher's concepts.

Whilst I do have a neat anamorphic transformation utility, called Anomorph Me, I don’t have a cylindrical mirror. What I do have is a stainless steel milk frothing jug and a stainless steel espresso cup. Now a coffee association is much more me anyway. So the first job was to work out roughly the right sizes to make the transformations.  I managed to get close on the first attempt. So far so good…
The stainless steel is not as clear as a true cylindrical mirror and also the items don’t have straight sides so the reflected images are not as sharp as Escher's and more obviously distorted. So out with a polishing rag and  back to make a new set of transforms this time with some conventional perspective shift to allow for the cup surface leaving out and the jug surface leaning in. For the final photos I had the cup filled with an espresso shot and the jug with frothed milk. I liked the one with the coffee best as it is a better self portrait of me (I love my coffee, I’m from Melbourne!) even though the reflected image isn’t quiet as clear. I think Escher would understand.

Noosa Nights

Available light of the moon reflected on Laguna Bay

Just in time?

I visited Cardina Dam yesterday, and have never seen it so full. So I was a little surprise to hear on the radio this morning that the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant will begin pumping “high quality” water (their term) into the dam from  today. However I would estimate there is less that 2m of freeboard available until the dam start naturally emptying itself via its spillway, which seems to contradict the claim that its website claim that it is only at 79.9% of its capacity. Just in time or not needed?

The panorama above was constructed from 22 images, using autostitch. I was trying out a new gadget, the little green cube on my camera, which is a multi-level slide into the flash hot shoe and it worked a treat. No matter how you position the camera on the tripod (portrait or landscape orientation), there are two bubble levels that help you ensure good horizontal and vertical alignment.

Reflections

Still clear days make for marvelous reflections. A three panel autostich panorama of Jell's Park Lake.

Welcome back stranger

 

I have not seen black swans [Cygnus atratus] in Jell’s Park Lake for a couple of years now. They were once very common, especially in late spring.  I assumed the pelicans had scared them away. Today one was swimming around exploring the reedy areas and generally enjoying the sun.

 

No black swan theory here

Crumpled Reflections

More Birds in Flight

On the wing

twilight

 

on the roof of the world

I have been reading Alain De Botton’s “The Art of Travel”, which features a graphic of the view from an jet airplane window, on its cover. (I’m fairly certain it is a mock up rather than a true photo mainly because there is no internal reflection). The image is accurate in that it shows the interesting phenomena of a very dark sky above the horizon, when view from the upper atmosphere, because the air above is very rarified and has little moisture thus little backscatter of light.

Taken over the great barrier reef, about 20 minutes out from cairns. (note the reflection of my shirt in the lower part of the image)

Reflecting Progress

Construction reflected in new building, Sudirman Central Jakrata

dusk moonrise

Reflecting on reflections off glass

HDR processing, does wonders for strong reflections off glass.

What it doesn't do so well is handle people that are walking as you take the bracketted set of photos, used to construct the HDRi image (see the ghosted multi-exposed figures on the bottom left hand side of the image on the right