Midday

Mucking around in boats :: Calm & Sunny at the mother ship

Time to appreciate the wonders of Light

Right Place, Right Time

I had  parked beside the Oakliegh Football ground on my way to a show at the Caravan Club, “Feelin’ Groovy” The Simon & Garfunkel Project  (its a Jazz Influenced band with two female singets, playing the folk/rock and harmonies of Simon & Garfunkle, and it really works. There is a another performance coming up at the National Theatre.) Anyway I have digressed I was a little late but as I looked up I saw the last rays fo sunlight break through the clouds and climb into the sky. I had to turn back and get my camera and take a bracketed set of photos to make this HDR image. There are times when You need to realize you are at the right place, right time.

By coincidence the theme the week on Photo Friday is silence.  (The Sounds of Silence)

PhotoProject :: Mad Dogs & Englishmen

At last we are getting some sunny weather down here in Australia (it has been an unusually wet and overcast spring so far).i So it is now time to break out the polarizing filter, one of my favourite landscape accessories, The Australian Sun can be really strong and Harsh light and generally the illumination of the sky much stronger than the land (or beach) to typically a photo in the middle of the day will have a bleached out sky, instead of the intense blue it actually appears to our eyes.

Just like polaroid sunglasses the polarizing filter oriented in the correct way can cut back the intensity of the sky and glare and deliver a nice sunny photo with a blue sky. My polarising filter is an older style and it also acts like a 2stop neutral density filter. Compare the photo on the left, taken with my polarizing lens, and the photo on the right normal exposure without a polaroid lens.

There are a lot of purist that might say you should only take landscapes in the golden hours, and never in the harsh midday Australian sun. But I say slap on some sunscreen, sunnies (sunglasses) and a polarizing filter and take a few photos if you want.Especially if the family are enjoying that day at the beach or in the park.

Sun, sand & beach can be a challenge to keep your camera and lens clean so put a blower brush (to blow off any sand or particles) in you camera bag and perhaps a lens pens (or microfiber cloth).

PhotoProject :: A better day on the beach

A better beach day, but still collecting photo references and sketches 

PhotoEditingTools :: Straightening up in AfterShot Pro

Something that everyone seems to be an expert on is straightening when the horizon is water. Everyone seems to “know” that the horizon will be flat and can be harsh when it isn’t. However straightening is one of the tools that often get overlooked when learning photo software. Further straightening is one task that is handled very differently in different packages.

I am using AfterShotPro on my laptop much more, often in association with Picasa to review photos when I first load them. I find this is the best time to cull, rank, add the metadata and perhaps do some very basic edits. Whilst Straightening is never a high priority. I find that AfterShot Pro has a really wonderful straightening tool, it is the small tilted picture icon at the bottom left of the main image display. The tool displays a bold arrow, clicking and holding the mouse will then select this point as an anchor and as you move the mouse away from this point a circular target style image opens up which has a horizontal and vertical grid markings (useful in aligning both vertical and horizontal items) Movement of the mouse can rotate this target circle. As you move away from the target a bold line is draw on one of the prime directions (right. left, up or down) closest you you movement. If you move the mouse outside a certain size (ie the circle almost fills the shortest axis of your image), the circle no longer expands but the bold reference line continues as you drag the mouse further. In the example above I have anchored the first point on the horizon on the left and side and draw out my desired horizontal to the horizon on the right hand side. Releasing the mouse rotates the image to use this new horizontal.

Unlike most other straighten tools, the one in AfterShot Pro does not automatically crop your image. So you are left with triangular salvages (shown in grey On the left) along the sides. The crop tool is the two overlapping L shapes with a tiny scalpel icon, its is to the left beside the straighten icon. Clicking on it displays a small dialogue box, in the upper right hand corner is a button labelled fit, clicking on this will then automatically fits your rotated photo into the largest rectangle that it can generate without displaying the salvages, (ie it trims off some of the edges or your image). This basically matches the automatic cropping of other packages. However when you rotate the image the aspect ratio of that fill rectangle can vary, so being able to crop to a defined ratio instead of the best fit could be desirable in many situations. Finally for all the “pixel peepers” and/or folk with a micrometre, here is my straighten version of my contre-jour seascape

On the Brickpath

Late Afternnoon Spring Sun, leaves a subtle dappled light on the Brickpath

 Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/the-brick-path

An Old Dame shows her Finery

 

 The PrincessTheatre has a colourful history, and possibly its own ghost, but in the winter sunlight she puts on a fine facade. perfect for a couple of HDR photos.e 

The importance of, right place, right time

By the time I notice this magic moment of the last of the sun breaking through the clouds, I just had time to snap this but those power lines in the way so distracting. Unfortunately by the time I got somewhere without the power lines, the magic was over. Just yet more proof you should carry your camera (iPhones also) with you always and keep your eyes out for those magic moments

Photofriday :: Morning has Broken–Revisited

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Early Morning

 

When I took this shot last week I( was actually pleased with it tonal but not colour and the original is posted on flickr. BUT it was quiet a magical moment to be there, the sun was breaking through the low morning cloud and exposing some promising blue sky above, and the dust and sand haze was still hugging the grown and the shafts of light where casting a gold glow. So I set about reprocessing the image on two parts (layers) in Perfect Effect 8 to cool the sky and warm the shafts of light in the dust and every so carefully  applying a clarity tone adjusted to the whole. Its now much closer to what I remember, well in my minds eye.

Sunlight on the waves

After the Transit of Venus, the clouds obscured the sun most of the afternoon but a few sunbeams managed to light up the distant wave.

Extreme Sunshine Pano

For Photo Friday's topic sunshine

This is a preety extreeme multi-photo autostitched panorama. Covering a view from south to north (looking west) and the horizon to straight above.

a glimpse of sunshine