Time to appreciate the wonders of Light

PhotoProject :: Experimenting with low afternoon light

Today was only my second photographic outing and it was good to be out in the fresh air with a strong sun, but at a low angle. Perfect to try and get some close up texture in the spent flower heads of reeds on the edge of the lake.

  

The first trick was to avoid getting the sun directly on my lens, because that causes flare and “fogging” of the image. I wanted the reed heads to be the detail (ie only things in focus so that means reducing the depth of field by going for the lowest aperture). I tried a variety of background/exposure. These reed heads are all with a couple of meters of each other. So whether I’m shooting up (with the sky as the background), straight ar the lake, or more down let me achieve three completely different backgrounds.

First signs of spring

The flush of bright yellow on the wattles, is a sure sign winter is coming to an end

Last of Autumn Start of Winter

This was taken with my new android phone during a break in the rain. It was taken using HDR Camera+ and then lightly adjusted to soften the colour a square crop and add the ragged frame using Adobe’s Photoshop Express for Android. Photoshop express was one of the early photo editor apps I used on my previous Android phone so I am roughly familiar with its basic operation. By the way the controls are nothing like other adobe photo editors, At first impressions it has more in the common format of small filter icons to pick the effect you want from a scrollable ribbon underneath the phone giving the impression of a one-click fix. However if you look a bit deeper on the icon on the bottom line there are a number of useful tools for basic edit. The key is the several filters can be used cumulatively on the one image. The first three overlapping circle control cropping tool, which bring up the filters related to colour with a horizontal slider bar to increase of decrease the effect. Next is a small icon with two overlapping l shapes which is the cropping took. Then a simplified icon of two sliders to control exposure, and many tonal and sharpening/noise options. The eye is for red eye reduction and the small frame icon is for adding a frame or fancy edge. Finally there is a band aid to remove blemishes. All in all most of the edit tools you might want to use.

Trying to get Google+ photos into blogger

Whilst I can embed google+ posts (as shown above).

It is somewhat disappointing that it is not easy to grab a simple link address for posting a photo. It is also a little distressing because the embed code doesn't actually show anything on your blogger new post page. The really distressing part is this method of embedded posting then also triggers a duplicate post back in google+, but without the image (because it is now considered two small!) The duplication doesn't end there it also adds a comments with the same text as in your post to your posts. I have an image of a disoriented animal chasing its own tail. There is a better way, but still with a bit of tail chasing.

The photo is actually a Google+ *HDR, but I will admit the afternoon did have wonderfull light.

Sunny Day ...eventually

On Reflection :: Sunny Winter's Afternoon

Autostitched Panorama of Reflections in Jells Park Lake, on a still but sunny winter's afternoon

 I just happened to be in Jells Park as the cold front approached, Making an interesting sky, which Google+ Autoawesome HDR* has captured

One Duck Done Six Ways

Picasa :: jpeg I’m feeling lucky	Google+ :: jpeg AutoEnhance & Vignette/Blur
AfterShot Pro :: RAW Perfectly Clear & Vignette	Photoshop Elements :: RAW Spotlight Effect
Lightroom :: RAW Tonal Adjustments, Noise Reduction & Vignette	Perfect Photo Suite 8 :: RAW Perfect Enhance, Magic Erase Brush & Vignette

A couple of ducks wandered into the front yard late this afternoon it was overcast and getting foggy so I had to use a high ISO just to get an acceptable exposure with my telephoto lens. While keeping a high f-stop to avoid over narrow depth of field. The resulting images has a lot of digital noise and was just a little flat, but with potential, Giving me the perfect opportunity to see what my many software mistresses might be able to do to lift this shot. I’m not trying to compare the packages for equivalent features, more trying to play to their strengths.

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 

PhotoFriday :: Sunshine

An AutoAwesome HDR, that nicely captures the setting winter sun.

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Sunshine

Winter Skies

Winter weather has arrived

Winter Solstice

A fitting sunset over the lake at Jells Park to mark the start of our longest night down here in the southern hemisphere.   

Sunny Afternoon Walk

Big Sky :: Winter Sunset

PhotoFriday :: After the storm

Yesterday was a very clear beginning of winter. After a stormy night the sun straights to break through.

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Shades of Gray

Winter is coming, and the lighting can be dramatic

Winter is approaching and the skies are getting much more animated, In particular the glimpse of strong sunlight between dark clouds so often bringing the landscape alive. Its a good time of year to always have your camera with you and not be afraid to stop and take in the wonderful lighting effects and get a few “special” shots. Both of these shots, where taken by the side of the road when I noticed a fleeting moment of great lighting. Both where shot without filters but I did use the Adjustment brush in lightroom to lift the highlights a little. The Panorama below was created with autostitch using 8 “portrait” orientated overlapping photos.

Spring hiding behind Winter

Late afternoon light from Jacob's ladder

RAW Winter Skies

One thing that has been worrying me for a while has been the behavior of RAW files in Picasa. Sometime ago I had set both my Pentax and Canon EOS to store images in both the camera’s RAW and JPG format. It does use extra space and takes extra time to write both images, however I wanted to get a feel for the difference each format provided. Well a strange thing was happening. Whenever I loaded the files the .jpeg and raw files always looked the same, but after a while,  particularly if I looked at the raw file. The two images inevitably looked quiet different,even when I had not made any changes to exposure etc. At first I suspected it was something to do with the .CR2 (native Canon RAW format) and .PER (native Pentax RAW format) Codex used on the computer.Then I began to suspect that RAW files would be brighter compare with a slight underexposure of the jpeg, but there were plenty of exceptions. Lightroom 4 avoids this little conundrum because when it sees a pair of raw and jpeg photos with the same name it only “imports” (links to) the raw file.

Well the explanation, is pretty simple. Both cameras do create thumbnail of the photo, in jpeg format using the cameras default jpg processing settings and embed this inside the raw image. It is this thumbnail view that you see when you first upload your photos. Then as picasa gets a chance to process the photo further it does read the actual Raw file and does its own best attempt at processing that RAW file, making its own new jpeg thumbnail. This might be quiet different to the cameras settings. Unfortunately it is a kind of Auto-fix for all approach and often not really what you want. For example in this photo I was after a kind of moody winter sky. Tweaking the RAW files a little gave me the effect I was after, and its quiet similar to the original camera jpeg. Once you make some adjustment to the RAW file in picasa (which you now can do by the way) the thumbnail does reflect those changes.

If you look closely lightroom does a similar thing. The image displayed in library view might change once you view it or develop it and it goes through the loading… delay. After that the thumbnail you see in lightroom is what ever you do to the image with lightroom. Picasa and lightroom are both “non destructive” systems so the original raw photo file remains unchanged.