PhotoFriday :: Nightfall

This week's theme gave me an excuse to practise for Tuesday's not-so-supermoon photowalk,

 more details on the MGA events page.

  For PhotoFriday‘s topic Nightfall

Running out of patience with Google+ Photos

I do keenly watch developments in google+ photos, and the take a tour item has just been updated (ok some time in the past month!). One obvious observation is it only show photos on mobile device, and I think this is clearly because that is their current focus (ie picasa and desktop applications are no longer part of the story). That aside one of the features that everypix (now defunked) were developing was object/scene recognition and more automated ways to group and classify your images. So I am interested to see google+ photos making the same claim BUT….

NO it doesn’t do object recognition once the photos are on the web. I suspect this may only be on mobile devices only (which is a bit strange because object recognition is likely to require a heck of a lot of computation cycles)

So where does that leave me, with not such a good report card …
on Photo Organization
on sharing photos in Blogger
not displaying Creative Common Licencing
on AutoAwesome
on AutoBackup

I suspect the essence of why I am becoming so frustrated with google+ photos and google+ in general is it is going the way of the apple-verse (ie supposedly “always just works” but it will only ever work in a simplistic way), which is so seldom very useful to me.

Be prepared for more Supermoon hype BUT….

Just a heads up to let you know there will be (yet another) supermoon next week this time over two nights for Melbourne, The term supermoon is not from astronomy it is more astrological. The event is real enough, the full moon corresponds with the closest point that the moon gets to the earth and it can give those interested the opportunity to get some nice photos, because the full moon will rise close to sunset.  Depending on the local atmospheric conditions this could produce a pleasing coloured moon against a richer sky. However there are a lot of myths about the name supermoon, (read this lifehacker post), so don’t expect the moon to be really large or much brighter and there are unlikely to be major catastrophes. If you haven’t witnessed a moonrise its happens surprisingly fast.

…it is a good excuse to photograph the moon

Having dismissed  the hype, photographing the moon can be fun because it is quiet a challenge for an automatic digital camera (as it also is with film based photography). The main problems comes when you rely on light meters, they average the illumination. However the moon is bright against a dark sky, so most often the moon will appear as a bright circle (or big white blob with flare) perhaps with a purple halo and no internal detail. Our eyes however can better handle the contrast and our brain adjusts to a more balanced illumination and we can usually make out at least some detail. The essence of photographing the moon is finding the right exposure to capture the detail of the shadows and craters. There is a lot of advice on photographing the moon on the net, some a little miss-guided but here is a good place to find additional advice.

For the Super moon (or any full moon) close to the horizon, my suggestion for a good starting point will be to use a tripod, set you camera to manual and use a long lens (or zoom in).  Even though this is a night photo try to keep the shutter speed high (1/100 to 1/500) because the moon moves fast. The aperture can be standard (ie around f8) although if you have a foreground subject you want to include and you have the long lens it might be wise to go to a small aperture (eg f22) to avoid depth of field issues taking the moon or the foreground out of focus. This really only leaves you the sensitivity to adjust to get the desire exposure and it will probably be in the range ISO 400 to 1000. Most modern digital cameras will go up to at least ISO 800. The ambient light of your position and view can make a couple of stops difference to the exposure so it is a good idea to take a test shot or two of the general scene you want to photograph just beforehand (remembering when the moon rises there will be a little extra light, ie slightly under exposed is ok). Finally if you are familiar with taking bracketed exposure, this is the perfect time to set your camera to take 3 (or 5) photos at a range of EV values (-2 to +2 is a good range if your camera allows this) that way you should get at least one good exposure.

The second common surprise most people get when they photography the moon is it always appears smaller than what they saw? This is particularly so if there is something in the foreground. This is really a function of the cameras focal length being a wider angle (ie 50mm for a DSLR). The solution here is easy use a telephoto lens 200mm or longer, or zoom in and stand further back from the object in the foreground.

The Flickr community team have suggested a series of Noctural and Lunar Global Photo Walks for September, and there has already been a focus of events that match up to the supermoon occurrences next Monday & Tuesday. In Melbourne the key times are shown in the table below

Date	Event	Time
Monday 8th. September	Moonrise	5:11 PM
	Sunset	6:03 PM
Tuesday 9th, September	Sunset	6:04 PM
	Moonrise	6:24 PM

Source: WillyWeather.com.au/Melbourne/Wheelers Hill

If you are in Melbourne, we have already had two widely hyped super moons this year, but Tuesday 9th September will be the last opportunity to photograph a super moon from location for the next decade. So cloud cover permitting why not join the flickr global photo walks group and/or a group starting at the Monash Gallery of Art at 6:00 pm, more details on the MGA events page. Even if it is cloudy there should be some good long exposure opportunities.

Some Photo Management tools for older eyes

Despite camera getting more megapixel and screens becoming higher resolution a lot of folk seem to struggle a bit expecting to see what they expect to be more detail. The reality is the eye doesn’t see all the detail in a good quality print even if you have 20/20 vision and while most screen are lower resolution and you can see the pixels when you are very close up (even on an ipad with a retina screen), and a data project with a lower resolution may appear to have crisper detail when projected on a wall. So what is going on here?
Its all got to do with the viewing distance and how our eye perceive detail relates to the angle separation the light sources and its intensity and we actually only see at high resolution in a small area,  What we see depends a lot on our brain’s assistance filling in detail as I eye moves around remember and assembling a detailed memory rather that a specific snapshot. This is an interesting topic but way too complex to discuss now (this Gozmdo post introduces some of the issues via a neat video). What is also in our field of view also affects what we see (or can focus), A small 10 by 15 cm print is not as compelling as the same image on a large screen TV or projected on the wall, even though the print could have many more pixels  Add to this the normal trend to loose the close vision resolution as we age. So us old folk with always reaching for our glasses for any prints or photos on phones. Buy where does that leave up in photo editing software The zoom function available in most software is a real bonus for older eyes. 
So here are a few of my favourite ways to see detail in a 18mega pixel raw file (ie a resolution greater that the screen could possibly display) They are all various of the zoom tool, usually signified by a magnifying glass Icon
Lightroom’s 100% view. This is a actually a bit of a strange name because it is really a view in which a single pixel from the images is displayed by 4 adjacent pixels on the screen (so perhaps a 400% view would be a better explanation). This view can be easily accessed when viewing any picture and the cursor shows the magnifying glass icon is showing as the mouse pointer, its the normal default). Just move this pointe to the centre of what you want to see and you get this very zoomed in view. Panning this view around the image is a little counter intuitive you have to do it in the navigation preview, on the right hand panel. It is clunky but usable. Click on the image again and you get zoomed out. Getting a partly zoomed in view is a little less obvious, if like most people you seldom use the menu bar. It is under the View/Zoom In menu (or the <Ctrl>= shortcut) and View/Zoom Out (<Ctrl>-shortcut).
This 100% view is more detailed that most people will see and those that go straight to this view are often referred to pixel peepers, (they are probably also obsessed with focus and sharpness). If you don’t have lightroom and want to see this obsessive world of the 100% view there is a web site called pixel peeper which compares reference photos from different camera manufactures with a link into “full sized” views on flickr.
There are two zoom tools in AfterShot Pro. the best one is the little magnifier on the upper right hand side once it is click anywhere you put the hand icon you will see a blown up view in the circle of the magnifier. Its close to the same zoom factor as the lightroom 100% view but the why you move it with the mouse over the point of interest is  much more intuitive and responsive (than lightroom rectangle). It has become my favourite way to preview photos. At the bottom of the screen is a zoom slider which zooms the whole picture in and out. (see also my recent post on AfterShot Pro’s workspace.)
The zoom function in Picasa is limited to a zoom slider, but it is always present at the bottom of any single photo. It can actually go deeper than the lightroom 100% view to a very pixelated/scary view (depending on the original photo resolution). So there is no need to take it to the extreme right. It works a bit more like the lightroom’s zoomed view in that a small thumbnail of the full image appears in a pop up window and you pan the larger zoomed view in the display window by moving the small rectangle of that view in this thumbnail window. (see also my previous post on Picasa’s workspace.)
My last zoom tool works on all software (even the back of the camera).  It is a flat plastic Fresnel lens, they are inexpensive, you can find them in the $2 style shops, often in a range of sizes. I always have one in the back of a small A6 sketch book in my camera bag and another on my desk. For computer work I hold the lens at arms length just in front of the screen.

The Anatomy of Google’s Picasa Workspace

Whilst Picasa is very intuitive and easy to pick up, it has a workspace that changes as you select different items, in other words its workspace is context sensitive. This makes it very simple to use but there is not one simple layout that applies to all action. In general terms picasa workspace is divided into 4 sections below the menu bar. The menu can access every action but I seldom use it.



The 4 section below the menu are a main screen, which will either display a number of photos in a given folder (as shown above) or a single photo as show below. In the library (or folder) view you can easily change the size of the thumbnail previews using the slider at the top line of the bottom tool bar.

There are then three separate tool bars, they change as you undertake different actions and activities.
The top tool bar has a few typical activities like import, creating a new album on the left and on the right there are filtering and a search option.

The left hand tool bar has two distinct modes. The first in the Library (or Navigation) View when you see several photos in the main window and it will assist you to scroll through your photos on your computer. The second view of this left hand tool bar is a series of tabbed tool for editing your photo and this appears when you have a single photo selected in the main window (see below) Just select and click a single photo in the library of folder view and you get transferred to the edit view. Click on the action key Back to Library and you get back to the main view.

The bottom tool bar performs some basic tasks like printing, emailing and sharing on google+ and there is a handy photo tray on the right hand side to show photos you have pinned (ie selected) and you can ten do group actions on them together.


There are a number of different edit functions, but I will discuss those separately in posts to come. Whilst google are clearly putting most effort into their on-line google+ photos area (which has taken over the on-line component to picasa). The PC version is still available for free download and if you want gain control of an unruly collection of photos it is really a good first stop.

I will finish off this workspace discussion with one of the most basic tools, yet very useful tools, for improving composition, the Crop. In Picasa you see the full image grey out but can view your crop selection as a full illuminated shape (rectangle of square). To aid the selection of standard sizes there is drop down menu, once a standard size is selected the aspect of the crop shape will be locked into that ratio and as you expand of contract one axis the other will automatically change. Here I am doing some preliminary compositional investigation for my Ingredients photo for the patch.

I will return later to the picasa workspace to discuss, metadata, albums and some of the more useful tools and filters.

ThePatch :: Toy on Parade in Nature

The patch theme this month is Toy On Parade, and the same toy needs to be in each photo. After having fun with my grandson making the automobile awesome motion gif earlier in the year I figure this was a challenge made for a bit more lego fun. If you have seen the lego movie on DVD and watched the special features you will have seen one of the designers describing some of the designs He is using a program called Lego Digital Designer, which can be downloaded from Lego. The models for the lego movie where largely developed with this easy to use CAD like program. It can be a little daunting (if your older than 6), it has a database of every lego part there is!  I quickly realized it does give me the ability to create a character that could be easily pose & animated. Perfect for this challenge, assuming a virtual character can be on parade. My young lego advisor loved the project and wisely helped choose a very simple character with which to build some adventures and hopefully some good photos. Meet Blue Lego Guy.

His first adventure in Nature, clearly was to be based around a small blue wren I had seen and photographed at a Jells Park lake on Friday. With some head scratching, even reading the manual and using the layers in Paint.NET I was soon able to acquaint blue lego guy with the blue wren.  Ok not so convincing and I liked a different photography anyway, with some raindrops on the grass around the wren but with depth of field giving a more blended background onto which to superimpose blue lego guy. A little bit of posing adjustements back in Lego Digital Designers and adding a camera, yellow of course. Getting convincing perspective was a bit of a challenge and I had to wing that in the end as well as guessing the relative height he might be.  A little bit of cloning to put a couple of blades of grass in front of his legs and some suggestions of shadows. Finally a cinematic wide screen crop.
Voilá ….Smile Mr Wren!

Wasn’t so hard after all. Stay turned for more Blue Lego Guy adventures.

Taming duplicates

I have had the exclude duplicates item ticked on my picasa imports by default, for the longest time. This helps avoid a lot of duplicates turning up because some photos where left on a card or a phonephoto was uploaded via wifi more than once or via different services, However because I now have my photos flow across several computers and software packages it is surprising just how many duplicates do turn up. So I have also been using a neat little utility program from digital volcano called duplicate cleaner, which is design for all file types but does work very well with media files like photos, video and music. The biggest feature of this cleaner is that it can recognise the same file contents, even if the name is changed. If the file is a jpeg and has been post processed it will be considered as different. Also if the jpeg has been rescaled it will also be considered different. This is fine I probably want to keep these,

During and particularly as I reach the end of the month I move my photos from the collection points (laptop computers) onto a backup drive and it is at this point that it is most useful to run the duplicate cleaner (if you have a lot of files it can take a while …so go get a coffee). After this I then copy the backed up files to the archive drive and make my DVD/CD backup set of the archive (this is my one remaining traditional backup, everything else is now on portable hard drives). I don’t delete the photos on the collection computers until I have finished the backup –> duplicate clean –> Archive cycle. The very end of the month is the right time to do this.

PhotoFriday :: Warmth

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Warmth

The truth is out there

I not sure how many times I have heard good photography (including my own) dismissed as faked in Photoshop. Further I’m also not really a fan of a lot of the on-click Artistic apps around. However there is definitely a place for intelligent post processing, in the whole process of art  –> graphic art–> photography. By example is you shoot RAW it is almost certain that you must undertake some post processing to get an acceptable image. It is just unfortunate that fakery seems to dominate people perceptions and photoshoped has become such a disparaging adjective for a photo.

The cartoon is a golden oldie by Aaron Johnson, and his work a quite photocentric you can see more of the duck here.

Source : As seen on PetaPixel, via Mosaic Lightroom Newsletter

PhotoProject :: How to Photograph Nothing

I just read an interesting article in The Artist Magazine by Paul Talbot-Greaves titled “How to paint nothing” (January 2014), in which he comments,

“Many people have said they probably wouldn’t notice the subject in one of my landscapes and would probably walk straight past the scene, … So just how do you notice a composition of nothing?”

There is a video of Paul painting a watercolour below (it is speed up but takes just over 10minutes, and is well worth watching to see how he uses a simple colour palette and strong tonal shapes, lines of the river, skyline and a few trees to quickly build a wonderful yet conventional landscape composition). Unfortunately a well meaning (and probably very experienced) photo critic would suggest his landscape needs a red canoe with the canoeist in a bright yellow life-vest positioned at the first bottom “thirds point of interest”, but he would be wrong it doesn’t need to be like that (ok it might be if you want to win the camera club photo of the month and he is judging!). It needs the artist eye to see the colour, composition and tone! That’s all.

I am inspired to apply his insights into the photographic process. One in particular is that  “compositional designs are best when strong lighting is involved”, for example using shadows to create exciting negative shapes and add dimension to an image. Paul also is attracted to “the bright, high chroma colours against darker muted tones”

So over the past couple of days I have been quick to pick up my camera whenever I see that strong light variation and strong colours against shadows, and particularly interesting shadow patterns. Did not really matter what the subject was after all it is a photo of nothing, I was just looking for the right lighting ambience, boldish colour and shadows.

This set of images (on the right) are simply of the shadows of a potted yucca plant on my partly open patio doors. I was sitting enjoy a coffee in the sun at the time. I had the foresight to include an EV bracketed set of exposure, so I sent that set off to Google+ Autobackup and this time they did return a decent *HDR autoawesome, but the composition, as shoot, was a bit boring. Also it had a few damaged leaves on the yucca and they were an unnecessary distraction. My favourite tool to fix composition in any photo is the crop tool, It is normally a simple logo of two opposing L shapes, occasional with a curved rotation arrow. Google+ photos has some good edit tools on-line and the crop tool (shown below) has a feature to control the ratio (aspect of horizontal & vertical axis) to keep the crop within given standard size combinations. There is a separate icon at the top of the panel on the right to do any rotational (straightening) adjustment.

I have not bothered about the rule of thirds of any other compositional rule, I was looking for a pleasing combination of colour and shadow and I like the contrast of the vertical door frames and the angled shadows with their lost and found lines feel. An image like this is a great place to experiment with all sort of crops, so don’t stop at your very first try. The wooden door handle on the white door frame is a little distracting but I have not managed to find any cloning tools in Google+ Photo so I have had to downloaded the edited image and then take it through OnOne’s Perfect Enhance 8. Perfect Enhance has a really magic Perfect Eraser which is content aware and does a both quick and reasonable job of removing the handle. Finally I add a big softy vignette.

So the exercise of photographing nothing can be rewarding, and encouraging both seeing more like a painter might but also forcing some creativity in you post processing (in this case perhaps a little more abstract albeit more thoughtful cropping).

PhotoFriday :: Architecture

The Contrast of Old & New

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Architecture

PhotoProject :: Straightening Out

“There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.” - David Hockney

I believe what David is highlighting here is that the camera’s view of the world is from a single lens with a specific perspective. We have two eyes and “see” a much richer three dimensional worlds and our vision can be influences by our expectations. For example when we are dwarfed by tall trees we know we are surrounded by a strong vertical world. Our camera however see a more curved representation (depending on the zoom) and we will probably notice wide angle views tend to show curves where we expect strong vertical lines. For this reason many architectural photographers go to some extreme length with special cameras and lenses to overcome this perspective distortion. The Tilt/Shift lens being very popular because they do allow control of this distortion. A number of tilt/shift filters are also now becoming popular because they can be used to create the effect of looking at a miniature world.
In this vertarama, made from three *HDR photos (created by google+ autoawesome) you can see the trees enclosing over me as the camera moves higher. Ok this is pleasing in some respects but I want to show the strong vertically of these pines, so I have Tried out a plug-in for after-shoot pro called zPerspector. There are a number of similar perspective adjustment plug in fro Photoshop, gimp & even paint.net. The all perform varaiable scaling  and/or warping to adjust the image. zPerspector has a very easy to pick up approach where you can stretch and pull at each of the corner edges of your photo to thus arrive at the expected view. In my example below I am not trying to get all the trees straight and vertical (because they weren’t really) what I was looking for for trying to reproduce the strength of the trees towering over me as I remember it.

A Better way to post Google+ Photos in Blogger

There is another way to get your photos from google+ photo into blogger, that gives you a little more control, thanks to a relic from picasa web album days (picasa web album is now google+ photos). If you look inside the new post screen in blogger and click on the insert picture icon, you see the dialogue window (shown on the right). The third item lets you insert from a picasa web album, but here is the rub, you may not find any recently uploaded photos, They must be in an album. This means you have to nominate an album when you upload the photo or Move the photo from the general date based Auto-back or Autoawesome areas into an album (you can create a new album in that move operation if ot doesn't already exist). I don’t think you actually move anything you just create a link to the photo from the album view. (Yes it is pretty obviously smoke and mirror stuff). Thus avoiding the duplicate comments/posts issues I have struck using the share/embed approach from within google+ photos. Once your photo has been posted it also shows up in an special extra Photos from your Post album. The image of the frustrated dog chasing his tail is getting stronger!

Yes, yesterday was magnificent!

The Anatomy of the Paint.NET Workspace

It may seem strange to include paint.net in my Photographic Workspace Series. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It is still supported by the original developer (who appreciate donations to help enhance the software) and an active community. The outstanding aspect of this very useful little program is its simple and intuitive to use and a nice introduction into the power of image manipulation. It supports a wide variety bitmap formats (but not RAW formats) and offers all the basic manipulation tools and also has the ability to work with layers, including a number of ways to blend them together (a very good way to familiarise yourself with layer methodology before jumping into more challenging to learn software such as photoshop).


The main workspace, which is called the canvas, has a menu and a tool bar above the canvas and a status bar below. The tool bar has two layers, the upper layer is for the most common actions and the lower layer is context sensitive for the current tool you are using. Unlike a lot of other software paint.net has several floating panels (or windows) that can be positioned anywhere on the screen. These can be toggled on and off using the small icons on the upper left of the screen. The three most useful panels ate the Tools window (where you select the tool you wish to use), the Layer windows and the Colour Panel.

In the example above I am using a gradation layer to modify the photo on the canvas. However I most commonly use this program to annotate screen captures, photos and diagrams, using the text and arrows (also shown above).

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.

ThePatch :: Kitchen/Let’s Eat

This is the last of the patch themes on the kitchen and simple captioned let’s eat. I had already figured out in the ingredient challenge that there is a fair bit more to photographing food than a simple set up and snap. Perhaps I can become a food blogger after all.

In search of Colour &/or Composition

My first investigation was colour, more specifically the impact of the background colour on the richness of the food. No surprises here, the background colour has a big impact! But which smoked salmon roll looks the tastiest?
   
My next thought it I need to add something to Strengthen the composition, more dramatic positive & negative spaces or maybe just simplify the subject matter?
   

Over-cooked with HDR

   
I thought I would also try out some more HDR, the google+ autoawesome variety (above) and also even using HDR Camera (below) on my android phone (to consolidated the food blogger feel), They are snappy but I’m not convinced that the clinical sharpness and strength of HDR dynamic range stretching is how I like to see food, I think food needs to be gooier and softer, perhaps even with a warmer glow.
 

Some Pop Art Inspiration

I am still reading (and enjoying) Beyond Digital Photography. It has a chapter of using pop artist as an inspiration for a creative photo manipulation. Personally I find Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans pretty boring and mundane (but I believe that was his point). I do like both Wayne Thiebaud and David Hockney’s food still-lives, but neither really considered themselves pop artists. They both use simple colour and shadows to help the form and composition so I figured I needed to get outdoors, to stronger light. My first objective was to use fewer colours and the technique usually call posterization let me limit the palette to just 7 colours. Yes that gave me an “arty” look but it was very dull (and contrived) so I just upped the saturation and contrast (ok a little harsh) so I use layered compositing and masking to add some detail and tone down selected areas with a semi translucent (lower opacity) using OnOne’s Perfect Layers. Success! I like the result it is ambiguously between a photo and something an artist might paint.
  

This technique does required a few steps and jumping between programs. I did like the shadows on the wooden table in a different photos (without the place mat) so I ran that through the method again, with a less heavy hand on the saturation on the posterized layer and more feathering of the opacity between the original photo layer and the posterized version (see below)

Its a slice of banana, nut & chocolate cake with some strawberries & greek yoghurt, was delicious!

The Moral: I’d probably rather eat the food, than delay the enjoyment while I photographed it.
However using this as an art inspired challenged was fun.But enough playing with food.