Orioles and Oranges

Winter doesn't want to quit this year.  An overnight storm left 3 1/2 inches of snow on May 2.  I was surprised to see a Baltimore Oriole on my deck by the feeders.  I took out an orange and he immediately returned to eat.

I put my camera on the kitchen table and took photos through the window several times during the day.  When I downloaded the shots, I had over 100 images of Orioles and oranges.  Most of them looked fine individually, but they were more than a bit redundant in a group.  I needed to select the best without wasting a lot of time.

I put BreezeBrowser Pro in slide show mode.  I ranked the entire group with a number 1 to toss and a number 4 to keep.  Birds that weren't sharp or had their butt facing the camera received ones.  I sorted by ranking and put all the number ones in the cull group. About 1/2 of the original group remained - about 50.

I utilized the compare feature in Breezebrowser Pro next.  I selected images 4 at t time.  I picked the strongest image in each group and tagged it.  I paid particular emphasis on the sharpness of the oriole's eye.  I moved all the untagged images into a separate directory.  About 12 tagged images remained.

I used Breezebrowser to look at the entire group of remaining shots as thumbnails.  When viewed this small several shots looked like exact duplicates of each other.  I selected the duplicates and used slideshow mode to view them in full screen size.  None of the images was an exact duplicate when viewed full size.  I let the slide show loop until I determined the best image off the group.  I kept the best image and removed the rest.  About 6 images remained.

Lightroom could be used for these steps instead of Breezebrowser if you have plenty of patience.  I don't.  I loaded the remaining 6 images into Lightroom to adjust cropping, exposure and color. I deleted any image was not satisfactory in Lightroom,   The shot above was one of the 6 images.

Some would call this process "Spray and Pray".  I disagree.  Every shot that I took was the best pose and sharpness that I could manage at the time.  When is all said on done, it doesn't matter how many shots I took or how much trouble I had getting the shot.  The final image is all that matters.  You either like it or you don't.

Canon 5D Mark III Problem

I had a problem with my Canon 5D Mark III that I have been unable to troubleshoot.  Two consecutive exposures were messed up.  These multiple exposures were not planned.

The first image contained portions of two different exposures.

The first image was immediately followed by another image that contained portions of two images and had a significant color error.

The exposures immediately before and following these shots were normal.  I haven't had a similar problem since.

The problem occurred in camera.  I can rule out a problem with the compact flash card and any  problems with downloading.  I can rule out any problems with the shutter or other physical  portions of the camera.

I checked the EXIF data.  The only thing that I was doing differently from my normal settings was that I had set the camera to the "P" (Professional) mode.  I expected to see it set to Aperature Priorty.  It's possible that the dial drifted but that is harder to do on the Mark III than it was on the Mark II.

The problem had to have happened after the exposure and before the image from moved from the cameras buffer memory to the compact flash memory.  After careful study in PhotoShop, I've concluded that the two problem images actually resulted from more than two exposures.

I haven't been able to get the camera to repeat the problem but I'm afraid that it will happen again when I'm working with photos that are more important.

A Different Point of View

My last trip to photograph cranes in Central Nebraska was hampered by the small number of early arrivals.  I stopped at the Crane Trust just before heading back to Omaha.  There were cranes everywhere, real cranes stuffed in glass cages and a hundred other shapes and forms in the gift shop.

One artist caught my eye with a series of crane painting.  The cranes were created with a multitude of colors instead of trying to use the colors found in nature.  The art took the familiar shape of the cranes and transformed it into illustrations that stood out among the hundreds of crane images.

I decided to try something in Photoshop that was "outside the box" for me.  I began with a dark and dreary image I created seven years ago.

I loaded it into Photoshop and began creating layers with different exposures and hues.  I used various filters and  overlays to modify the image.  Translation - I played around with alot of differnt things until I found a combination I liked.

My final image wasn't very far "out of the box"  It is similar to an early morning flight with the warm hues of the rising sun.  I would look great as a large canvas print.

Unfortunately this is a one of a kind rendition.  I merged all my layers without recording what I did.    If I had been smart, I would at least have saved all the layers in a Tiff file. 

Exploring a New Kind of Light

The first light I used for portraiture was a reflector with the strobe in the center.  Wider reflectors produced light with softer shadows.  Most of the light came directly out of the center flash tube and never bounced before striking the subject.  Even with a large reflector, the light produced a sharp transition between light and shadow.  This light was fine for the young and beautiful, but it also emphasized wrinkles and flaws when they were present.

Portrait photographers like the kind of light that comes through north facing window.  The sun never shines directly through these windows so it cannot  produce any sharp shadows.  Photographers emulate this type of light with large diffusers like Soft Boxes.  The light from the strobe bounces in many directions before leaving through a large opening in front.  

Recently photographers have rediscovered a new kind of light.  This light is hard and soft at the same time.  This light can be created in a light modifier called a "Beauty Dish."  The beauty dish I purchased is typical.  It  is a shallow reflector with a 22 inch opening.  If you look at it from the front you cannot see the flash tube of the strobe because a metal reflector covers it.  Light from the flash hits the backside of the center cover and bounces  to the sides of the dish where it changes direction again in order to leave the front of the reflector.  The result is a 22 inch light source that produces very soft light coming from many directions. 

I mounted a 12 inch rod on the top of a light stand and positioned it so that one end of the rod was touching the wall.  I placed a beauty dish 45 degrees to the side.  With this setup, a hard light source will produce a distinct shadow on the wall and a soft light source  will produce little or no shadow as the rod becomes more distant from the wall.

In the photo below, the beauty dish is aimed directly at the light stand.  Notice how the shadow spreads and then completely disappears.  This head-on light is very soft.

In this photo, I turned the beauty dish to the side so the light stand and rod receive hard light from the flash tube and soft light from the rest of the beauty dish.  Notice how visible the shadow is now.  The shadow is still softer than that of a point light source, but it definitely harder than it was when the beauty dish was directly aimed at the subject.

When I purchased the beauty dish, I also a grid that allows me to control the light by limiting it to a smaller area.  As you can see from the first photo, the resulting light is still soft when the light is aimed directly at the subject.    The second photos shows that the light stays soft to the very edge.  this setup does not produce light that is hard and soft at the same time.

My beauty dish came with an optional white cover.  The resulting light is soft when aimed directly at the subject and remains soft as the light is feathered.  The light covers a much wider area than it did with the grid.  

I've seen excellent presentations that show a model photographed with a wide variety of lighting equipment.   When I look at these tiny printed illustrations, I cannot perceive the subtle differences. 

This exercise didn't teach me how to use the beauty dish.  It did provide the first step toward mastering  the simultaneous hard and soft quality of light it produces.  I also learned that I'm wasting my time if I try to achieve this effect with either the grid or cover attached to the beauty dish.  These options only useful if I need a soft light source.

Bryce Canyon National Park is Beautiful

 Bryce Canyon National Park is located in southwest Utah.  It is famous for it's towering pinnacles of multicolored rock called hoodoos.  The hoodoos are up to 20 stories tall.  When the hoodoos seem to glow when they are lit by the warm colors of the setting sun.

The Paiute Indians believed that the hoodoos were Legend People that the trickster Coyote had turned to stone.  They called them "red painted faces".  The first European to live here was a Mormon pioneer named Ebenezer Bryce.  His neighbors started calling the area Bryce's canyon.

 Bryce is so beautiful that everyone gets a good photo.  They usually take many more as they ooh and aah.  When they look at their photos later, they are disappointed.  They all look the same and are not nearly as spectacular as Bryce looked at the time.

 

It's important to provide a sense of scale. The photo above uses a tree to help demonstrate the size of the rocks.

 

This photo uses near and far objects to give a sense of distance.  It also uses the green of near and distant trees to provide contrasting color.

 

 Lighting is extremely important at Bryce.  It's easy to produce photos that merge all the hoodoos into a single red mass. The hoodoos need shadows to show that they are many separate towers.

 I used HDR (High Dynamic Range) for this group of photos.  This allowed me to provide texture in the brightly lit rocks and to provide details in dark shadows.  I made adjustments in processing to lighten and darken objects in the images.  

Using HDR significantly increases the number of exposures taken.  You can be accused of using the Spray and Pray technique. With the right subject, HDR can be spectacular.  If HDR doesn't work for a subject, you may find that the best single exposure wasn't the same setting as your camera's meter would have selected.

You Have to See It to Believe It

The Tinkertown Museum has buildings constructed out of over 50,000 bottles.  It has animated displays featuring thousands of hand-carved figures.  It has scraps and junk that has been reassembled into objects of beauty.  When you think that you have seen everything, you enter another room and are amazed all over again.

Tinkertown is the life work of an eccentric folk artist named Ross Ward.  He began his art career travelling with carnivals and painting at each stop.  He carved as a hobby for most of his life and started to exhibit his creations at each carnival location.  Eventually he created Tinkertown to showcase his work as a roadside attraction near Albuquerque.  When Ross died, his attraction became a museum.  It has been rated as one of the top 10 small museums in the United States.

The photos above and below show portions of Ross's car.  A sign nearby said that he turned his Jeep into a Lincoln by gluing thousands of pennies to the outside of the body.  That is an example of the subtle sense of Ross's humor that lives on in the museum.

 

I used a Canon 5D Mark III and a 24-70mm zoom for these images.  I used HDR and Photomatix Pro for tonemapping.

High Road to Taos

I stopped at a fascinating little gallery in an old house on the "High Road to Taos".  Most of the house was used for display.  One room served as an artist's studio.  I requested permission to photograph it.  The image above shows the room viewed from the entry exactly as the artist left it.  I used  a 3 exposure HDR to control the contrast.  I used a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70mm lens set to 30mm.