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.

Three Sacred Places in the Land of Enchantment

San Geronimo Church

The Tiwa people had lived here for centuries before the Good News of the Gospel arrived.  The Franciscan friars were attracted by the permanent pueblo settlement and decided that it was lacking a church.  They used force to convert the natives and more force to encourage them to build a mission.  In 1680 the pueblo revolted, killed the friars and destroyed the church.

The Spanish were back a decade later and the pueblo was reconverted to Christianity.  The church was rebuilt.  In 1847 the United States Army occupied the area and sent a territorial governor to Taos.  With the Spanish gone, the Native People including some from the pueblo decided to govern themselves.  They assassinated the governor.  The United States Army attacked the pueblo.   The church walls were 4 feet thick.  Hundreds of women and children sought refuge there.  Many of them were killed when the army used artillery to destroy the church.  

The dead were buried in the cemetery next to the church.  The bell tower of the mission was rebuilt as a reminder of what had happed here.  A new church was built nearby and still stands.  The cemetery has been used for centuries.   It doesn't have clearly defined plots, bodies are buried among and on top of other bodies.  The simple wooden markers deteriorate and are removed.  The ground is considered holy ground and visitors are not allowed to enter.

The Sanctuario de Chimayó is known worldwide for its sacred dirt.  The church was built in 1871 following a series of miraculous events.  While the miracles are considerably different in several versions of the story they all agree on a divine presence at this spot. The church has been dubbed the “Lourdes of the United States".

Thousands pilgrims visit the church each year.  Many have reported miraculous healing during or after touching or eating the sacred dirt beneath the church.  Besides the hole containing the sacred soil, the church contains hundreds of crutches, casts, and other items that people discarded when they were cured. 

"The Ranchos de Taos Church," San Francisco de Asis, was completed in 1815 and provides one of the best examples of Franciscan Old World architectural ideals combined with New World building techniques.  It has walls that are four feet thick and enormous buttresses.  It is built of dried mud and needs to be recoated with mud on a regular basis. 

This church attracts artists and photographers as well as the church at Chimayo attracts pilgrims.  The front of the church is impressive, but artists are attracted to the back of the building and the way that light transforms the building.  It is the most photographed and most painted church in America.

Like the others before me, I wanted to show the building as more than a simple pile of mud.  I photographed the sun at the top corner of the building.  Since the range of light exceeded the capablity of my camera, I used a series of exposures to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image of the building.  The bright sun created a series of internal reflections within the lens.  The number of exposures multiplied the effect. A pair of birds dropped in to assist with the composition.  The resulting image combines form and fantasy, and clearly was taken in "the Land of Enchantment".

Signs of Improvement?

I made several refinements to my Bird in Flight technique today.  I used a shorter lens - 135mm, moved back for a larger target area and stopped down more to get more depth of focus. I placed the camera outdoors in the freezing temperatures of late December.  I moved the feeder in an attempt to make the flight path more predictable. 

Increased depth of focus increased the number of sharp images, but the news wasn't entirely good.  The 135mm lens increased the background area.  Stopping the lens down made the background sharper.  As a result, the bokeh on today's images isn't as good as the results from the 400mm lens. The image below is a good example, the backgrould is mottled and distrating. 

I used a remote to fire the camera today.  I was able to trigger the camera remotely.  As a result, I wasn't able to chimp and make adjustments to my camera position and focus as easily.  The flight path is still too short and random for consistent focus.

I awarded this image 6 points

10 Point Bird Photo Scoring Checklist	Point	Comment
Is there adequate detail.  Noise? Focus? Is the body sharp?	1/2	Noise Reduction destroyed some detail
Is the exposure good? Has motion been arrested?  Are the wings sharp	1
Does lighting enhance the image?	1	Backlighted
Is the bird in an interesting pose? Are the wings spread?	1
Did I make good use of the frame? Is the frame free of distractions?	1/2	It's head is too high in the frame
Does color enhance the image?
Does the background contribute to the image?  Color?  Depth?
Is this bird a good subject?  Young and beautiful?  Ugly, ragged and missing feathers?  In mating plumage - sexy?	1
Does the bird look alive and engaged?  Eye sharp? Catchlight?	1/2	Cannot see eyes
Is the bird doing something interesting?  Is it interacting with a mate, offspring, friends, enemies or the environment?	1	Looks active

I awarded this image 6 1/2 points.

 

10 Point Bird Photo Scoring Checklist	Point	Comment
Is there adequate detail.  Noise? Focus? Is the body sharp?	1
Is the exposure good? Has motion been arrested?  Are the wings sharp	1
Does lighting enhance the image?	1	Backlighted
Is the bird in an interesting pose? Are the wings spread?	1
Did I make good use of the frame? Is the frame free of distractions?
Does color enhance the image?
Does the background contribute to the image?  Color?  Depth?		I like the blue
Is this bird a good subject?  Young and beautiful?  Ugly, ragged and missing feathers?  In mating plumage - sexy?	1
Does the bird look alive and engaged?  Eye sharp? Catchlight?	1/2	No catchlight
Is the bird doing something interesting?  Is it interacting with a mate, offspring, friends, enemies or the environment?	1	Looks active

 I definitely need to help the birds maintain a consistent flight path to the feeder.  I also need to fire the camera before the bird enters the target area to compensate for the birds speed and my slow reactions.

In a future session, I plan to put up a branch that is higher than the feeder.   If I can convice the birds to start there flight to the feeder from this perch, I should be able to increase the number of images that are in focus.