Hello again

I have been gone way too long.  A 4th kid takes everything i have right now.  Thats not a bad thing just means photography isnt primary right now.  
Here is a picture to tide you over.  

A critical eye

I am starting to wonder if it is my own sense of “not good enough” that has taken my joy of photography away.  My own critical eye sees only the imperfections when i go to share a picture i have taken with someone else.  I am afraid all of the “things i have done wrong” in lighting technique composition and post processing will be immediately  obvious to everone else. 
I have to admit I have trouble sharing my enjoyment of my photos with others.  Maybe it is the uncertainty of what i really like about it. 

Long story short  i am posting a picture i took of my daughter.  I like it for almost all of the reasons i don’t  like it, but i do like.  I really like it and i need to be ok with enjoying it rather than dumping on all the parts that i “should” have changed. 
My biggest critic is myself.  My greatest triumph os to continue to create even where i might have failed.  To discover how many more ways there are to tell a story in photography.

Spring- Can it be

Spring appears to have arrived rather abruptly.  The grass is showing already.  I have hung up my winter coat and we are dealing with the infinite growth of pot holes on our streets. 

I’m loving it.

So to celebrate here is my last winter picture of the year.  After ice skating downtown I shot this picture of our central square at victoria park. 

Check out this awesome photo from 500px: https://500px.com/photo/101240419

A month without my camera

Call it seasonal affective disorder.  Call it depression.  Call it laziness or priorities or apathy or a change of scenery.  Call it what you will but I spent the last month without picking up my camera.  I didn’t post process much either.  Mostly I have avoided photography because for a while I lost sight of the enjoyment of it.  Comparing myself to others and getting frustrated with images not turning out made me competely forget why I take pictures.  So I put my camera down.

After a month I think I can finally say I want to take pictures again.  I remember why I enjoy it and what I love about it.  That doesn’t mean im not discouraged by my past blundera but that I still want to learn, I want to explore and I dont mind making mistakes as long as some of those are pictures I will remember and cherish and be proud of for the rest of my life.  Not every actuation of the shutter will change the world but it will help me to see.  And sometimes I know now I just need to put the camera down and connect with the world around me. 

I wish I had some triumphal image to share with you all or some amazing announcement about becoming a pro photographer but truthfully im just happy to be back.  Meandering my way through this garden of life taking a few pictures to remind me how much I have to be in awe of. 

Thanks for joinig me on this journey.  I promise more photos soon!

October 24 – Explorations of high speed photography

I know I know there is nothing original about milk and high speed photography, but lets be honest our ideas and inspirations usually come from an extension of someone else’s ideas. When I see others peoples work I often find myself thinking “Pssssh , I could do that”. When I saw the photos at http://aurumlight.com/ (slightly NSFW), especially the series with the sword fighters, I realized – no, no I couldn’t. I was, however, very inspired.

My son spends a lot of time walking around the house yelling things like, “Dad look it’s “Pida man” or “Soup – e – man!” (He’s 2. Enough said.) He loves superheroes, and so do I.

I thought I can make a superhero. I’ll just use a lego man and try to get a highspeed photo of him “wearing a cape.” A milk cape that is! Well it turns out the only lego man I actually have in my house is a Vetruvious figure from the lego movie and he’s already a superhero that wears a long white robe, so not much to go with there. Unless I put another robe on him or something.

My son does have a few little tikes figures that he calls his “friends” and since they were readily available I thought I would give them a try.

After all they are little farmers and around here farmers are the closest things we have to superheroes…

After about 7000 failed attempts at getting anything awesome in camera I finally had enough source images to try and accomplish what I wanted through post.

Here are the two source shots I used.

These two shots gave me the two building blocks to make the cape (the milk splash was a good shape and while totally in the wrong spot still entirely usable) and have a nice clear image of the figure.

First things first I correct the expose and tried to tone down the blown highlights.

Then I opened both images in seperate documents in photoshop.

I cut the man from one image and the large milk splash from the other.

I then created 3 new layers on the original image of the man. I had the background layer then the milk splash then the top layer was just the cut out of the farmer.

I then set to work with the layer masks to try and create a nicely defined edge on the cape as well as blend the man and cape to make sure that the right parts of the cape were behind the man and that some of it was in front of the parts of the man that would be covered had he actually been wearing a cape.

Then I used some blend as well as some simple brush strokes to try and perfect the lines.

I then selected all the foreground and any background parts of the image that were just clutter. I filled black over everything and left the stacked layers to create the depth without it looking like I had just cut and paste a picture from a magazine.

Using a brush with soft edges I carefully painted black over every remaining unwanted surface. I then made the edge of the brush more solid and lowered the opacity to create a bit of shadowing along the edge of the cape. Flattened the image and then rotated it and cropped it.

Here is what I got.

You tell me what you think.

Sunrise!

Sometimes as much as I like to sleep in.  The light in the morning is worth it.  Today was no exception.

August 2014 – Uninspired or timid.

I have been sitting on a storyboard for almost a year now.  Having just returned from a refreshing vacation I haf thought inspiration would come a little more freely.  That doesn’t seem to be the case…at least not at the present moment.  I have absolutely no ideas for this months shoot.  Absolutely none except for the one I have had for a year. 

I am a little unwilling to shoot it.  First because I have such a clear idea of what I want it too look like that I am afraid my own expectations will ruin the creative process.  Secondly I lack the lense I really need to pull it off (a 24mm wide angle)  and lastly I have no idea who I can use for a model.

So the real question becomes is this something I am willing to try to do in the next 20 days. 

I think perhaps I am better off waiting for september. 

If you have any ideas for photos you are willing to share.  Please leave a comment.  I am always open to suggestions.  For now you will have yo pacify yourself with this shot from my vacation in yellowstone. 

July 2014 – Vacation!!!

Yeah.  Much needed time off!  That is all.

July 2014 – heartache

I don’t think I’ve ever looked at one of my well thought out pictures and hated it.  Maybe I’ve been frustrated with it being out of focus or annoyed with some element that I should have changed, but I have not outright hated an image I created.

Photography is a craft of heartache.  I say this because it is an art of great hope.  A hope that all of the elements in the frame would come together to capture that magical moment.  That one would be able to actually articulate a thought a feeling an emotion a sense of awe. 

Yesterday I felt a mile high.  I got home from an evening shoot with beautiful light.  Some dramatic clouds and I had made it to my pre scouted location with ample time to set up and shoot.  And shoot I did.  I framed reframed bracketed and panned my way through 7 or 8 dozen shots.  I thought I had it cased.  I thought even as a worst case I would just have to exposure blend and everything would be great.  Even my spot checks on my lcd suggested I had nailed the exposure and composition. 

Today however was a day of heartache.  I could not interpet what was wrong.  Was it motion blur?  Dynamic range?  Color cast?  Something was lackluster and in one image I would love the sky but absolutely hate the foreground or love the framing and hate how the sky turned out.  I spent over an hour trying to exposure stack a panorama.  I never did get it to work. 

Then the regret.  Why didn’t I take more time to set up.  Why did I break the golden run and handshoot something I could have used a tripod for.  Why didn’t I pull out my nd filters and try to get it even closer to right in camera? 

I’d love to say I have learned all these basic photography methods, but clearly I believe I am the exception.  This is a tough lesson to learn.  Don’t get me wrong,  some of my pictures turned out just fine, they just aren’t what I had hoped. 

Your thoughts in the comments are welcome…

So In my commitment to this process outlined is the process below.

First I shot a 5 frame pano at three different shutter speeds. I should have used a tripod and a much greater DOF say F16 or F22, but that ship sailed.

I didn’t realize how noisy the foreground flowers would be and with no real focal point you can see your eye dances around the field quite a bit. I think a tighter crop would probably serve the image well, and getting a touch closer to the barn I could have stitched say 7 images together instead of 5, but I shot from the roof of my car from the road and wasn’t about to go driving through some farmers canola field.

After i stiched the images I tried numerous times to actually process and HDR with the 3 different panoramas and even tried manually exposure stacking them, but since I hand shot three different sets of images I was unable to align the highlights the midtones and the shadow images properly.

So I had a choice. I could publish the abismal images I got (which are not shown here – although I could probably post an example if anyone is so much interested) or I could forge on. I did process a few other images from the shoot which I kind of liked (see below) but that was hardly the point, so I forged on.

With several attempts in photoshop and even one effort in lightroom I managed to take the underexposed images and tone map and caress my way to what you see. I’m still not convinced these images are entirely publishable, but I feel a whole lot better about them than my first 20 attempts.

So what exactly did I do. I compressed the highlights bumped the exposure even further I added some serious gain to the shadows and blacks and finally added some contrast. I tried to reduce the noise a bit and sharpened the images. Overall fairly minor adjustments.

I won’t share any “secret sauce” post processing tips because the truth is, if it’s worth shooting it is worth shooting right in camera.

My best to all of you. Thank you for your kindness your likes and your follows.

-Ed

July 2014 – CRAP a DIME

I don’t know why my wife and I think we are funny, but we have a running joke that centers around the phrase crap-a-dime.  It isn’t even really that funny to us.  Without fail, as soon as someone uses the all to cliche tag line carpe diem (seize the day), one of us chimes in “don’t crap a dime” or “yeah this day is dropping dimes all over the place” or more to the point, simply, “crap a dime!”

I have a point.  Today I failed to make the most of an opportunity that I consider painfully rare.  I’m not sad about spending time with my neice and nephews from out of town, or about taking the time to put my kids to bed or putting the finishing touches on some post processing, but I still should have taken a second to run across the street grabbed my camera and taken some shots in the golden light. 

Town has been covered in smoke all day (maybe from a grass fire idk) and the sun was trying to shine as it set.  The combination created a beautiful soft light with rich colors and a warm highlight that was not too bright.  I couldn’t ask for better catch lights. 

I acted not.

And so this post contains all of the pictures I took using the rarest most beautiful light I have seen to date.  Yup 0  none nada….crap a dime!

Don’t forget.