Morning Landscape Potpourri + a Sculpture

I've been doing a lot of reading and very little shooting lately. I got up early this morning to try another sunrise. I picked Stanley Park as the location, hoping to get the sunrise over Coal Harbour and Downtown Vancouver. After parking the car and starting along the seawall, I noticed a barge housing a large set of illuminated Olympic Rings (to my delight). This would be my subject.

It wasn't long after picking a location and setting up that 1, 2, and then 3 other photographers showed up. They were sporting some really fancy equipment, and looked like they knew their stuff. Although it's a little discouraging to think that I wasn't being original, I also took this as a sign that I was clever (or lucky) in choosing a good spot at a good time.

I experimented with a bunch of different compositions at pretty much every focal length to see what worked. The photo below, taken at about 6:50AM with a 28mm lens, is my favourite.



I noticed how quickly the light and mood changed. Reviewing my photos, I found as the sky got brighter, it also got grayer, the colourful reflections in the water diminished, and I generally found the cityscape to look less exciting under daylight than when illuminated with its own artificial light.

The following shot was taken looking the other direction (towards North Vancouver), with my 20 year old Nikkor 50mm lens.



After getting home and looking at the photos in more detail, I was amazed just how good this lens is. I had taken similar shots with my 18-55mm and 55-200mm zooms, and none of them comes close to looking as nice as this one does. The details are great, and I think the starbursts on the specular highlights look really cool. I should use this lens more often.

On the way out of the park, I saw some moored container ships. I wanted to fit as many of them in the frame as possible, without making them too small. The following photo, taken with a 66mm lens, is my favourite composition. I adjusted the tone curve to achieve maximum contrast in what was an original with a very small tonal range. I also heavily desaturated the photo (there's still a bit of colour left) to give it a mechanical, industrial feel.



Finally, I stopped in the west end at a public display of sculptor Yue Min Jun's Laughing Figures. I wanted to emphasize the rough, rusty texture of the metal. I used my 50mm and shot at f/1.8 and ISO 400 so that I could use a fast shutter speed. I ended up with many different shots that I quite like. Most of them feature a pure white background from blowing out the overcast sky, but for some reason I really like the out of focus apartment building as a background in the following photo.

Jericho Sunrise

Went to Jericho Beach this morning to photograph the sunrise. It happened pretty fast, and I clicked away at various focal lengths, compositions and settings.

Noticed that my gear is dirty (could be the sensor), and that I sometimes get abnormal looking smears around the blown-out sun. Here's my favourite shot.



Apart from the usual tonal curve adjustments in Photoshop, I cheated a little and made use of the "Smart Sharpen" filter. Although I am generally in favour of trying to get a sharp photo at the time of capture, I should admit that I'm impressed with the result.

I was sharing the pier with a few guys tossing crab pots into the water. I wanted to get an action shot (a pot-toss shot!), and was loafing around nonchalantely waiting for the right moment. During that time I took this photo of smooth gradient of the water's surface. Never did get the pot-toss shot though.



Update (04/10/09): While checking out The Drift, I saw a photo in Vancouver Special by Shea W. Pollard. It's called The Deep End.

I like hers more than mine. The water has a lot more texture, and the photo is just really well executed. The sticker was $700 for what looked like a very nice 36"x36" print. I wouldn't dare say that it's not worth that much, but I can't help but wonder... if I made a nice big print of mine, what it would be worth?

High Key Portraits

I've been doing a bit of reading on studio lighting. In particular, a few things that got me excited were Snapify's series of One Light Portraits, as well as the numerous great articles on http://www.diyphotography.net/ (especially from Nick Wheeler). So, I decided to get my feet wet by attempting a high key portrait.

Unfortunately I don't have a studio, or even a space that could pass for one (e.g. garage, basement). I do have a very small dining room, though. My setup is shown below.



What I've got is a piece of matte finish bristol board, affixed to a Swiffer via sticky tack (bear with me now). It's roughly positioned above and at about 45 degrees to the subject. This serves as a reflector for my key light. I've got my speedlight sitting on the table, aimed at the bristol board. I've also got a white post-it-note stuck to the speedlight to give a little bit of fill. The camera is at the other end of the table, at the same height as the subject. I used a telephoto lens (70-90mm) to get a nice close up and to exclude much of the background. Unfortunately, I think the small space places a limit on the size of object which can be photographed. Here's what the results look like.





Aside from cropping, neither of these photos have been edited.

I ended up playing around quite a bit. Placing the flash at various distances from the reflector, and adjusting the flash zoom to change the contrast of the key light. Using other types of reflectors for the key light (a pizza pan, handheld mirror). After viewing the results up close, I can see that I didn't get the fill light quite right (notice the nose and eyelash shadows on the left side of the face.) As the setup picture shows, the flash is placed more or less directly in front of the subject. Combine this with way too small of a reflector (the post-it-note), and we get a wholly unsuitable fill. I should have moved the table (and flash) off to the left a bit, and used a larger reflector. I could even have widened the flash zoom, aimed the flash more towards the subject, and put a diffuser in front of it (perhaps a white quick-dry athletic shirt, or a couple of dryer sheets).

I'll definitely be doing some more experimentation with this in the future.

Santa Monica at Pre-Dawn

It's been far too long since my last post. Now that the summer is over and I have a bit more time on my hands, hopefully I'll be able to practice more regularly. Unfortunately, nothing special today. Here's a simple but pleasing shot of the pre-dawn sky above Santa Monica, CA, taken from Santa Monica Bay. The little white dot is the planet... Venus I believe.



This was taken at ISO 1600, f/3.5, 1/40s at 18mm. I believe the time was about 5:45.

Kootenay Rafting

I went on a 4 day river rafting trip last week, and one of my objectives was to get some decent photos. I ended up keeping 103 in total. Here's a few that I particularly like.

Given that the trip passed through some pretty nice looking mountains, it would be a shame not to include a landscape shot. Here goes.

I chose this photo because of the trees in the foreground. I think they really stand out. I'm very happy with their sharpness, as well as the variation of tones and hues. I'm not sure how I managed to pull this off. The right lighting (bright sunlight above and to the right) as well as accurate focus were contributing factors. In processing, I mainly upped the saturation and contrast. Too much? You be the judge. I like it for now. Maybe next week I'll take another look and think it's too gaudy.

The next shot is my friend gearing up in his tent in the morning. Technically, I don't have much to say about this photo. I just like how it captures what I would call a camping mood. With the warm sunlight filtering through the tent fly, which frames the scene to give the impression that we're peering into the tent. He's happy, bright eyed and his hair is a mess. Ready for another day outdoors.


Had to give the stacked lens macro thing another try. Here's a flower about to bloom. I really like how the shallow depth of field causes the background to be a single wash of colour (I've also got a shot of a purple flower with green background). I don't really mind how much barrel distortion is going on. This was taken with my 18-55mm zoom set at 55mm, with my 50mm prime reversed on top of it.


Here's the trail of a jet that passed overhead. I think it turned out pretty crisp.

I believe I once heard someone say not to put things in the corners of your photos. The heck with them, I think it works out well here. I really like how the sunlight projects through the image, as if it's a spotlight aimed at the little cloud. Again, some may argue that the colours are overly saturated, and that the sky doesn't look this way when you look at it with your eyes. To them I say: your eye and my camera differ in how they see the sky, and this image is my camera telling your eye what the sky looks like in its opinion.

Lastly, here's a long exposure (6") near dusk of our raft pulled up on a bank of river rock.

The raft itself is a little unsharp. Either because of slight movement of my camera, or because the raft was moving a bit with the water, or both. Given that the rocks on the bank are fairly sharp, I'm guessing it was mostly the latter. I like the colours in this photo. Lots of grays, with a few small splashes of yellow and green. I think it gives the photo a tranquil (as opposed to depressing) feel. I left the saturation as is, and lowered the contrast to go along with this theme.

Macros

I had a friend tell me that I can reverse my 50mm prime lens for macro usage. While searching the web for an adapter that allows this, I found this post by David Chin on stacking lenses for macro use. He didn't use any special adapters, he just held his 50mm (in reverse) up against another lens. So I thought I'd give it a try.

I used my Nikkor 55-200mm zoom, attached to my camera body, with the 50mm reversed and hand held on top of it. I also used an off camera flash to get enough light to permit me to use a fairly short exposure time.

Here's a picture of a Panamanian coin, poorly focused.

To get a sense of scale, the eagle's wingspan is 14mm. I had the zoom set to 66mm here.

This is a moon snail shell. With the zoom at 66mm again.

The hole in the centre of the shell is about 0.5mm wide.

And here's part of a fax I received. The zoom is set at 200mm.

The 'e' is about 1.5mm wide.

Except for the fax, I cropped a bit out of each of these photos. As David Chin's article noted, vignetting is a problem. I noticed this especially with the shorter focal lengths. It wasn't so bad at 200mm. I used f/16 for the coin and shell, and f/25 for the text, in order to maximize depth of field. Unfortunately I can't control the aperture on the 50mm lens. It's set at f/1.8 and is stopped down by the camera right before the shutter opens.

50mm Prime

The 50mm f/1.8 lens I ordered on ebay is in. It's an older one (from the 80's), and although it has a bit of dust, I'm really happy with how it works. It's heavy (made entirely of metal), and the focus and aperature rings turn nicely.

I was in Seattle doing some sailing for the weekend. Here are a few pictures I took with the lens. Not much to say about them. Didn't really make many adjustments. Judging the exposure (given that my camera body has no clue what aperature the lens is set to) isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I usually get it on the second or third guess. Focusing in some circumstances can be tricky, but this is something I imagine will come with practice.

Here's a picture of a lamp shade, one of the first pictures I took with my new lens.



And here's a picture of my mom having a snack on deck between races.



More to come.