dirty caterpillar...

February, week four:
A significantly different photo from last week... I will admit that I was a little desperate for a submission since today is the last day of february. I took this at the construction site next to where I am working tonight. Once completed, this building will house the University of Virginia Department of Radiology research space. I like the depth of field effect on the fence (I also took a companion photo focused on the fence, with the construction equipment out of focus). Until now, I had addressed 8 of the 15 stated goals for my project (several of them more than once, of course), and thought this may be a good way to address "industrial" (although it's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of industrial photography). Hopefully by the end of March I will check off a few more from the list.

Something I did with this photo, which I recently figured out when reading photographer notes on dpchallenge.com (especially the very helpful info by scalvert), was to resize in the middle of processing. I realized that I was spending so much time trying to tweak the contrast and sharpness of a photo, and then just hit "save for web" and submitted. Only after thinking about it did the obvious become even more obvious... I need to spend my time working on the image that is being submitted, not just on the full resolution image! So, after some minor initial sharpening, I resized and did another round of sharpening, and the results really stood out. While I could have improved upon this image some more, the more important thing was the immediate understanding of why many of my images have appeared soft in their final form. For this image, the second sharpening really brought out the detail on the dirt...

I'm getting more comfortable with the channel mixer for black and white conversion, so I will need to start learning more about hue & saturation methods of converting. Then, hopefully within a few weeks, Photoshop CS3 will be out (I'm using a really old version right now, clearly not optimized for my macbook) and will play with its new features. But I want to learn the basics before I try and let a fancy piece of software take all the fun out of the process.

Image details:
Date and location: 2/28/7 at 17:10 EST, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 41mm, handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/100 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2, export as .jpg and load into photoshop 7, channel mixer/monochrome (50, 0, 35, -10), USM (150%, 1.0, 0) -> resize -> USM (100%, 1.0, 0) -> +10 contrast -> border, text, save
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #14 (industrial)

bug eyed...

February, week three:
I'm visiting my brother in Augusta where my parents are coming to celebrate their 40th anniversary. My visit, and that of my other brother, was a surprise to my parents. While waiting for my parents to arrive, I spent some time playing with my niece and nephew. Here my nephew is excited to have his picture taken... he is only 8 months old, but this morning he climbed out of his crib on his own for the first time. Looks like my sister-in-law and brother will have their hands full keeping track of him. I have taken nearly 150 pictures in less than a day here, and will likely take many more as the weekend goes on.

I don't have a lot of experience taking pictures of people, in particular in black and white, so i like how this turned out. I wish I had a faster lens so I wouldn't have to use a flash. The conversion on this was fairly straight forward, and I'm excited about how powerful Aperture is. I have about 12 days left in my trial, and will likely be purchasing the full version at that time.

Image details:
Date and location: 2/17/7 at 19:23 EST, my brother's house, Augusta, GA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 22mm, handheld with IS, flash, ISO 100, f/4.0, 1/60 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2, monochrome mixer (0, 100, 0), sharpen 1.0, brightness 0.25, contrast 0.10, to photoshop, resize to 768 pixels, border + text, save as .jpg
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #2 (portraits), #3 (vertical orientation)

stone wall...

February, week two:
While driving around on some country roads just at about sunset, i noticed that the light was nearly parallel to a stone bridge that led to Monticello. Even while driving I could see the amazing contrast that this offered, and I had to park on the side of the road and quickly get some pictures. Within just a few minutes the sun had shifted enough that there was no longer any light, but in that time I got some great shots that I really like.

I have completed my transition to Aperture for management of my library, and for this image actually chose to do all of the post-processing (other than the initial raw conversion) in photoshop (still on v7). While I like aperture, photoshop offers much more flexibility. In addition to regular sharpening, there is also USM (both sharpening features are more customizable). I liked the ability to sharpen both before and after resizing (which I guess could be done in Aperture, but not as easily). This is something I hadn't thought much about, but it makes sense that the resizing (in this case downsizing to 1024 pixels) will alter the sharpness and other image parameters. I need to start doing fine-tuning at the final output resolution.

This could have turned out a little better, with more intrinsic sharpness and contrast, if I had used a tripod, which I may do on a reshoot. Regardless, I am very happy with this image. There is a balance between creating crisp sharp images as opposed to harsh-appearing oversharpened images. While I think this would look better if more of the sharpness was natural and not created in photoshop, I have no complaints. Every week I suggest that if I went back I could take a better version of the image, and I plan on re-shooting nearly all of these images. I think this is a good demonstration of how post-processing can improve an image, but can only go so far in compensating for limitations in the initial capture. Hopefully I will better anticipate the things i need to do to improve the pictures, and maybe I will soon have images that i can enjoy without thinking about re-shooting.

Image details:
Date and location: 2/4/7 at 16:17 EST, Saunders Bridge at Monticello, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 70mm, handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/125 sec, shot in raw
Processing: cataloged in Aperture v1.5.2, monochrome channel mixer in photoshop (10, 10, 100, 0), USM 200, 1.0, 0, resize to 1024 pixels, USM 100, 1.0, 0, +10 contrast, border + text, save as .jpg
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #12 (abstract)

coke wall...

February, week one:
I was walking downtown this afternoon with some friends and noticed this wall with a faded coca-cola advertisement. This fascinated me for several reasons. First, I love coke (although I switched to diet-coke a few years ago) and coke advertisements. More than anything, though, was that I had never noticed this despite walking past it dozens of times over the last year and a half. The afternoon lighting was on the opposite side of the street, but I like the way this turned out... especially since it was very faded to begin with.

Last week I made a switch to managing my photos in Aperture, which is much more powerful than iphoto. I'm not as familiar with aperture as I was with lightroom, so I wanted to play around with it some. While I had the option of doing the black and white conversion in photoshop, as I have been doing previously, I decided to make the adjustments in aperture. The controls aren't as flexible as photoshop, but I like the way this turned out. I had to use Imagewell, a simple but useful freeware program, to add the border and watermark. Hopefully I will learn how to do more functions directly within Aperture. Together with photoshop CS3 (should be out in a few months), I will hopefully have all the necessary tools to create some great images.

So my last few entries have been architectural in nature, along with a junk/nostalgic theme... I'll look to shake things up next week, as there are a bunch of my goals that I haven't addressed yet. Also, to avoid there being "week 28" entries, or other numbers like that, I've started numbering as "Month, week X." I will attempt to do 5 entries in at least four months, giving me 52 for the year.

Image details:
Date and location: 2/3/7 at 15:51 EST, Downtown Mall, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 17mm, handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/60 sec, shot in raw
Processing: to monochrome in Aperture v1.5.2 (-20, 27, 100), sharpen 0.60, export as jpg and then border+watermark in Imagewell v3.0.1
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #11 (architecture), #15 (nostalgia)

dilapidated...

January, week four:
This image was taken only 13 minutes after my last entry, which was posted 13 days ago. I have been debating about how new an image has to be, and my goal will be to post weekly with a new image, however since the black and white conversion process can be its own creative effort, I may occasionally deviate from this and perform conversions (during this week) on previous images that I have taken which I would like to see in black and white. The last two weeks have been fairly hectic, so I'm excited to be getting back to this!

This house immediately caught my eye when I was driving around. Unfortunately, it was a fairly gray day out, but that was also rather fitting for this house which seemed to be starving for attention. The detail in the full resolution original did a good job showing the chipping paint, especially after I played around with USM sharpening in photoshop. I used similar black and white conversion parameters as I have done recently (primarily blue channel... it's my way to focus on my favorite color in this mostly monochromatic-themed effort). The contrast in the final output is not exactly what I was hoping for, and I may revisit this house in the future to bring out the textures and detail that are calling out to be seen.

Image details:
Date and location: 1/14/7 at 13:34 EST, Waynesboro, Virginia
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 38mm, Handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/125 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw to tiff in lightroom beta v4.1, then to PS7, crop, USM (250%, 1.0, 0), then b+w (channel mixer 10,-10,100,0%), saved at 50% resolution (to preserve most of the detail without it being too big)
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #11 (architecture), #13 (junk)

exposed skeleton...

January, week three:
This image was taken geographically between my two previous entries. Last week's shot was taken in Shenandoah National Park, and the first week was on the blue ridge parkway, just south of the park. This is of an abandoned hotel that overlooks Interstate 64 that is between the blue ridge parkway (which runs south from this point) and Shenandoah NP (which starts north of here). Between these two great examples of the beautiful Virginia outdoors is a set of old abandoned buildings which stick out like a sore thumb.

Since I was worried about the structural integrity, I didn't go inside, so I got these pictures while standing just outside. Since there was a low light situation, I considered grabbing my tripod or increasing the ISO. I was too lazy to grab my tripod (even thought the car was only 20 yards away), and I didn't want to introduce graininess with the high ISO, so I decided to try holding as still as possible and count on the IS. I think it turned out pretty good, but I plan to go back and use a tripod. I'm actually very happy with how this looks given it was hand-held at 1/13 (IS is awesome!).

After doing slight exposure adjustment in Lightroom, I switched over to photoshop for black and white conversion. I stuck with the channel mixer primarily focused on the blue channel data, with slight modifications. The sharpness is even better on the full resolution version, and I can't wait to reshoot this with a tripod. Maybe next time I'll poke my head inside if I have someone to go exploring with me (Chris... that means you! better get your XTi soon!)

Since the sagging support structures in the ceiling can be seen, i chose the name "exposed skeleton." this is another reference to the different type of digital images i look at as a radiologist.

(PS: No dad, this is NOT my new apartment :-)

Image details:
Date and location: 1/14/7 at 13:21 EST, Abandoned hotel in Afton, Virginia
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 28mm, Handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/13 sec, shot in raw
Processing: +0.65 exposure, raw to tiff in lightroom beta v4.1, b+w in PS7 (channel mixer 5,5,100,-10%)
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #11 (architecture), #13 (junk)

black and white in blue...

January, week two:
I went for a hike last weekend along the whiteoak canyon trail in Shenandoah National Park. At the end of the hike (4.6 miles out and back, approximately 1200 foot elevation change) there was an amazing 86 foot high waterfall, the second highest in the park. It was a great day for a hike, and on the way back I took this photo from a footbridge about 200 yards upstream of the main falls.

While I really liked a lot of my images of the falls, I think this one looks better in black and white than one of the entire falls. I feel this way because I like the texture of the rocks, water, and trees that this provides, and these characteristics would have been lost on a distant view of a tall falls.

My camera was on a tripod placed on the middle of a small footbridge crossing over the stream (which as stated is shortly before it makes it's big drop). I used a polarizing filter, mostly because I wanted to extend the exposure to get maximum blurring of the moving water... this was necessary since I was stopped down all the way (f/32) and don't have any neutral density filters.

As for the conversion, processing shots for my first submission (fractured limb) was the first time i played with "channel mixer" in photoshop as a method of black and white conversion. I love the flexibility it offers, but I am still learning. Nearly everything I had been converting started at something like 100% red, 40 to 50% green, -10 to 0% blue, and -25 to 0% constant, and i tweaked it from there. That worked ok, but then I learned a trick to start off by looking at each of the three channels at 100% with the others at 0% to see what that channel's information looked like. I had been frustrated with the 100/40/0/-10 settings and all subtle modifications, so it was eye-opening to do it this other way. It turned out that I liked the way the 100% blue and 0% everything else looked, so I went with it. I could probably tweak it some to improve it, but I wanted to go with it this way because it represents a new step in my digital black and white experience; last week I started using channel mixer, this week I started shaking things up... can't wait to see what comes next! Also, blue is my favorite color, so I liked being able to use just the blue channel. That is where the title of this blog entry comes from, "black and white in blue" (the original title i gave to the photo itself is "Whiteoak cascades")

Image details:
Date and location: 1/6/7 at 14:15 EST, Whiteoak Canyon Trail, Shenandoah NP, Virginia
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, circular polarizing filter
Settings: 56mm, tripod, ISO 100, f/32, 3.2 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw to tiff in lightroom beta v4.1, b+w in PS7 (channel mixer 0,0,100,0%)
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #6 (extended exposure)