dendritic...

April, week two:
There was a thunderstorm that started less than an hour after the "night photography" challenge started on DPChallenge. I went on to my balcony and tried to start taking some shots. It was hard to time it right, and out of a few dozen images only two or three turned out decent. This is my favorite. I learned a lot about timing lightning strikes, and am looking forward to future opportunities. Unfortunately, since I was in my apartment complex, the lights in the parking lot didn't allow the dark background that I needed to do very long exposures and still have decent contrast. The longest exposure I could get in this setting without the background looking too bright was about 2 seconds... so, most images had no lightning. Here's one that showed some of the nice dendritic branching that I was hoping to capture. I wish there were more lightning storms around here.

For the processing, after a simple b+w conversion I adjusted the levels to darken the sky a little. Resizing, sharpening, and then I went with the asymmetric (top/bottom) border again... this time to compensate for the wide crop ratio that I was forced to use.

Image details:
Date and location: 4/4/7 at 01:01 EDT, my balcony, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 17mm, tripod, ISO 100, f/4.0, 2.0 sec, shot in raw
Processing: cataloged in Aperture v1.5.2 -> export as tif to PS7 -> monochrome mixer (0, 100, 0, 0), -> crop -> levels (0-222) -> resize -> USM (300%, 0.5, 0) -> border + text ->save as .jpg
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #6 (extended exposure), #7 (night photography), #10 (landscapes)

streak of light...

April, week one:
There's a great little crêperie in downtown Charlottesville, in a tiny little brick building. You just walk up to the little window, get your food, and eat it on the patio out front. Unfortunately they are closed on Monday's so I couldn't get a crêpe but i was able to get some cool pictures. Making use of my handy-dandy tripod, I was able to get some extended-exposure shots with cars driving by leaving streaks of their lights. A trick I learned is that you often get a better effect if you can time it so that you only have cars driving away from you... the red tail-lights don't over-expose as easily as headlights do, and you get the added advantage of their headlights illuminating some of the subject. That worked well here. This image addresses a large number of my goals for this project... more than any other single image to date (although admittedly "action" is questionable).

The black and white conversion process wasn't very complicated, although because of the detail I wanted in the bricks I did a little bit more sharpening after resizing than I normally do (USM with 200% instead of 150%, still at 0.5 pixels). Also, since the image was slightly under-exposed, the total percentage for the various channels in channel mixer added up to 110%, followed by a slight boost to brightness and contrast. Doing this in post-processing, as opposed to getting full exposure with the original image, kept the street-lamps from being too blown-out. Lastly, I toyed around with an asymmetric border... I hadn't ever tried this before, but I really like the way it turned out. I need to experiment with this more to try and maximize the impact the borders can have.

Image details:
Date and location: 4/2/7 at 20:47 EDT, downtown, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 28mm, tripod, ISO 100, f/4.5, 5.0 sec, (pattern metering ; - 1.0 EV) shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2, export as .jpg -> photoshop -> USM (200%, 0.5, 0) -> monochrome channel mixer (50, 50, 10, 0) -> crop -> resize -> USM (200%, 0.5, 0) -> brightness +10 & contrast +20 -> border + text -> save for web
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #6 (extended exposure), #7 (night photography), #9 (action), #11 (architecture), #16 (street photography)

luna...

March, week four:
I was able to borrow a telescope from my friend James, and after a bit of fiddling got my camera hooked up. It was a clear night out and there was a great view of the moon. I had first tried this setup two days previously with some decent preliminary results, although I think the images were slightly overexposed (at 1/50 sec!). I think it was Ansel Adams who reminded people that the moon is a sun-lit subject, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when it came out better with 1/125 exposure. Seems strange to be using such fast shutter speeds in the middle of the night, but it's hard to argue with the results.

My biggest problem was probably focus, since I'm not used to manual focus, and I was pretty much laying on my back looking at an angle, propping myself up with one hand and adjusting the focus with the other. This was complicated by having to chase the moon, which at this stage (waxing gibbous at approximately 90% full) could barely fit in the field of view. That meant that if everything was aligned perfectly, I would have about 5 seconds of the moon passing through where I could image it in its entirety. What I did was move the telescope to where the moon was half-in the image and then focus. Once it was about to be in the image completely, I took several shots until it had passed through. Then I checked the exposure and focus on the camera's LCD, and started over. Each time I think the focus got slightly better. After two or three of these passes, I loaded the images onto my computer to evaluate more carefully, and then try a couple more sets. An experience like this this helped me realize the real benefits of tethered shooting, not to mention the live-view feature that is available on the Canon 1D-Mark III and the EOS 20Da.

Overall, I'm very excited by the results (although admittedly the black-and-white conversion process wasn't very complicated for this image). After playing around with lunar shots some more, I'm gonna try some planetary imaging, followed by (hopefully) some stars and neublae (however those may be better in color :-)

Image details:
Date and location: 3/30/7 at 01:41 EDT, my balcony, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, Celestron NexStar 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (f/10.0, approx 1500mm), Celestron T-adapter, T-Mount for Canon EOS
Settings: manual focus, telescope on tripod, shutter release, ISO 100, 1/125 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2 -> export as .jpg -> USM (200%, 3.0, 0) -> resize -> USM (200%, 0.5, 0) -> channel mixer monochrome (0, 0, 100%, 0) -> crop -> text -> save for web 100%
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #7 (night photography), #8 (astrophotography)

tracks...

March, week three:
I was wandering around and came across this old railroad bridge. I hadn't realized it was so easy to walk to... i just had to park on the side of the railroad tracks and wander over here. I had tried a couple wide angle shots from a very low perspective (on the tracks), but the autofocus captured the railroad ties and not the far distance like I had wanted. It was an oversight on my part, and will require a reshoot because otherwise it would have been a cool picture. When I go back I'm also interested in getting some shots on the bridge. Maybe I'll be able to time it so that a train is coming.

The conversion wasn't anything special, however I did clone a spot of sensor dust using photoshop. While this is minimal post-processing, I normally do not do any adjustments that are not applied to the entire image.

Image details:
Date and location: 3/11/7 at 12:49 EST, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 17mm, handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/10.0, 1/200 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2, export as jpg to ps -> clone spot of sensor dust -> USM (150, 0.5, 0) -> monochrome mixer (100, 0, 0, 0) -> contrast +20 -> resize -> USM (100, 0.5, 0) 0> border + text -> save as .jpg
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #11 (architecture), #15 (nostalgia)

gliding...

March, week two:
Another image from my trip to Seattle... Here is a picture of one of the birds that was flying right next to us as we rode the ferry from Bainbridge Island back to Seattle. The original image was slightly washed out, so I had to downplay the blue channel during black-and-white conversion to regain some contrast between the sky and the clouds. Otherwise, I didn't use any new technique for the monochrome conversion. I'm happy with the detail, which was aided by the bird flying so close to us. It was gliding so peacefully...

Image details:
Date and location: 3/5/7 at 16:03 PST, Bainbridge Island Ferry, Puget Sound, WA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 85mm, handheld with IS, ISO 100, f/10.0, 1/320 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2 -> export as jpg to PS7 -> USM (150, 0.5, 0) -> crop -> resize -> USM (100, 0.5, 0) -> channel mixer monochrome (100, 100, -100, 0) -> watermark/border -> save for web
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #9 (action), #17 (wildlife)

produce stand...

March, week 1:
I went to seattle and had the chance to wander around Pike's market. Fortunately it was a sunny day, and the outdoor produce stands had a stunningly brilliant color that I did not expect out of the normally rather grey city. The color version of this image turned out fairly well (even though I forgot to switch the ISO, which I kept at the 400 I was using inside... I prefer 100 when possible). The color image was fairly easy to produce (no pun intended), given the colorful subject matter and excellent lighting.

The difficulty here was in the greyscale conversion with the channel mixer. If you look at images with just the red, green, and blue channels, you get very different looking images. In particular, all of the fruits and veggies looked black on the blue channel. While it was easy playing around with the channel to make an image that was visually appealing, I thought it was also important to have the different produce items somewhat recognizable. While a high contrast black lemon may look cool, it wouldn't really look like a lemon. After adjusting in multiple ways, I determined that for this subject matter the green channel seemed to contain detail, red channel brightness, and blue channel contrast/darkness. I ended up choosing a green-dominant balance (50%), with some red to maintain brightness (25%), and just enough of the blue channel to give it a contrasty black-and-white feel.

Overall the trip to Seattle was great, and i will likely be posting some more pics from my explorations. For this image I added another category of my photo-a-week goals, street photography, which this seems to fit very well. I also posted the color version of this image, which I may start doing more regularly.

Image details:
Date and location: 3/1/7 at 14:56 PST, Pike's market, Seattle, WA
Equipment: Canon 30D, 17-85mm IS lens, Hoya SMC UV filter
Settings: 41mm, handheld with IS, ISO 400, f/14, 1/400 sec, shot in raw
Processing: cataloged in Aperture v1.5.2, export as 16 bit tiff, to photoshop, USM (150, 1.0, 0) -> monochrome (channel mixer 25, 50, 15) -> resize -> USM (100, 1.0, 0) -> border -> save for web
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #16 (street photography)
color version

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)