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Showing posts from June, 2012

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Wings of Freedom

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As a kid I grew up hearing stories of how my dad lived through WWII. And most of the stars of these stories were the planes of WWII; the Spitfires, Mustangs, Hurricanes, and the numerous bombers. I was mesmerized by these stories as only a kid could be, and felt cheated that my childhood wouldn't have the same type of stories. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to view some of these planes in person though a group called Wings of Freedom . They tour around the country with a group of WWII planes, the P-51 Mustang, a B-17 Flying Fortress, and a B-24 Liberator. Today's shot is of the P-51 Mustang, or more accurately the TP-51C Mustang. A trainer (2 seater vs. the normal 1 seater) version of the American fighter plane. Great scale of size
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Day Panorama

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I find I do panoramas in spurts. So here's another panorama. I really like the clouds in this one. Photoshop Elements did a great job with this panorama, leaving me with little to do to hide the seams. It also has a very cool feature called Content Aware Fill. Typically when I do a panorama I end up cropping out the middle part because the stitching together process leaves the photo jagged along the edges. With Photoshop's Content Aware Fill it analyzed the parts of the photo that along the jagged edges then filled in the area to give the full height of the photo. Typically this means working in the corners, and where the photos come together. For the first time ever Photoshop actually did a good job of filling in the blank spaces. Lazy clouds over Trinidad
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Week 25 GPlus Project 52

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Horse drawn carriage = love The theme for this past week was love. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for that. I could have gone around and snapped photos of couples on the street, but I have a personal issue with doing that. Like I'm invading their privacy, while they're in public. I feel like a stalker. So then I was thinking of photographing things I loved, but that to me didn't seem to fit what the theme was. So then I snapped this. Because, really, who rides in a horse drawn carriage unless they're in love. Especially with a heart shaped window? You can view this, and the rest of my Project 52 photos here .
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Panoramic Sunset

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One of my favorite type of photos is the panoramic shot. There are just some scenes that the widest angle lens probably isn't going to get. A fisheye lens might get it, but then there's all the distortion to deal with. But, at least for me, panoramas aren't the easiest to make and I forget just how difficult they can be until I'm 3 hours into processing and I can still see the seams of the individual photos. This is a 3 shot panorama taken on a tripod and with a sizable amount of overlap with distinguishing features to help the software figure out how to align things. Oh, and this shot panorama was also supposed to be an HDR panorama. Meaning a total of 15 exposures. First I tried making the five different panoramas for each exposure value. Problem with that is the software cropped it differently for each exposure making the resulting HDR blurry since they didn't quite line up correctly. This after multiple attempts. Then I processed the individual frames through ...
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Week 24 GPlus Project 52

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The pink lady Week 24, almost at the halfway point. Which, to be honest, is farther than I thought I'd make it. The theme for this week was architecture so I chose a wonderful specimen of Victorian houses. The Pink Lady, as it's nicknamed, has been on these pages before here  given the HDR treatment. This time around it's just a single exposure. I can't imagine the work it takes to keep it looking good.
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Scene on the Pier

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Not exactly sure why I took this shot. I think it's because I liked the boat  and the cages on it. I can't say what this type of boat is used for, and the cages don't look like the crab cages I'm familiar with, but I'm no fisherman. Everything just looks ready to go. This is a 5 shot HDR taken during the Kinetic Grand Championships. In the background with the flags was the starting point for the water part of the race. Pier Scene
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Week 23 GPlus Project 52

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Click to see larger The challenge for this week was a photo taken and posted straight out of the camera (SOOC). A good exercise to do to help rely less on post production to make the photo I wanted. If I knew I was going to use this shot, or a shot from this shoot, I should have had my camera shoot in JPEG or at least JPEG+RAW. As it stands this is a shot that did go to Aperture but only to have Aperture convert it to JPEG. No adjustments, no Topaz Labs plug-ins, just SOOC. It's similar to my last posting, but is a completely different shot. This is one of the last shots of my shooting and if I remember the sun was just about gone. You can view this, and the rest of my Project 52 photos here .
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Software Envy

So last week, for some reason, the internet and photographers were all abuzz about Lightroom 4. And being used to choosing a product that doesn't get updated often, or get's killed off completely (HP TouchPad anyone?) there was a certain amount of new software envy. This envy kept building the more online forums of Aperture users complained about not just there not being a new Aperture version but not a peep about when or if a new version was coming. I know, secrecy from Apple? That's crazy. For me it culminated in a blog posting made by some professional photographer and Aperture trainer Scott Bourne who very publicly and dramatically proclaimed to be about to switch from Aperture to Lightroom 4 "and never turning back". My first thought? "Dude, who cares?" Apparently a lot of people did and it got picked up by a bunch of blogs. I was also lamenting the lack of any new Aperture version, and in a 13 minute window of weakness I downloaded the Lightroom 4...
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Popular posts from this blog

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca...
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