January in Florida

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Mary Ann and I decided that we needed a break and some quiet time on our own, so we planned a trip to Maggie and Jay's condo in Fort Meyers, Florida.  We invited Mary Ann's cousin Anne and her husband Russ to join us, which they did.  This was my third time down to the condo, and each time is more relaxing.  The Gulf coast is full of nature photography opportunities, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The weather in the winter months can be hit-and-miss in Florida.  The week we picked was spectacular.  70's and 80's and sunny, all week (for those of you who can't speak Fahrenheit, it was around 25 degrees Centigrade all week).

Here are a few shots around the area.

Hanging around Fort Meyers Beach the first weekend we arrived.  Weather was terrific, and everyone was headed to the beach.

Not surprisingly, Fort Meyers Beach is made up of restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops.  But there was an energy about it, especially in nice weather.

 
The beach was made for sunsets, and still very crowded at 6:30 at night.

We learned that another cousin Janet was in Florida with a friend Cory.  We met them for an afternoon of exploring, and a few drinks on the beach on Sanibel Island.

Those of you who know me well, know that I would have been photographing birds non-stop if I could.  Not surprisingly, there are lots of stories about photography on this trip, but I'm saving those for a couple more blog postings.  I did manage to bring some birding gear with me, a really cool 600mm f4 lens I picked up from my friend Ron. A lens like that is a game changer, and takes photography to a whole new level.

You will have to stay tuned for those stories!

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Thanks for reading...

Mark

Christmas in Atlanta

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Happy New Year to all!  Sorry for not posting sooner, January just got away from me.  It has been a busy month, and I'm a few posts behind.  So let's start with Christmas...

The family (Mary Ann and I, Jeff, Chris and my mother-in-law Bea) travelled to stay with Mary Ann's sister in Atlanta for Christmas.  Maggie and Jay have been in Atlanta for many years, and their kids Philip, Mark and Danielle were home from school for the holidays.

Rather than bore everyone with family Christmas photos, I would like to share a trip that Jay and I took on one of the clear days (it rained most of the week).  Jay has become interested in Civil War history, and asked if I'd be interested in taking a road trip to a few Civil War sites in the area.  I was game.

We were headed for two sites - Chickamauga and Chattanooga.  Along the way, we were driving by the Georgia National Cemetery at sunrise.  We drove in for a quick photo of the sunrise.

The Georgia National Cemetery is the resting ground for Georgia military personnel and their spouses.

We were headed for Chattanooga Tennessee, about two hours north of Atlanta.  Chattanooga and nearby Chickamauga, were sites of heavy Civil War fighting, with casualties second only to the Battle of Gettysburg.  In total 120,000 troops fought in these battles, and the number of casualties was 65,000.

Chickamauga was little more than farmland and bush in the 1860's.  Luckily the sites were preserved in much the same was as they were 150 years ago.

The log cabin acted as a hospital.

Chattanooga was just north of Chickamauga, and was a key strategic location in the Civil War.  The Chattanooga River as well as a rail link from Atlanta north provided supplies to the Confederate war effort.  After heavy fighting, the Union troops captured Lookout Mountain, and provided a lear view of the Chattanooga river.

 
Capturing this site was a turning point and allowed the Union troops work their way toward Atalanta.

It was interesting to see the scale of these sites, and to imagine how a Civil War must have torn the country apart.

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Wishing everyone Happy Holidays. Thanks for reading...

Mark

Dress Rehearsals

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Time flies... I have not posted a blog entry in many weeks, sorry about that, I'll try harder in the future.  Unfortunately my day job gets in the way once and a while.

Mary Ann has been involved with fundraising for the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra for most of November and December, so the performing arts weighed heavily on my mind.

My friend Lance invited me to photograph the dress rehearsal for Opera York's production of Lucia di Lammermoor with him.  The biggest challenge to photographing a dress rehearsal is the lighting (or should I say the lack thereof).  And no flash allowed.  I set up two cameras, the D300s on a tripod with a 24-70mm lens for full stage shots, and walking around with the D3 and the 80-200mm lens.  Here are a few of the images.

These images were taken at ISO 3200, with a shutter speed of between 1/80th and 1/160th of a second, with an aperture of between f2.8 and f3.5.  The D3 and Lightroom do a great job dealing with digital noise in high ISO images.  I was happy with the shoot.

I also had a opportunity to photograph the dress rehearsal of Alexander MacKenzie High School's production of Anything Goes!  In addition to the lighting challenges mentioned above, this production had many dancing sequences to deal with.  Here are a few of the images.

The lighting was brighter for this production, so I was able to shoot most at ISO 2000, with a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second, at an aperture of f4.5.

Having the equipment to handle the higher ISO, slower shutter speed and wider aperture is a big help in capturing these images.  Another variable is timing (sometimes luck) in capturing eye contact with the actors (and bonus marks for having a catch light in their eyes).

Stay tuned, there is another fun dress rehearsal coming next...

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Wishing everyone Happy Holidays. Thanks for reading...

Mark

Up in Smoke

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Smoke photography is a technique I have seen in workshops, but not tried at home.  In its simplest form, it is photographing wisps of smoke.  From a practical point of view, it is a much different beast trying to get the smoke to behave the way you would like.  In other words, you have to control as many variables as possible.

When things go according to plan, and you feel a little creative in Photoshop, here is the result:

For the photographers in the crowd, here is the set up:

The camera is set up approximately 8 feet away from the incense, and the incense is approximately 3 feet away from the background.  It is set up this way to enable the flash and reflector to blast the incense with light, but keep any spill light from hitting the camera or background.

The camera was set on manual, manual focus, ISO 200, aperture of f8, and shutter speed of 1/100 sec.  The flash was also set on manual, 1/2 power, and fired with remote triggers. I tethered the MacBook Pro to the camera using Lightroom 5. This was the first time I tethered a laptop to the camera and was very happy with the result, instant feedback on a decent sized screen.

The most difficult part of the setup was controlling the air flow.  I was set up in the garage, so there was a fair amount of air flow.  Air flow from side to side was Ok, as it was within the focus area.  Air flow from front to back would mean that some of the smoke would be out of focus.

It did not take long to understand how the smoke generally behaved, and when to fire the shutter. Here is a typical shot that I thought had potential to work on in Photoshop.

Once in Photoshop, a few quick steps such as a rotation clockwise, colourize the smoke, and clean up the smoke a little, and this is the end result.

Doesn't even look like the same image, does it? Once you get used to the routine, then you can try mirroring the effect, like this:

The image at the top of this blog entry was given the same treatment.  That image was a composite of a single image, mirrored 4 ways.

You can also change the background from black to white (no colour added).  Here is a before and after:

There were several images taken over the course of the shoot that resembled faces.  I caught this one right away, although Mary Ann didn't see it quite the same way.

Depending on how creative you feel, the possibilities are endless.  There are many more images here to play with, I'll save those for a rainy day.

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Thanks for reading...

Mark

Starry Night in Algonquin

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My last blog entry looked at the sunrise and fall colours of Algonquin Park.  As I mentioned in that entry, Ron and I met our friend Glenn Springer for a trip into the park.

Not only did we shoot the sunrise and fall colours, but we spent the night before shooting the stars.  We left Glenn's place in Minden around 12:30 and made it to the park around 2:00 in the morning.  The weather conditions were perfect.  Mild temperatures, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky.

We were searching around the park for a location that had a northern exposure, with something interesting in the foreground.  We decided on the Lake of Two Rivers.  There was a beach on the south side of the lake, so the reflections off the lake and the tree line provided the foreground interest we were looking for.

Here is one of the first shots out of the camera.

I loved the reflection of the Big Dipper in the lake.

Since we were shooting in a northerly direction, we could not understand why there was so much light above the tree line.  That's Algonquin Park to the north. Then it hit us. It was the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.  How cool was that?  Then we noticed something else, directly overhead....

The Milky Way was directly overhead!  Very cool, indeed.  We don't see stars like that in the city.  Between the Northern Lights, the Milky Way, and the dozens of shooting stars, we were like kids in a candy store.

Here is another image of the Northern Lights with the lake and canoes in the foreground.

We set out photographing the stars to attempt an image of star trails.  Essentially, we shot 140 images of the stars in rapid succession, then combined them into a single image, so that the stars appear to circle Polaris, the North Star.  Here is my first attempt.

Each image was taken at a 30 second exposure, f2.8 with ISO 1,600. The 140 images were shot in RAW format, then imported into Lightroom.  After a few minor adjustments, and copying those adjustments to all 140 images, each image was rendered as a high quality jpeg.  StarStaX was used to combine the images into the final image.  StarStaX is a free download for a PC, or an experimental version for the Mac.  The Mac version worked flawlessly.

Pulling an all-nighter was the most fun I've had in a long time!

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Thanks for reading...

Mark

The Colours of Algonquin

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Ron and I played hooky Friday afternoon and drove to Minden to hang with our friend Glenn Springer for the evening and Saturday morning.  Glenn has blogged about the fall colours in Algonquin Park this year being the best he's seen in years.  Check out his blog here.

We arrived mid afternoon, and planned to visit the park Saturday morning to photograph the sunrise, and then the fall colours around the park. (Actually, we drove to the park earlier Saturday morning to photograph the stars, but I'll save that for the next blog entry.)

We scouted out locations, and decided on the south shore of Lake of Two Rivers.  Here is an early shot, before the sunrise.

Because of the mist in the atmosphere, the sunrise cast a beautiful warm glow.

The mist in the marsh made for some interesting photography.

The campsites around the lake were full, once the sun came up the beach began to show signs of campers

Once the sun was high in the sky, it was time to head back to Glenn's, and find some fall colours along the way.

The drive on Arrowhon Road was particularly colourful.

We were also fortunate enough to come across one of the "locals", a nosy red fox.

As I mentioned above, stay tuned for the next blog entry for images of stars and the fun stuff that included.

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Thanks for reading...

Mark

Lightroom vs HDR

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Amazing how time flies, isn't it?

I have been meaning to stay active with these blog entries, but I have been incredibly busy with my day job, and getting the new season of the camera club off the ground.  I have moved up to the Presidency of the Richmond Hill Camera Club this year, and our current season started at the beginning of September.

I wanted to return to the Scotland images to test a theory.  Many of the landscape images I took in Scotland were done as 5 shot brackets, with the intention of using HDR Efex Pro to blend them into a single HDR image.  For those non-photographers, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, meaning the image captures more range of tones, closer to the way your eyes see the scene.

My theory was that an HDR image from a 5 shot bracket would look better than any single image.

Let me set up the scene.  The location was the Quiraing, a geological formation on the Isle of Skye. It was about 5:30 in the morning, still before sunrise, so very little light.  This image was exposed for the landscape, to give you an idea of the beauty of the scene.

This image was exposed for the sky, to give you an idea of the structure of the clouds.

 I also took three additional images at various shutter speeds to fill in the range. [Photo tip - remember to set your camera on manual so that the aperture is fixed and that the only variable is shutter speed.  Changes in the aperture would affect the depth of field and would affect the overall quality of the blended image.]

I used Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro 2 to blend the images, and found a preset that I liked to punch up the contrast and saturation, but not going too far to make the sky look over processed.  Here is the result.

I brought it back into Lightroom for a little tweaking, but otherwise not much additional processing.

I'm very impressed by Lightroom's ability to deal with a single image.  I used the second image above (the one exposed for the sky), to see what I could do with a single image.

The key adjustments made were:

• Shadows + 100 to bring out the detail in the dark parts of the image
• Highlights - 74 to tone down the brightest parts of the sky
• Whites +51, Blacks +37 to use the full range of the histogram
• Contrast +33, Clarity +46, Vibrance +31 to punch it up, and give it that gritty look  

There were graduated filters used in the sky, and local adjustment brushes used to dodge and burn the clouds to punch them up a little as well. Most, if not all of these settings are personal preference, that's just how I like the look of the image.

Here is the final image.

In this particular case, I like the single image better than the HDR processed image.  I like the sky in the single image, I think it looks more natural.

Don't get me wrong, I love HDR Efex Pro 2, and love processing HDR images.  I have had great success processing landscapes, especially old abandoned buildings with lots of textures. Glenn Springer, a friend from RHCC has become a guru of HDR, and has crafted some incredible HDR images using this software.

The point is, that Lightroom is incredibly good at bringing back detail where you thought there was none.  Those bright skies, or dark shadows can be saved.  Having said that, the highlights can't be saved if they are overexposed to the point of being pure white, with no detail.  Similarly, the shadows cannot be saved it they are underexposed to the point of being pure black, with no detail.  One additional point to make - RAW images are more forgiving than JPEG images.

So don't give up on an image, just because it is overexposed or underexposed, there is still lots of detail in that image to recover. Just keep an eye on the histogram to make sure none of the blacks or whites are being clipped.

Try this experiment yourself - YRMV (Your Results May Vary).

If you are reading this blog for the first time, don't forget to review the archives at the right side for earlier entries. And feel free to add a comment, as well as share this blog with your friends. If you have not already done so, please enter your email address in the "Follow my Blog by Email" box on the right hand side. It will be much easier for me to stay in touch with you. If you don't see a signup box on the right side, then click on the blog heading and that should take you to a webpage with better graphics. You should then see the signup box on the right side.  If you have trouble signing up, send me an email at mark.girard@rogers.com.

Thanks for reading...

Mark