5/21/2010

A Little Reflected Sky

This is the Little River, and the sky is well reflected, hence: A Little Reflected Sky.

If you follow my posts here you might recognize the view, from the observation deck on the back side of the trail loop at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. I have many images captured from this deck and of this view…no two alike. The tide here was full and the river brim. There is a bit of ripple on the water from the wind, but not enough to really disturb the reflection. I tried the shot with more or less reflection, and more or less sky. I like this version, but others might prefer the more sky shot below.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80. Landscape program. This is one of those rare shots that did not require any fancy metering or exposure tricks. The Landscape program gave pretty close to the ideal balance between sky and foreground.

In Lightroom, a bit of Recovery to bring out detail in the reflected clouds and deepen the sky. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and just a smidge of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

From Rachel Carsons NWR Seasons.

And, as promised, the more sky view.

4/28/2010

Guana River

I am trying to give you a break from the birds of St. Augustine Alligator Farm. This is an oyster shell beach at Guana River Research Reserve in Palm Coast, south of Jacksonville and north of St. Augustine. The whole beach is protected as a archeological site. The driftwood snag adds foreground interest and there are just enough clouds to populate the sky for depth.

Canon Sx20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.

In Lightoom, slight cropping bottom and top for composition. Recovery for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint slightly right. Sharpen landscape preset.

From St. Augustine FL 2010.

4/9/2010

Mousam Under Sky

We have spent a few days in the Macro world, so lets step back and take the wider view. The Mousam River runs a quarter mile behind our home and I often take a walk that includes a stretch of its bank. The double arch is a railroad bridge. Of course it is the sky that holds most of the interest in this image, and I have cropped it accordingly. And, though I know I say this a lot, this image really does look better at a larger size, available by clicking the image to open it on weiw.lightshedder.com.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.

Recovery for the sky. A touch of Fill Light. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. This is, by the way, a classic example of how I process landscapes, as detailed in the little video at Quick Dramatic Landscapes in Lightroom

From Around Home 2010.

4/1/2010

Birch With a View

By this point in the day, the sun had sunk low enough to warm the light, which was especially effective in bringing out the gold in the winter grasses of the marsh. Add a white birch, catching light and filtering the amazing sky that day, zoom in a bit for framing, and…

Canon SX20IS at 67mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.

Just a bit of Recovery for the sky in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right. Added Clarity and a smidge of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

From Around Home 2010.

3/23/2010

Balson River, Emmons Preserve, Kennebunkport ME

I have attempted to photograph this stream in every season over the past 12 years. It is on a little pocket preserve tucked in between the homes on two back roads…gifted to the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust some years ago, and developed just enough for easy access…once you know it is there. The stream, or river, depending, goes from a trickle at mid summer to a full raging torrent during the storms of spring and fall. Or it can be an icy cascade in winter, with every willow wand along the bank hung with ice bells. I have seen it in every light.

And it is always a bear to photograph. The range of light, from deep shadow to bright sun on the foaming water of the falls, from the incredible dark green of the moss in the shade, to the pure silver light reflected off leaves, is just way beyond any sensor’s ability. I even wrote a whole Point and Shoot Landscape piece on exposing for post-processing based on my trials here: the only way to come close to capturing the range is to expose so that both shadow and highlight detail can be restored in post-processing. Of course, that means that the images, out of camera, can look pretty strange.

So…with a new camera and all, I had to try again…or at least make a beginning in the process of learning how to use this camera to capture an image in Emmon’s Preserve…since no two cameras have the same range of possibility when it comes to that (or anything else).

All the shots taken that day were experiments. I found that with previous cameras you could not use exposure compensation to save the highlights. That left the shadows too dark, and post-processing added to much noise. Still, I know that photographically, exposure compensation is the right solution here, so I was trying what the Canon could do. This exposure was at –1 EV, and, with processing in Lightrroom, it is one of the most successful shots of the Balson that I have ever taken. The highlights and sunny bank areas are just within range (having applied some Recovery in Lightroom), and the shadows opened up well with just enough Fill Light not to produce much noise. Granted, it will get worse when the leaves come out and the shadows deepen…but for now, I am really liking this rendering. The dynamic range is very natural…both shadows and highlights are much as the eye would see them in real time: and that, ultimately, is my goal.

(By the way, I am not an advocate of the silky water school of stream photography. I have another P&S Landscape piece on that. I prefer to let the shutter freeze some of the water motion…since, in real time, I see something closer to the detail of frozen water, than I do to the silky blur. I find the patterns of swirl and bubble infinitely fascinating.)

Canon SX20IS at just under 60mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/200 @ ISO 80. Landscape preset. (Landscape preset, by the way, does better, somehow, for color balance than regular Program does on auto. It handled the open shade here just fine.)

In Lightroom, as mentioned, Recovery for highlights, Fill Light for shadows (but not much). Blackpoint just slightly right. Added Clarity and just a tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

From Around Home 2010.

3/20/2010

The Full Bend in the Little

The Canon SX20IS has “Easy Panorama” Mode, which aids in the creation of panoramas by displaying a thumbnail view of your first image beside the second so you can match them up, etc, etc. It is actually pretty clever. They also provide the PhotoStitch application which does a pretty good job of auto assembling the images into one. The only way to get really good panoramas is to use a panorama head on your tripod, which keeps the sensor plane aligned with the segments of an arc so the images really do overlap perfectly. Or you need a panorama camera, which swings the actual lens. I have never owned either. I am not all that into panoramas since I have never figured out how to display or view them effectively. Still, I could not resist trying out Easy Panorama mode on the new camera.

This is four images covering about 100-120 degrees of view. You really do need to view it on WideEyedInWonder at the largest size your monitor will do (click the image to open the WEIW link). The first shot, on the left, is almost due north and the last shot on the right is south of east, tending toward south-east. I used the corner of the wooden rail around a observation deck over the Little River at Rachel Carson NWR as my tripod, and set the lens to 28mm equivalent. You can see the rail at the lower right. Also, if you view it a larger sizes you will see that stitching of the last two images is not perfect. The wooden rail did not make a perfect panorama head.

What is interesting to me is that, long thin format aside, if you looked at the image without knowing it was a panorama, and were not familiar with the location, you might not guess it was a panorama at all. Rivers do bend like that.

For comparison, here is the unprocessed first and last 28mm shot.

Since Easy Pano mode is a mode in itself, set on the control dial as you would Auto or Program modes, you are reduced to the auto exposure the camera provides, but it did pretty well in this tricky light. The last exposure, as you see above was facing pretty much into the sun. I was particularly pleased at how naturally the variation of light in the sky is rendered.

Once stitched, I imported the image into Lightroom for post-processing. Recovery for the sky, Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and a touch of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.

Individual exposures were at 28mm equivalent, F2.8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80.

I will never be a big panorama shooter. However, given the tools the Canon provides, I may try one from time to time, just not nearly often enough to buy a panorama head!

From Around Home 2010.

3/19/2010

Loons in Light

It is the season when the Loons gather to feed at the mouth of the Mousam River, especially where Back Creek comes in, just behind the dunes at Parson’s Beach. It is also just the turn of season when the light is beginning to look like spring. This is a flood tide (we have had a lot of them due to storms lately). Beyond the dunes the ocean was roaring, but here in Back Creek, all you see is a particularly strong tidal surge troubling the high water… making for interesting reflections. That, and the Loons. For full effect you need to view the image at larger sizes by clicking the image to open at WideEyedInWonder. It should open in the largest size you can view on your monitor, but if not, use the size controls across the top of the screen.

Canon SX20IS at about 125mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.

In Lightroom, some Recovery for the sky. Just a touch of Fill Light for the foreground. Added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped from the bottom for composition.

From Around Home 2010.

3/5/2010

Little River Marsh in Winter Dress

I am hoping this particular view, dressed as it is, is soon a memory I won’t have to revisit for at least 6 months…and of course, this particular combination of storm clouds, snowy landscape, snow frosted trees, and cusp of spring light is unlikely to ever occur again. This is another shot I took too off. The other view is at the bottom and I can’t really decide which I like best. Though they are the same exact vista, the are very different images. To my eye at least.

Canon SX20IS at about 85mm equivalent. F4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto, biased just slightly for the sky.

Some Recovery for the sky, and Fill Light for the foreground. Only a touch of Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and a tiny amount of Vibrance. Exposure increased slightly for the snow.

From Around Home 2010.

And here is the other view.

This one is at 28mm equivalent, F4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto as above. Processing as above. In this one the sky is more the subject than the land.

1/17/2010

Merriland River Massh

Looking out over the Merriland River marsh to the sea from on of my favorite vistas at Rachel Carson NWR. I have lots of shots from here but I have generally called it the Little River Marsh. I just found out that the river in the foreground is the Merriland…it joins the Little near the point of trees jutting out o the left.

This was a very difficult shot to expose. I ended up with just a straight Programmed Auto exposure and some heavy work in Lightroom.

Fill Light for the trees, which otherwise were dark going on black, Recovery for the snow field and sky, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen Landscape preset. Pretty much standard processing. but more of everything, beginning with Fill Light.

Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100.

From Rachel Carson Seasons.

1/12/2010

Winter Mosuam

Roger’s Pond Park in Kennebunk is just a little patch beside the river Mousam where there is a town owned skating pond, but it provides about the only easy, public access to the river in a 20 mile stretch. It is a favorite fishing spot too. This day there was a casting derby going on up at the north end of the park. I take a lot of pictures there. It had just about stopped snowing for the moment (another squall came as I was about to leave). I love the silvery color of the water in winter…and in this shot there is just enough color in the evergreens and the few leaves clinging on from fall to offset the blanket of clinging snow.

Sony DCS H50 at about 100mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

Blackpoint right in Lightroom. Added Fill Light to bring up the color. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Landscapes preset.

From Winter Weather Kennebunk ME.