The Zoom Blur

Here is another technique I tried out while out hunting.  It’s the Zoom Blur.  Basically, zooming in our out during an exposure that’s long enough to let you capture the motion.  I used a tripod for mine, but you can do it free hand or even use your own side to side, up and down, rotate, zoom in, zoom out, or any combination of movements during an exposure to make some cool pictures.  I liked the pictures I had seen of trees with this zoom blur because it makes them look… Aaaaaaah…  That’s a full chorus of angels Ah-ing.  I tried zooming in, zooming out,with the sun behind the tree, beside the tree, etc.  Here are my favorites from this experiment.

The more blurred or closer I got, the more abstract it became.

This last one made me think of a spider web since the bare branches just continued to multiply and weave together during the zoom blur.

Pictures from Thanksgiving

I’m kicking myself for not breaking out my camera during the Thanksgiving festivities.  I still feel silly toting around this huge camera and trying to look like I know what I’m doing with it… especially at family functions where I should be taking snapshots… not minutes to set up a shot.  I’m going to have to keep my pocket camera handy in the future so that I can whip it out and still capture the moments.  I really should have taken some pictures of all the food too.  I think we counted 26 pies at the Alston feast.

Anyways, here are a couple of my other favorites from our Thanksgiving trip.

For these photos, I applied a new preset (Wedding Fantasy) I found for over at lightroomkillertips.com.  This last picture of the saguaro skeleton was a mixture of HDR (high contrast surrealistic filter in photoshop), pulling the sky from of one of the darker exposure, and apply the wedding fantasy preset above in lightroom.

Happy Birthday to Caleb

Caleb turned 10 on Friday.  That’s three children oven 10 years old now.  Man!  We are getting old.  We give our kids a couple of new privileges when they turn 10.  Caleb’s bedtime is now extended to 9 PM and we set up a new email for him yesterday.  He’s definitely growing up.  Only 9 more years and he will be on a mission!  Crazy…

We gave Caleb a new compound bow for his birthday.  He’s already been practicing with his friend and at Cub Scouts.  So, it was not surprise, when he knew what to do with his new bow.  We just need to get him some bails of straw set up out back now so he can practice all he wants.  He are some pictures of him in action.  I know, I wasn’t worried about the shadows.  I just wanted to capture the action of the arrow flying out and the bow string bent.  He’s a good shot.

Astrophotography

Thanksgiving with my wife's family was great.  It always help to remind me of life's priorities.  Today we get our second Thanksgiving with my family.  It's been a great arrangement for us that my family always does Thanksgiving the day after.  Sometimes we change it up and do Mexican food, or Italian.  I'm very thankful for family, friends, and photography.

While hunting with my brothers I did some astrophotography.  Something about all those stars helps to put this world in perspective.  I love it when you can see the milky way rather than having to pick out the  ten lonely stars in the bright city sky.  Ideally, I'd have a moving tripod head that would track the stars, but I'm not there yet.  So, I do what I do... try to keep the exposure short so that the stars don't turn into streaks.  Using a wide angle also means less motion visible since the distances of movement become smaller.  It doesn't take very long at all for the stars to turn into streaks.  Here is a picture of the constellation Orion.  At thirteen seconds and with my 50mm lens it is already starting to streak a bit.  The JPEG compression here doesn't do it justice, but you can see a satellite's orange streak across the picture too towards the top middle.  Or at least you can in the original.

ISO200  50mm  f/1.8  13s

Here are a couple with the sun just getting ready to rise.  I was trying to shorten up the shutter speed, but you can see the noise pour right in as the ISO goes higher and higher.

ISO3200  50mm  f/1.8  2.5s

ISO800  18mm  f/3.5  4s

Now that I'm going through these photos again, I really should have done some experimentation with the exposure to see if the stars could look sharper rather than just like blown out lights.  Which they end up looking like if you follow the camera's meter like I did.  Another experiment for next time I'm in the great outdoors.

High Dynamic Range Photography

I was able to practice more HDR photography on the Elk hunt last week.  HDR photography is an effort to see into all the highlights, shadows, and mid-tones at the same time.  For these photos I took three separate pictures.  One exposed “correctly”, one at +2 EV (plus to f-stops), and one at –2 EV (minus 2 f-stops).  I only changed the shutter speed between the exposure in order to keep the same depth of field (DOF).  Photoshop has a merging feature that takes all 3 photos and tries to interpolate which areas of each photo to keep so that you get a higher dynamic range of details in the highlights, shadows, and mid-tones all merged into one photo.  Then I tried out all sorts of presets and filters to change the look even more.  I really liked the surrealistic look on these landscape images.

This last one has a similar idea of extending the dynamic range, but I did it by overlaid one photo on top of another and erased the areas in the shadows to show the portions the grass and sign on the lower layer.  I had processed this the same way I did for the images above, but I didn’t like the way the sky turned out.  So, I used the sky I liked from one photo and the ground and fence I liked from another.

By the way, we camped right next to the reservation line.  This sign says, “Strictly Closed Area For Non-Members  - No Access - No Hunting.”  In case you tried to read it.  One guy in our group saw a herd of about forty Elk just on the “member side.”  Unfortunately, they never decided to come over to our side of the fence in this area while we were there.

As I’ve studied HDR photography, I’ve heard a lot about tone mapping.  I think I’ll dig into that deeper next time I do some HDR photos.  I’ve also heard a lot of good things about Photomatix software for processing the HDR images.  I’ll have to give that a try too.

Painting With Light

The best experiment I did while out hunting was “Painting with Light.”  Basically, you use a light source such as a flashlight, laser, glow stick, fire, etc. in the dark, you set your camera to a long exposure, and with the shutter open you paint light onto your subject.  That’s the basic idea anyways.  The more light you put on a particular part of the subject, the more lit up it will be in the picture.  In my case, I was using a flashlight on this cool lookin’ tree next to our camp.  I was using 30 second exposures at ISO 100 and f/3.5.  Here is my subject:

I thought a painted tree with a sunset in the back would look cool, but I made the mistake of just sticking to the cameras standard 30 second exposure.  I should have used the bulb exposure mode and cranked down the aperture to let less light in.  The bulb mode allows you to leave the shutter open as long as you want.  Then I could have had 1-2 minutes to paint the tree more thoroughly.  The moon was nearly full that night.  I want to try this again in the complete dark which would allow longer exposure more easily.  Then I wouldn’t have to worry as much about overexposing the other areas of the pictures.
Here are some of my favorites.  I took these ones while standing behind the camera and shining my flashlight at different parts of the tree for different amounts of time.  The first one was taken at f/5.6 before I opened it up to f/3.5.



For these I also moved closer to the tree since the flashlight was pretty weak from too far away.  I also mounted the camera lower to try and get the top of the tree above the horizon line.  Seeing how the light was brighter when closer, I got the idea to run around under the tree and shine my flashlight at a closer range to help make it brighter.  I got my favorite pic when I did that.

Isn’t it cool!  These are all straight out of the camera without any editing.  The squiggly line is my headlamp while I’m running around.  The straight lights in the back are the street lights in Bylas. 
Some other lessons learned are that flashlights have a lot splash.  I found myself using my hand around the tip of the flashlight to try and narrow the beam down and more precisely target the areas I wanted.  I also should have used the Bulb mode for longer exposures and would like to try it all again when there is no moon.  Different colored lights or a mixture of colors and light sizes would be fun to play with too.  Last of all, tell those around you what you are doing.  I could hear the guys at the camp (100 ft away) wondering if I had fallen off my rocker.  It must looked like I was trying to find something in the tree.  Fun! Fun! Fun!

On The Hunt

Nope, I didn’t see a single one.  Elk, that is.  I didn’t have a tag, but went along for the fun with three of my brothers and several friends.  It was a blast!  I could have done without the sore feet and lack of shower and bathroom, but It was a great opportunity to practice photography.  Even though I didn’t see any elk, I did see several deer, a fox, birds, bugs, trees, stars, sunrises, and sunsets.  I had time to practice painting with light, HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, panoramas, and astrophotography.  I have a ton of pictures to post, but I’ll have to break it up into several posts.  Here are some pictures of the main reasons I went.  My brothers, friends, hunting, and wildlife.

I took this one on a tripod with my fancy dancy wireless remote hidden in my pocket.  (Doug, me, Tommy, Ryan)

We spent a lot of our time glassing the hills (looking through binoculars) for any signs of elk.  I like this panorama that I stitched together of Doug and Tom doing just that.  You can click on this one to see it in a larger format with more detail.

Here are some of my other favorite pictures of us “glassing the hills.” (Eric, Miguel, and Tom)

Hunting pictures wouldn’t be complete without the weapons…

and some wildlife…

I’ve still got plenty more to go.  Next post.

Baptism Dress

Briesa is getting baptized this Saturday.  Congratulations Briesa!  What a big step for her.  To add to the occasion, her Mom made her a new dress.  Wendy has made dresses for each of her daughters’ baptisms.  What a great tradition.  I think Wendy did a great job with the dress too.  Wendy asked me if I’d take some pictures to help remember the occasion.  Thanks Wendy!  Here is some of what I came up with.

f/2.8   1/1250   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

f/2.8   1/400   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

f/4.5   1/500   ISO 125
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ @ 37mm

f/4.5   1/500   ISO 200
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ @ 34mm (Cropped)

f/2.8   1/400   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

Thanks again Briesa.  Good luck with your baptism.

Spring Chickens in the Fall

We have some new arrivals at our house?  Christi and I were talking yesterday about how cute baby chicks are.  We both agreed that they are still cute when the grow up too.  Somehow they don’t lose as much of their “smile factor” as they grow up compared to other animals.  We still get a big kick out of it every time we see one of our chickens running across the yard.  Something about the way that chickens and ducks walk and run is just plain amusing, and seeing them out in our yard wandering around is grounding.  Hopefully we can hold on to these ones a bit longer than the last clutch.

f/1.8   1/60   ISO 160
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

f/1.8   1/60   ISO 125
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

f/1.8   1/60   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 50mm f/1.8 II’

Just a quick note on my gear.  As I’ve been editing portraits, I’ve been more up close with the colors and noise in my pictures.  I’m using a Canon 7D and I’ve noticed that noise started to creep in noticeably even at ISO 400.  Get over ISO 800 and it becomes almost unbearable for me when I’m working up close on skin and eyes.  I originally bought the 7D liking the 1.6x multiply (bigger zoom) of the APS-C frame because I’m using it for wildlife photography too.  But since I’m doing more portraiture, I think my next investment will be the full frame sensored Canon 5D Mark III (When it comes out) instead of faster glass.  From what I’ve heard, you get much better color saturation and less noise at higher ISOs than with the smaller sensors.  Lucky for me, I have time since it will take me a while to save up for the new camera anyways.  For now I’ll continue learning to use what I have.

The Niu Family

Saturday I got together with the Niu family to do their family portraits.  What a great family.  We met them first at BYU and have stayed great friends ever since.  What a great family to photograph too.  Debbie does photography and I could tell that her kids were used to posing for pictures.  It was great!  It was kind of a drive by shooting because we ran out of day light and had to zip over to the Potato Barn to get these pictures instead of downtown Gilbert as we originally planned.  Debbie had some great ideas and made it very easy for me.  Here are some of my favorites:

They put Michael in between Chris and Debbie as a joke since he is taller than his Mom now.  Boy our kids are going up fast!

I couldn’t write this without a highlight on their best little poser, Cambria.  What a cutie!  She had everyone laughing and smiling with her lively faces.

Key lesson learned… allow enough time… again.

Thanks Niu Family!

Wrapping up the Cook Family Photos

Whew!  Thanks again to the Cook family for giving me their time and letting me practice on their familiy.  It’s been a week, and I finally just blew through it and finished the edits on the Cook family photos.  We ended up with some good ones.  I’ve already got a Niu family to start working on… :)  Yep, it is the Niu family’s portraits.  Here are some of my favorites of the Cook Family. 

I learned a lot about my own work flow with this shoot.  First of all, I tried to edit and treat way too many pictures.  I really should have paired it all down to a manageable amount first rather than trying to rip through them all.  I ended up with 100+ edits and 5 different colors treatments.  

I wanted to save each picture in several different color treatment, but savings each picture in each color was taking forever.  I finally figured out that in Lightroom I could select 100 pictures and create a virtual copy.  Then it would already have the new 100 copies selected and I could use Auto-Synch to apply a preset to all the 100 new copies just created.  Soooo much easier than trying to do one at a time.   Bada boom, bada bing.  Watch out though when leaving Auto-Synch on and having 100 photos selected.  I learned the hard way not to remove the selection and ended up changing many pictures in ways I didn’t want too.  Thank good ness for Ctrl-Z (undo).  I really need to sit down for Photoshop session with Leah and see her techniques and work flow again now that I’m getting some practice under my belt.

I’ve also been using my collections a bit more to try and organize edits versus originals, color treatments, etc.  I’m not sure if I’ll stick with this flow or go with using flags, stars, and colors to distinguish them.  Time will tell. 

In Photoshop I learned more about cloning.  I learned to save a tone of time in masking off areas using the quick selection tool.  This made it much easier to clone grass right up to them rather than sitting and blending all the edges by hand.  Another big learning on cloning was in using the pattern stamp and alternating the rotation, scale, etc. of what I’m cloning to make it more real and help eliminate repeat patterns. 

One last thought.  I need to learn to get the right amount of smile.  It’s easy to invoke a big grin, but sometimes I loose the eyes when the smile is too big.  I’ve been practicing closing eyes and then having them pop them open before I take the picture.  I still haven’t totally figured it all out, but I’m sure I’ll get there.