Off To Hawaii!

We’re off to Hawaii and I’m I’m taking the opportunity to post an iPhone snapshot of my wife and daughter in the airport waiting for our flight. I’m posting via inflight wifi and typing in the WordPress app with one hand on my iPhone (my wife’s coffee in the other). I honestly don’t know how it’s going to look with respect to photo size, etc. — I’ve never used the app to write any posts before.

Little Eden slept for hours while we waited for our (delayed) flight then woke up as we pulled away from the gate. Nancy fed her as we gained altitude so her ears could pop and she’s been a perfect angel ever since. What a sweetheart!

My friend Jim Nix at http://nomadicpursuits.com has been doing a lot of iphoneography lately and this is a perfect post to call that out and point you to his blog.

Hope this post turns out alright..

25 Years And Counting

Almost 25 years...

Today my wife and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (that is, if I scheduled this post correctly).  I’d say mushy things and all that but (1) neither of us are very public with that stuff and (2) my wife rarely reads my posts anyway  I’ll just say that she’s awesome and I hope to be with her for at least another 25 years.  The picture at the top is the most recent one I can think of where it’s just the two of us (from a hike in Montana this summer).  I’ve posted scans of a couple old favorites below.

Back in 2001…

2001

Way back in 1987 shortly after we were married…

1987

Squished Portrait

Squished Portrait 20mm, f/6.7, 1/20s, ISO 200

Another quick one in this post…still really busy.  The Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago (aka “The Bean”) is just like a fun house mirror with infinite possibilities as far as my children are concerned.  We took a lot of group/self portraits on our last visit to Millennium Park and I’m sure this won’t be the last one I post.  I put this one through all sorts of tweaks in Lightroom in an attempt to highlight the subjects (us) and to bring out the various fingerprints, dirt, streaks, and distortion on the sculpture.  I pulled the image into Photoshop and tweaked some colors here and there (to mute them a bit).  I used Topaz Adjust to do some wild-ish things on a duplicate layer and blended that into most of the image at about 30% opacity.  Finally I used selective (via masks) sharpening and noise reduction to touch it up.

Borrowed Brackets

St. Charles Church, Vienna

Remember Google Buzz? A few years ago a guy named Leo Teles shared some bracketed shots for folks to process into an HDR. I don’t have a link to the original images despite trying an image search on google but I linked to his photoblog above.

On my flight to San Francisco Monday I processed Leo’s brackets just for grins while taking a break from reading The Red Badge of Courage on my little iPhone screen…didn’t spend a ton of time on it.  I did go for the ominous look — dark sky, deep shadows in the little nooks and crannies of the building.

Processing was started in Photomatix, then I did a series of curves adjustments in Photoshop to tweak “this and that”.  Noise reduction was done on the sky and I selectively sharpened many areas.  With more time (maybe on my flight back to Austin later this week???) I would spend time getting the whole sky to a more homogenous blue hue (making the whole sky dark).  I would also balance out the exposure of the building — Photomatix makes the building itself rather “blotchy” for lack of a better word.

Not Touching…Still Not Touching…

Not touching...Still not touching... 50mm, f/3.5, 1/100s, ISO 400

Those of you with siblings probably remember putting your finger right next to one of them and taunting with “not touching” — frustrating both that sibling and parents who got to hear the complaining from the one being almost being touched.  The kids sometimes like to join in my photo fun, especially when they get to goof off in them.  I “sold” the concept for this shot to my son and he liked the idea and was patient enough to sit for a few shots.  My goal was to try out a simple composite like this in preparation for a future photo I have in mind.  If it’s not obvious, the subjects are the same son with a different shirt on.

This was really simple.  Lighting is just the room’s ambient. [Update...I'm thinking I actually used an on-camera flash pointed back at the wall behind me.  That's the only way I'd have that glare on the couch.  I'll check the photo's exif sometime soon.] I put the camera on a tripod and didn’t move it between shots.  Since I planned to composite two images I sat my son on the coffee table rather than the sofa.  The wrinkles and creases made on the sofa in the different seating positions might be too difficult to merge in the composite.  I took a shot with my son on the left side then used that picture (on the camera’s LCD) to help position my son’s finger in the second shot.  In Photoshop I used one layer as the background and masked in my son from the second layer — very simple.  I gave the final image some extra contrast, etc…just played around until I get something I thought was fun.

Capitol Reflection

Texas Capitol Reflection 70mm, f/16, 13s, ISO 200

On a recent evening I dropped my daughters off at the IMAX theater downtown and decided to poke around with the camera while waiting for them.  I had in mind a particular shot of the Capitol (which is only a few blocks away from the IMAX).  The planned shot was one of the Capitol’s reflection on another building.  I had been inspired to get this planned shot after noticing the reflection on our drive home from the Texas Longhorn volleyball matches.  In these drive-by glimpses it seemed like such a cool place for a shot, not so much in person though.  It turned out not to be compelling at all and I never even put the camera up to my eye when I arrived at the spot.

While trekking around I noticed this a puddle in the parking lot above and decided to get some images of the Capitol in the reflection.  While shooting a car approached at one point.  I realized that if I stayed where I was the car would be forced to drive through the puddle, messing up my glassy reflection.  So, I quickly grabbed the tripod and backed away to allow the car to go around the water.  Turns out it was a security guard and I think I aroused his suspicions after grabbing my stuff and running off a bit.  He quizzed me a bit but was satisfied that I was up to no harm and let me continue.

The shot above was a single exposure which was tweaked a bit in Lightroom.  I shot this with several apertures — f/16 in hopes of awesome starbursts from the lights (f/22 was beyond my 30-second manual exposure, I did not have my remote along, and I was not going to hold my shutter button in bulb mode), f/2.8 in case I liked the bokeh of the background.  I decided that I liked the background (parking lot) mostly in focus to make it clear what the scene was about.

The following shot started life as a 7-exposure HDR but I bet I masked in enough from the original exposures to make it more of a composite in the end.

Texas Capitol And Reflection 40mm, f/16, 7 exposures, ISO 200

Hand Made Christmas Ornaments

2009 (painted on the side of the mailbox) 35mm, f/22

Each year my mom sends hand-made Christmas ornaments to family and friends.  They are usually very intricate in both structure and painting.  It’s a bit harder now with our large family size but ours are typically personalized with our first names painted on the ornament.  She does exceptional work on crafts like this.  We always encouraged her to make a business out of her various crafty things but she was never interested.

Before the tree came down this year I decided to grab quick shots of some of the ornaments.  While the crafts stand on their own artistically I’ll throw out a few comments on how I shot them.  First off, I didn’t light them except with the lights on the tree and the ambient (tungsten) light in the room.  I used a tripod and bracketed the shots thinking that I might even do some HDRs given the large difference between the shadows and the lights on the tree.  In the end the only HDR is shown at the top of the post…it’s just OK photographically IMO.  I didn’t spend any time in Photoshop trying to make it better.  I experimented with aperture.  I didn’t get enough DOF with f/2.8 — even when considering only the ornaments and not the tree and lights.  Using f/22 gave interesting starbursts in the lights of course but required either very long shutter speeds at low ISO or a higher ISO which I avoided since I was planning on HDRs.  Of course I could use any shutter speed I wanted but I was simply too lazy to do manual exposures/bracketing above the 30 second maximum sans “bulb” mode.  I didn’t want to do starburst HDRs that badly.  So, I ended up processing individual frames with apertures ranging from f/6.3 to get some bokeh vs. f/22 to get the starburst effect.  Lightroom was used for some simple adjustments — mainly clarity, contrast, sharpening, and vignette.  A variety of combinations are posted here.

For purposes of scale here’s a (blurry) picture of the above ornament with a quarter held next to it.  Other ornaments are shown below.

Don't remember which year...

The Texas ornament is not hand-made...

Main Street Bethlehem

Sewing Girl, Main Street Bethlehem 50mm, f/1.4, 1/180s, ISO 3200

Each year in Burnet, TX, the First Baptist Church opens Main Street Bethlehem to the public.  The church has a permanent town of Bethlehem built near the church and for a pair of weekends it comes alive with shepherds, blacksmiths, bakers, rope makers, candle makers, tax collectors, Roman soldiers…and bazillions of visitors from all over Central Texas.  All these actors take on their full character and as you walk through the town they treat you as if you are actually in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.  They ask you if you want to buy their products, taste their bread, and “Did you hear about the Messiah?!?”.  If you try to get them out of character by talking about some modern thing they do a remarkable job of acting as if they have no idea what you’re talking about and they quiz you back with questions fitting the times.  Our children’s favorite spot in the town is the tax collector’s table.  As the townsfolk come to pay their taxes there’s the occasional person whose taxes are delinquent.  The children like to watch the Roman soldiers haul them off to jail.

Most importantly, there is a manger where Mary and Joseph hold a baby to remind us of the gift of Jesus Christ that God gave us many years ago.

Baby In A Manger, Main Street Bethlehem 50mm, f/2.5, 1/60s, ISO 3200

Shooting in the low light was difficult as the 50mm f/1.4 lens has a terrible time focusing.  With the place being so crowded I really didn’t have time to fiddle around so I tried to quickly find high contrast points to focus on and snapped away in aperture priority mode.  I also used between minus 1/2 to minus 1-1/2 exposure compensation so the camera properly captured the night scenes.

Merry Christmas!!!

“…Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  Phil 2:5(b)-11

Christmas Lights, Circle C Ranch

Christmas Light Portrait 65mm, f/2.8, 1/60s, ISO 1000, flash with blue gel

Circle C Ranch is a development near our house and the neighborhood is known for its great Christmas light displays.  I took three of the kids out last night and drove the streets (along with lots of other cars).  We stopped at two locations to grab a quick portrait.  I brought red, blue, and green gels in hopes of matching the flash to the lights somewhat — I had mixed success but since our purpose was to view the lights I didn’t spend any extra time attempting to perfect the shots.  I dialed down the flash way down in hopes of making the images look more like they were lit by the surrounding Christmas lights.  There’s a tell-tale shadow of course but I’m not trying *hide* the fact that flash was used, just match the lighting (and its brightness) to the environment.

The kid’s favorite house is one they call “the jungle”.  The displays (front and back yards) are walk-through and have all manner of decorations from a nativity scene to Elvis to the Grinch to Winnie the Pooh to…everything you can think of.  For as long as I can remember, the neighbor to the jungle has put up a “Ditto” sign.  Funny.

The Jungle 27mm, f/5, 1/40s, ISO 1000

The next shots were taken in the backyard of “the jungle”.  The nativity scene used bare flash handheld on a sync cord and the other shot used a red gel on the flash to match the lights.  I could have used a different color — the main idea was to prevent the flash from lighting the kids with daylight (bare flash) while they were standing in the middle of the colored lights.  I wish I’d had a red gel which was slightly weaker…

Nativity Portrait 30mm, f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO 1600, bare flash

In The Jungle 30mm, f/2.8, 1/200s, ISO 1600, flash with red gel

Finally, an out of focus shot in the back yard of “the jungle”.

Obligatory Bokeh Shot