timeimmortal

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This is my wife’s handiwork.

These snacks are pretty tasty, and are comprised of boccocini, basil leaves, and cherry tomatos on toothpicks. Simple, yet very enjoyable (and if you pureed the lot, you’d have a heck of a tomato sauce). Grace spent all morning preparing and arranging them on the plate just so…and the results were pretty good; full marks for presentaton too!

And how could I not take a picure of my wife’s hard work?

I think the Reader can guess that I boosted the red and green saturations fairly heavily in this shot, in addition to doing some major highlight reduction (this platter was next to the window through which the sunlight was entering the boat). Given more time, I might have had a go at using Photoshop to delete the surrounding food items, but decided against that for the time being.

Here’s one more shot from Finn Slough, and old boat that I can only assume has not been seaworthy in quite some time. Then again, I don’t know boats, so perhaps the one in this picture is still capable of holding its own on the water.

But I suspect not.

The more I play with Lightroom 2, the more I get addicted to the diffusion effect that comes with setting the Clarity to a negative value. It just looks good on so many images (not on all, to be fair).

Edit-wise, in addition to the above-mentioned Clarity adjustments, I applied the Vivid preset to bring out many of the colours in this image. However, because of some particularly harsh chromatic aberrations, I had to desaturate the magenta and purple hues quite heavily. Other hues — notably the blues and greens — saw their saturation boosted somewhat.

I also had to do quite a lot of highlight reduction on the sky, but this worked out (more or less), and some cloud detail was recovered from what had otherwise been a washed-out area of the image. A bit of sharpening rounded things out, resulting in the image that you see here, O Reader.

There’s a certain…”not entirely real” quality about the scene.

Once again, I’m kind of jumping back and forth in time, although this time only by a matter of hours (if that much). This picture is the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay, taken perhaps thirty minutes before the ferry departed for Vancouver Island.

The reason this image took a bit longer to arrive is that it is an attempt at a high dynamic range (or simply HDR) image. The concept behind HDR is basically to present an image in which both a darker foreground and a brighter background are in detail, with neither of the two being either washed out and overexposed, or dark and underexposed.

In layman’s terms, I suppose you could say that what HDR is is an attempt to make the camera see what the human eye sees when looking at a scene.

The plain fact of the matter is that the dynamic range (the “space” between the darkest value that a camera can record and the brightest value it can record) of most cameras is substantially less than that of the human eye.

So whereas we might look at a scene with our eyes and see a bright Sun in a blue sky behind a tree on which we can see the colour of the branches and the leaves, in a photo of same we will either see the detail on the tree in front of a washed out, bright white sky, or else we will see the Sun in a blue sky behind a dark, essentially black tree.

HDR photography uses one or more of several techniques to get around this limitation. Some forms of HDR attempt to use bracketing to combine several images, each at a different exposure level, into one cohesive picture that looks “right”. Other workarounds include the use of neutral density filters of proper magnitude at appropriate angles. Lacking both good HDR software and a graduated neutral density filter, I opt for a third method: taking a mid-tone picture and using Lightroom’s surprisingly power curves tool to effectively create a pseudo-HDR image.

Edit-wise, I began by doing a lot of highlight reduction on this shot, using both Lightroom’s built-in Recovery tool and the Tone Curve tool as well; almost all the bright highlights were stripped out of the picture. This was enough to restore detail not only to the sky, but to the clouds as well (note the subtle gradiations of grey amidst the white). I also used the Fill Light tool in Lightroom, which brightens darker tones, and then darkened some of the shadows again to restore contrast detail.

Finally, I applied my calibration/Punch preset, some noise reduction (always a good idea after that many level adjustments), and a bit of chromatic aberration correction to round out the edits. I toyed with the Clarity a bit, and thought briefly about doing this shot “diffusion print” style, but instead settled on a Clarity value of 50 (the default for the Punch preset).

This was a shot that I honestly didn’t think would work out; my past experiments with HDR have only occasionally ended successfully. That said, I was pleasantly surprised with how well this picture did turn out, and I’m going to have to remember everything I did that made this one turn out right, because I know I’ll want to do it again.

I tried another shot of the tree in Grace’s grandparents’ back yard on one of the few days during our vacation that we actually got a glimpse of blue skies. The Sun was setting when I took this, and one can discern — through the maze of branches — a fiery orange hue cast upon the upper part of the tree.

Much like the previous shot of this tree that I attempted, this shot was taken with my lens set to its widest possible setting (17 mm), which I prefer to avoid the use of when I can but which, under certain circumstances, can work out for me if I’m careful. Principally, I’m worried about barrel distortion, which on the lens in question can be quite pronounced at its shallowest focal length. Equally, though, the problem of intense chromatic aberration (especially at the borders of the photo) looms large at 17 mm.

And it was the chromatic fringing that I had to adjust for in Lightroom — this eventually required me to reduce the purple and magenta saturations to -100, and even then I don’t think I managed to clean all the offending flared colour out of the picture.

Other edits to this shot included heavier noise reduction, owing to the fact that I was shooting at ISO 800 (which is pretty high on the EOS 350D. I applied the usual calibration/Punch preset as well, to bring out the colour. And I also boosted the green and blue saturations a fair bit. Lastly, the sky required some fairly hefty highlight reduction. In spite of all the tweaking that had to be done, though, the picture itself turned out really well, for which I’m grateful.

Of course, since we were in the vicinity of Coal Harbour, I had to stop and take a picture of some of the boats. Luckily, there were three rather colourful houseboats moored side-by-side in the harbour, which provided an easy subject.

Edit-wise, this picture actually presented me with a bit of a challenge. In particular, the background was a bit overexposed, and highlight reduction wasn’t reducing that as much as I might have liked. Playing with the shadow clipping helped somewhat, but even then left much to be desired. I applied the calibration/Punch preset, some noise reduction (I had the camera set at ISO 400, as it was getting a bit darker outside due to the rain), and some sharpening, all of which helped to improve the image in small ways.

But for the life of me I just couldn’t get the image to where I wanted it to be.

So I began to experiment. First, I tried applying some vignetting — that helped, somewhat, and made the overexposed parts of the border areas of the image more subdued. It also forced the viewer’s attention on to the boats themselves (a good side effect). But the background still flummoxed me.

So I tried shifting the Clarity of the image around a bit, finally ratcheting it all the way down to -100. This once again applied the “diffusion print” effect to the image…and made it just about perfect. The background suddenly looked good for its overexposure, because the details therein were a little less distinct in a hazy, ethereal sort of way.

I’m glad I read about that Clarity tool — it affords one a small toolset of handy tricks.

The cherry blossoms were in bloom in Vancouver while we were there, although I have to wonder whether they are still doing so well in the wake of the snow Vancouver just got. Then, too, that snow apparently cleared up rather quickly.

It was raining when I took this picture, and two drops of water found their way on to the lens (or, rather, the filter in front of the lens) before I could get the shot off. That’s kind of a pity, although I think the picture still works in spite of them. This is an apartment tower in downtown Vancouver, near Coal Harbour, and it provides a nice backdrop indeed for the pink cherry blossoms.

Edit-wise, I actually wound up reducing the purple and magenta saturations to -100, effectively cutting them out of the scene in order to reduce some very harsh chromatic aberration on the parts of the tree that have the sky as a backdrop. The sky required a lot of highlight reduction as well, although to be fair there wasn’t much detail in it that needed to be recovered — sometimes a grey cloud is just a grey cloud.

I applied the usual calibration/Punch preset that I always used, and also boosted the red and aqua saturations — the red, of course, comes out in the cherry blossoms, while the aqua comes out in the apartment (or, more likely, condominium) windows.

Now, if only there were some way to keep rain off of a camera lens when said lens is pointed straight up!

Here’s yet another building in Vancouver — this one being, if memory serves, the Fairmont Waterfront hotel.

Grace wanted me to get a picture of the building with the various flags in the foreground. Honey: here you go!

And really, the shot turned out well; the tower is backlit by the Sun somewhat, but not too harshly; it wasn’t anything a little bit of highlight reduction (and some artificial vignetting) couldn’t cure. Nothing is washed out, and nothing is underexposed. And the colour depth!

Edit-wise, after applying the usual calibration/Punch preset and some sharpening, I adjusted the shadow intensity a bit, and was pleasantly surprised by the results; a lot of the colours shifted into very pleasant, darker and richer hues. Deciding to take things a bit further afield, I switched my calibration settings to a “Vivid” setting that I cribbed from this article at LightroomNews.

That did it; I especially love the colour of the sidewalk (bottom, foreground) and the building windows. This shot really came alive in post.

Update: Can someone please tell me why the heck this picture is so popular? I want to know what I got right!

This is the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel, the hotel attached to Canada Place in that city. After seeing the docks, Grace’s family and I moved on to Vancouver proper, to see a few sights there.

There are a lot of fascinating buildings in Vancouver — it’s easy to see why they use it in a lot of movies and television shows, including Battlestar Galactica. It has a very modern (or even somewhat futuristic) feel to it (and I get the feeling that it, or some of the buildings near to it, may have actually featured in a Battlestar episode here and there).

At any rate, it was eye-catching.

Edit-wise, I had to do a fair number of lighting adjustments to this shot before I got it “just right.” I had to darken the shadows a fair bit, as well as do some highlight reduction, and I even adjusted the saturations and luminances of the blues and greens in the shot. This was mostly to bring out as much detail in the building’s windows as I could.

Outside of that, a touch of noise reduction and the usual calibration/Punch preset rounded things out. This shot also benefitted from Lightroom 2’s on-export sharpening, a feature I have come to regard as a “must have” (to such an extent, in fact, that I’m barely using Lightroom 1 anymore).

This was supposed to be a shot down the driveway at Grace’s grandparents’ house, but when I heard the car approaching I decided to wait a couple more seconds for the shot.

Not strictly the best picture, of course, so I spent some extra time eking as much contrast and detail out of the greenery as possible. Timing the shot so that the car was fully visible (albeit blurred) required shooting with both eyes open; once the left eye (not looking down the viewfinder) saw the car, I squeezed the shutter release…and voila!

Of course, I had to do a fair bit of highlight reduction on the image, especially on the car itself, since the light meter had adjusted the shutter speed for the shrubbery in the foreground (thankfully). But after that, my calibration/Punch preset, and some on-export sharpening in Lightroom, I was left with this image, which I do rather like.

Lightroom 2 is very rapidly earning my praise.

This is another shot taken on my little backyard wander at Grace’s grandparents’ house. It is a little ornament of some kind that I noticed amongst a stand of plants of some kind — a little bear holding a valentine. I wonder how long it has been laying in that patch of greenery?

This is the first picture I’ve produced that was edited with Lightroom 2.0, the beta of which I downloaded earlier today. Overall, I like the changes to the program interface, although I can tell already that learning some of the new tools is going to take me a goodly length of time. That’s okay, though — I love a challenge.

Edit-wise, this picture received what could be called a typical treatment, although I threw in a few changes at the end. I applied my usual calibration/Punch combination preset (Punch increases the vibrance of undersaturated colours in the image, incidentally), then did a bit of noise reduction (this was an ISO 400 shot, and so was a tad grainy) and applied some sharpening. And I finished it off with some highlight reduction to reduce glare on the leaves. That made things look pretty decent overall, but it still needed something to make it stand out a bit more.

To that end, I reduced all the saturations for the various colour channels to ‘-100′ (i.e. the lowest saturation value possible, essentially reducing that colour channel to grayscale), and then began “adding in” colours again. Greens were boosted to ‘+100′, and reds to ‘+40′. Aqua was boosted a bit, and blues were brought back to neutral. Oranges and browns were kept unsaturated, which meant that (most of) the bear and the twigs and branches in the background stayed uncoloured, while the leaves and valentine stood out.

I also took advantage of a new “on export” sharpening feature in the program. While it doesn’t give you the tightest control over the amount and kind of sharpening applied, it does give you a pair of dropdowns that allow you to kind of customize the output: sharpening can be set to ‘low’, ‘medium’, or ‘high’; it can also be optimized for ‘Screen’, ‘Matte Photo’ printing, or ‘Glossy Photo’ printing. For this image, I tried ‘low’ sharpening with ‘Glossy Photo’ optimization.

I’m pretty happy with the results — the image looks exceptionally crisp and clean, more so than any other I remember taking and editing. This is true even near the edges of the photo, which is usually where the 17-85 mm lens is quite soft.

Periodically, I get asked to take pictures of some of the various products that the company produces.

This is what is called an anti-2-block unit, a device for preventing the two ‘blocks’ of a crane assembly from contacting during normal operation. If for whatever reason the blocks were to contact, it could severely damage the crane, and most crane operators want to prevent that from happening. Hence, this little unit.

The slightly lifted plate there is deliberate — this is one of a series of photos showing how to maintain the unit in the field. Behind the lifted plate is the battery compartment.

Anyhow, I had to run around the office all morning trying to find a sufficiently white background on which to take photos; once I had that, Colin took the unit apart, and I took pictures at each stage of it. I really liked how this image turned out, in spite of the high ISO I had to use. It was a fairly simple image to edit, especially since I had been using my 50 mm lens, and only really needed a mild exposure boost and some highlight reduction, in addition to the noise reduction one would expect for a high ISO image.

Cats are, I think, among the most beautiful creatures in all of creation, and are always fascinating subjects for photos. This shot was something of a rarity, as usually I cannot count on my parents’ cat to hold still for the 8 second shutter time that I needed to properly expose this shot. But the cat was more intent on napping peacefully, and so obliged me by holding still.

I so rarely get the chance to take pictures of this cat at ISO 100, and jump at any chance to do so. Here, she had decided to catch an afternoon nap on one of the living room chairs, and I balanced the camera on a stack of magazines and newspapers in order to properly frame the shot.

Edit-wise, I reduced the blue, magenta, and purple saturation in the image (to get rid of colour aberrations), applied a fair bit of sharpening (at ISO 100, you can get away with it), and also did some fairly heavy highlight reduction to try and diminish the harsh overexposure on her one paw. Oh, and I added in the vignetting, just because I think it looks nice in this shot.

When I have a chance to work with a nice sunset, I usually like to try one or two experimental shots, especially since I’ve been messing with the idea of HDR photos. I really should just invest in a graduated neutral density filter (or even a half-and-half), but for the moment I’ve got to content myself with using software — Lightroom and Photoshop — to compose such pictures.

This was one attempt.

I probably could have done more to this shot, but as it was I decided not to push it all that far. All I really did was some heavy highlight reduction and some heavy “fill light” application in Lightroom to keep the background (the sunset and the sky) suitably detailed while at the same time lightening the foreground details. The idea was to make the whole tree visible, and I hit that mark (though only barely).

I had to apply some fairly heavy noise reduction to this picture, since artificial light boosting amplifies the noise in the affected areas. I also applied a pale vignette to the image, to better highlight the tree in the viewer’s eyes.