In a previous photo of this penguin, he was described as smug in the comment section. I think he looks quite suave in this shot. What adjective would you use to describe him here?
May 302012
May 282012
It’s wake-boarding season again, with the water warming up and wave free days popping up. I decided to bring out my new Canon 7d to give it a test. After all, it was supposed to compliment my 5d mk II by excelling at action shots. I was not disappointed. The 7d’s burst mode sounds like a machine going off in comparison to the 5d mk II. On top of that it’s more complex focusing system, with far more focusing points, make holding focus on a moving target a breeze. To illustrate the action capabilities of the 7d, I decided to upload the best photo of the day, next to a couple falls that were captured brilliantly.
I used one exposure shot in RAW to create this HDR image. As there was so much white in the scene, between the boats’ wakes and the clouds in the background I had to bump up the exposure by one stop to expose Soniko correctly. In post processing I adjusted the RAW photo to provide exposures at -1, +1, and +3. These were then combined in Photomatix and tweaked in Photoshop.
May 272012
My First Time-Lapse!
I know I told you that my first time-lapse would be of an ice cube melting and that you’re all really excited to see that. Unfortunately, I’ve got to disappoint you. Yesterday, I shot a time-lapse of my friends as we cruised through Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda. The intervalometer was set to take a photo every 10 seconds. The end result is a 30 second video. I feel like it needs a sound-track, but can’t think of anything.
Today’s Photo: The Parrot in the Window
As a happy side effect of buying a second camera body, I took out one of my backup memory cards. Happily, I discovered some photos from New York I thought I’d managed to lose. Early in the morning, just before last Christmas I decided to set out and take some photos without anyone else around. The streets were empty as I’d expected. It was also really cold. Colder than I’d expected.
Bergdorf Goodman always has pretty extravagant window displays, so I decided to try to incorporate them in a few photos. I had seen a picture someone took on a train, where half the photo showed what was outside the window, the other half showed what was inside. This made me decide to try taking a similar approach with this shot.
May 262012
I took part in FriFotos on Twitter this week. They set a theme on Monday or Tuesday and on Friday people from all over the place post photos for the theme. This week’s theme was waterfalls so I posted a load of them.I also dug through my archives and found today’s photo of Ouzoud Falls in Morocco.
May 242012
New Toys
Canon 7d
I grew more and more paranoid about having my camera break down on my first day in Iceland. So, I went through with my plans as stated on the My Gear page of this website and bought a Canon 7d. BH Photovideo came in particularly useful for this as I was able to go through their second hand department and save some cash. I have a lot of faith in their second hand department as they certify everything is in working order and even provide you with a new warranty.
I haven’t had time to get out with it yet, but will be adding a comparison of the 5d mk II and the 7d once I get a feel for it. Already, from fiddling around with it at home, it’s pretty clear it will be a good companion for my 5d mk II. I’ll be using the 7d for any action/wildlife photos going forward. It’s got a much higher frame per second rate in burst mode and the crop sensor has the effect of extending the reach on my 70-30mm lens.
Intervalometer
While I was at it, I bought myself a Canon Intervalometer. I’m a big fan of time lapse videos and this will make it easy. It’ll also make my long exposures easier as I won’t have to stand there watching for a 16 minute exposure to finish and close the shutter. In fact, as i write this my camera is producing my first time lapse for me. It’s sat pointed at a pair of ice cubes in a glass, snapping a photo every 45 seconds. Once I figure out how to stitch it together I’ll let you guys see how it came out. (the ice cube idea came from Ian Sheldon, here)
I know you’re all excited by the opportunnity to watch an ice cube melt, but that’s going to be a few days. To hold you over, take a look at these two great timelapse films that payed a part in inspiring my interest: Migration and The Mountain.
Today’s Photo: Creepy Red Light
I took this on my first trip to New York after discovering HDR. The inside-outside nature of the shot is great for HDR along with the details in the bricks. The red light was flashing on and off which I thought could add a pretty cool effect and I set about capturing it. I don’t know who decided to put a red light in this tunnel but it would have been pretty creepy if I’d encountered it at twilight; particularly as it was also buzzing for the moments it was on.
This light was an integral part of my shot. So, typically, as soon as I got set up it decided to turn off. I’m pretty sure it had a loose wire. I gave up and started to pack up. Then, it came back on again so I set up again. Guess what happened next…
Give up?
It turned off again!
By this point I was determined. I thought maybe it was on a motion sensor. I couldn’t see one and walked all over the place to no avail. I decided I’d wait 15 mins and then pack it in. About 5 minutes in it started flashing again and I got the shot.
May 232012
Why Romania?
When I told people I was going to Romania the most common reaction was, “Why, Romania?”
Telling them it was just for a vacation wasn’t typically enough to satisfy the question. So, I’d have to launch into the following story.
As soon as I finished my final exams at university I took off to travel across Europe along with my Belgian housemate Greg. We inter-railed from Amsterdam to Athens over a six week period. It was great. Study time gave me a great opportunity to plan everything out. The route was plotted and off we went. Everything went to plan. Except, that is, for our 2 night stop over in Sighisoara, Romania (the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula).
We were in Budapest, along with my friend from Bermuda, John, and had an important decision to make about our 6am departure. It was midnight in the hostel bar, 5 hours until we’d have to be waking up to get on a 10 hour train ride. We decided that just didn’t make any sense. The hostel bar was open all night and it was really lively. It was full of a big group of Australians a couple Belgians and a few others. We’d be much better off staying up all night and then spending the long train journey asleep. This logic was probably based on the fact we were already a few beers in.
You can probably guess where this is going. After we had successfully defused a heated argument between the Australians and Belgians, John wussed out and went to bed with three hours to go. Then, with an hour left, Greg and I decided it was time to go pack – that was another piece of careful planning. The next memory I have is being woken up by these words from Greg, “Uhhhhh, Johnny, I think we missed the train.”
“Why, what time is it?” I replied.
“10:00”
“So what you’re saying is, we definitely missed the train.”
As a result of this blunder, we didn’t go to Romania. We went to Serbia. As a result, I wanted to see what Romania was about, so I made a much more successful attempt to visit a couple of summers ago.
Now I’ve been there, if anyone asks me why I’m going to Romania in the future, I’ll just answer, “Because it’s awesome.”
Today’s Photo: 7 Ladder Gorge Waterfall, Transylvania, Romania
Today’s photo is one of the reasons that Romania is awesome. The country is beautiful. This is taken in Seven Ladder Gorge. When I was there it was officially closed as the metal ladders and walkways through the gorge had been damaged by the winter floods. Our guide told us this and proceeded right along. The walkways were definitely damaged, some had fallen down. I liked it, it made for more of an adventure. There were a lot of picture opportunities along the way. This is one of my favorites.
Again, this is an old photo I had saved as a JPEG but always felt was a bit flat. I’ve given it a sort of faux HDR treatment using Topaz Adjust, which really is an amazing Photoshop plugin.
May 222012
After drinking copious amounts of wine and petting cheetahs (preferably not in that order) this is your view as you leave Spier Winery. This is where we started our wine tour and from here we went for what may have been the best meal we had in South Africa. It’s called bobotie and it’s delicious. Our guide described it to us in much the way that I’m going to describe it to you and all we could think was that it sounded odd. We decided to go ahead with our guide’s recommendation just the same and were certainly please.
Bobotie is a minced beef dish. The beef is mixed up with raisins and spiced up. It has a bit of a curry flavour. It’s cooked in a small casserole and topped off with a really thin layer of egg. They served it with mango chutney and sliced banana. Like I said, this combination of ingredients sounds odd but it really is delicious.
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May 212012
Update: HDR Tutorial
I’ve been trying to decide on a photo to use as an example in my long awaited HDR tutorial. I’ve actually decided on a few, taken all the screenshots I need while processing it, and then lost the files. The first time, I somehow just forgot to save it. The second time, my computer froze on me just as I was preparing to save the images.
Finally, I got all the images I needed. Today’s photo will be the sample. So, if you’re interested in how I produced this photo, and the general method I use to produce all of my images, I suggest you follow this blog by entering your e-mail to the right, or follow me on twitter or just make sure you check back daily… AND, while you’re at it, tell your friends to check out the site! Tell all of your friends! You can do this by sharing posts you like on Facebook, Twitter etc. and sharing’s made easy via the buttons below the image!
Today’s Photo: Bermuda Ritual
Going down to Horseshoe morning after morning I grew more and more shocked by the level of activity going on. It seems a lot of Bermudians engage in a morning ritual revolving around Horseshoe Bay. There are people walking the length of the beach, people running and even, gasp, people swimming before May 24th. The swimmers turn up randomly and converge at the point where everyone leaves their dry clothes and towels. They all seem to know each other. Then, they swim out and float around together, chatting away. You can hear them from the top of the rock, where today’s photo is taken from! I decided I wanted to capture some of this action within one of my landscapes and when the swimmers formed a neat circle and drifted out to about the middle of the bay I decided that was my opportunity. It really is a nice time to be down there, you’re surrounded by beautiful scenery and friendly people. There’s supposed to be lightning tomorrow morning. I’m tempted to go down just to see if people still turn up.
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May 202012
If you’re interested in finding this “secret” viewpoint, I provide a few clues as to its location in Niagara Skyline. It’s a pretty cool spot to find, even if you’re not looking to photograph the area. It’s definitely a different view compared to what most visitors to the falls get to see. Once up there I decided I had to try to capture the whole scene. So, I framed up four different shots and bracketed each for HDR. I wasn’t positive at the time how I’d go about stitching them together.
It turned out it was pretty involved. I had a total of 28 photographs to work with. These 28 images could have produced 4 HDR photographs to then stitch together. This approach caused me all sorts of problems with ghosting. Another significant problem was setting the sliders in Photomatix so that they’d be optimized for all four images. I kept ending up with dark areas in the final result. So, I changed my tactic.
In order to get this to work, I wound up grouping the exposures for each image together – meaning that i had seven sets of four images ranging from -3 stops to +3 stops. I stitched each of these together to create 7 huge images that I could then run through Photomatix. Unfortunately, this pushed the limits of my computer’s capabilities and I kept encountering error messages due to insufficient memory. I had been trying to use Photomatix’s deghosting tool to clean up people and vehicles that had moved through the frame. Eventually, I decided I’d have to do this in Photoshop after producing the tone mapped image. This reduced workload appeased my computer, and I had an HDR image to work with!
I went into Photoshop and layered the seven original exposures under the tone mapped image and masked away any ghosting I could find. It was pretty time-consuming and I’ve spent ages trying to figure out how to do it, but I’m happy with the results. I’ll be producing more stitched panoramic images going forward. I’ve got an idea for another shot at the top of Horseshoe Bay using this technique. I’ll give it a try once the weather decides to behave itself again.
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May 192012
After taking the photo posted here I made my way back down off the rock. Once I got down on the sand, I noticed the fact that the sky was reflecting in the thin layer of water left by the retreating waves. So, I walked out to where it was about ankle deep when the waves came in and set my tripod up low to maximize the reflections. The water was causing the tripod to sink into the sand. As a result, I didn’t take my usual 7 exposures. Instead I only took 3 because if I had to mess around with the settings the tripod would have shifted between photos.
