Stumbling across old things July 25, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentIt seems I don’t always have everything as completely organized as I might like. This becomes no more apparent than when I build a new computer and move over to it. I wind up with all these orphaned files and folders, cast away photos included. Sometimes I have no idea why I did it, maybe I didn’t like the photo at the time, maybe I set it aside for something. In either case, it’s always interesting to stumble across old photography and get this sense of nostalgia and wonder at the same time. “Gee, did I take that?” Usually I remember everything I take, somehow, but there are some that I look at years later and have to wonder if I took it, or if someone else did. I suppose if the RAW or full resolution original file pops up somewhere on a hard drive I’ll know, until then I am fairly sure I took it, but I have no idea when.
I’ve stumbled across such a relic today as I look for some old design stuff I did for fun when I was an undergraduate for the research group I was working with at the time. The people I’m working with now have a similar need and it would be fun to tinker with some designs again. Instead of finding what I was hoping to find (a folder full of Illustrator files) I stumble across an old photograph of what I can only assume was a part of a TV at one time. If my rusty memory serves, this was from a pile of garbage under a bridge along the nearby canal.
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pet pictures July 24, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentI don’t usually take pet pictures, but sometimes I just have to. Unfortunately my cat, Ghost, seems to sometimes like to play camera shy, not to mention he sometimes seems to not like the sound of the ultrasonic motors. So many people take pet photos so it’s hard to do anything new as much as it would be nice to not have them look like every other pet cat photo. Not that I really care about that all too much, like any other pet owner sometimes you just can’t resist taking a few shots of your favorite furball.
The fact that he’s white doesn’t help me a whole lot at times.
ND Gradually getting here July 17, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : General , add a commentIn my attempt to get a new ND grad filter (Cokin 4×6″ 3 stop soft edge) I got sent the wrong thing by B&H. They’re doing right and fixing it, it’s just going to wind up taking about a week longer to get the right thing. I’ve got to say, their customer service is much better than the last time I used it six or seven years ago, kudos!
Lightning July 13, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentSome day I’m going to find myself somewhere that has really distinct and photogenic lightning, and I won’t have a camera. It seems that will happen because the converse is almost always the case in the northeast. In NJ you wouldn’t get a well defined front, in upstate NY you have fourteen different weather patterns moving in from all over the place and the same thing happens. I’ve never seen the well defined and fascinating looking clouds and lightning like you see in the midwest for example.
Darn.
Chance with benefit July 8, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 1 comment so farJoe and I went down to a party at a guys house south of Rochester who we worked with or near last summer (Joe still works at the same place, but I’m an advisor’s slave now). There was great home made bbq (pulled pork), all kinds of bizarre and unknown alcoholic drinks and plenty of other goodies as well as most of the company I had worked with last summer. It was a fun time seeing them all again, and the place we were at was a lot of fun too.
The guy owns about 100 acres, and we took golf carts (and Joe’s Forester) out and about on the field and one of the first things Joe and I saw was this crow stuck head first in the ground. We immediately knew it was something we just had to get a picture of for fun (I tend to call shots taken for fun/not “serious” purposes just pictures instead of photographs). We came back later in his Forester after sliding around all over the place and walk through the field to the crow and just start snapping away, laughing at the poor birds unfortunate circumstance.
It turns out that aside from being morbidly funny, at least a few of the pictures were actually kind of interesting visually.
That’s the “best” of them and I don’t figure there’s much reason to post more. They were all more or less like that at varying angles and Joe and I will probably giggle inside like idiot school boys whenever we see them.
You don’t have to take that photo July 5, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 1 comment so farToday Joe and I thought we might go downtown to watch and shoot the fireworks. We were considering shooting them through archways in the old abandoned subway but the rain all day and the hazy skies discouraged us.
In spite of my doubts Joe and I left the car and walked across the Ford St Bridge (we’re in Rochester, NY if I haven’t made that clear) to try shooting from the east side of the river. We set up and started taking some test shots and trying different lenses and orientations before we both eventually gave up. It didn’t help that a guy parked himself in front of Joe so he couldn’t shoot and waved his umbrella in front of my camera and wouldn’t stop when we asked. I think he was enjoying himself.
We left that spot and started heading back towards the car. A lot of people were set up on the bridge and we even considered it but cars riding over the bridge would shake it and blur our photos. The conditions were hazy enough, we didn’t need bouncing cameras.
Ultimately, it came down to what the title says. Sometimes you’re better off just enjoying it in person because you just can’t find a way to get a photograph worth sharing. I think this is a concept that starting photographers, aspiring pros or otherwise, need to understand. You can take the photos but you have to learn to self edit whether you do it before you even shoot, or when you’re done. Sometimes it just isn’t worth taking the photograph, and if you did sometimes it isn’t worth sharing with the world.
Obviously, the above doesn’t really apply if you’re just taking the photograph as a record for yourself, nobody should ever discourage that!
“Photo polish” a.k.a. local contrast enhancement July 3, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentThis is a neat trick where you “abuse” the unsharp mask tool in Photoshop to have a small sharpening effect (in other words contrast enhancement) over a large radius around object edges. The result is a subtle bump in edge contrast and if you don’t overdo it, no visible artifacts in the image. The most common misuse of this is an overapplication resulting in a halo around objects in the image.
The image on the right below is the difference image auto-leveled to show just what you get between the original image and an image with the local contrast enhancement applied. Nothing is happening in the broad uniform areas, like the sky, but the edges are affected.
The image on the left is the enhanced image. No CSI enhancement here, but as soon as someone figures out how to do that I’ll probably have something to say about it.
P.S. - If I catch anyone calling this photo polish I’ll beat you with my monopod (the tripod is carbon fiber, I don’t think it’s good for beating)
Playing with color July 2, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Color Vision, Photography , add a commentI’ve been messing around with color on recent photographs more than usual. Generally I take a pretty tame approach since when I do anything the results can be unpredictable, but it’s been fun to crank things up in varying ways. This weekend Joe and I went shooting on Saturday and Sunday night up near Lake Ontario at two different places. Saturday we missed the sunset for the most part, but still got some lingering color, and on Sunday we found a spot that I think we both want to explore some more near Braddock Bay
Welcome all
Posted by tcbp in : General , add a commentI’ve been wanting to get something going for a while now and this is it. I have no idea how often I’ll be updating this or what I’ll update it with each time. I hope to be able to use this to share things (photographs) with friends and family. One major topic will definitely be photographing with bad color vision, I don’t expect to be able to help other people who are color blind and enjoy photography, but I will share things I’ve learned and techniques I use to work around or with this.
I’m sure there will be more to come later!