Vacation
by James Howe on Dec.16, 2010, under Travel
(Olympus E-3, 150-300mm at 300mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, Exposure 1/640 sec @ f/5.6)
I love winter (as long as it snows) but sometimes you just need to get away for a bit. I’ll be taking a short break from my blogging activities but will return shortly. In the meantime, I figured I would post this shot that I took on a trip a couple of years ago to North Myrtle Beach, SC (where I took this shot.) This image has been sitting around waiting for me to decide to do something with it. I’ve always liked the repetition of the chairs and the warm color but I held back posting it anywhere. I just purchased the PhotoTune suite which includes Focal Point 2. I decided to try it out by slightly altering the field of focus. It’s not a big change, in fact it might be too subtle but I’m just starting to experiment with this tool. I also used PhotoTools to bring out just a bit more color and contrast.
Since I won’t be posting new material for a few days, feel free to peruse some of my older posts that you may not have looked at before.
Comments?
Copyright © 2008-2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Snowstorm
by James Howe on Dec.15, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 34mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/3.8)
Continuing the theme of the last couple of days, this is another shot I took during our recent snowstorm. This barn is located on the other side of the road from where I took the Snowy Trees shot and just up the road from where yesterday’s Headstone picture was taken.
When I was processing the image I wanted to create a brighter image. I used Silver Efex pro to do the initial conversion where I added some additional structure. I used a curves layer to brighten the entire image and finished it off with PhotoTools to add some toning to the barn. This combination helped bring out the snowflakes which are harder to see in the raw image.
(click either image to view in lightbox mode)
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Headstone
by James Howe on Dec.14, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 300mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/125th sec @ f/5.6)
Just down the road from where I took yesterday’s image is a small cemetery. I’ve always felt odd about photographing in a cemetery, but I do find old headstones to be interesting. I suppose it is somewhat cliché to shoot a cemetery in winter, but with a blustery snowstorm going on around me, it just seemed like the right thing to do! The wind was really nasty and cold so I didn’t spend a lot of time here. I tried various angles and focal lengths and ended up liking this one the best.
I just received my copy of OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite so I was anxious to try out a couple of things. The first thing I did was adjust the crop in Lightroom and darken the blacks somewhat. I then took the shot into Photoshop where I used Silver Efex Pro to do a black and white conversion. I upped the structure and then used the opacity slider to bring back just a bit of color to the image. I liked the color of the headstone and I didn’t want to lose it completely. I also used some edge effects to create a stronger vignette and to burn the edges of the image. I finished the image using Focal Point 2 to increase the blurring surrounding the main headstone a little bit.
(click either image to view in lightbox mode)
Thoughts, comments or questions?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Snowy Trees
by James Howe on Dec.12, 2010, under Michigan
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 230mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/250 sec @ f/5.6)
We received our first snowstorm of the season today and it created a nice opportunity for some winter photography. The weather yesterday was slightly warmer and we had some rain before the snow moved in. As a result, the snow stuck to the limbs of the trees. Early in the afternoon the snow was falling steadily but lightly, not much wind. By mid-afternoon an Alberty Clipper moved in and the wind really picked up. I had gone out around lunchtime to get some city shots in the gentle snowfall and I was planning on going out in the country to get some rural shots. When I went out later in the afternoon I debated about going. The wind was blowing down trees and knocking out dead limbs. I decided to take a short trip outside of town to see what I could find. This shot was taken a couple of miles from my house. On one side of the road was a barn (which I took pictures of) and the other side was the field with these trees in the distance. With the snow falling it created a foggy atmosphere and I liked the way the trees looked in the distance. I shot a handful of shots, focusing on the trees. When I got home and looked at the picture, I noticed the windmill off to the right which I thought added a nice element to the shot.
I had a couple of different ideas in mind for processing of this image. At a minimum I wanted to make sure I included the windmill. I decided to crop the image to keep the big tree in the middle and have the smaller tree and the windmill flank the main tree. My next decision was how to process it. The image was mostly black and white and I thought about keeping the color version with just a little bit of brown in the foreground. I thought about keeping the image very hazy, but decided instead to bring out some of the detail of the trees. My main goal was to focus on the shapes created by the trees agains the white background. I used Silver Efex Pro to do the conversion and I bumped up the structure to bring out the pattern in the tree limbs. I used Photo Tools to add a Tobacco tint to the entire image.
(Click either image to see it in lightbox mode)
Comments?
Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Acme Mercantile
by James Howe on Dec.10, 2010, under Ann Arbor
(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 14mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, 5 exposure HDR @ f/9)
I’ve been posting a lot of grungy, dark images the past few days and I decided it was time to do something a little more colorful. I took this shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2009 and its been sitting in my ‘blog possibilities’ collection for a while so I decided to trot it out. The image shows the Acme Mercantile store on Liberty Street. The store has all sorts of interesting items for sale. I took this shot on a walk I took around town focusing primarily on using my ultra-wide angle lens (7-14 Digital Zuiko 2x crop factor). The image was produced as an HDR from 5 exposures, with some additional processing.
Processing started with merging the 5 exposures using Photomatix Pro. I then took the image in to Photoshop where I used Free Transform to adjust the perspective. When doing perspective corrections in Photoshop I like to use the Free Transform tools of Skew and Scale. I set up some guides and correct by eye. After doing the perspective correction I used the BuzSim preset in Topaz Simplify to make the image look more like a painting. I like the effect this preset has on brick, grass and leaves. I didn’t want the entire image to have this effect, however, so I painted on a layer mask to bring reality back to the parts of the building that I wanted to look realistic. You can compare the finished image above, to one of the exposures in the HDR sequence, below.
Remember to click on either image to see it in lightbox mode.
Comments?
Image and text Copyright © 2009-2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved