From the Archives: My first panorama

So while adventuring in South America, you may have noticed I have set my blog to auto pilot. I'm too busy having fun on the other side of the world to report on photography experiments in the Pilbara.

A few months ago I went through all my photos and found some of my old photos that when I look back, were my initial inspiration. I came across this photo taken at Port Arthur in Tasmania on a school trip (this one time, at band camp...to clarify I have never to this day seen that movie nor do I want to!). I was using the first digital camera to grace our family - a Ricoh...something. I can't remember but it was blue! It was blue, and I was 16 and freezing.

This is a regular reminiscence. The first time I went over the 2006 band camp photos I was surprised to discover this photo had a partner. I was using a program called ArcSoft at the time to experiment with panoramas taken on my first Kodak - so I experimented to see if they fit.

Firework Friday

So I was lucky enough to have a second shot (pardon the pun) at tackling some fireworks. I think this celebration in Dampier was for Guy Fawkes day, but I could be wrong. Regardless it was pretty special to be sitting under the palm trees at the beach, watching fireworks. Again, I went prepared with my remote, camping chair and tripod, ready to enjoy the show.

I had some success. Next time I am going to try and extend myself - there are two things I want to try: 1) having something in the foreground. Now I feel I have mastered capturing the explosion, I want to try and add scenery. 2) I want to try and achieve other patterns than just explosions from the center - maybe dots or sparkles. Next time, anyway.

Below are...quite a few. I figured everyone would just be happy it's Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! May you all feel like letting off fireworks this evening!

I  like the sparkles in this one.

In this one I like the little, sparkler-type ones at the bottom

The green colour, and the red on the end of the lower explosion make this one interesting

Love the stars and sparkles! They look like sparklers standing on the beach!

Happy!

This almost looks like a love heart

Post process - Just as important as taking the photos

You may ask, if you take a good photo, what use is it if it is not printed correctly? In days gone past my understanding is that if you were serious enough to develop your own negatives in a dark room, the printing process was just as much as important as taking the photo.

Sadly, I have never been in a darkroom, nor developed a 35mm negative. The closest I have come is dabbling in editing RAW files which are essential digital negatives. So where does the printing come in? Well, in the digital age, this is surprisingly difficult.

Firstly, there are the kiosks in shops like Kmart, Harvey Norman and so on where you plug in your media, go through the touch screen process and Bob's your uncle, there you are with some prints. Now, there is nothing wrong with this process, except in my experience it can be a bit hit and miss. The colours need to be well calibrated on the touch screen for a start but the main thing I've found you need to be careful with are the sizes - numerous times a good photo is ruined by poor cropping - I've had a problem with printers like this cutting off heads.

Secondly, you can print at home. This involves self-calibration of your printer and computer and expensive ink but it does give you a great deal of control over the product.

Printing is important. A few tips include: making sure the file is saved at 300dpi, the screen and printer are calibrated correctly and you have high quality photo paper.

This is a photo I took on my smartphone of some of the firework photos I took in August. I like it. Three landscape oriented ones I printed at home before my printer got sick and the other two I printed at Kmart. It's not a great quality photo because I needed the flash to bring out the colours.

PS still in South America having a great time - I hope!

Landscape at 140mm

Growing up in South East Queensland I never realised how precious that paradise was. I never realised what a rare commodity the rainforest was, nor how much mountains (even small ones) can affect the weather, or valued being able to walk  barefoot on green grass.

On recent visit to Bribie Island, just north of Brisbane, we spent some time on the beach of the passage between the island and the mainland. It was a beautiful day, clear as a bell. You could see the Glass House Mountains in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland across the passage in a blue haze. So very blue.

Of course, they were quite a way a ways, therefore the trusty 18-200mm was zoomed in to a 140mm focal length. Not your typical landscape focal length, but I was pretty pleased with the results. I have cropped this image to be a panoramic size, and tweaked the colours slightly in Photoshop and added a post-crop vignette.

Glass House Mountains. Canon EOS 50D f/5.6 1/2000 shutter, ISO 160, +2 step exposure bias, 140mm. 

Of course, it has dawned on me that as I write this, I am sitting in my lounge at 9:20pm watching British comedy. I can multi-task. (I said the same thing about my homework in high school). But as you are reading this I will be in some real mountains. Big mountains. Called the Andes - hiking up to Maccu Pichu in Peru to be exact. Hopefully safe. Hopefully this is a self-fulling prophesy - we are having an amazing time and sometime in 2014 you will be seeing some South America pictures on this blog! God willing my camera and memory cards are not stolen. And I am not killed in a terrifying plane crash. OK, it's 9:30 and the paranoia is creeping in so I had better sign off. Hope you like the Glass House Mountains and I look forward to sharing the Andes with you in good time.

Ozzie Snappy Gums

One of the most interesting features of the arid landscape in much of Australia are the white gums, or snappy gums. Not sure to this day why they are called snappy gums, but they create an amazing contrast in the landscape. I remember taking a photo of the Devil's Marbles in the Northern Territory and thinking that they looked like a permanent form of lightning striking the landscape.

That photo was not blog worthy, in case you were wondering.

There are a lot of them up here though, and they present a rather artistic challenge: how do you take a photo of a twisted tree? Composition is probably one of my weaker points as a photographer (which is kind of an issue) and particularly with trees. I always think they just look so cool, and then I get home to go through my photos and feel let down. Here is just one example.

Betsy, f/7.1, 1/640, 18mm, ISO 500. 

The other cool thing about them is they are home to cute creatures like this little guy.

Betsy, f/7.1, 1/400, ISO 500, 200mm, cropped, Edited in Adobe RAW

The Pilbara: Tough on Cars

We recently made a purchase of a new car. Some people may perceive this as hasty, materialistic, take your pick. But the truth is, the Pilbara is tough on cars.

Rule one: don't leave your car unattended in the bush. Otherwise this happens.

Pilbara: Tough on cars - Canon EOS 50D f/10, 1.250 shutter, ISO 100, 18mm. Reduction of saturation in Photoshop, also contrast and brightness adjustment.

Lucky for me, old beaten up cars in the bush make great subjects - they don't move! Plus, they have distinctive character. The bush will rule over mankind trying to tame it!

Lesson #11: Polarizing lens filter

It's been quite a while since I've done a post about something technical. Last week I told you about that Pilbara Gem Conzinc Bay and began to tell you about my adventures with the Polarizing filter I have. It really does warrant a post to it's own because let's face it, that sucker is difficult!

I have a circular polarizing filter. Now, I am not savvy with angles with the sun or any of that technical stuff, I point and shoot what looks good. Lesson 11 is that you really should pay more attention to the technical stuff because polarizers, while brilliant, can really mess with your colours if you don't use them right. They are magnificent on the water and taking the glare out, but in the sky - especially when taking a panorama (this I don't actually recommend)  - it can be temperamental, it can make other colours dark and even unreal at times.

While on my photographic adventure in Conzinc Bay I was pretty snap happy taking panoramas. The trouble was I was on the rocks,  with a beautiful scene on each side and the sun heading pretty much well overhead. I had to keep rotating the filter so that the colours were OK. Trouble was a lot of time when the glare was completely gone from the water, the surrounds were darker, meaning I had to do a fair bit of lightening in post production. And stitching a panorama with a polarizer?  Forget it. You can do it, but it ruins the sky. I guess it would be OK if you had no sky.

I took these examples especially for this blog.

NO FILTER: Five portraits stitched. EOS 50D, f/13, 1/250, ISO 160 shutter, 18mm. Slight enhancements in photoshop

WITH FILTER: Five portraits stitched. EOS 50D, f/11, 1/160 shutter, ISO 250, 18mm.

You'll notice I adjusted the settings - I was still trying to take a good photo both times (while crouching in bare feet crawling with ants on hot rocks). Notice how you can see better colours in the water in the polarized shot, but the rocks look nicer in the non polarized shot. You can also see how half the sky is darker in the polarized shot. Just different techniques I guess. I must admit though, I love how the polarizer works on the water.

Still learning!