Two Blog Week

I think this is my worst unannounced week of blogging since I started. Got won in MOnday, Tuesday and Wednesday went down the chute, today I am wedging it into the day and tomorrow it just isn't going to happen. I will be running around for a wedding we are a part of on Saturday. So here goes...

Last Saturday I got up early to shoot a golf outing the College/Career group from our church was having. Early yes, it was still dark when I arrived at the course. Basically it was going to be an ugly day, no sun, drizzle if not showers. Yuck! It would give me an opportunity to try out my new bag, a Tenba Messenger bag I picked up at one of the seminars last week.

So the shoot went really well, I had a cart to run around with which mad a really good support for the mono-pod I had with me. Here are some shots for the day. All the long shots were done with an EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS with a 1.4 teleconverter. This first shot was from halfway up the fare way shooting towards the tee box.

This next shot is a par 3 and shot from the tee box. The compression is really obvious with the tele glass. It looks like it's a chip shot but is actually 130+ yards.

Here is another shot racked all the way out to get the golfers teeing. Again the compression is quite dramatic.

This next one is with the EF 24-105 f/4 IS L lens. All of the shots were on a Canon 40D as I wanted the crop for the reach. It was nice with the 6 fps burst rate I could get shots like the one below. This was of the Pastor teeing (duh!) off on the 14th hole and I just ordered a print of this to give him for his office.

Ok, Lets all go Aaaaaah! Is't he so cute!

Yes he is just a bit blurred but that just shows movement. Not really thats just a photographic excuse. Fact of the matter, I was driving the cart while holding onto the camera on the right seat and this little guy goes squirting out in front of the cart. I let the cart coast and use both hands to steady the camera as best i could. Now that's what I call an action shot!

Like I said, I will not be around tomorrow so it will be Monday before I am back!

Cya... Doug

Communication

This image comes from a couple of weeks ago at the falls in Gahanna Ohio. I saw this couple just sitting there for the longest time and could only imagine the discussion they had prior to this current joint act of defiance. Something happened to case these two to ignore each other.

I forget the exact lens I had on the EOS 40D but I believe it was the EF 24-105 f/4 L IS lens. This is quickly becoming my favorite lens, I just wish Canon made an f/2.8 version. Can't be sure of the shutter speed but the aperture had to be down to f/4.0 due to the bokeh in the image and from where I was standing I probably had the lens out to 90 or 100 mm.

I am waiting for a descent afternoon to get into a position to get some good light on the downtown buildings here in Columbus, maybe it will happen this afternoon.

Have a good middle of the week all.

Cya... Doug 

When You Least Expect It

Photography is one of those elements in life that continue to surprise the participant. Just when you think you have what you came for, there is a little more there. It's the ten minutes after sunset when everyone has taken off that the sky presents its inner beauty. It's that moment that you remember to turn around to find the fabulous view you have been walking away from. These are the giving beyond the capture in photography.

I had two such events present themselves within ten minutes of each other. The first I explained in yesterdays post The Ride. The second opportunity actually happened before the first. I had gone up to Falasburg Park north of Lowell MI for some background shots only to find that the trees had not popped yet. Beautiful blue sky with a lifeless tree line. Sweet, perfect for some black and white images. But that is not the special event of the day.

I was sitting on a bench by the water with my 5D Mk II on a tripod spying a goose floating upstream when I heard a couple of geese honking and splashing further upstream. My EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens with the 1.4 teleconverter was mounted to the 5D2 so I pulled it off the tripod to take a  look at the commotion upstream.

Come to find out, the commotion was avian talk for a pre-departure briefing. They started moving and I stated shooting. The image below is the second of three that was of the takeoff run.

I really did not have the camera/lens combination for this shot but sometimes you take what you get and be happy with it. The 40D with this same lens combination would have made the 320 mm combination into 448 mm on the APS-C sensor. The high speed burst on the 40D may have provided a higher percentage of images to choose from but that was not to be the case.

The image below is just one of those images that pops from the screen when viewed in Lightroom. It say's, "I'm the one..." A touch of vibrancy (what a great slider), a tad bit of clarity, and poof, ready for prime time display. Ok some sharpening if it were going to print.

Well, it wasn't that easy. I had to do a bunch of spot healing as when I was zoomed in there were little white traces behind and below the geese. Take-off must exert a lot of strain on their system. Either that or it was extra thrust. Hmmm.

Hey that will wrap it up for today.

Cya... Doug 

Back to Work

Well it's time to get back to work, my day job if you will. Back in Columbus and I am more than happy that I am not at the Hyatt. Actually I'm at the Marriott Courtyard by the airport. You know, the one where the internet actually works! Time off is always a pleasure but it is good to be back at your craft, especially when they are footing the bill for your time off.

I spent some time over the weekend going through the 800 or so photos I managed to capture on our trip to the Great Northwest. My workflow is rejects, keepers, key wording, collections, picks, adjustment. Of course that does not always work when you want to get those few out right now. Lightroom is such a great program for this end of the workflow. The Bridge is a great viewer/browser but it just does not hold a candle to Lightroom.

Now for the pic of the day. It was our last night on the coast and we went down to have some fine Fish and Chips at Mo's in Newport Oregon. Well, Mo's was closed for a company party. So it was off to another location. We got seated only to find out they did not serve Fish and Chips. The waitress was very gracious as eleven of us we getting up to continue the Fish and Chips quest. So gracious in fact that she recommended one of the other waterfront restaurants. On the waterfront was no lie. There was a deck (a bit cold for the meal in question) that overlooked a dock. All during the meal the very LOUD sea lions were barking and growling at each other.

After dinner we were out clicking away the these lovable creatures of the sea. They are truly the puppy dogs of the sea. The similarities are really amazing.

• They have whiskers
• That pointy dog nose
• A face that anyone can love
• They bark
• They growl
• They scratch the same. (Obviously the fin does pretty good)
• They even bite at themselves the same way.
• They lay around
• The tangle with each other

It was just a hoot to watch these guys. we must have spent an hour leaning over the rail watching and listening. (Ok so it was a cheap thrill)

Gotta get going as I have an early day tomorrow. Cya... Doug

You Looken at me?

Here are a couple more images of my day at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago with my new 40D. The zebra above was shot with an EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens at 200mm, f/10, at 1/50th of a second. It was originally shot in landscape orientation but when I looked at the overall picture I just knew it would look better in portrait.

What was funny is just prior to this shot I had taken one of another zebra in the sun. Of course we were walking around mid day trying to get great shots. That just isn't going to happen, so we just accepted good ones and went with it. Anyhow they zebra I shot before what just alive with the blinkies. The natural black stripes would dominate and the the red blinkies would. Ok... So it's not that funny but the three of us photo-nerds got a kick out of it.

The giraffes where actually fairly active for the time of day it was. There were eight of them wondering around the habitat. The little guy on the right was the newest and always wanted to be around the water so I went with it. Unfortunately city zoo habitats don't always look as wild as they would like you to believe. Too often there is a feeding trough or something in the shot that just screams captivity. That was the case here. Even though these two where not in eat mode, there was a large pole with a feeding device hanging from it. So a little bit of cloning had to be accomplished in Photoshop to give it that wild look.

All in all some nice wildlife shots.

Cya tomorrow... Doug

Holy Green Lizard Batman!

Iguana, Salamander, Lizard. Ok! So I am not a herpetologist, But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!

We spent a couple of days into Illinois with my wife's family and met some of them on Thursday at the Brookfield Zoo. This was not only to hang out and do something but for me to start to get the feel of my new 40D which I am loving more and more.

This shot was shot inside through glass in a rome that was lit by a multitude of lighting. All very dim with the exception of the habitat. I had my 24-70 f/2.8F USM lens mounted to the 40D and an ISO of 400. The aperture was f/2.8 and a shutter speed was at 1/500th of a second. The focal length by the way was at 50 mm.

The original image was very green and did not look that great but I played with it in PS Elements and was able to desaturate and boost the colors of the little critter.

Hey, there is a lot going on today so I will be off. Be back tomorrow... Doug

Penny for your thoughts?

I had just opened the box from B&H containing my 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM lens. This is one lens I would not want to drop, especially on my toe. Evelyn must have been doing something in the kitchen that had our golden's (Chip) attention as he was frozen in place for the longest time.

I was about twenty some odd feet away from Chip and the light was coming from a 75 watt flood in a ceiling can. Once I mounted the lens and zoomed into Chips head I played with speed and aperture to where I was happy. I wanted to bokeh the background so I was able to hand hold at f/2.8 to get the shot, I forget what the speed ended up being. It is absolutely amazing to be looking through the eyepiece watching the image jitter around and then half-press the shutter release. Everything stops moving with this lens, it is truly spectacular.

In PS Elements I simply sharpened Chip just a bit and framed him in some complementary colors.

Take care... Doug

DOF

Here is a great depth of field example and one that I use when shooting portraiture in order to through the background out of focus. This particular shot was taken in the parking lot of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Columbus OH last summer. I was walking out to the car and to my left was this goose standing on top of this pick-up truck, going quack... quack... quack! I grabbed my camera out of the back which had a 75-300 f/4.5-5.6 IS lens mounted and framed up. If I recall the first image was wide open (4.5) at about 80-100MM which gave me relatively good focus all around.

The second image was zoomed in at 300MM and I can not recall what the aperture was but is had decreased some from the zoom. By zooming the background is blurred giving the head of the goose the undistracted prominence it deserves.

I can only imaging what it would have looked like at 200MM and f/2.8 on my 70-200 2.8 IS lens. That is one of the wonderful things about photography. You take a great shot with certain equipment and when acquire a higher grad piece of gear you just have to wonder hows it would have looked with the better gear. That just perpetuates the need to go reshoot locations and images once visited.

Well, thats pretty much going to do it for this week. I have a show at the hotel tomorrow and I might just use it to catch up on some rest and fight this cough I have been battling since Wed night.

C U All Monday... Doug

Birds of a Feather

Before I picked up my 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens, I had been using a 75-300 IS lens that I bought after I realized the 70-300 non-IS lens was just not going to cut it for what I was going to be shooting. Ok… So it was an expensive learning curve but the 75-300 IS still has a place in my lens case.

Anyhow Evelyn and I were walking back from the Grand Haven pier from a windy and cold shoot of frozen Lake Michigan when these Seagulls seamed to be impervious to the 18 degree weather. I had the 70-200 2.8 lens mounted and snapped a bunch of these birds. By themselves they were not that exciting but when I assembled them into one image it took on a whole different look.

I synced all the images in lightroom for white balance and color then opened them in Photoshop. I left the bird flying to the left alone. Each of the others I did a close lasso and feathered the selection by two pixels. The I dropped the selection onto it’s own layer and finally dragged the layer into the primary image.

The feathering of the birds left just a little cloud effect around each bird and as long as the bird was positioned in another clown the selection would go unnoticed.

After creating the fine art digital frame, the whole image was still missing something so I made a copy of the bird image, resized it by using transform and but a drop shadow on the deal.

I’ll talk about digital framing in another post. For now, take care and keep looking forward.

Doug

I-Chiwawa

Good Monday evening all. This one is for the dogs, or at least this scrap of a dog pictured here. Here name is Bridget and belongs to my sister-in-law. I had taken my wife into Illinois on Valentines day so she could attend a meeting that evening with one of her sisters. As we had arrived in town a little early, we stopped at one of her other sisters homes. Of course she was not home but had left the door unlocked for us.

Bridget was gated in the kitchen and as soon as I moved the gate she scrambled off to her one home. She was going to guard that little green house of hers to the death. We decided to just sit in the living room and read until Ruth (sister-in-law) got home. After about 20 minutes of non-stop yapping (sorry it just does not sound like a bark) and borderline two headaches, it was time for action.

Bridget had not moved and as I rounded the corner the defiant challenges from this little... I'll just go on. I charged at the cage with arms raised and a deep growl of my own and the little yapper disappeared into the deepest shadows of its cage. It charged... I stopped my foot and yelled at it to shut-up. We never even said while raising our three children. But little miss muttly was a different story. Bridget again disappeared in the cage and there was silence.

After about ten minutes of quiet reading, my wife asked if I would check on Bridget as she though the beast may have had a heart attach. Once the investigation was over it was to our loss that the beast was still alive.

We had just gotten there and were already looking forward to seeing our Golden Retriever and Australian Shepherd when we returned home.

On a side note, my other sister-in-law has this cat that acts like a dog, it is really sweet! 

That is a quickie for today, I am get to see Little Rock tomorrow... The land of the barge they call the Clinton Library.

Cya later... Doug

Before and After

A few people have aske me about the image on the post card under the Mpix Rocks post. Som on what was the original image but the most was on how I got the two dogs to both look attentive.

The first is easy. A lot of clone stamping of the wood floor and wall to get rid of the distracting book case. Alignment of the floor trim was critical to prevent an arcing line going up the wall. See if you can figure out the error in the picture. Clue; it is called baseboard.

As for the dogs, I just asked the owners (pictured... Duh!) what word got the pups attention the most. In this case it was "Food!" The would lock onto whoever was making that call. In this case it was my wife standing behind and to my right. This is evidenced by where the Lucy and Copper are looking, because it was not down the lens of the camera.
The original shot was taken with a single speedlite but I have forgotten what the speed and aperture settings were at the time.

Later,

Doug