Just Ride - Finale

This is the final installment of our ride around Lake Michigan last week.

As expected the Courtyard was very nice yet in a business area were there was nothing to walk to. I took the Harley down and picked up some ice cream at a Baskin-Robins and brought it back to the room to finish off our culinary experience for the day.

Saturday was a short ride to the embarkation point for the Lake Express. I did not have an opportunity to get a good exterior shot of the Lake Express but here is one from their web site.

Photo By Lakeexpress.com

If you are familiar with how a jet ski or Sea-Doo propulsion system works then you understand how this rig flys through the water. Below is another shot form the web site on the port side water jet nozzles.

Photo By Lakeexpress.com

This shot was taken on Saturday from the upper deck. The ride is amazingly smooth as the twin hull slices through the water at up to 40 miles per hour.

Oh yes... Did I say it causes quite a breeze on the upper deck. This might be just a little gross for some but if you turn your head sidewise with your mouth open you will soon find saliva running across your cheek. Please do not ask me how I know this.

The following sign makes two major statements. First is "Not Designed for Public Access" and the other is "Proceed at Your Own Risk". So pretty much the whole sign makes the point. Unfortunately I took this shot on the way back from being out on the "structure" getting a really good shot of the riverfront and harbor in Leland. I must say the structure the sign speaks of is actual a long grouping of large rocks that form a breaker wall to keep the harbor smooth in more inclement weather.

Peek Digital Photography Klutz Award

For his efforts in accessing a vantage point in the furtherance of photographic perfection or at least a unique composition, the Peek Digital Photography Klutz Award goes to yours truly. For the selfless sacrifice of his (my) body in order to protect his camera from harms way.

Thank you... Thank you... No... Please stop your applause... Please be seated.

Ouch!

I was walking... err... stepping from rock to rock on my way back from shooting some really good shots. Almost to where my wife was sitting on the beach (3 foot strip of sand) and my left foot slipped on some sand that was on a rock and down I came. Left knee hit first, then the left elbow hits and finally my left side impacts the top edge of the rock my foot slipped on.

So there I was laying across this large rock on my left side with my right hand pointing straight up holding the camera undamaged. Dodged a bullet on that one. I felt like one of the guys on the Pepsi commercial - "I'm good!"

Product Note: The little deal hanging around my neck is a Hoodman HoodLoupe. It is a necessity in daylight shooting to see your images on any LCD screen on the back of your camera. Even the best of the best screens need help in sunlight.

That finishes up our Harley ride so take care.

Cya... Doug

Just Ride Part 1

Just Ride Part 2

Just Ride - Update

Well we got off to a reasonably good start on Wednesday for the our Lake Michigan ride. Rather than taking the back roads to Muskegon we jumped on the highway. We have done that so many times to Grand Haven we made the decision to save a few minutes. That was fortunate as we needed that time later.

Stopping in Ludington for food and fuel we continued our trek north through Manistee towards the Leelanau Peninsula. The bridge that crosses Glen Lake in Sleeping Bear Dunes park was out so we made the long trip around the lake. Windy curvy roads mad the detour a delight on the bike.

The worst part of the trip had to be when we were just about taken out by a black pick-up truck in the middle of nowhere. We were running up the road and I saw the guy up ahead and to the left at a "T" intersection with our road. With not enough time or room to stop the bike, he pulled right out in front of us. All the screeching, skidding, sliding was not going to prevent us from becoming a part of his rear bumper. Our only option was to swerve to the right to prevent an impact.

At this point I was not looking at the truck but where I wanted the bike to go. While hard on the front brake, the rear tire would lock and I'd release. This cycled a number of times until finally I figured we were going to clear the truck and be on our way. Evelyn saw it another way. She saw that the truck was full of people, and the shocked look on the passengers faces as we went by missing them literally by inches.

Later up the road we saw the truck pull into a winery... Go Figure.

Anyhow it was only about a half an hour later when we reached our destination for the night. Leland MI is a quaint historic fishing village that has retained it's ambiance of it's origins while adjusting to the times and people.

Leland Waterfront

The image above was take from a stone (very large) levy that created the breaker wall that protected the harbor. The building are original equipment and most of the tools for netting and fishing from the past remain. The boats in the picture above are not quite as old.

Below is one of those shots that you just have to have even though it may not make the photographic hall of fame. If you look close above the breaker wall, you can see a sliver of Lake Michigan and then North Manitou Island.

Killer Sunset in Leland

Thursday was definitely our longest day as we had to get up to Mackinaw City, cross the bridge, and shoot over to Escanaba across the upper peninsula. We had our work cut out for us. It seamed like very town was having some kind of event this week, the traffic in both Charlevoix and Petoskey was miserable. We did finally make Mac City, stopped at the Harley store to pick up my brother-in-law a tee-shirt and off we went.

The bridge was not nearly as ominous this time as it was a couple of years ago but it is a little freaky having the front end wanting to track differently than the rear.

Evelyn and I in the U.P.

We made it across, to St. Ignace, got some gas and grub (no it was not a pastie) and we were off and running towards the western upper peninsula. Oh, by the way, don't bother doing a Wiki search on Pastie, it's not the same thing!

So last night was in Escanaba MI and tonight we are on the north side of Milwaukee WI. The ride from Escanaba to Green Bay was to be the most scenic while in Wisconsin but we were in rain the whole way. South of GB it cleared up and we had a nice ride the rest of the way.

We found a Courtyard to stay at and immediately went for the jacuzzi upon arrival. Tomorrow we will ride the Lake Express over to Muskegon and slide on home.

That's it for the update.

Cya Monday... Doug

The Ride

Last Friday I was finally able to get out on the Harley for a decent ride. I was out about two weeks earlier for a short ride but Friday was a good five hours being gone. I am now bringing my gear almost every time I ride. The gear back fits in the tour pack and my Enduro tri-pod in its case straps onto  cargo rack quite nicely.

Anyhow, back to the photo. I had stopped to capture some images and while walking back to the Harley I heard the throaty thumping of a group of bikers. I turned around and there were six or seven in a pack with one straggler. I got a number of shots but when cropped, this one just gave that classic rider on the sweeping turn look. 

Ok. I must admit to cropping now and again. Most everyone knows what cropping a photo is but there is a huge divide between the croppers and non-cropping purists. Yes cropping diminishes the resolution of the image, it does delete data, and OMG... It is changing the original image! Here is my argument for cropping.

Point one on diminished resolution. You have to think about how the image is going to be presented. Web, snap-shot photo, framed print, or large print each require a minimum resolution to provide a high quality print. In this case the image started out at 21 megapixel and 7 megapixel after the crop. This is more than enough for a good 13x19, so what's the big deal.

Point two regarding deleted data is true in Photoshop unless you have multiple copies. In Lightroom this is not even a factor as the original image remains untouched.

Point three concerning changes to the original image. Soooo What! It's art people. If the photographer is inspired to capture the image and then adjust, change, or even destroy it later it is totally up to the photog.

Bottom line is what ever you do to an image to make it more presentable and emotional is a good thing. If you can do this while maintaining a high standard of quality, that is even better. After all, we are creatives and in that light, we are dealing with photographic art.

Hey enough is enough!

Cya... Doug 

Cheater Thursday

Nice title... Read on.

The other day when I had the Harley down at South Haven I was going for a good sunset shot. I rode down the normal road to the beach and the sun on the Lighthouse was exactly opposite to what would make a good shot unless of course I was looking for a silhouette which I wasn't. So I went back around to the other side of the channel where another beach was with condo's or rental units facing the beach. I saw a picnic table close to the water that made a great place for my gear and tri-pod. Due to the thick haze, setting sun and grungy looking water the light was really sucky. Ok... lets try the HDR thing and see what happens. I took five exposures all at f/4.0 and ranged from 1/2000-1/200th of a  second. I had my EF70-200 f2.8L IS lens with a 1.4 teleconverter mounted on the 40D.

When I got this images into Lightroom I was even further unimpressed. Well it was time to see what CS3's HDR function could do with it... Not much, but it did give me a place to start. What started out to be a simple HDR became one of my most tweaked photos. I had taken the five shots in portrait orientation and it finally gave me a headache on how to finally crop the image which as you can see I went with a square classic look. Stop Blog...

5 minutes later...

Thinking about that classic look I just jumped back into Lightroom and gave a B&W effect to one of the images and I don't know if it helped or not. It was just one of those yucky days.

Anyhow, now that I have pulled back some of the onion skin you can see that there were people in the image. And yes with five images in the HDR there was plenty of ghosting of people so they all came out of the final product. I thoroughly enjoy shooting people (hope Homeland Security did not just catch that), or should I say photographing people but some times they just get in the way if you know what I mean.

All in all it ended up looking pretty nice... Oh by the way it is not cheating but artistic impression and technique. Cya later... Doug

It's a new week

Well, after Friday's no posting Evelyn and I ended up running over to Lansing MI to watch a Lugnut's game and fireworks. We had a very enjoyable evening. Spent most of the weekend doing this and that. We got out on the Harley a few times between storms. 

What I have been working on for over the weekend on and off was the photograph below. This is my son Tim's Kawasaki 850 Custom that he has had for a couple of years and we got it shipped out to him in MD where he lives now. Before it left the house though I wanted to get some photos of it. This being one of them. Not having a large area to do vehicle shoots I positioned the bike in front of the garage door and set a couple of speedlites up on light stands.

The specs on the shot are a 24-70 f2.8L USM lens at 160th of a second at f/2.8, 100 ISO at 27 mm. One speedlite was set up to my left and the other to the right, both being balanced. The largest amount of time was spent removing the background. Even using onOne's Mask Pro it and the PS Magic Wand, it still takes good old clicking to get it right. The time spent is usually worth the effort for the final product though.

That's about all for now.

Later... Doug

What a Wonderful Monday

Today was a really really nice day in West Michigan. Just a gorgeous spring day with temps in the upper 60's. While I had been playing a little catch up on the office work there were two wheels in the garage that were calling my name to be uncovered.

Ok, so we did not go up to the Mackinaw Bridge... We did go out for a nice late afternoon cruise (65 mi) and stopped in Saugatuck, MI for an early dinner. I ˙ad only started the bike once over t˙e winter and the volts were down to about 9VDC. I gave it a try anyhow and it fired on the first turn over. So I sat there soaking in the potato... potato... potato beat that the Harley-Davidson V-Twin engine puts out.

My daughter and husband were in over the weekend for a wedding of a good friend of ours so we were able to enjoy some time with them as well. As far as the wedding I have a new interest in attending these events. It is called watch and learn form the sidelines. We are not into Weddings at the moment but I have no doubt we will go in that direction in the next couple of years.

The photographer was shooting with a 5D and what looked like a 30D or possibly a 40D as a second body. I think he had a 40-70 L lens and a 70-200 L on the smaller body which would make sense to get the farther reach with the 200 and 1.6 cropped sensor. 

Without going into the gory details I was asked to get some shots of the bride for someone who could not attend the ceremony. As a good friend of course I agreed. The problem was I did not want to bring my gear and look like I was ripping off the guy hired to do the wedding. So all I could really do was bring my G9 with me and look like an over interested fan of the couple. This would be my stealth approach to getting some shots.

* * *  WARNING  * * *   WARNING  * * *  WARNING  * * *

Somewhere in the G9 manual must be a statement about not shooting in low light with this camera. I will offer Canon the following scale of acceptable low light performance:

ISO    Noise Ratio     Esthetic Rating

100        NR     Cant See Anything

200        10%     Still way to dark

400        40%      Can make out images if exposed long 

                               enough

800        60%      Really kind of sucky in noise

1600      ???      You might just as well shoot through 

                               a screen

Now for the good news. I jump online and surf over to Noise Ninja by Picture Code and download their version 2.1.1 and install it as a plug-in to PS but I also picked up the stand alone version so I would not have to fire up CS3 just to hack at a jpeg file.

It would have been really ugly if I had to tweak a whole bunch of these photos but with a little on the fly action I was able to automate most of the process. What was really cool thou is that when run in CS3 as a filter it can be used as a Smart Filter. Click on the Noise Ninja sub-layer and you jump right back into the plug-in. Really Sweat!

The image about is the shot from the camera if you can see the noise. After the magic of Noise Ninja the image below was revealed.

I just gotta tell-ya, this is a really fine product. Anyone who has a point and shoot and tries to get low light pictures to turn our is in dire need of this application. It was like $79 bucks for license   codes for the plug-in and stand alone version. This really is amazing. I have not figured it out yet but I know there are downloadable profiles for various cameras which would lead on to believe this could be a much more automated system than I had done today.

Here is the link again if you are interested: Noise Ninja

With all that said and done It's time for some sleep.

Cya...Doug

More Harbor Springs

We are either traveling tonight, or are in Illinois visiting family so this is short but I said I would put it up on the blog. This is a old church that we came across while walking around Harbor Springs MI last summer. It was so clean and pristine that I had to snap it.

I told you this would be short.

Cya later... Doug

Easy Rider

Last sumer I had taken a ride down to Battle Creek Harley-Davidson just to see what they had in their store. The store is a rejuvenated grocery store and I might add a much better use of space. As I walked around the shop I of course lingered around the nice new bikes and then there they were. Two bikes out of the past. The first was Wyatt's and  Billy's bikes from the 60's Easy Rider cult movie. Wyatt was played by Peter Fonda and went by "Captain America". The bikes never had names but over the years "Captain America" has been synonymous with Fonda's motorcycle. This blurring probably came for the fact that the fuel tank and Fonda's helmet had an American flag motif.

There were a number of these bikes built but definitely come as a very limited edition motorcycle. This was a way cool bike. I took some snaps with the camera I keep on my bike. The image above is of the tank with Peter Fonda's autograph... Another way cool touch. Too bad at the end of the movie the bike... Oops, I had better not give it away just in case you have not seen the movie. Interesting counter culture flick that is a very big downer man.

Hope you all enjoy your weekend. 

Cya Monday!

Doug

Our Scoot

Here is an image of our H-D Ultra Classic Electra-glide. It just so happens to be our main summertime transportation in Michigan. This pic was shot while the bike was on the sidewalk with lush green grass in the background. 

This was one of my early experiments in removing background. Using some of Ben Willmore's techniques I was able to isolate the bike. The windshield was not so easy and I finally relented to create a windshield instead. Using a multi-phased gradient on the windshield selection produced a passable form.

Speaking of Ben Willmore (click here for his blog), if you ever have an opportunity to attend one of his day long workshops you will be utterly dazzled by his curves prowess. If you can not get to one of his seminars, you can sign-up for online classes at Kelby Training. Definitely check it out, you will not be sorry.