Secrets in the Closet

Back in July I posted about Leaving Paradise from Palm Beach Florida. Had some really nice images from that layover but I forgot to put one up that I had to process a little more.

This is a pano shot from the shore of Palm Beach to the west which ironically show downtown West Palm Beach in the image. I was walking around shooting in the Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden and was unaware of the impending deluge. I knew I wanted to get a pano across the iner-coastal waterway but had no idea of what loomed beyond.

As it turned out, I was able to get back to the car without getting wet except for the beads of sweat form the incessantly hot and humid South Florida weather.

I was able to make it across the bridge and grabbed this image imminent squall. You can make out the double towers of the historic Breakers Hotel in the background.

Need to pack it in for the night. Take care... Doug

Pan-O-Ram-A Workflow

After spending my free time last week going through the better bart of 1300 images from our Hawaii trip, I noticed there were a number of panoramic sequences. The beauty of pano's is the ability to come closer to sharing with the viewer the majesty of the scene the photographer is blessed to take in.

In this case we have a series of images taken from the sea walk at the Hilton Wiakoloa Village on the big island in Hawaii. Yes I know it is Hawaii, HI but it sounds cooler saying "the big island".

Notice the start and ending images which are not included in the pano. This is a Scott Kelby trick that I have adopted in my photography. It brackets the pano images so they are easy to select. Speaking of which, the screen shot below shows the selected images and a simple right click or Control click brings up a number of option. 

The "Edit In" is the menu item of choice as this is where you would normally make the jump to Photoshop (CMD-E or CTRL-E on windows does the same thing). This time you must move down the second list to Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. This takes these images into a Photoshop dialogue shown below.

I have the best results simply accepting the defaults on this screen by clicking OK. Now the magic begins. Normally when you take a Lightroom image to Photoshop, you get a copy of the image that is then saved back to Lightroom. We could have opened all these files in PS but then we would have had copies of all those images. Using the Merge to Panorama in Photoshop option simply uses the file and does not copy it. As you can see in the layers pallet below, all the files have been placed on their own layer with a layer mask.

This is really where the smoke and mirrors works its magic in Photoshop. The jagged edged black masks on the layers pallet shows the extent PS works at the pixel level. All to blend and position the images into one contiguous image. Once Photoshop has done its thing, I select the top layer and use the keyboard shortcut of Shift-Option-Command-E to merger visible while retaining the layers being merged.

This produces the following single image that we can now edit. One of the side effects of shooting a panorama is that the image ends up looking like a bow-tie after the merge that must be cropped resulting in a large amount of lost data. I was fortunate in this case. One of the techniques to mitigate this problem is to shoot in portrait. 

Anyhow I went to Free Transform (Cmd-T) and used the Warp option to streach the corners slightly. This is a subjective adjustment but you must be careful to maintain a realistic look to the image. If it starts to go funky you will have to either crop clone .

Finally a crop must be made. If not to clean up the edges then to remove the excess data in the image beyond the canvas. With all the tweaks and adjustments done in Photoshop you can send the file back to Lightroom. 

Simply click save and the image will show up in lightroom along with the original elements of the pano as shown below in the Lightroom Screen grab.

Stacking images will greatly increase the efficiency of you Lightroom workflow. If you like to keep the original images like I do, select all the images including the pano. Make sure the pano is the highlighted image of the selections. This will place the pano on top of the stack. Do not try to do this in a collection, it must be done from the Catalog Panel. 

Finally with the stack selected I hit the number 9 key to make it a blue selection. This way I can scroll or filter to very quickly see where my pano's are.

Notice I did not make any adjustments to the original images in Lightroom before taking them to Photoshop for the pano merge. Corrections would be made locally while in Photoshop knowing the limitations of Lightroom. Once back in Lightroom further adjustments are applied to the pano.

The biggest advice for a good pano is not to use a tripod (it helps of course), but to shoot in manual with an averaged exposure (I start at F/11 and adjust shutter speed from there) and once focused, go to manual and fire away. Here is the final image, enjoy!

Hey that pretty much fills the blog today. Like I promised last week I will have plenty of Hawaii images up this week.

Take care... Doug

Tampa Bay - Bonus Post

After my NAPP visit I headed to a little place in Tampa I have not been to in years, Chubby’s BBQ, a wonderful hole in the wall place with the best barbeque in Tampa. It was a clear day at the 90 degree mark and I was looking forward to getting a nice shot of downtown at sunset. I ended up sing a movie (Surrogate- very good!) and missed the sunset so I went back to the hotel.

My room faced the bay and as I walked into the room I saw the image below.

First I killed all the lights in the room and grabbed my G9 out of my flight bag. Using the window mullion and the glass I could stabilize the camera to capture two images. Below is an assembled pano of the view. Glorious I’d say!

Honestly, that is the view from my room. Enjoy... Doug

A Grand Vista

Ok so the Grand Vista thing might be a little lame but it is the Grand River in Grand Rapids Michigan. But I really had no plans what so ever to go shooting the other evening.

Doctor: "Please lay on the couch and tell me all about it."

Patient: "Ok... Well it all started back when I was..."

So I  will not go to the screen play dialog but it did really start earlier in the evening. I was taking Sniper our black and white (looks like a border collie) Aussi and the sun was starting to give some better light. In the mMichigan latitudes we get a little longer golden hour during the fall as the sun starts to set towards the southwest. Anyhow, I saw the light (sorry) and knew I had been waiting for the sun to go further to the south to get evening shadows off of a red barn I have been waiting to shoot. So, I took Sniper back to the house, grabbed my gear and off to the red bard I went.

Of course the tree shadow was still on the barn so that idea went down in flames. I started back home when I thought about going downtown and seeing what I could get there. I have never really done any photowalking downtown.

The image above is a three shot pano of Grand Rapids with the J.W. Marriott and the Amway Grand Plaza prominently centered in the picture. I know, you shouldn't center things in the picture. But panos are different. If it works, it works. Now if you look in the middle of the river you will see an art piece that is entered in the Grand Rapids Art competition worth $250K. It is call "Grand Dance" by David Lubbers.

Below is another art entry which I could not find a reference to the name or artists but it too is entered in the competition. It is position on a walking bridge that used to be a twin track rail bridge back in the day.

Kind of looks like he is ready to leap off the bridge to me. 

The next two images are a before and after of one shot. The corrections were done in Lightroom alone and really demonstrates its versatility without having to make the jump into Photoshop all the time. This is the walking bridge I referred to just a minute ago and the building is the Marriott Hotel and Apartments. The light was just striking in this image.

BEFORE

AFTER

That's about it for today. I have a couple more from this photowalk for tomorrow.

Cya... Doug

Any Team, Any Time

A promise has been satisfied. After 30 plus years I took my wife to Cubs game at Wrigley Field in Chicago. I must admit I am not the biggest baseball fan. To that point, a few years ago I was standing by the counter at the Fixed Base Operator in Tampa FL when my first officer across the way pointed to my right and made some lip talk. I looked to my right and there were a couple of people standing there, so I looked back at my guy and with my arms out, liped back to him with What? I walked over to him and asked him what the big deal was, He said "Dude! You were stnading right next to Derek Jeter!", to which I responded "Who's Derek Jeter?"

With that story (which is true by the way) told, I have established the fact that I may not be the biggest follower of the game that hits the small stiched ball. After having gone to the park, I must say Wrigley Field is magical. Riding the bus from the parking lot at DeVry University through bustling streets of a residential city to come upon the ball park is a visual transition that was so natural. Very old but well kept, tightly spaced homes, transitions to a more but very old commercial district and finally there is the ball park in the midst. Very old but unassuming and very natural in its surroundings. Then you see the marquee. That massive red, and unmistakable Wrigley Field.

Entering the stadium is like going back in time. If it were not for all the people dressed in todays garb, you feel as if you are back in the early 20th centyury. It was a wonderful experience. We obviously had to stop and shop at the Cubs Store but after that it was up the ramps to our seats.

I must say there are a muber of experiences in life where your first view is breath taking. That first view of the Grand Canyon, or waking up in Denver to see the Rocky Mountains, or something many have experienced, going up in a tall building and finally getting to a view point that over looks the city. That is the feeling you get when you finally get your first glimps of the ball diamond, lush green grass, and that wonderful and historic ivory coverd wall of Wrigley Field.

Other than the old architecture, structure, and ivy covered perimeter wall, there was one more very old school item to the park. The score board! for the longest time I could night see what the score of the game was until I realized I was looking at the running scores of all the games being played in the National and American leagues.

Below is a portion of the scoreboard as you can see the dismal performance of the Cubs in the bottom of the 8th inning. The really old school functionality of this board is the little squares where the numbers are shown a panels that are manually placed throughout the game. After realizing this I started looking around for a semaphore flagman at the bullpen.

It wasn't until after I got the images downloaded and was able to take a closer look did I realize the open panels were not simply missing. As evidenced by the man sitting back with his arms behind his head in the image below, they were peep holes for the occupants of the scoreboard to watch the game. Very cool!

The Cubby's were up against the Washington Nationals and it was too bad the entire team didn't show up for the game. It is true, baseball is as much a team sport as football or basketball.

The star pitcher for the Cubs started the game after being off fur a number of weeks. The crowd had high hopes but soon faded. Not even his home run in the third was enough to bring fan loyalty and more-so, coach patience. A relief pitcher was brought in during the fifth inning with two on base, the next batter was intentionally walked as he was a good hitter. I can't remember the count but it was the next batter that sent one over the ivy for a grand slam. BAM! 6 to 1, that'll take the wind out of your sails for sure.

They never did recover as you can see the 15 to 6 score on the board. So the question still remains... Is Doug now a baseball fan?

To that I will continue not to be but I do enjoy going to the park and watching a bunch of guys hitting a ball and running around the bases. As far a Wrigley Field, I am most certainly a fan and hope they are able to maintain the emotion that facility brings out in people. As far as the Cubs? Well there is always another game, and another year to go for the championship. I guess that makes me a Cubs fan!

Cya later... Doug

Going W I D E

Friday has wrapped up in Columbus and tomorrow is my last day in town and I can head back home. Last night I was looking for an image to share here on the blog and was coming up dry. At least from the standpoint of a really dynamite image.

Well, this is not necessarily spectacular but it certainly is wide. Back a couple of months ago I was stuck in Marina Del Rey CA. There was a meeting room at the hotel I was staying at that had access to a roof patio and heli-pad. I was able to get out on the roof withthis wonderful vantage point of the northern valley.

There are seven images shot here and assembled in Photoshop Elements which did a fine job even in one area I was a little long on the overlap capture so that took some minor clone stamping to fix things. Shot in RWA at f/6.3 at 1/50 second on the G9, I started the post in Adobe Camera Raw setting the white balance, recovery, brightness, clarity, and vibrance the same in all three images. Opening it in Elements I fixed the little stitching issue I had and worked in some shading into the image.

Hey, I think that will wrap up this week. Hope you all will have a tremendous weekend and take care of yourselves.

Cya... Doug 

That's a Waterfall

Multnomah falls is one of the most photographed waterfalls in the world. It is not the biggest but it is one of the easiest to get to. Park the car, walk about 75 yards and start clicking. Located east of Portland Oregon along the Columbia River Gorge it is truly breathtaking. The water over the edge falls some 620 feet into the pool at the bottom.

What really brought some significance to this was just two days prior we were on Mt. Hood and my son called telling me he had repelled deep into the earth. Close to 600 feet. It was pretty amazing to look at these falls and how small we felt to imaging a single rope hanging over the edge with a young man descending. Yikes!

This is a six shot pano of the falls and was shot using a Canon 40D with an EF 16-35 f/2.8L USM lens mounted. It is somewhat of a wide lens but with the crop factor it was not too bad. Focal length was 35mm which helped also. Speed was 1/3rd second at f20 and an ISO of 100. If I recall, I had a circular polarizer screwed on the front to knock it down a couple of stops. Pano assembly was in CS3. The shots were taken in landscape to which I rotated so PS could better assemble the images. Once together it was flattened, rotated, and worked with. Prior to deleting the original pano layers the file was at 1.06 GB. Now that's a fat file!

Hey! I got to go off to Z-land. Cya tomorrow... Doug

TGIF

It has been a busy week at the house with Tom being home. There were a number of things to get ready for him to go back to Chattanooga for the summer to counsel. We got both bikes in running order and spent a little time on them and then the issue of our 89 Safari van came into play. At 222,222 miles on it... You guest it. Tom is going to drive (maybe coax might be a better word) it down to TN on Sunday. Of course we will be following him. It would be a blast if it made it sown there.

Well here it is... The pano of Manhattan Beach just south of LAX airport. The shots (all nine) were take near the end of the pier looking East. It did take about an hour of cloning to get the railing right as there assembly of the images was just a little overwhelming to CS3. This was shot on the G9, handheld with no pano guide. I know the G9 has it available but I have always found them more cumbersome than a useful tool. 

That is about all I have in me for today.

Take Monday off from surfing and enjoy the long weekend.

I will be back on Tuesday. Cya... Doug

While on the Subject of Pano's...

This was my first pano in CS3 about a year ago. At the time I was still coming up to speed on Photoshop and did not take the time to play with levels, saturation or curves to make this image pop. None the less it was an impressive (at least to me at the time) assembly of nine images.

How PS does this number crunching is beyond me but the process is very impressive. Once all the images are open in Photoshop, you simply select Photomerge from the Automation menu and sit back and watch the magic happen.

Each image gets it's own layer and layer mask. The layer mask eventually shows a black area that reveals the layer to be merged with the others. What is really interesting here is that one would think there is a high degree of blending between images when in fact it is a very distinct division between the layers. PS simply draws the line so to speak in areas that are the most in common. I say simply when in fact I have no idea how it actually works in the coding of the software. It just looks totally cool when it is done. 

I must admit that I have not pushed PS on the blending by shooting in an automatic mode. I always shoot in manual for panos to establish a baseline exposure between images. It is kind of fun to then turn off each layer one at a time to se where the breaks in the mosaic are.

One note to Lightroom users. Either this does not exist or I have not figured it out yet but once the pano is assembled in PS it creates a new psd file that was not generated in LR. If I bring the pano back to LR I must import it as a file. Another note is that when you choose Edit In Photoshop CS3 in the LR menu you create a second copy of each of the images in LR. When you exit PS you close out those images but they remain duplicated in LR sucking up that hard drive space.

Take care for today... Doug

Something Is Still Missing

This pano was from five shots I too while returning to Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. We had figured out that on the lower deck we could open the side windows and get a good shot of Lady Liberty but I was not happy with the shots I was getting of NYC while on the island. On the ferry though I found out we could go stand on the ramp of the ferry while it was on its way to downtown.

With camera in hand and using Scott Kelby's pano trick I was able to get the images I would need for this wonderful pano. Ok.. You are asking... What's the trick. Well, when I got home and found that I had taken 450 images in the three days we were in New York it can get a little daunting to figure out the images. Lightroom helps, but there is still the issue of which shots are for the pano. Say there are 15 images of the same general landscape. Which ones are for the pano and which are for a stand alone image. Here is the trick... Before the first shot is taken stick you index finger in front of the lens and fire off a shot. When the last of the pano shots are taken, put two fingers in front of the lens and do the same. It is what I call simply-stupid, but it works great!

So it has been a number of weeks since the trip and I have not had much time to go through the images when my wife asks me to put together some pictures to show her mom and sisters who are all over for the weekend. I say not a problem and shuffle through the 450 images (most of which have not been processed) and come up with 125 that will work. I get them processed and drop them into PhotoMagico (great app), select all, single command to fit to screen, dump in a single transition and timing for all slides, render it to iDVD, and finally burn a DVD so the ladies can watch it on the TV rather than huddle around me in the office.

Great idea but the auto sizing did a lot of messy cropping. It was really my improper use of the command for all the slides that caused the problem as I was rushed. Bottom line is that we ended up in the office huddled around the iMac. So what does this all have to do with the pano? One of my sister-in-laws just got a Mac and was interested in how a panoramic was put together. So right there before her very own eyes she watched the assembly process and retouching of the final image develop into the what you see above.

Now for the title of this post. I have been flying in and out of the New York metro area for so many years, I can not look at it or an image of the lower Manhattan area without envisioning the twin towers. Those tow majestic columns of strength will forever be etched in my mind.

I must be off getting ready to head out tomorrow so I will catch you all latter.

Doug

Way Too Late to be Blogging

The time at the tone... Beep 0624 Universal Time Coordinated. For you GMT / Zulu time challenged, that is 1:24 AM. I am actually in violation of the five day blogging rule but I will count this a s a Friday post. I was working on this pano of the Brooklyn Bridge I took a few weeks ago when we were in New York and wanted to get it up (the image) before I hit the rack.

While it looks like we are on a watercraft, I am actually standing on the North dock of the South Street Seaport. I was shooting manual as I don't have to concern myself with exposure issues in the pano even though CS3 does a fantastic job with blending. I was shooting with a Canon 16-35 f2.8L lens.

I did take some liberty with the image but only a die hard New Yorker will probably catch to modification. I may, if I remember, expose my handy-work at another time. But for now I have to get up in the morning and head off to the racetrack to shoot some pit & practice then in the evening shoot some of the race. I will get some images of that up in the next week or so.

That's it for me... Good night all and have a great weekend.

Doug