Smokies Light

Vignetting, which is the fading of light in the corners of an image, occurs in certain conditions of exposure settings, lens selection, and light. It can be taken out in software or in this case, actually increased to enhance the subject.

Have a happy Fourth of July. Don't forget what it's all about: shooting firecrackers.

Ok, have mercy on me. Inspired by my blog friend Beth at Too Much Sugar for a Dime, I've made my first attempt at a moving picture for the blog, taking you for a brief excursion on my walk this morning. I definitely need to work on my enunciation and speaking clearly; my southern drawl slur with a lisp is sometimes hard to understand. It's not easy speaking publicly and improvising about whatever comes to mind and eye. I have a new found respect for actors, screenwriters, and editors who can create and carry a story on film. It ain't easy.

Blog buddy Alice noted that some scenes in yesterday's video would make decent pics. I went back this morning with the SLR and snapped these two.

A seagull leaves a contrail as it flies at very high altitude to avoid flak. Ok, that's pretty lame but goes well with a lame pic. Have a good weekend.

Now if I let you see this place where stories all ring true
Then will you let me past your face to see what's really you
It's not for me I ask this question as though I were a king
For you have to love, believe and feel, before the burst of tambourines takes you there

Green grass and high tides forever
Castles of stone, soul and glory
Lost faces say we adore you
As kings and queens bow and play for you

-- The Outlaws

The exposure was set for the very bright sunny sky to capture the cloud detail resulting in the foreground being very underexposed, creating a silhouette of the spanish moss covered live oak. I like this one.

After many days of sweltering heat and humidity, this morning a cool sea breeze returned, with thunder rumbling and showers in the distance. The beach and all the creatures who live there were in a good mood. I did NOT want to leave the beach this morning. It was just too grand to behold. I wish you could see these images on a very large monitor or poster-size print. Photography is a moment in Spirit, paralyzed for sharing.

The recent images of cloudy skies I've been taking makes for severely underexposed areas as you can see in the last two posts. Some of the underexposure can be corrected in Photoshop, but the old-fashioned way is to use graduated filters and/or multiple exposures. I figured if it came to multiple exposures I might as well take a dive into HDR, high dynamic range. HDR is basically multiple exposures processed by some fancy software to create a balanced image, sometimes with dramatic visual effects and colors. This image is my first attempt with HDR using software from Photomatix instead of Photoshop. Photomatix is easy to use and doesn't take forever to process large files, which are about 21 megabytes for each jpg file that makes up the composite image. My camera can take several images per second automatically changing the exposure by one stop for each capture, so recording multiple images of the same scene isn't too bad. In fact I'll probably start shooting all images this way from now on altho it does eat up the disk space and strain my old laptop to its limits when processing them. The image above is 120 megabytes before optimizing for web display. Shooting for HDR is going to require changing old habits at capture time and the workflow on the laptop, so it's a learning experience. The image above is soft and blurs on the edges so I'm not pleased with it. I'll probably be posting more HDR imagery hopefully showing signs of improvement over time.

Update: Image below is the same scene posted a few days ago. The colors are more saturated and the light is more balanced, but still not as sharp as it could be. I'll have to work on that (as long as I don't have to use a tripod).

Sometimes I think the High in HDR reflects the state of mind of the engineers who invented it. Of course, the clouds didn't look like this to the human eye. My interest in HDR is the capability to merge multiple exposures of high contrast scenes blending the best exposures from the individual images, and less in the sometimes dramatic, surreal visual effects. I think with practice I can tune out the drama with adjustments in Photomatix and Photoshop and create more realistic imagery. But, my imagery is about art more than realism or photography, so I reserve the right for some dramatic, poetic license.

A blue crab. They are plentiful here, often caught inadvertently when fishing, not because they get hooked, but because they grab on to the bait with their claws and won't let go. Yummy!

I posted before that taking pics of the fort is like trying to take an interesting pic of a concrete cinder block. HDR helps it out a bit, or at least helps the sky to frame it better. I've noticed post-processing in Photoshop has become limited to sharpening and downsizing for the net. Previously most adjustments were made for brightening underexposed areas and toning down overexposed areas. Those adjustments are no longer necessary. Setting the exposure at capture time for one image is less critical also. Before, when shooting an image with a bright area you had to expose for the bright area but still not totally underexpose the darker areas, and then lighten up the dark areas in Photoshop, and use a fairly low ISO setting to keep the noise low. All that is no longer necessary when shooting and blending multiple exposures. In many ways HDR makes the capture and post-processing much simpler.