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shadows

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

I have finally gotten around to a semi-regular schedule of hiking, having gone 3 of the last 4 weekends. I would go this weekend as well except I have a wedding.

Obviously, hiking gives me a good chance to not only photograph, but also work on seeing scenes that in all honesty look otherwise rather basic and wondering whether there is a photo there or not. Things like noticing the light, the shadows, and perhaps considering how a bit more contrast might make a difference.

This is very much the case in this photo. In color, this is a fairly bland photo. The sky is all white and blown out, the trees diminished by the expanse of grass in the foreground, and only a small bit of visible shadows. But the play of light was interesting, if not dramatic, in person.

My hope was that by converting to black and white and then increasing contrast, I could make the shadows really jump out, and silhouetting that tree on the left would really change the mood.

In this case, I was very much “seeing” in black and white, and while I used the computer to add contrast, this isn’t any different than what I might have done in a traditional darkroom.

first among many

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is from my second batch of tests to find a “holy grail” of b&w film and developer. This was taken just last weekend while hiking through Alamaden-Quicksilver Park in San Jose. It’s a great park in that it has a lot of different trails, several grades for variety, and the sun moves in and out for the most part. I took a slightly different route this last time and will be doing a review of that route soon.

As for the photography…one of the great benefits of 35mm film is that the cameras are small and portable. The downside is that with a relatively small negative size you need excellent sharpness to stand up to enlargement. And with sharpness comes grain.

My goal has been to find a film and developer combination that will control grain yet give me good sharpness. Certain developers (in this case, Perceptol) are very fine grain, dissolving it, but at the expense of sharpness. When you dilute such developers, you increase sharpness. My hope was that using such a fine grain developer, diluted, would give me a sharp, fine grain developer.

Well. Guess not. Sharpness is good – excellent perhaps – but the grain is still more than I had hoped. I will try this with some slower, finer-grain film (this film isn’t fine grain to begin with – I was hoping to tame it) but will also move onto other developers.

It was a beautiful hike regardless.

foggy pier

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

My wife and I went on a cruise to Alaska back in late August, 2008. We took many, many, many photos the whole way through. I used a digital SLR with three or four lenses I brought. She used that, too, but also a Panasonic Lumix TZ3, which is a point-and-shoot with a big 10x zoom on it. Very handy and great to have around, but in all honesty you aren’t going to confuse images from the two cameras often.

On the very last day, we docked in Seward and left the boat. It was a foggy, grey, and rather unpleasant early morning. However, because the TZ3 was just in her pocket, my wife pulled it out and took this great photo of the pier where we docked. It looks a lot better in black and white because it was rather dim and the lighting was 10 different colors, but it says a lot about just having a camera handy. Better than no camera at all or the one all zipped up in the backpack. I love the feel of this photo.

sunset at Morro Bay

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is right next to “Morro Rock” in Morro Bay, CA. I believe I have the map information in the flickr photo. Morro Rock is this giant granite formation that is visible from quite a long distance and possibly larger than the town itself. Much of it was cut up to create the small marina/harbor and even parts of the town. Yet it’s still quite large. The entire rock wall in the image was created from it.

Morro Rock is now a protected area, as many Peregrine Falcons nest there.

My wife and I were very lucky that the clouds worked with us to create this spectacular sunset. I had my camera on a tripod and took, I believe, the equivalent of 45 photos of the sunset. It was just so stunning for such a long time.

The reason why I say “equivalent” is because this was the first time I used a method known as “HDR” or High Dynamic Range, first introduced in Photoshop CS2. Essentially, digital cameras can capture a certain range of tones, from detailed shadow to detailed highlights. HDR allows you to take a series of photos – from ones set to get maximum detail from the shadows to ones that constrain the highlights – and then merge them all together into a photo that is not otherwise possible.

A look on flickr for HDR can show you some of the results, many of which, honestly, are not pleasing because they are unrealistic, in my opinion, and overdone.

I tried to go for a more natural look. I was also trying to compare against what I can do “in camera” without digital manipulation, using the tools that were available before Photoshop came along. The primary method was to use what are called “graduated neutral density filters.”

These filters essentially allow you to decrease the amount of light coming in from one area (in this case, the sky) while getting “normal” exposure in other areas (the beach). I had 4 “stops” (quantities of light, where each stop is 2x the amount of light as the previous one) of filtration. The HDR image was created from 5 exposures (so 5 stops).

I will try later with a 4 stop HDR image, but there is a noticeable difference in the detail in the beach with the HDR image vs. the one made in-camera, with just filtration. I thought that was pretty interesting. That even with that much effort, with that much filtration, I still couldn’t get it the same as with digital manipulation.

equus

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This photo was taken while in on a hike…probably a few months ago. It’s a really nice park in that it’s only horse and foot traffic, but the downside is that all of those horses…well, the smell can get to you during a 2-3 hour hike.

truck by moonlight

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is from a workshop in Death Valley that I did in November. It was a workshop on, essentially, nighttime long-exposure photography. This was shot on color slide film, and is a 45 minute exposure. You can see the rather long star trails that result from such a long shot.

This scene is illuminated solely by moonlight. The truck was behind a building and I had a lot of time to walk around the truck with a flashlight to illuminate it further. Inside the cab, for instance, I lit it up quite a bit along with just generally painting the truck so that it would come out brighter and with a bit more luminosity.

A lot of people doing this type of photography like to use all kinds of colored lights to produce very different effects. Many are really creative and impressive. My personal taste is to keep the shot a bit more natural-looking and use not much other than a basic flashlight for extra light.

climbing vines

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

I have a few new goals this year, photographically (other than just trying to have more fun with it). The first is to carry a camera with me everyday. This is not a “photo a day” project, because I won’t get something every day that I like. But I want to always have something with me. And I want to mix up the cameras, too. Film, digital, point-n-shoot, pro SLR, etc.

The other is to post something to my blog everyday from my photo collection. The photos make me reflect on why I took them, what I was thinking at the time, and other aspects, so it’s a good way to keep me going.

However, this poses a challenge – I don’t want my blog to become a photo-dominant one. So I’ll have to try and be actively posting other items as well. Which really isn’t a problem consider all the crazy news out there (just saw something on Obama’s pitch of his stimulus package that is worth a post, I think), but I will have to be dedicated.

Anyway…this is a pillar at the entrance to Santa Clara University. I have it geotagged so you can see exactly where. I shot this specifically to convert to black and white. The combination of colors were not so great and I realized that the lines and chaos of the vines and branches might work better in black and white tones than in color. I’m not saying that I’m a master at “seeing” in black and white, but I think that my initial education in that medium (film, specifically), has helped me to visualize in tones and I think it worked here.

Not a great photo, but it’s about how I was thinking when I took it.

tree tones

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This was taken, I believe, in Calero County Park in San Jose. I enjoy hiking, though I don’t do it as often as I’d like, and bring a camera along to grab photos of whatever I happen upon along the way. I try really hard to challenge myself and find photos, rather than just waiting for them to find me. I also look at what might be an everyday scene or subject and try to make it stand out and end up interesting.

This is a decent approach to life, too, I might add :-). I try to do that, too – see beyond the first layer, I guess. Not sure I do a great job with it.

Anyway – what I did here was to try and make the moss and texture of the tree stand out by setting the camera up to blur out the background. I didn’t want to blur it out completely (actually, it would have been almost impossible to do that without then blurring out part of the tree), but I think it makes the tree stand out even though the tones, overall, are really similar.

Another thing I do is to try and work entirely “in-camera.” That is, I don’t take a really wide shot and then crop down, for instance. I look through the viewfinder, look at the corners, change my angles, etc, to get the shot framed the way I want. Not only is that less work for me in the end, but it feels more natural that way, to be honest. Maybe I’m being snobbish against those that do a lot of cropping and post processing. I hope not.

On the technical side, this is also one of my attempts at finding a “holy grail” of film and developers. I am trying to find one that gives really good sharpness without too much grain. This developer is one that normally really, really decreases grain, but at the expense of sharpness. By diluting it to one part developer and 3 parts water, I decrease the overall amount of “grain solvent” present and increase sharpness. I’m hoping it’s a good compromise. I made a few mistakes on the exposure side of things but we’ll see how it goes on my next try.

open land

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is the view from the back porch of the apartment where my wife stays in Paso Robles, while she is there working at a local hospital as a nurse. I personally wanted to go trekking around all the land there, but everything belongs to someone and everyone owns guns so I figured I shouldn’t do that. But this, from a back porch, is astounding. I could not get over it.

I wanted a better view of the sunlight as it set on that vineyard that is dead center but all of the roads are much lower than the actual cultivated land so I couldn’t get up there. But it’s still beautiful.

3 stop graduated ND filter plus a polarizer. Allowed the foreground to come out with good detail while making the sky nice and controlled.

The truly amazing thing is that, again, this is from her patio.  This incredible view, right there.  And at night, I can see more stars than I did while I was in Death Valley.  I could almost make out the entire Big Dipper and could find the North Star almost immediately.

a walk along the beach

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

From just after Christmas through New Years, my wife and I were down around Paso Robles, in the Central Coast area of California (Paso’s not really on the coast, but that whole area is called that). This area includes Paso, San Miguel, Templeton, Atascadero, and San Luis Obispo. It also extends southward towards Pismo Beach, and north towards Cambria (by Hearst Castle). I think that covers it for the most part.

My wife works down in Templeton as a nurse. It’s about 2.5 hours south of our home in Santa Clara. It’s tough having her away 3-4 days a week but the job market is how it is for new nursing graduates and this is a good, growing hospital that will get her the experience she needs.

So, technically she was down there for work and I was visiting, but there was a gap during which we were able to drive around and explore that area a bit. We went to SLO, Pismo, Cambria, Morro Bay and up to Hearst Castle as well.

This particular photo is of the pier at Pismo Beach at sunset. It’s geo-tagged so you can see where it is if you go to flickr and look at the map. My wife and I actually stayed just up the beach a few years ago so it was nice to see it again.

Also of note is that this photo was taken with a Panasonic TZ3, a super-zoom compact camera. So I carry around all these big DSLR cameras and expensive lenses and my wife was using this tiny compact camera. The camera does a great job with metering and has great color rendition. It did a great job with the sunset.