A Photo Contest results

Recently I entered some photos into a photo contest that was done by one of the photo clubs I am a member of. I was pleased with how I did. I would have loved to have placed in everything I entered but realistically I know that is not possible especially with several of the phenomenal photographers that are members. One of the best parts of entering into this club's contest is the feedback on how to improve my photography.

Here is the photo that won the Open Category and was runner up to Best of Show. It is the Decorah Bank Building. This was taken in July at the Nordic Fest and was a HDR. I have had this photo on this blog when I talked about building an HDR.

I had an Honorable Mention with my Black and White Spider Web. This photo was on this blog last week.

My other Honorable Mention was the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. This was the photo that was accepted into the State Fair and discussed in that post.

Sorry that there is not as much content to my blog this week, but it has been a very busy week and I did not have much time to write.

Saturday morning marco photo walk

This past Saturday one of the photo clubs I am a member of had a Macro photo walk at a local park. We decided that it should be held at 6:30am so we could get out and shoot before the bugs became too active and the breeze started up. We have several members show and had a good time.

All these photos were shot using my Canon Macro 100mm f/2.8 lens. All of these were shot using natural light.

My first photo from the day is of an orange bug on a yellow flower. I like this photo because of the way the light was on him and the edge of the flower. My setting were: iso 200, f/3.5, 1/100sec

My second photo is of a spider. I like the way he was sitting there with the light hitting him. I would have liked to have taken him from a slightly different angle but he moved when I moved. My setting were: iso 200. f/3.5, 1/100sec

My third photo is of the spider's web. This was a bit of a challenge because I could not get all the web in focus because my depth of field was too shallow and the water I misted it with kept evaporating very fast. My setting were: iso 200, f/3.5, 1/320sec

My last photo is of a bee. He was very active and was a bit of challenge to get one that I liked. My setting were: iso 200, f/5.6, 1/160sec

All of these photos were very minimally edited, most of these have not even cropped.

Boyson Trail

I have been on many mornings going out with my camera on the Boyson Trail. The trail goes from near Bowman Woods winding along the Indian Creek through Thomas Park ending at
Hanna Park.

On these walks I take pictures of whatever catches my eye that morning. I don't take a lot of pictures and sometimes I don't quite get the shot I wanted. The nice thing is that I can try again the next time I am on the trail. I will be posting pictures off and on from this trail as we go through the year as a way to see how it changes through the different seasons.

The lens I have had on my camera for these walks is my Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Zoom. This lens is not as sharp as my macro but is a better walk around lens.

This first photo is of a squirrel with a nut in his mouth. He chirpped at me until I noticed him and then he ran into the tree. He is not as sharp as I would because I had my camera set too slow because I had been taking pictures of some wildflowers along the trail. The settings for this photo were iso 200, f/8, 1/12sec

The second photo is of two bees on a yellow wildflower. This photo is much sharper than the squirrel but is not as sharp as my macro lens. I took this photo after I had taken the squirrel photo. My setting for this photo were iso 100, f/9, 1/50sec

These are the only two photos that I am going to share this week from my walks along the Boyson Trail. I will be back on Boyson Trail and there will be more photos. This is a very popular trail here I have never been on the trail when I did not run into a lot of other people on it as well.

Creating an HDR

I have in a previous post talked a bit about HDR photography, High Dynamic Range photography.  In this post I wanted to show the steps used to create the final photo.

These photos were taken recent at Nordic Fest in Decorah, IA.

HDR photos are composite photos. They are created from several photos that are the same except for the f stop. Ideally you try to have nothing change except for the aperture of the lens but if you are outside there might be small movement and the software can help merge things so you do not see "ghosts" created by this movement. There are times however you might want these "ghosts" for artistic reasons.

To compile the photos takes special software. The one I use is photomatrix and I have been happy with it. There are other programs and they are also very good.

I use 3 bracketed shots for my HDRs because this is what my camera has in its software for bracketing photos. There is software available that can do up to 10 bracketed photos and you can also do it manually as well.

The first photo taken for the HDR, this is according to the software in my camera is the one at the correct aperture.

The second photo is underexposed. I set my camera for 2 stops under the first shot.

The third shot is overexposed by 2 stops from the first shot.

After I have taken the photos I download them to my computer and then import them into photomatrix. I do not edit these at all before importing them. I wait until after I have created the composite photo. Once I import them into the program I then choose a style that I want to continue editing the image with. I have found that I tend to use the painterly setting the most and then adjust the image further as needed moving the adjustment slides till I like what I see. After I am done with the merging of the images I may then do further editing in photoshop elements if I feel the image needs cropping or any other edits.

Here is the HDR I created from the 3 photos above.

As you can clearly see the HDR has all the details from the 3 images creating an image that the camera is not able to take with one image and in this case there is more drama in the final photo because of having the full range of highlights and shadows and all the details that were captured in each image that others bracketed shots were not able to capture.

One photo different edits

This week has been busy and hot so I have been out to take photos mainly in the morning, before I have even had coffee. I decided look at what different forms of editing can do for a photo.

I took this wildflower this week at Lowe Park here in Marion. It is a pink cone flower that is fairly common. The setting for this photo was iso200, f/5.6, 1/100sec

This was the basic image.

I wasn't happy with this photo because the background had too many highlights.

I decided to try Gray scaling the background.

I still wasn't happy with this the background was still too distracting because of the highlights.

I had suggested to me try darkening the background.

This was better but I felt there was too much background so I cropped the photo.

This version of the flower I think is the best I can get this image. I also upped the color saturation a little bit as well. In this version the flower attracts your attention while the background is not totally nothing it does not distract.

How can I improve this photo. There is not much I can do to make this a really good photo but I did learn several things. I will make sure I have a cup of coffee before I head out so I will be a bit more awake.  I definitely will pay more attention to what the leaves in the background are doing in the light. I will set me camera to slightly underexpose the flower so I can do more in editing the photo. I probably would choose I more perfect flower.

Panoramas

Recently we went to  Western Wyoming for my nephew's graduation. We took this opportunity to also do a bit of sightseeing as well. On the way out we went through the Snowy Mountain area of the Medicine Bow Mountains and on the way home we went through Grand Tetons National Park, Yellowstone National Park and other parks.

The land is just beautiful and vast. It is just too much for a regular photograph, it needs panoramas to do it justice. To try to capture the vast beauty I took a series of photographs that I was able to stitch together with my software to form panoramas. I use several programs depending on what I am doing. I tend to use Adobe Photoshop Elements and the second most is Adobe Lightroom. I have found that these programs while similar do things differently so I use the one that will do what I want the easiest.

The downside to these stitched together panoramas can be very large file size. Sometimes the camera will see colors a bit differently in each image so you sometimes it is very noticeable where the different images were stitched together. This means that you either have to do a lot of work to correct this in the merged image of before you merge.

Here are some of the panorama that I took in Wyoming. All of these were taken with my 18-135mm lens because I have a polarizing filter for it.

This one is was take in the Snowy Mountain area of Medicine Bow it is comprised of 9 images. The settings were 400iso, f/8, 1/800sec

The next one was taken in Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming it is comprised of 5 images. It was hazy that day so the mountains are not sharp and crisp. The settings were 400iso, f/4.5, 1/4000sec

Panorama can be more than grand vistas such as mountains but also things like lakes, ponds even waterfalls. They can be horizontal or vertical. Both of these were taken at Yellowstone. The first one is one of the prismatic hot springs in the park this picture is comprised of 4 images. This is not the Grand Prismatic Spring but a small one that was near by.  The settings were 400iso, f/11, 1/200sec. Yes, the colors were this vibrant.

The next picture is a vertical picture of Kepler Cascade and is comprised of 4 images. The settings were 400iso, f/11, 1/800sec. I did take more photos to try to merge for this waterfall but they didn't line up nicely so I decided not to use them in the panorama.

Merged Panoramas are a lot of fun and a great way to get the pictures that are too large for a single shot with your camera. Sometimes though the camera will see each photo with a slightly different color. I had this happen. I was using a 70-200mm lens that I was renting and did not have a polarizing filter for it, while this can also happen with a polarizing filter. The setting were 400iso, f/11, 1/400sec. This was taken just outside Laramie, WY. It is comprised of 10 images and it needs a lot of work on blending the colors before I would be able to use for anything.