A barn

Near my house there is an old barn that is interesting to look at and photograph. It appears to be abandoned with lots of antique farm equipment in it. I have been out several times to photograph it and have found that I have been happier when I take the photographs as HDRs because there is so much detail that is captured in the HDR that is not caught in a regular photograph.

I have taken a lot of photos of this barn from many different angles to in order to try to capture what it is about it that intrigues me with it. I am only going to post three of my favorites. These were not all taken on the same day or even the same time of the day. I took all the photos of this barn standing on the side of the road since I have no clue who owns it and I didn't want to trespass.

This first photo is of the side of the barn that has fallen in. You can see a lot of the equipment that is under the remnants of the hay and barn including several antique John Deere tractors. This photo was taken on a clear day at sunset and is composed of 3 brackets with my 18-135mm lens. I have made a print of this photograph on metallic paper and the halos that I see on the screen are not as visible on the print.

The second photo of two of the tractors. I was using a 70-200mm lens and was able to get in closer to see the details of the tractors and other equipment that is in the barn. This photo was taken several days later on a cloudy day early afternoon again using 3 brackets.

The third photo is of the front tractor from a different angle. You can see more details of this tractor from this angle. This was taken the same day and time as the previous photo also using 3 brackets.

I will continue to go back and photograph this barn as the seasons change and the elements take their toll on the barn.

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.

Out early one morning

This past week it has been much nicer so I have been out more to taking photographs. I have been heading to near by park first thing in the morning sometimes before coffee. Usually this time of year the parks flower beds are over flowing with flowers but this year they are not doing as well because of the very hot and dry weather we have been having.

Here are some that I took Friday morning at Noelridge park using my Macro lens using natural light. The reason I chose these to share is that they are bright and cheerful to me.

Here is a Sunflower. I like the way the leaves are pointing both right and left and that there are still a few dew drop still on it. My settings for this photo were: iso 200, f/11, 1/80sec

Here is a bee on a Sunflower. My setting for this photo were: iso 400, f/11, 1/125sec

Here is a close up of the same bee. My setting for this photo were: iso 400, f/11, 1/64sec

Here is the center of a lily with an ant on the petal near the center. I just love the color of this photo. My settings for this photo were: iso 400, f/11, 1/50sec

State Fair Results

Earlier this summer I entered 4 photographs into the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon and one of my photos was accepted. This is actually a big deal because only a little over 20% of the photos submitted are accepted.

The one that was accepted was San Fernando Cathedral which is in San Antonio, TX. I took this photograph on March 16, 2012 at 9:30pm.

The other three photos I entered but were not accepted are below:

Iowa State Campanile

Bricks Bar and Grill

Pink Lily

If you have a chance to go to the Iowa State Fair make sure you take time to go through the Photography Salon in the Cultural Center Building. There are a lot of fabulous photos that were entered this year. I would love to post about the winners but I do not have their permission. For the list of the results you can go to the Iowa State Fair website: Iowa State Fair and look under the competition tab for the competition results.

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.