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Jeremy > June 2, 2009; Day 31. Like Father, Like Son. I’m prepping this week for Japan and have little time for anything else. I grabbed this shot just before I headed off for work this morning. I’m sure the neighbors got a kick out of me crawling in the weed-and-dew-filled grass in my nice pants. Although I only had a couple of minutes, I am trying to capture shots using my macro lens but at diffraction-free large apertures. (I really wish that the EXIF data included the macro ratio. This is not 1:1 but I think it's greater than 1:2.) This shot could use more depth of field; it probably would have looked great at f/8 or f/11. Raw: Color Temperature: 4950K; Tint: +20 Raw: Exposure: +0.8 Raw: Blacks: 15 Raw: Brightness: 0; Contrast: +50 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > May 20, 2008; Day 18. Why I Don’t Use Weed Killer. If you’d have told me a few years ago that I’d be sneaking into the neighbor’s unmowed yards to gather dandelion seed pods, I’d tell you that you were crazy. But I’ve done it twice now. My pods were mowed down last weekend and haven’t returned, yet. I’m pod-happy because tonight I wanted to recreate one of Oliver’s superb macro shots. I was shocked when I noticed that Oliver’s shot was taken at f/11. There are a couple of differences that help him do this: he’s a little further away from the subject and his camera has a crop sensor. Otherwise, we both have 68mm of extension tubes mounted on our lenses. Oliver’s lens is 100mm which should be an effective 160mm on his crop sensor. My lens is the 90mm macro focused at 1:1. Now that I’ve done this I must say that I like both shots. Still, mine is at f/22 which some would say now suffers from diffraction. I also have serious vignetting but only in the extreme corners. This must be due to the extension tubes. I've shot plenty of 1:1 subjects and not noticed this before. Someday soon I will try this with the D70 see what happens. Raw: Color Temperature: 5700K; Tint: -3 Raw: Recovery: 4 Raw: Blacks: 8 Raw: Brightness: 0; Contrast: +51 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Healing Brush to remove much sensor dust (needs cleaning) PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > May 16, 2009; Day 14. Babylon. This morning I chased after macro subjects for the week 4 assignment of my Joy of Photography class. Right now the ferns are unfurling in the spring sun and I was hoping to find some fractals. They’re everywhere. When focusing this shot, I kept my eye on the curls and hoped that the tiny aperture would allow everything to be in focus. It’s close, but the DOF is very shallow in macro-land, particularly when you attach extension tubes to your macro lens. I have 68mm of extension attached here. This makes the subject larger than life size (1:1) which subsequently shrinks the DOF. Hence the soft portions despite f/64. Diffraction is at work too, although less than I expected. Raw: Crop: 8.6MP Raw: Color Temperature: 5900K; Tint: -15 Raw: Recovery: 100 Raw: Blacks: 25 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Curves and Hue adjustments to produce a Kodachrome effect PS: Clone and Healing Brush tools to remove sensor dust and a strand of spider web PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > May 8, 2009; Day 6. Ugly Flower. I haven’t yet mowed my lawn for the season, which means a lot of weeds are sprouting flowers, to the delight of the bumblebees. I thought I’d practice trying to catch one. But rather than chase the bees, I picked a flower and waited for a bee to come to it. The bees seem to select their flowers somewhat randomly. Naturally, the nearby bees were selecting the adjacent flowers. Someone once wrote that macro work is slow and tedious. I’m beginning to agree! The tripod at its lowest possible setting, just above the ground. While watching the bees, I noticed that they are rather rotund bugs that would need a lot of DOF to show fully in focus. Their girth also causes the flowers to sway under their weight each time they land. By the time the flower has stabilized, the bee is off to the next one. I computed that I’d need no fewer than 8 seconds of perfect stillness on the part of the bee to capture it clearly. (Ring flash to the rescue? I may try that.) I realized that a 1:1 shot of a bumblebee was not in the cards today. Thus, I just photographed the ugly flowers instead. I wish I had noticed the flower in the lower left of the main stem; it is the only attractive one in the bunch. I’d need extension tubes on the macro lens, though, to bring it closer and push the unfortunate dead flower adjacent to it out of the frame. I wonder if flowers are aware of their fallen, rotting brethren next door. I hope not. I could have just pruned it out too. This shot got a lot of post-processing. Click here to see the original JPEG from the camera with just sharpening applied. Feel free to tell me if you think that I’m going overboard with the processing. The lab "a" adjustment did most of the blue-to-purple conversion. I personally like the final result. Kashaaf asked me yesterday if I also tried the rain shot with the focus on the house, or somewhere in between. I didn't try in-between, but I did try a shot of my house with focus on the house. I didn't like it nearly as much. Raw: Color Temperature: 9100K; Tint: 0 Raw: Exposure: +0.25 Raw: Blacks: 19 Raw: Brightness: +18; Contrast: +50 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Curves adjustment to give the effect of developing E4 slide film in C41 chemicals PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 11, 2009; Day 344. Resurrection. One of the assignments for week 1 in the Joy of Photography class is to photograph something you rarely photograph. I admit it, I’m not big on outdoor flowers. But now that I’ve taken the close-up photography class, I am interested in the little flowers that are weeds. (They keep on growing even though I mow over them each week.) This was the first week to find such flowers growing in my yard. So I got on my belly and crawled hither and yon. I’m not going to submit this photo to the class because I need to fix a few mistakes. That blue petal from the out-of-frame flower on the left is too distracting, as is the flower on the right. Also, I need to bracket a few more stops of aperture to see if I can get any more depth of field without ruining the smooth background. Also, I may take a spray bottle of water with me and see what kind of mischief I can make with that. Happy Easter, everyone! Raw: Color Temperature: 4650K; Tint: -15 Raw: Blacks: +19 Raw: Brightness: +24 Raw: Contrast: +45 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 10, 2009; Day 343. It’s In His Tattoo. This is my friend Jeff, officiating at tonight’s “leather night” which turned out to be a really informative and entertaining evening. Even I donned a leather vest and boots tonight to be in the spirit of things. Jeff tattooed the names of his sons on his arms so naturally I shot him from his better side. :~) This is strictly ambient light. There are two sources here, the very blue overcast skies that you can see on the wall to the left, and the incandescent floods overhead. The camera’s auto white balance corrected for the blue lighting which made Jeff very orange. I think if I had set the white balance from a gray card then he would have been much cooler. Personally, I do like skin tones to be a little warm. Raw: Color Temperature: 3300K; Tint: +10 Raw: Fill Light: +20 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Curves adjustment for additional contrast PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 9, 2009; Day 342. Liquor Frill. One of the things I enjoy about hard liquor is the way it’s packaged. The bottles are often of a unique shape and sometimes there are frills on the bottle like this little loop of rope. My friend Brian gave us this bottle of Frangelica last year and I always thought that the rope would make a nice macro. Getting good texture from the rope is important here, so sidelighting is necessary. The rope is 3 dimensional, so it will cast a deep shadow if the light is small and harsh. To soften the shadows, I’m pointing my flash directly at a gold reflector that is standing to the right of the bottle. None of the flash light is striking the bottle directly; it’s all diffused by the reflector. I found that by going monochrome, the hairs on the rope stood out even more, so I picked sepia. The full text of this Old English font? "According to the legend, Frangelico lived three centuries ago in a hilly area bound by the right bank of the river Po. He lived as a hermit and through his love of nature and knowledge of its secrets created unique recipes for liqueurs. The most precious one of all was a liqueur made from wild hazelnuts with infusions of berries and flowers to enrich the flavour. We continue the tradition by proudly offering this fine liqueur in honour of his name." Here’s the original JPEG from the camera if you'd like to see a yellow bottle lit with gold light. Not as bad as you might think. Thank you James Hill for your comment on yesterday’s shot! I love it when people point out the parts of a photo they don’t like. It gives me something to work toward. Raw: Color Temperature: 3900K; Tint: +30 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Hue/Saturation: Colorize; Hue: +37; Saturation: +25 (Sepia) PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 7, 2009; Day 340. Psychedelic Duck. This week I embarked on yet another photography class at the Perfect Picture School of Photography. This time, it’s the 12-week course called The Joy of Photography. In week 1, one of the assignments is to shoot something ordinary in an extraordinary way. This is a smallish rubber duck sitting in a tube used to gift a bottle of wine. My friends Marty and Kevin attended the pasta party last weekend and gave me this. The wine is long gone, but this gift tube will come in handy again I’m sure. This duck was bought for my Art of Seeing class last year, in order to show abandonment as a concept photo. The lighting here is an LED flashlight being held on the left side of the lens. I also tried this shot with a ring flash but I liked the shadows here better. I still have one assignment left to do for my close-up photography class, but I need a good block of time around sunrise to do it. Maybe on Saturday. Kashaaf observed that I’m a “num lock on” kind of guy. Scary but true! I also got some specific questions: My photos are processed on a 2003 Dell XPS with a 20-inch LCD monitor and a 500GB hard drive. It was top of the line in 2003 but it’s a bit long in the tooth now. I use Photoshop CS3 and the Adobe Camera Raw plugin. I haven’t yet learned to use Bridge; I still use Windows Image and Fax Viewer to do the bulk of the purging. The backpack that goes with me everywhere contains the following: D700, 14-24mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-210mm f/4-5.6, 50mm f/1.8 (all Nikkors), Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro, SB-600 and SB-900 strobes, extension tubes, Lee GND filter set, Lee circular polarizer, and various cables. The 300mm f/2.8 and teleconverters are carried separately if I think I’ll use them. I’m missing the 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 16mm fisheye. Some day I will put all this gear in one place and photograph it. Raw: Color Temperature: 5350K; Tint: -13 Raw: Recovery: +100 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 5, 2009; Day 338. Texture In Hand. I remember seeing my mom’s hands after a few years on the farm and marveling at the texture carved into her palms from the toil of being farmers. At the time she was younger than I am now, and sadly, my hands have not worked nearly as hard. Still, there’s lots of texture in there. The assignment for Week 4 in my close-up photography class is to capture texture with and without the help of a reflector. Here, my hand is in the sunlight streaming in from the right. Yes, the right. Only little patches of the sunlight are illuminating my hand; most is blocked by the fingers you don’t see. On the left is my 12-inch gold reflector which is in full sun and therefore, throwing a lot of golden light. Most of this light is reaching my hand. The macro lens was set to 1:2 since I originally wanted to get much more of the hand in the shot. The texture of this crop is better, so I should have gotten closer with the camera. This image was submitted to the class. Raw: Crop: 5.7MP Raw: Color Temperature: 4950K; Tint: -20 Raw: Recovery: +40 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
June 2, 2009; Day 31.

Like Father, Like Son.

I’m prepping this week for Japan and have little time for anything else. I grabbed this shot just before I headed off for work this morning. I’m sure the neighbors got a kick out of me crawling in the weed-and-dew-filled grass in my nice pants. Although I only had a couple of minutes, I am trying to capture shots using my macro lens but at diffraction-free large apertures. (I really wish that the EXIF data included the macro ratio. This is not 1:1 but I think it's greater than 1:2.) This shot could use more depth of field; it probably would have looked great at f/8 or f/11.

Raw: Color Temperature: 4950K; Tint: 20
Raw: Exposure: 0.8
Raw: Blacks: 15
Raw: Brightness: 0; Contrast: 50
Raw: Saturation: 6
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > June 2, 2009; Day 31. Like Father, Like Son. I’m prepping this week for Japan and have little time for anything else. I grabbed this shot just before I headed off for work this morning. I’m sure the neighbors got a kick out of me crawling in the weed-and-dew-filled grass in my nice pants. Although I only had a couple of minutes, I am trying to capture shots using my macro lens but at diffraction-free large apertures. (I really wish that the EXIF data included the macro ratio. This is not 1:1 but I think it's greater than 1:2.) This shot could use more depth of field; it probably would have looked great at f/8 or f/11. Raw: Color Temperature: 4950K; Tint: +20 Raw: Exposure: +0.8 Raw: Blacks: 15 Raw: Brightness: 0; Contrast: +50 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
June 2, 2009; Day 31.

Like Father, Like Son.

I’m prepping this week for Japan and have little time for anything else. I grabbed this shot just before I headed off for work this morning. I’m sure the neighbors got a kick out of me crawling in the weed-and-dew-filled grass in my nice pants. Although I only had a couple of minutes, I am trying to capture shots using my macro lens but at diffraction-free large apertures. (I really wish that the EXIF data included the macro ratio. This is not 1:1 but I think it's greater than 1:2.) This shot could use more depth of field; it probably would have looked great at f/8 or f/11.

Raw: Color Temperature: 4950K; Tint: 20
Raw: Exposure: 0.8
Raw: Blacks: 15
Raw: Brightness: 0; Contrast: 50
Raw: Saturation: 6
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
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