Chicago

This past weekend was spent in Chicago attending the wedding of good friends Nora and Michael.  While there, we did plenty of hiking around the city searching out some of the great food the city has to offer.  Of course I could not pass up the opportunity to haul around my camera and take some shots of opportunity.

Chicago is a city proud of many things, not the least of which is its architecture which provides great targets of opportunity for anyone walking about.  On our second day in Chicago we ventured out to Oak Park to visit the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright and the birth place of Ernest Hemingway.  I will focus on the visit to Oak Park in future posts, but for now, here are a few of my photographs from our walk around Chicago.

Have fun and go make some great photography.

Craig

Washington Nationals Park During Construction

Although I live in Washington DC, just a over a mile from Nationals Park, I have to admit to not being a baseball fan.  It is not that I don’t have affection for the home team, but I simply don’t have the patience for baseball.  For me, baseball is somewhat like the NBA and NHL that suffer from too many games in a season for anything less than fully dedicated fans to get their heads around.  I generally reengage with these sports when playoff time comes – when every game is significant.  The idea of every game being important is what makes the NFL more appealing to me.  With fewer games in the NFL (and all college sports), each game takes on greater significance.

However, my views on baseball and other sports are not the subject of this post.  The purpose is to share some photography of Nationals Park during construction.  Nationals Park opened in 2008.  These photographs are all stitched panoramas taken during the late spring of 2007.

I have not shared these photographs previously because they do not show well in this format.  But being the middle of baseball season, I decided to go ahead and share these with my baseball loving friends.  From a photographic perspective, there are two characteristics of these photographs of note.  First, the photographs are composed of 5 to 7 individual photographs stitched together to form a single panoramic photograph.  Second, my choice to process the photos as black and white.

I chose black and white because it enhances the industrial feel of the composition, and because most of the color information in the photos came from construction and safety equipment.  Neither of these components added anything to the composition.

At the writing of this post, the Washington Nationals are in next to last place in the National League East with a record of 49 wins and 52 losses.  Lets hope they improve their season before the playoffs come, and I tune back in to baseball.

Have fun, and go make some great photography.

Craig

National Cathedral, Washington DC, at Night

For quite some time I have had a lingering shoot on my photography work list that I just never seemed to get around to checking off.  In January I was finally able to make it happen, and made it out of the house very early on a Saturday morning to photograph the National Cathedral in Washington DC at night.

For a long time I had visualized the shots I wanted.  The key parts of the shoot included shooting at night, shooting in winter when the trees were barren, and shooting on the weekend when I could easily find a parking spot.  Combining these three prerequisites with the need to get up well before sunrise kept this shoot on my work list for much longer than most other planned shoots.

My shoot was successful, and these are a few of the photographs I was able to make.  I particularly like the way the stark trees interplay with the cathedral.  And with very little color information, it made complete sense to process them as black and white.

Each of the photographs are 5 shot HDR images taken with a Canon 17-40mm f/4.0 L at 17 mm.  I am also pleased with the HDR processing.  I am finally closing in on my goal of producing HDR images that don’t look like HDR images while still taking advantage of the real value of HDR; bringing out the details in both the highlights and shadows.

Have fun and go make some great photography.

Craig

California’s Golden Gate Bridge

This post continues my recent theme of photography from Northern California.  Today’s photographs feature the Golden Gate Bridge taken from the Marin Headlands. 

My timing for these photographs was about as good as it gets…by coincidence.  My wife and I had just spent the day driving the coastline from well north in Mendocino county and arrived to beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco just moments before sunset.

With the sun low on the horizon, I was treated to beautifully saturated colors, a dramatic sky, and wonderfully formed shadows.

The Golden Gate bridge is a beautiful structure and draws tremendous crowds to the Marin Headlands.  I have some more shots from the San Francisco side, but will save those for another time.

All photographs are hand held three exposure HDR images taken on a Canon 5D, 24-105mm f/4.0L, various focal lengths, f 8.0, ISO 100, and various shutter speeds.

Have fun and go make some great photography.

Craig

Christmas in Washington DC–US Capitol

The snow in Washington DC yesterday was great!  DC is so beautiful after a fresh coat of makeup.  This post continues the theme of Christmas in Washington and features the U.S capitol, and the snow certainly adds to the Christmas atmosphere.


I must have walked 10 miles in the snow (against the wind, up hill, and with no shoes) and learned a little about shooting while it is snowing.  While I have photographed regularly in the cold, a blowing wet snow is a completely different thing.  In addition to my normal cold weather precautions (battery care, slow transition of camera/lens temp, etc.) I found a couple of things handy yesterday.  First, the rocket blower to keep snow off the lens was indispensible.  I also took a micro fiber cloth to keep the camera relatively dry.  Finally, practical things like pointing the camera toward the ground when not shooting and keeping the lens cover on while moving from locations were helpful in keeping the camera ready to go.


The one precaution I failed to takes was use of a camera bag.  I normally don’t like the hassle of taking the camera in and out of the bag.  I much prefer hanging the camera on a Black Rapid strap which is very comfortable and keeps the camera at the ready.  However, in snowy conditions, the viewfinder and the LCD screen were all but useless.  A little snow, a little water, and some ice crystals conspired to leaving me with little more than the ability to see that the shot was framed somewhat correctly.


Due to the small size of the photos, you probably can’t see much of the falling snow, but trust me, it was falling pretty rapidly.  I was wearing a long wool coat and it did not take long for me to transform into some resemblance of Frosty the Snowman.


I will be continuing the theme of Christmas in Washington DC.  So visit again soon.
Have fun, and go make some great photography.
Craig

Christmas in Washington DC–Library of Congress

As promised in my last post, here is the next installment of Christmas photography in Washington DC.  The photographs here all come from the Library of Congress.  The Library of Congress is a beautiful and impressive building.  If you have not been there, I highly recommend a visit.


While I was shooting, there were a number of people taking the free tour.  Of course I was doing a bit of eve’s dropping and was impressed with the detailed conversation of the architecture and history of the building.


As I write this, the snow in DC has started.  This will result in three things; 1) closures of most everything, 2) traffic chaos, and most importantly, 3) some great photography opportunities.  I will be heading out momentarily to take some photographs for the next posts of this series.


Have fun and go make some great photography.
Craig

Don’t Delete Your Photographs Part III–Graffiti in Focus

This is the third in a series of posts discussing software packages that offer the opportunity to salvage photographs you may otherwise discard.  Just so we are all clear, getting the shot right the first time is undoubtedly the best approach.  But if you have that once in a lifetime opportunity to shoot the Central Park Yeti – and you miss the focus – there may be some help available.  And focus is the topic of today’s post.

 

Last week, I heard of a new software package by Topaz Labs called InFocus.  The software was touted as having the capability to restore photos that suffered from either motion blur or simply being out of focus.  I just had to experience this miracle.  Well, I was both disappointed and encouraged at the same time.  I was disappointed that the software did not live up to my expectations, but encouraged that Topaz Labs took a first step in providing a solution.  Topaz Labs makes some great products, so I expect the next generations of this package to move the focus recovery concept to a truly valuable piece of software.

 

I would like to provide you some examples of out of focus shots and the result from InFocus, but I will rather focus on a positive application of this package.  Fundamentally, Infocus is a targeted sharpening software.  So rather than continue to be disappointed by attempts to heal unfocused shots, I decided to apply InFocus as a sharpening tool.  The photographs here show the results.

 

The first photograph is the post-processed yet unsharpened original.  The second photograph is a cropped area of the original – unsharpened – to give you a better view of what InFocus can do.  Finally, the third photograph is a repeat of the cropped section with InFocus applied as a sharpening tool.  In my opinion, InFocus makes a fine sharpening tool although it lacks some of the controls other dedicated sharpening packages provide.  Finally, the last photo is the entire composition with InFocus applied as a sharpening tool.

 

In summary, I am not recommending InFocus as a tool to salvage out of focus, or motion blurred shots.  The good news is that some really bright people are working on this, and a solid solution is likely just around the corner.

Have fun, and go make some great photography.

Craig

Don’t Delete Your Photographs Part II–Ghosts at Damascus Gate

This is the second in a series of posts discussing a few pieces of software that present the opportunity to save photographs you may otherwise decided to discard.  The conclusion resulting from these advancements is to save your photographs (even the flawed ones that hold promise); a software magician is about to make them better.

 

In this post, I focus on Photomatix Pro.   This software package is specialized for processing multiple exposure HDR photography.  Photomatix has always done a fine job of processing HDR photos.  However, until recently it had some difficulties handling “ghosts.”  Ghosts result from people or objects moving  - in other words they show up in a different location in each exposure.  Imagine a three exposure HDR image that has a person walking from left to right through the frame.  When processing the three images, the software is confronted with a person in three different positions…where does the person belong?

 

A recent update to Photomatix Pro went a long way to remedy this by allowing the user to select ghosted areas, then designate which exposure to use for eliminating the ghosts.  The photograph of Damascus Gate (The old city of Jerusalem) featured here is an example.  The first version was processed with the selective ghosting tool.  The next two versions are tighter crops so you can see the differences.  The second version uses the “automatic” deghosting function of Photomatix Pro.  The auto mode was as good as it gets prior to the update unless you went through a good deal of tedious masking in Photoshop.  Finally, the last version shows the same shot with no deghosting.

 

For my taste, and what I was trying to achieve with this photograph, the second and third versions are unacceptable.  6 months ago, I might have overlooked a photo with such ghosting problems unless the “ghosts” were an interesting part of the composition (see my photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge in a previous post).  With the recent advancements to Photomatix Pro, I can shoot crowds with confidence and know that I will not be spending hours in Photoshop masking out ghosts.

 

Have fun, and go make some great photography.

 

Craig

New York Street Photography

Three posts in a row featuring color photography!  I noticed the last two each featured color, so I said why not?…make it a third.  This post is also inspired by the quickly approaching Thanksgiving Day celebration which I will be passing in New York with my family.  My daughter is preparing her first big family Thanksgiving feast, and I am very much looking forward to it.

The photographs featured in this post were taken in March, 2010 on a trip to NY to visit my daughter.  New York is a paradise for street photography.  Not a step goes by that something new and interesting is sure to cross your path.  The first two photographs are a great example.  These shots are of the same alley.  The second, at the entrance to the alley, and the first further into the alley.  Except for the blue doors and window frame of the café at the end of the alley, it would be difficult to recognize these shots were taken within 100 feet of each other and focused in the same direction.

The previous photograph is a small portion of the Brooklyn bridge.  It is unclear what is going on inside these doors, but my mind was wandering a bit when I named the shot “Brooklyn Bridge Condos.”

This photograph of some details from the Old Staten Island Ferry Building begged to be processed as color.  I really wanted to make the B/W transformation, but the colors kept screaming to be free.  With some great tonal range within the colors, I relented.

Finally, here is a shot of a school and a church from a park.  Sorry, I don’t recall the name of any of them.  But I can tell you what I like about the shot.  First, the starkness of the barren trees add a wonderful texture to the composition both directly and through the shadows cast on the ground.  Second, the lightly clouded blue sky  frames the buildings and park below while adding a complimentary color.  Finally, I like the colors of both the church and the school particularly in the way the two color relate to each other.

I’m sure I will be returning to black and white soon, so stand by.

Have fun, and go make some great photography.

Craig

Architecture for Ashley

I am once again sitting in the Etihad lounge in Abu Dhabi attempting to entertain myself while waiting for my flight.  Fortunately, photography is a never ending source of recreation.

While sitting here, I was presented with a request for some specific photography.  My niece, Ashley, asked to see more architectural photography.  Ashley is a budding photographer who has a creative eye and is doing some great work.  I really hope she sticks with the photography and maybe even make a career of it. 

Ashley blogs about a number of topics as one would expect of a college student, but she often writes about her photography (www.ashleycorl.wordpress.com).  I recommend you visit her blog and see some of her fine work.

The photography featured in this post is only held together by the subject of architecture.  Had I put a bit more thought into this, I probably could have come up with a more cohesive theme and collection.  However, I board in 35 minutes, and am hustling to get this posted.

Quite honestly, I don’t even have time to talk about the locations.  Some are obvious.  Others less so.  Maybe you can take a guess.

So to answer Ashley’s request for some architectural photography, I offer this random collection of photography.

Ashley, I hope you enjoyed the photography.




Have fun and go make some great photography!
Craig

Mosques in the Unfamiliar Abu Dhabi

I don’t mean to overload you with photography from Abu Dhabi, but I am spending a lot of time here, and therefore it is, by default, the subject of much photography.  Also, I am working on a project that I have tentatively called “The Unfamiliar Abu Dhabi.”  The photographs featured in the post are additional candidates for this project.

The city of Abu Dhabi is a study in contrast on a number of levels.  These photographs represent one small slice of that contrast.  The story I want to tell in these photographs is the rapid pace of development contrasted against a rich religious tradition.

If you were to visit Abu Dhabi, you would never be out of sight of a mosque (the previous photograph shows three mosques within eyesight of each other, on one city block).  I can’t verify the veracity of the statement, but a friend once told me that Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder of the United Arab Emirates, wanted mosques located in such a way that no one would have to walk more than 500 meters to find a mosque for daily prayers.  True or not, my guess is that the objective was achieved.
So now we can juxtapose mosques located at convenient intervals surrounded by skyscrapers and the ubiquitous construction and development that lives in Abu Dhabi without pause.  Contrast level one.
More of the Unfamiliar Abu Dhabi to come and I hope you are enjoying the more frequent and shorter blog posts.  I would love to hear your feedback.
Have fun, and go make some great photography!
Craig