Finally got up to the snow this week!
Was a little disappointed in the weather up at Mt. Buller last Thursday, unfortunately it was foggy all day limiting my options on photos. After lunch I found a spot lower down the mountain that was clear and conveniently there was a jump here. This particular photo was taken fairly late in the day (right before I made my last run to head home).
On the editing side of this, quite a lot was done (although didn’t take that long). A lot of the editing was done in masking the layers. Basically there’s masks on the snowboarder, the trees and the snow. From there, I had to adjust the levels (just a lot of tweaking to get it looking right).
Firstly I removed some fence posts (that were bright orange) and rope from the side of the jump.
The snow had it’s highlights brought right up, and then the mid-tones adjusted to make the shadows show up.
The rider had his mid-tones brought up.
Finally the trees had to be adjusted otherwise they looked totally like a black blob.
Sharpening was done with the Unsharpen Mask which I’m not sure if I got right as I haven’t really used it before (typically I just use the lightroom sharpening slider).
I did want to remove the brown dirt coloured snow, but couldn’t really find a decent way to do it without the photo looking doctored. I don’t think it detracts too much from the photo though.
A nice Altona Beach sunset this week.
My Ultra Wide Angle lens (Tokina 12-24 f/4) needed some love this week. I’ve been neglecting it for a while. Unfortantely this photo isn’t 100% sharp (it’s not bad though). I think it’s due to it being manual focus on my D5000 (lack of motor in the body) and I’ll still finding the actual infinity point (most lenses will focus past infinity) which was quite hard in low light. It could also be related to shooting at f/22 which is beyond the defraction point for my camera (which would typically be around f/8 – f/11).
What I do really like about this photo is the star points coming off the lights. To get this easily, all you need to do is use a narrow f-stop (in this case f/22).
As it’s such a small aperture and in the sunset, this was taken on a tripod. I didn’t have my remote release with me, so I just used the timer (along with “delayed shutter” mode which locks up the mirror for one second before taking the photo).
Processing wise, not much here. I changed the white balance from Auto to Daylight to give it that real blue hue (which is very similar to how I saw it), added a gradient to the sky (which helps make the colours richer), very slight levels adjustment (not much at all though), vibrance adjustment (although it didn’t need much) cropping and sharpening. I did play around with some other effects to see how it looked, but nothing really enhanced it much over the minor changes I had already done.
No snow photo this week. Snow trip was cancelled (right before I got to the mountain) due to most of Mt Buller being closed because of high winds. Hopefully get up there soon. This week, more playing around with the new lens.
A little cliché, especially for these bike racks, but I like it. The repetition is striking.
Very basic processing here. Crop (person was walking on the left of the frame), levels adjustment, clarity, contrast, vibrance (to bring out the blues) and sharpness (not that you need much with the 70-200, especially when shooting stopped down a notch at f/4). Added a slight vignette so the yellow of the wall and the lightness of the footpatch don’t catch the eye quite as much.
I had to get some advice from my lovely wife with this one. I did a black and white version of this as well and couldn’t pick between them. She found the black and white one a little dark for this type of photo. Looking back on it now, yeah, I think she’s right.
Week 33 and some new gear!
Not the best photo to show off the new toy (I’ll get to that later), but a windy and rainy night (along with a crappy tripod) in Melbourne limited my options.
What I like about this photo is the pole itself fading to black. Not quite what I saw but due to the limits of camera contrast, this is what came out, and I like it. This was a quick last minute photo taken on the way home after some failed attempts at long exposure photography. I literally pulled off the side of the road, rolled the window down (well, pushed a button), and took a few photos.
Processing was very simple. The levels went though a very minor adjustment (much less than I normally would do), a little bit of vibrance to make the orange a bit more brilliant, and that’s pretty much it. Due to shooting in RAW, I could have brought more pole detail in, but I like the way this one is, along with the fact that it would have been a very noisy image (Lightroom will only clean up so much noise). The shot itself was taken at 200mm with an aperture of f/2.8 (yep, you read that right) and an ISO of 800.
So, on to the new toy, and boy is this a big one (doubled the value of all my photography gear). Picked up a Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lens. This thing is big and heavy (around 1.5kg for the lens alone). Overkill on my D5000 camera, but good glass is never wasted, and this lens will last a lifetime (pending accidents) across many bodies (would love to have a D3s to attach it to, but I think I’d get in big trouble with the wife if I bought one!).
One thing I have to say about this lens is that it’s super sharp. The day I got it, I went for a quick photo walk around the city taking photos (didn’t really get anything good), but one thing you could really see was how sharp the photos were. Nothing compares to it. Big problem is now I have a love of ‘fast glass’ (my other favourite lens is my 50mm f/1.4), and of course they’re the expensive ones.
Next week, I’m hoping to have a snow photo here. I’m heading up snowboarding on Wednesday and taking the camera. No, I’m not taking the new lens, my much cheaper and lighter 55-200mm f/4-f/5.6 will do quite nicely I think.
Week 32. No writeup last week, the photo is in the gallery here. Nothing special, probably should have used a bit more depth of field and had the tea candle in focus.
This weeks photo wasn’t the best one I took this week. Unfortunatly I don’t put up photos of other peoples kids without permission, so a couple of nice portraits miss out.
A last minute effort for this one. Really didn’t know what I was going to do, so I went for a bit of a drive. In the end, nothing really caught my eye, so decided to go for some close up detail.
Very basic, but pretty cool I reckon. Not a lot of processing above the normal (brightness, contrast, etc), only real change is a higher level on the clarity slider which really brings out the texture of the sand a lot more.
Interesting to note though. The last few weeks I have been almost exclusivly using my 50mm f/1.4 prime lens. I’ve been after a very low depth of field, so this is the only fast lens I have. With any luck, that will change tomorrow as I have a lens being delivered. Watch this space for some shots from it!
Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk this week.
Was quite fun meeting new people and walking around for two hours taking photos. Good getting other insights into taking photos and seeing the photos that people took.
I might put another couple up sometime during the week. While I had fun, I don’t think I took anything spectacular (won’t be winning any of the prizes).
Processing on this was a bit different to what I normally do. The main change was lowering the vibrance slider (I normally tweek it up a little). This has given the photo a slightly desaturated look without going too far to grey. Sharpness & clarity have been cranked up a bit to really make the leaves pop.
One thing I really like about this photo is the twigs on the ground along with the very low depth of field.
A quick update with a few photos uploaded from my photowalk around the Yarra on the weekend. Can be found here.
Not a lot of editing in these, very basic adjustments.
Enjoy.
Also about to upgrade to WordPress 3.0… hopefully this goes ok 
Edit: Wow, painless, let me know if there’s issues with the site.
Photo walk around Melbourne this week. Took quite a few photos from along the Yarra River area. This was one of my favourites.
Taken with my Tokina 12-24mm f/4 lens at 12mm. So a nice wide angle shot. I’m not 100% happy with the angle of the wheel, looks a little lopsided, but this is mainly due to the very wide angle lens and the subject being off center.
Processing wise, a little done to it, but not a whole lot. Basic white-balance, levels, noise reduction & sharpening. From there, I’ve pushed the clarity and contrast up quite a bit along with the vibrance and a touch of saturation. A minor vignette was added, but in the end, it probably doesn’t enhance the photo as much as I was expecting. A bit of clean-up along the left was done to remove the edge of a tree that was showing.
Later in the week I’ll probably upload a few of the other photos I took from my walk.
Next week will probably be stuff from around the other side of the city as I’m going on Scott Kelby’s World Wide Photo Walk. Which I’m looking forward too (just hope it’s not raining for the walk).
I was lazy last weekend and didn’t write up the photo. Took it and uploaded it though.
Originally this was going to be taken and processed with flash. I had it set up and it looked quite impressive. 2 Flashes, one from each side to try and get a nice even light/reflection across the chrome – a strip softbox would be ideal, but unfortunately I can’t afford one… yet. Since this is a light sabre, and it has it’s own light, I figured I’d give that a go. Turns out it looked really good. Best thing to improve this image is if I had a seamless black background (paper or muslin). Not much processing at all apart from all the touch ups removing the dog hair from the couch.
This weeks photo is a bit of an experiment in processing. In particular the border.
A nice chinese statue from near the Princess Theater on Spring St in Melbourne. A bit of an experiment in using a “sloppy” border which I quite like (I don’t think it would work putting a title on the image though). The other experiment comes from watching Photoshop User TV and a suggestion of using the sharpen brush (which wouldn’t have been touched in previous versions). I did some selective sharpening with this on some of the high detail areas to make them pop out more. On top of this, I’ve played around with some Lightroom presets to get a bit more of a vivid/saturated look out of it.
Half way point of the year. Can’t believe I’ve kept this up! This weeks photo comes from a photo walk I did at lunchtime on Friday scouting out locations for a future photo shoot (no details yet, don’t want to jinx it!).
Hosier Lane in Melbourne is quite well known for its (legal) street art. This little laneway (Rutledge Lane) comes off the side of Hosier lane, around the back of a single building, then rejoins Hosier Lane. Looks like a fantastic location for a grunge style shoot. I took quite a few other shots of much better street art on my walk, but considering I was just taking the artwork, I couldn’t really call the photo my own.
One thing I really like about this photo, is that the bins are in the way, but have just been painted over. Nothing is really an obstacle. Even the road itself has graffiti on it.
Processing wise, not much apart from the basics really. Being an overcast day, the colours had great contrast, so even the tweaks on levels were minor. A slight vibrance boost (not much though) and some sharpening.
