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I checked the resolution of these images against the files straight out of the camera. I was concerned that my processing was somehow softening the edges and delivering less resolution. Good new! My processes retain all the resolution I could ever want. This is fun stuff.
This image is an enormous stitch effort. The file is quite large and all the details and resolution are simply over the top stunning. The prints look gorgeous.
What an amazing GREAT time the Mt Tabor Adult Soapbox Derby 2009 event was! Too much fun, that's all I can say.
Since there are so many good straight photographs, I decided to try something a little different. Heavy texture layers. Super ultra holy cow fantastic wide angle lens. Emphasizing the machines. I rather like the effect.
My wife and I went for a rather nice, if not a little damp, walk through the redwoods at Humbolt State University. This is second growth redwood. Even at that, the size of some of the trees was truly impressive.
For this series, I used an HDR technique to make sure I captured the complete dynamic range, then made sure the blacks and whites were of the proper tones. Also, I added a green filter to lighten to foliage. Finally, adding a handmade sepia tine, I think I've come close to achieving the "look" I was after.
Continuing with a series of store window images, I found a new set of models to photograph down toward a different light rail station than I usually board at. You can really get a sense of how different stores like to sell to different buyers.
Pavlov's Dogs are not all the same, are they?
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 1
Noise Reduction: 0.03
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PreGamma: 0.4
Just a little bit of rain and you would only see one vehicle in this image.
This is at the parking area for the Painted Hand ruins that are now part of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument.
Further down the road are ruins known as Cut Throat Castle group that are still part of Hovenweep National Monument.
I think the two should merge but I guess one is BLM and the other is NPS.
All this land is checker boarded to some degree with ranch and crop lands.
That rental could make it up to a certain point towards Cut Throat Castle but would have to either stop or risk being unable to make the climp back up a rocky uneven road beyond the "safe parking" area.
Had there been rain or snow they would have to park back at the paved road as we did 3 years ago before we bought the Xterra.
Its been said a rental can go over anything. It might, but getting back over it might be a problem.
There are so many things to learn and experience. Each step I take seems to go deeper into the kinds of images I was only in my wildest dreams ever hoping to create.
Has anyone mentioned that image making can be fun? LOL!
To be airplane high without the airplane. Looking down from Mesa Verde on a trail not far from the campgrounds there.
Shot taken at sunset facing east.
The leap this lizard took to get to this wall was amazing so of course I blew the shots.
The previous image shows the lizard poised to jump up onto this wall.
I have always admired artists who've been able to capture the "essence" of a bird. National Geographic and the Audubon magazines pointed the way and set the standard, back in the day.
Fast forward thirty years and I find I really enjoy watching the birds in our backyard. Such fun, these. I call the American Goldfinches we have my little piggies. They eat through a feeder of thistle a week. Happy we don't have children to feed too. :-)
When Greg and I went to ride the Speeders, we took a moment to walk through Oaks Park. I put the 8mm Peleng fisheye on the camera to see what kind of distortions I could get.
After passing the image through Qtpfsgui, I continued to modify them using the Gimp.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 1
Noise Reduction: 0.008
------
PreGamma: 1
Not as secluded as some destinations but its an interesting enough place in the middle of a mining town.
This series of images has several inspirations. I like the wood cut or engraved feel of these. We see these kinds of images around so many of the Paris flea markets. Alas, I can't afford them and all too often they're not of a subject I'm interested in.
My many thanks to the G'Mic developer, David Tschumperle and to David Patrick for providing a kewl new tool and for sharing what's possible.
Visiting with Desmo_Dave was great. My wife and I hadn't seen him since he made the trek to Paris a couple years back when we were there.
Vancouver is reportedly the highest density city along the West Coast. Still, there was plenty of room to move about and the traffic was better than anything I've ever experienced in Seattle or San Francisco. Oh, and the people there tend to be slim, trim and fit. Very unlike in the US where 60%+ of the population is overweight.
The Chinese Bell at the Rose Quarter has always seemed a little un-real to me. So using the tone-map technique I was able to express how these bells feel to me. Complex. Highly textured. Other worldly.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1.4
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 0.6
Noise Reduction: 0.01
------
PreGamma: 1
These are the last of the portraits from the 2008 event that I'll post. Soon, with luck, I'll be able to share some battle scenes.
The previous image in my stream shows the business end of this snake.
Out by Picket Post Mountain.
This critter lay right in the middle of the old highway looking much like a stick, terrible survival strategy.
I stopped in time to be able to get a few shots while it kept on playing stick.
Then the monsoon rain hit and I got back in the truck and waited for the snake to get out of the road.
It did so and we all went on with our lives.
There is a scenic loop out there which requires high clearance and four wheel drive. Unfortunately for us we didnt have quite enough clearance to make it more then half way thru before things really started getting rough.
The Pink Jeep tours had little problem.
I intend to upgrade this Xterra soon and return to that road and do the whole loop.
I am building rock sliders and winch bumper right now, and intend to get new tires and suspension to make more trail ready.
Stock this vehicle has done us very well and allowed us to get a lot of places without having to walk a lot of extra miles to get to our destination but
she needs a bit more clearance and better shoes to really clean some of these more difficult trails.
Wandering around an amusement park that's closed for Winter is really quite fun. You never know what you'll stumble upon, which way your head will turn, things the eye will find pleasing.
I gave these photos the treatment I did because I find amusement parks hyper-real in any event. This closely matches what my mind constructs whenever I visit.
The Napa riverfront is being renovated. This area is under construction. Maybe the downtown areas won't flood as much as they have in the past?
This image was processed from a stack of three images (+/-2EV, 0EV), put through Qtpfsgui, and then further processed using the GIMP. I have left the Qtpfsgui parameters in place, but please remember; these were just the starting place and the Gimp further modified the original source images.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 0.7
Noise Reduction: 0.1
------
PreGamma: 0.5
What an amazing GREAT time the Mt Tabor Adult Soapbox Derby 2009 event was! Too much fun, that's all I can say.
Since there are so many good straight photographs, I decided to try something a little different. Heavy texture layers. Super ultra holy cow fantastic wide angle lens. Emphasizing the machines. I rather like the effect.
There were so many wonderful machines to be seen flying, winging, wobbling down the road at this years Mt Tabor Adult Soapbox Derby event. Really gives me inspiration to build and run one of my own. Maybe something based on Victorian era themes. My fine wench and I, appropriately attired, holding forth with a faux-Brit upperclass accent. A wee-bit-o-bubbly. Handing out gifts as we make our way down the hill-side. Bubbles happily emitting from the back of the vehicle.
My wife and I went for a rather nice, if not a little damp, walk through the redwoods at Humbolt State University. This is second growth redwood. Even at that, the size of some of the trees was truly impressive.
For this series, I used an HDR technique to make sure I captured the complete dynamic range, then made sure the blacks and whites were of the proper tones. Also, I added a green filter to lighten to foliage. Finally, adding a handmade sepia tine, I think I've come close to achieving the "look" I was after.
I'm really enjoying the tone mapping technique. Add a dash of sepia tone. Et Voila! Images that come closer what what I've _wanted_ to create than I've ever come in 40 years of clicking a shutter.
“An innovative open source software platform known as the Freedom Toaster has provided an opportunity to bridge the digital divide and make software available free of charge to the previously disadvantaged.”
Read more about the Freedom Toaster
issuu.com/designinformation/docs/design_in_technology_1_2/71
From the Cajon Group of outliers at Hovenweep in Utah you can see the gas and oil brick-a-brack. On a dark cloudy and almost snowy day you can see the flames burn.
Look at the large view.
Lomaki Pueblo early morning. I should have painted in a blue sky and painted out that sign but this is the last photo of this month so perhaps next month, which is tomorrow.
A stitch of two images taken at the Painted Hand ruins at Hovenweep.
Sleeping Ute Mountains in the background.
Panorama created using Hugin and GIMP.
It's difficult to imagine trees that stand so tall, are so big around at the base, and are still quite young. This is a second growth forest. The remains of the first growth are impressive. It's nearly enough to bring one to tears thinking about what must have been. Now, all removed so some Fat Cat somewhere long dead and gone could fill his greedy pockets with gold and silver...
These were processed using a HDR technique to ensure shadow detail and retention of information in the highlights. I added a green filter to bring up the foliage and then applied a sepia tint to add the "feeling" I was looking for.
Chaco Canyon's most well known ruin.
This is the only vantage point I could sqeeze the whole of the place in one frame with my 24mm.
The post-its were to be put on the wall on five big posters of each of the rooms where the working sessions were held. Each of these posters were dedicated to one of the five themes we worked with in the Bazaar project, being: 1. Social Software, Tools and Content Creation; 2. Hey Dude, where's my data?; 3. OERs and the Culture of Sharing; 4. Interoperability and Metadata; 5. PLEs, e-Portfolio's and Informal Learning.
On the sonoran desert preserve south of Phoenix and east of Gila Bend on an old stage coach trail there is a water catch surrounded by a black iron pipe fence.
A tank stores the water and two access points where the water is drinkable by smaller animals attract these doves and lots of honey bees. Thousands of honey bees.
The doves would fly in and out to get water but it appeared they were annoyed by the presence of the bees.
The bees did not get upset at my presence so I assume that doves just dont cotton to bees.
Much like the previous image in my stream this was under exposed but not as much, auto levels and an overlay gave this a dreamy feel that the realistic approach didnt have, The light was harsh and bleaching so it seems lucky to me that these came out as well as they did.
The less I buy the more I realize how hard advertisers and retailers strive to make people respond to their "signals" like just so many of Pavlov's Dogs.
To take the "buy signal" and turn it inside out, I wanted to see what I could do to bring out details otherwise not seen and to see if I could transform the Pavlov Response into something different and unintended.
To this end, I really like the way these images transform the human form into something nearly real and breathing. The textiles take on a shape and form all their own, like just so much drapery with wrinkles.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1.5
Beta: 0.7
Color Saturation: 0.7
Noise Reduction: 0.09
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PreGamma: 1
This image is the result of much clone tool abuse and digital fakery, much like the Iranian missle test images published by their government, this image is only about 75% real.
The original three image stitch the next image of my stream.
I chose what happened to be one of the wettest days in November to head out to a local cemetery to snag a few photos. It was so wet that I sloshed and slipped, slid and mucked throughout the graveyard.
I was hoping to continue the image theme that I started with the steamlocomotives. Alas, the graveyard images became their own theme. Dreamy. Erie. Beautifully strange.
Canon 40D, 10-22 EF-S, Gimp, Sepia, etc...
There is a tall totem pole at Oaks Park. The first couple trips down there I tried my hand at photographing it. But I wasn't thrilled with what I came away with.
On the most recent trip down to visit SP4449 I used a longer lens to pull details out of the pole. I then tone-mapped the images to begin to reveal the subtle contrasts and details in the wood. After which I continued processing using the Gimp to get the right mix of contrast, colors (I like them slightly desaturated), and sample coloring of various layers (in this case, sepia).
Now we're getting somewhere. I like these more than any of the poles I photographed up in BC, Canada. In fact, I like these so much I'm wondering if I might not need to make another trip to that beautiful country to the north of us.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1.3
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 1
Noise Reduction: 0
------
PreGamma: 1
My wife and I went to Vancouver, BC to visit Desmo_Dave. He was over for a conference and being a friend of going on 20 years, I thought it important to pay him a visit while he was in my hemisphere.
Our trip through Cascadia found us traveling home along the West Coast of the USofA. The early evening skies seem to lend themselves nicely to the kinds of post-capture manipulation that I've come to love.
As with my other tone-mapped work, several applications are used to create the final image. I've left the Qtpfsgui parameter information in this description to show where I started from. It's certainly not where I ended up. So keep this in mind.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.001
Saturation Factor: 0
------
PreGamma: 1
A year ago it was snowing up there. Hovenweep around the Painted Hand site.
Located just the other side of the Utah/Colorado border in Colorado.
Had the wrong settings for the first few shots of this beastie so they came out way under exposed.
I shoot in raw+basic and as it would turn out the basic jpg came out like this after hitting auto correction in digikam.
The raw file was just not getting anything as desireable no matter what I did or what application I used.
This is a male Common Collared Lizard up at the Petrified Forest National Park and he just happens to be on a piece of petrified wood, not far from the agate house.
While this looks unreal, I think it also look quite interesting.
Here is the second part of a little test that I'm running with everyone. These are the tone-mapped versions of the "straight" photos I just posted a little while ago.
I will post these new images to the same groups that I posted the first batch. Then I will watch to see the number of views. This may give me feedback as to how people respond to images.
Thanks for participating in my little experiment.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1.5
Beta: 0.84
Color Saturation: 1.5
Noise Reduction: 0.008
------
PreGamma: 1