The Window, Part 1

The Window is a feature of the Chisos Mountain Basin in Big Bend National Park. It's a notch in the mountains that ring the Basin, and it's the primary drainage path for rain water. It's also a great "frame" for watching and photographing the sunset (you face west when looking through The Window from within The Basin).

These two photos (below) were taken at sunrise when the light was hitting the Window directly. I spent two mornings in a row, during our recent trip to the park, observing and photographing the sunrise from atop a large boulder in the Basin.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 5D with Canon 17-40mm f/4L
17mm, f/11, ISO 100, blend of two exposures: 1/4 & 1/2 sec.

I try to avoid photographing subjects that are cliché and obvious because they're often overdone and boring. The Window is one of the primary features of Big Bend that most park visitors get to see and photograph. If you've been to Big Bend, or you've seen published photos from the park, chances are you've seen the Window, Casa Grande, Santa Elena Canyon, and/or the South Rim of the Chisos. The park's website even has live photos of the Window from a webcam permanently mounted in the Basin.

But, as I continue to work on my Big Bend project, I realize that I do not have any good photos of this well-known icon. Our recent trip gave me good opportunities to photograph it because we were staying at the lodge in the Basin and taking things very easy (my wife is 8 months pregnant; i.e. we were not doing our usual routine of backcountry camping and all-day hiking). I woke up early for the sunrises and wrapped up my shooting sessions just about the time the sweet light was ending and my family was finishing up breakfast and ready to depart for our morning venture.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 5D with Canon 17-40mm f/4L & polarizer
23mm, f/11, ISO 100, blend of two exposures: 1/5 & 0.40 sec.

It's not impossible to come up with fresh, interesting photos of well known subjects but it's certainly a challenge. Fortuntely, there are an infinite amount of combinations of camera positions, focal lengths, lighting conditions, weather, etc.

I'm not sure I pulled off some good shots here - you be the judge of that. I decided to feature the great clouds present during this shoot and make the Window (the notch in the lower left) smallish in the frame by using wide focal lengths. These compositions also feature another great aspect of Big Bend - the skies. The frequent, huge, and unobstructed views throughout the park allow people to see for miles and that's quite refreshing for those park visitors confined into city living back home. One thing I always look foward to when visiting the park are the amazing vistas.

At the time these photos were taken, the light had lost its early morning warmness and become somewhat harsh. The scene's colors were a little boring and muted. I tried two approaches to create more interest - 1) using a color-enhancing filter, and 2) black and white.

The black and white helps viewers to really focus on the subject matter and its form, IMO. Effective monochromatic photos are sometimes hard to make, but having a good, strong composition (and nice clouds :-) ) certainly helps. For me, this works well because what I'm most interested in is the rugged line of mountains (including the notch of the Window) and the wide-open, huge view of the sky. These are quintessential features of Big Bend.

For the color shot, I used a Singh-Ray gold-n-blue polarizer. I'm new to using this filter, but it can produce some garish results. I "dialed" in the filter to a nice warm spot somewhere between its two points of maximum effect. In post-processing, I further subdued the effect of the filter by fine-tuning the white balance in RAW conversion. The end result, as you see above, is a warm, pastel color scheme that I think looks more like the sweet light that comes immediately after sunrise.

Anyway, I've got more sunrise shots of the Window from my second day of morning shooting in the Basin. I'll have these up in the next few days.

One from the Rest Stop

On our way out to Big Bend National Park recently, we stopped at the nice rest area along Highway 90 near Sabinal, Texas. We enjoyed a picnic dinner in the early evening just before sunset. Nearby, the gardens beside the restrooms were abloom with butterfly weed. The swallowtails were in abundance and I spent some time shooting them.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly on Butterfly Weed

Canon 40D, Canon 400mm f/5.6L
1/400 sec. hand-held at f/5.6 and ISO 400

Many thanks to our state for building and maintaining one of the cleanest and best rest stops I've ever seen!

Terlingua Ghost Town

I'm very slowly processing my photos from our recent trip to Big Bend National Park. My progress is hampered by the cleaning up needed after Hurricane Ike. I can't complain, at least we have power and Internet! As I write (5 days after the storm hit), about 60% of people in the Houston area still don't have power. A good chunk of them won't have power until possibly next week.

Church in the Terlingua Ghost Town

Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4L, tripod
13 seconds at 27mm, f/8, ISO 200

This was taken about 30 minutes after sunset, September 5th. My wife and I love this little church. We've stopped by several times over the years since our first visit four years ago. The church appears active and is slowly being restored. We considered renewing our vows there (the 5th was our 10-year anniversary), but didn't want to make firm plans because she's 8 months pregnant and we weren't sure the trip out there would even happen.

The Ghost Town is a neat place to wonder around after dark. It's a great place for night photography.

Hurricane Aftermath

I've been busy lately dealing with this recent hurricane (Ike) and the after effects. The greater Houston area got hit pretty hard. The media likes to focus on Galveston, but the rest of us inlanders suffered quite a bit too. Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula got smacked, and I'm very sorry. But the 4 to 5 million people living nearby are dealing with some bad stuff too.

We were extremely fortunate to get power so soon after the storm. Most of the Houston area is still in the dark. Some places will be without power for several weeks to possibly a month or more given the damage that was done to vital transmission lines.

Aside from many places being without power, the other big issue at hand is the lack of gasoline. The very few stations that are open right now are swamped with people. I've read reports that it takes only a couple of hours for these stations to run out of gas after they're replished by a tanker, and the tankers aren't coming real fast.

A few grocery stores are open and have dry goods only. All schools are closed. Most businesses are still closed too (including my employer). Houston could very well be in a state of anarchy and chaos, but most people are dealing with the lack of vital resources pretty calmly.

------------------------------

So what have we been up to? Well, it's been non-stop work pretty much since before the hurricane. We prepped our house and yards before the storm came.



We lost some sections of our fence, a load of branches from our trees, and have a new roof leak. We faired pretty well. There are those much less fortunate. Some of the major damage in the area reported is from large trees falling on houses. We also did see some outright wind damage on some roofs.



Sunday morning was the kick in the face. We got 12+ inches of rain in about 2 hours. Our street flooded (as did many other areas) and our neighbors who had parked out on the street got their vehicles flooded.



We've been working every day to clean up the yards and get our house straight again. Thank God for this recent cold front! The temps outside are quite nice, and for the first time since last winter, we have the AC off and the windows open :-)

We're thankful that we faired reasonably well. We're surpised that we didn't get more damage than we did in our area despite seeing winds so high. So, say a prayer for the folks down here in the Houston area.

p.s. I have a ton of photos from our trip to Big Bend last week. I'll be getting them online shortly, so stay tuned! :-)

In Remembrance

Today marks one year since the sudden passing of a young and dear friend, Mike.

I promised myself that I'd perform some "Mike-ism" today in honor and memory of him. Something along the lines of:

- watch a stupid movie and then spend the next 6 hours quoting it and laughing
- get involved in a lively discussion about politics or sports
- fart and pretend that it didn't smell
- drink single malt scotch straight
- create a massive spreadsheet to analyze and plan my next major purchase
- stop for a green light
- laugh and laugh some more at a stupid joke
- not get pissed off, no matter what angered me
- smile all day long

Mike was the kinda guy that you would like only after 30 seconds of knowing him. He always wore a smile. He always had good things to say about things and people, no matter what. Even the jackass that just cut him off in traffic.

His wife and three young children miss him terribly. We all do. Life is just a little less bright and fun without his presence.

TuFuse Me? (easy HDR :-)

Earlier this year, a photo buddy of mine (Jeff Kohn) introduced me to TuFuse. It's a program that combines multiple exposures (from a high dynamic range, HDR, scene) into one image. TuFuse is shareware.

The basic interface of the program takes you back to the old days of DOS :-) To run it in Windows, you have to create a batch file that establishes the path to your files, calls up the program (with optional switches that adjust the processing options), and tells the program which image files to combine. It's fairly easy and straightforward once you've done a run.

TuFuse will accept 16-bit TIF files and produce a 16-bit TIF as output.

I finally got around to seriously using TuFuse and tackled some of my older, difficult images. First up was a 5 exposure scene shot last year.

click for larger pic

The above scene was shot with 5 exposures (all in RAW). The result, using nominal processing settings in the program, was fantastic.

I still ended up layering (with masks) some content from the original files over the TuFuse output in PS (Photoshop). Using layers and masks is my normal approach to combining multiple expsoures, and it's tedious and labor intensive. I've tried manually combining the exposures for the above scene about 6 times in the last year and never got a result that completely satisfied me.

For comparison, here's my original attempt at exposure blending - manual blending only (i.e. using only layers and masks in PS):

no clicky

With a scene like this (one that has a very bright source of light in a localized region in the scene) simple layering with masks is quite difficult. Imagine concentric rings of differing exposure around the point light source (the sun). This is further complicated by the mountain in the upper right - this mountain is one of the darkest parts of the scene and renders nearly black in simple layering because of its close proximity to the sun in the scene.

The beauty of TuFuse is that it handles these areas of difficult exposure transition well. And then you can layer in bits of the original files into the "easy" areas of the scene (not that the TuFuse output is bad, but the original pixels just seem like a better choice to me where possible).

Since I was pleased with the TuFuse results, I also tried the sister scene to this shot, one that I'd not processed before:

click for larger pic

This was another 5 exposure blend done in TuFuse, and then supplimented by bits of the original files in PS (i.e. layering in, using masks, some of the original files over the TuFuse output in PS).

------------------------------------------

To reiterate what I've said before, shooting wide dynamic range scenes (i.e. scenes that contain a dynamic range greater than what the camera can capture in one shot) is quite difficult, and there are different approaches to doing it. Each approach has its pros and cons.

I prefer not to use graduated neutral density filters (the traditional method of shooting such scenes) because it's a one-size-fits-all approach that isn't always well suited. Take the above scenes for example. A graduated ND would have made the upper right-hand mountain very dark (much like my original efforts in blending the scene manually). There is no ND filter made that has a ND spot to handle scenes like this, and if such filter was made, the size and ND strength of the spot would have to be just right.

HDR programs (like Adobe HDR and PhotoMatix) have not worked well for me in the past. In fact, my first attempt at blending this scene was done in Adobe HDR. I spent long hours with it trying to fine-tune the processing and output with only poor results.

Manual blending (using layers and masks in PS), when done with care and skill, seems to produce superior results. The con is that it requires a lot of processing work. But I feel that the results are the best that can be achieved and also make the most and best use of digital post-processing (or, digital darkroom, if you like). Using TuFuse definitely helps to handle those tricky areas, like the upper right hand corner of the scenes above.

32 Week Ultrasound

The baby is 33 weeks along now as I write. Last week we had the final, scheduled ultrasound.

click for larger pics

click for larger pics

The weight was estimated at 5 pounds! And it's still a boy :-) No change there. Due date is Oct. 14.

Tanya is exhausted and uncomfortable, but she's hanging in there. I'm real proud of her and thankful. She's a terrific mom.

Canon 50D and the Megapixel Race

Canon has just announced the new 50D. I suppose I'm a little bitter about this - I bought a 40D less than one year ago, not too long after its introduction. For once in my photo life, I wanted a new camera with fresh technology (as opposed to buying an older and/or used model like I usually do). Oh well, you can't keep up with technology unless you want to constantly spend money :-)

The 50D's 15 MP (megapixels) jumps the count up from the 40D's 10 MP. I thought the megapixel race was over or at least slowing down because manufacturers were finally coming to their senses. I guess not.

Canon claims that the 50D's microlenses occupy nearly 100% of each photosite (as opposed to microlenses of previous models which presumably didn't fill up each photosite). Because of this, the 50D's sensor should not suffer from increased noise levels at high ISOs (the typical result when you cram more MP's into a given sensor area thus making each photosite smaller). In fact, Canon claims the noise levels to be approximately 1.5 stops better than the 40D. Their claim is reflected in the ISO settings of the 50D - the highest (in expanded mode) is 12,800. The highest on the 40D is ISO 3200.

As my grandfather was famous for saying, "We'll see..."

Interestingly, if you take the 50D's pixel density and apply it to a full frame sensor, you get a 39 MP chip. Whoa...

Finding Your Photographic Style

For a long while I chewed on the notion of photographic style. I was not able to define it in my work. Yes, there was an apparent style, or rather, just a few basic similarities between each of my photos. But that didn't satisfy me as I thought style would be something much deeper and more meaningful.

Earlier this year, with a little help from a photo workshop, I figured it out. I decided to write a piece on it since the whole process was complicated and deeply emotional for me.

Click here to read the article.

I hope that by sharing my experiences I can inspire those of you searching for your style and meaning in your work. Maybe you’ve found your style but it seems somewhat superficial. Maybe you wish to move beyond just making pretty pictures and create work that is more meaningful to yourself and others.

Defining and knowing your style will help you connect better with your passion in your work, IMO. Knowing your style isn't necessary for creating meaningful work, but I think it helps. Good luck!

Death Valley, Feb. 2008

High Island & Low-Light Panning

The Houston Audubon Society owns four bird sanctuaries at High Island, Texas. In March and April each year, the rookery in the Smith Oaks section is a hoppin' place. The nesting areas are cram-packed with Great White Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Neotropic Cormorants, and other shore birds. There are frequent squabbles for space and the noise is incredible.

The trails and viewing platforms near the rookery are equally packed. They are infested with photographers, birders, and thick clouds of mosquitos. Finding enough room to shoot is difficult enough, then you have to worry about getting elbowed or knocked in the head by someone's lens. There's always a bit of tension in the air when groups of photographers attempt to co-exist with groups of birders :-)

Anyway, I've made four trips there in the past two years to photograph the birds. I'm just now wrapping up processing my photos from this year.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

I've shot different types of bird scenes at High Island, but the ones I like best (and the ones I've strived to get) take a different approch from the normal shots that photographers usually capture here.

When the light gets dim and the nesting area falls into shadow, almost all photographers and birders leave. The mosquitos get thick and the alligators float like dreadnoughts in the waters below.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/200 sec., ISO 400

I like to shoot in-flight shots in relatively low light (and slow shutter speeds). The subdued colors in the quiet light are quite nice. What I'm really after is getting a little wing blur to imply motion.

The resulting photos have a dream-like quality and offer a different view of High Island from the literal direct-light bird-book type photos usually taken here by others.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6L
f/5.6, 1/250 sec., ISO 400

Using the Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens is well suited for this type of shooting. The lens is relatively small and light, and it's easier to pan along with the birds when shooting.

The slower maximum aperture (f/5.6) is acceptible because it results in slower shutter speeds (required to get wing blur) and also a little more DOF. Shooting in-flight shots like this is hit-or-miss (mostly near-miss) and the added DOF helps to get the bird's head in acceptable focus even if the focus point is a little off.

In a typical bird-book type shot, the 400mm f/5.6 does not produce beautiful, completely blurred backgrounds like a 500 or 600m f/4 lens will. So, this style of shooting (low-light panning) helps to blur the background more due to motion.

DIY Camera L-brackets

About two years ago, I figured out how to make a simple L-bracket that was compatible with the Arca-Swiss style quick release system. You can buy professionally made L-brackets that are extremely well made and very nice, but they're expensive (especially when you change camera bodies every year or so, therefore requiring a new L-bracket each time :-) ).

Since then, I've made two others. I've created an article detailing how they were made (download it here - PDF file).

I like doing stuff myself and working with my hands and tools. I buy things or pay for repairs only when I cannot do it myself. Believe me, there are many things in my house that have been fixed with duct tape, super glue, or clothes-hanger wire :-)

Now, if I could just figure out how to make a home-made ballhead... ;-)

Lone Star Trail

Back in April of this year, a friend (James S.) and I hiked a portion of the Lone Star Trail in Sam Houston National Forest. We made a one-way 11.25 mile hike.

Before the hike, I decided to keep things as simple as possible and take only one camera body, one lens, and no tripod. We didn't have a lot of time for the hike which meant that I didn't have too much time for quality photography. Covering 11+ miles takes a while, especially when it's hot and humid. At least the trail was fairly level!

I took my versatile, beater lens - the Canon 28-105mm f/3.5 - 4.5 USM II. I've blogged about the merits of this lens before - it's a great all-purpose, lightweight, and relatively small lens that provides pretty good results (especially at f/8). I wish it was just a tad wider (24mm would be perfect) but I really like the zoom range, close focusing distance, and having just over 100mm at the long end.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 5D, 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM II
f/8, 28mm, 1/25 sec., ISO 800

James took me to a special spot to visit a mighty oak that spanned a creek. We spent some time exploring and photographing the old tree. At this point of our hike, I really wished that I'd brought my tripod.

This photo was taken hand-held with me squatting down and bracing the camera with my legs. I fired several bursts - a technique that's good for this situation. Usually, in a burst of 4 or 5 shots, the second, third, or fourth shot will be sharpest. (the act of pressing and the releasing the shutter button on the first and last shots often adds a little extra camera movement and blurring of the photo) It worked out fairly well, and I got a reasonably sharp image. I did have to shoot at ISO 800, but the 5D produces acceptable noise levels provided the image is well exposed. Shooting at f/8 was necessary to get the depth-of-field I wanted. I had brought a polarizer, but took it off for this shot to get the fastest shutter speed I could, and that was a compromise.

click for slightly larger pic

Canon 5D, 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM II
f/8, 28mm, 1/25 sec., ISO 800

This shot was taken a little later in the hike, just after we crossed the East Fork of the San Jacinto River. I used the same technique as described above, except this shot was taken with me holding the camera atop my hiking stick. I usually take a 4-foot long wood dowel that serves as an impromptu monopod when needed.

I wished I could have used my polarizer (and also a lower ISO). The filter would have helped to cut the white glare off the surface of the leaves and really show the beautiful green glow that the forest canopy generates. Next time I'll definitely bring the tripod.

hike info
Double Lake Recreation Area and Big Creek Scenic Area are located just south of Coldspring, Texas inside the Sam Houston National Forest. I made a custom map (1 MB) of our route and plotted GPS waypoints. The GPS data was made before the hike using software, i.e. they're not real points taken in the field. However, during the hike, I found that those pre-plotted points were accurate.

Ghost Beach

I'm finally getting around to processing a load of photos I made earlier this year. These images are from the beach at High Island, Texas. They were taken about an hour after sunset the day after a full moon.

click for larger image

camera/lens: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4L
settings: 25mm, f/8, 102 sec., ISO 200

Archetype The photo above shows a specific archetype. I won't tell you what it is, so leave a comment and tell me what you see, please! I showed this to my wife, and she didn't get it. She did, however, see a different archetype, and that was quite interesting because it was something I didn't see. That's why I really like showing my photos to others and hearing their views :-)

click for larger image

camera/lens: Canon 5D, 70-200mm f/4L
settings: 154mm, f/8, 15 sec., ISO 400

I love night shooting. There's something magical and other-worldly about long exposures in the dark. The camera's sensor will keep collecting light and capture details not seen with the naked eye. The resulting photo contains things not seen au naturel.

Of course the negative aspect is that because our human eyes can't see as the camera does, we can't fully appreciate the fine details that show up in the resulting photos as we shoot them. Night shooting often involves a lot of guesswork, trial-and-error, and a lot of time.

Oh, one piece of advice about long exposures taken on a sandy beach: your tripod legs will sink into the wet sand! I took several other exposures (most of them very long, e.g. 3 to 20 min.) very close to the water line and also just into the surf. The photos were a little too blurred to be of any good.