A few weeks ago while on a week holiday in Dunkeld I photographed this old home. The image was taken with a Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer, hence the strange colour cast. I processed the file in Adobe Lightroom followed with some tweaks in Photoshop CS5, using the content aware feature to remove the power line. Then back into Lightroom for the final crop and a couple of graduated filters. The shot was not taken under ideal light, in fact it was very poor light, but serves to show what you can do with filters and modern software. Before and after images below.
This month I will explain some of the processes involved in the photo of the month.
I borrowed my young sons pair of shiny silver magnets, feeling their smoothness I imagined them being photographed on a reflective surface. The silvery appearance needed to dominate. Placing them on a black high gloss acrylic surface would reflect their silver finish but still give contrast to the image. To aid in the composition they needed to be placed of centre, perhaps using the rule of thirds. I had a very clear idea in my head as to what the final image would look like.
I first tried to photograph them indoors, bouncing my flash off the ceiling to soften the light. I found it too hard to control the reflections and the reflections that were happening in the magnets and in the black acrylic just did not enhance the image.
The sun was almost setting outside and the light was quite soft so I thought I would try outside. Picking a spot under our slatted pergola, I tried a number of angles finally settling on the above composition. The lines produced by the illumination from the blue sky filtering through the wooden slats added greatly to the overall image. I chose an aperture that would just blur the reflections and used a large silver reflector to fill in the shadows and enhance the silver finish on the magnets.
I recently attended PMA Australia, Southbank Melbourne. We stayed in an apartment block close by. I took some time lapse photos with my 5D Mk II from our 18th floor balcony. After a bit of experimenting I took 367 shots at 3 second intervals, f4.5, 0.7 sec exposure with a 24-105L set at 28mm. I then processed the RAW files in Lightroom, exported the images as full size jpg files 5616 x 3744. The resulting files were then loaded into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Then the trouble started, I have a i7 system with 6 gig of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 Video card, 3 HDD’s and my system almost ground to a halt. I wanted to pan and zoom as the images played through their time lapse segments. Even with my reasonably powerful system and CS5 with its new Mercury playback engine I could not play even 2 frames, no such thing as any sort of preview when loaded with 367, 21 megapixel images. So I basically set the zoom and pan settings, rendered the time line (which took about 15 minutes each time) made the necessary adjustments and rendered it again and again and again…, eventually I had my time lapse movie somewhat to my liking.
Wellington, New Zealand. This is another HDR image down near Wellington wharf as I said previously the weather was against me with grey overcast sky and intermittent rain. The rain was actually quite a help as it made the pavement stand out. This image was made up of 3 exposures then processed and enhanced in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. I was quite happy with the final image.
This is a photo of the “Natural Arch” in Springbrook, Queensland, Australia. It was originally taken as 3 images with exposure bracketing to render using one of my HDR programs. I just could not get it right so I used Photoshop, masking out sections where necessary. I would love to return and try again, next time I would bracket manually over 5 or 6 frames.
Running a bit late this month, half way through April already, however better late than never. This is a HDR photo of one of a number of salt lakes in the Swan Hill district. Hope you enjoy.
Last year while in Zimbabwe for my son’s wedding I had the chance to visit a number of orphanages. A large percentage of the Zimbabwe population have AIDS so there is an extraordinary high number of orphans. One of the orphanages we visited was the “Voice of Peace” in Hatcliffe, they currently have almost 50 orphans living in extremely poor conditions, almost half have AIDS. When we first arrived the orphans were very depressed and quite. My wife and myself were quite upset at their condition. Suzanne, the young lady that was showing us around the orphanages just embraced the children, giving them hugs and kisses, fed them with fresh fruit and then involved them in games. The transformation was surreal, this photo I believe captures a moment of happiness in the midst of despair. I hope that this image might encourage to make a donation for the Zimbabwe Orphanages.
I have included this photo not for it’s artistic merit but for it’s content, or lack of it. A couple of years back I had a job to photograph a number of outback pubs. I had just finished photographing the deserted Hatfield Hotel and my next job was the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel at Booligal, my GPS said that I needed to go via Ivanhoe which was over 200 km. I had a bit of forethought and had loaded a set of maps from Tracks4Australia which is a very detailed map without auto routing. It showed me a dirt track between Clare and highway 75 that saved me more than 100 km. The land scape was incredible, about half way along the track I stopped and climbed onto the roof of my 4×4 and took in the barren 360 degree view, a view with not a single tree or building, this is a photo looking back towards Clare.
“And people have an awful down
Upon the district and the town -
Which worse than hell itself they call;
In fact the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is Hay and Hell and Booligal ”
Hay, Hell and Booligal
A.B. “Banjo” Patterson
Wellington, New Zealand. I rose early on the last day of our trip to New Zealand in the hope of taking some great sunrise photos. The weather was against me, rain and total grey overcast. I returned with only a few images, I thought this HDR image of the Wharf Offices was quite pleasing.
Selected prints and postcards can now be purchased at photograph.asia. We have just set up a new website with full shopping cart facilities incorporating Fotomoto. As a special offer to our readers the first 10 people to purchase on line can use this discount code to receive a 20% discount. Enter this code: 62651D. Fotomoto is already working with hundreds of photographers across more than 25 countries. They are quickly becoming a trusted and respected brand among photographers because of their quality service. Fotomoto is a company based in San Francisco and is backed by one of the highly respected investment firms in the US, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), the same firm that invested in Hotmail and Skype. We will be away in New Zealand from Christmas till the 18th of January 2010 so any prints or cards ordered during that time will not be processed till we return. If you require a print or a card of any of the images on stockphoto.com.au please email me Steve and I will post the image on photograph.asia for you
All money received will be forwarded to ACTS for work related to helping the orphanages in Zimbabwe, the only expenses taken out will be the fees the banks charge me to transfer the money.
