A Cooperative Frog

My buddy Cliff and I went for a photo walk at Five Rivers today.  Fall colors were faded and not much to shoot, until this patient bullfrog posed for us.  I shot this with my Maxxum 7D and a 80-200, 2.8 lens, handheld at about 1/640 second, f6.3 and ISO 800.  Fortunately the camera has anti-shake built in which gave me 3 more stops to play with. SInce the computed focal length was 300mm (1.5 DX crop), I needed at least 1/350 sec for sharpness.  I focused on the eyes and recomposed.  The image was lightly edited in iPhoto.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

Fall Softly

We have a short window to capture fall.  Usually I go for intense fall colors but when I see a softly lit scene like this I am thrilled.  This was shot at the Whitbeck Preserve in New Scotland this past Sunday with a Fuji x10, handheld.  I processed it in Topaz Adjust 5 to get the colors just right.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

Ancient Secrets

The Whitbeck Preserve in New Scotland has a small cemetery off the trail.  There members of the George-Pound Families are buried.  This is the tombstone of Arthur Pound.  I believe it represents his children.  This was one of the most successful shots I have made of this touching scene.  I had an initial urge to clean up the pine needles, but stopped, realizing the impact they had on the image.  Shot with a Fuji X10 and processed in Topaz Adjust.  Jeff

 

The Christman Sanctuary

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Today was the perfect day for our photo club field trip to the Christman Sanctuary in Delanson.  Part of the Nature Conservancy, the Sanctuary is one of the most beautiful places to photograpth running water.  The Bozenkill runs off the mountain and after some good rain, looks like this.  The six of us had a great time.  These were taken with a Fuji X10, using a circular polarizer.  I shot in aperture priority at f8 ( =to f32 on a DSLR) and had shutter speeds of about 1/4 to 1 second.  I like the water to look soft most of the time, thus the long shutter.  WB was set to cloudy as we were in shade and I did not want the water to look blue. I focused 1/3 way in to achieve a hyperfocal zone of focus, insuring sharpness through the 28mm  wide angle images.  I did a little editing in iPhoto to bring out shadow detail and adjust the color temp back to neutral, or 5500 Kelvin.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

Onesthaqua Creek with iPhone 4 and 645PRO

Onesthaqua creek.  The rain stopped a little while ago and I headed out with my Pentax 67II and trusty iPhone 4.  I used 645PRO to make a 14.4 MB TIFF file. As the Fall colors were past peak, I decided to make it a monochrome.  This was processed in Photoshop using Convert to B&W Pro 3.0

Nice way to use a phone, huh?  Enjoy, Jeff

 

White Birch Pond , Partridge Run, Berne NY

White Birch Pond , Pentax 67II.

I had to cancel our Photo Club's field trip to the Christman Sanctuary today  as it was quite rainy.  Time to work on taken images.  As in an earlier post.  I decided to re-incorporate medium format film into my photography.  The Pentax 67II is a huge film MF SLR that produces a 60x70mm negative.  Using expensive film with only 10 images per roll does the most wondrous thing.  It SLOWS YOU DOWN.  I love my digital cameras, but honestly, unless I really think about it, I am banging away on the shutter because I have room for 1000 images on my memory card.  Putting this 5 pound monster on a heavy tripod, using cable release, carefully composing and double checking exposure, putting up the mirror and blacking the viewfinder AND relying on experience to know that your exposures will be fine ( no chimping here!) is a calming,  thoughtful experience.  

This image was shot on Fuji Reala 100 negative film with a 45mm Pentax lens ( = 22 mm in 35 format) at f22 and hyperfocal focusing to insure sharpness from front to back.  After processing, I ran this negative  through an older Epson 2450 flatbed scanner which provided enough resolution for an 16x20 print, now on order through Bay Photo.  I felt a monochrome image would look best so I processed it through Photoshop and Black & White Pro Conversion software.

Photographically you can have your cake and eat it to by digitizing your analog image.  Hybrid photography!  It does not get better!

Enjoy, Jeff

Fall Colors

Tawasentha Fall Foliage

 

Bouquet of Leaves

Today was a great day to shoot after work.  Sky overcast, big soft light and color!  I used a  Fujifilm X 10 camera on Velvia setting and DR of 100.  The leaves above were shot in Macro mode.  The upper image was lightly processed in Photomatix  Pro to blend and tone map 3 exposures.  There are so may ways to photograph fall, from the landscape to what is close in the landscape.  The leaves above were part of the wider view photo on top.  I chose this perspective as the tree limbs seemed to reach out and present its leaves to me.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

HDR Fun

These old fishing trawlers make a great subject for HDR.  Faded paint, rust, decay and breakdown lend themselves to great HDR imaging.  Shot with a FUJI X10, auto-bracket at-1, 0. +1 stops.  The images were then combined in Photomatix Pro to create this painterly effect.  I chose preset Painterly 4and then toned it down a bit to my liking.  Enjoy, Jeff