First Year
On this day last year Burnt Embers took life. The image at the bottom is from my first post. I took it with the camera set on monochrome – one of the few times I have used that setting as I now realise the value of having colour against which to apply filters and so on in post-processing. The image I posted then was straight out of the camera with no processing. I still like it, but as the version above demonstrates, it had more to offer, had I but been able to extract it at the time.
As it happened, I hand-held three exposures from this same location as I was trying for the best compromise to express this idea. Surprisingly I still have all three ‘brackets’. Thus, the top image is an HDR treatment I did a couple of days ago. The middle picture is recently tone mapped from a single image, the same one I posted originally.
Tone mapping of same image as posted a year ago.
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I have included these reworked images as a nod to the improvement in my post-processing ability and symbolic, I hope, of the general improvement in my photography skills over the past year. I think the composition stands the test of time fairly well, and the idea of the bright rail leading the eye to the white house, both lit in the afterglow of sunset against a darker background, still works well for me. Each exposure had slightly different framing, hence the mildly unfortunate crop off the right side of the HDR version, which is why I tried tone mapping the single image as I like the way that line of logs leads the eye.
As first posted exactly a year ago – no processing of any kind.
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It is hard for me to think that it has been a year of blogging now. My first post was followed for two days without a post, and then on September 17th I began an uninterrupted run to this day, at least one post every day. In that time there have been 373 posts, more than 2200 images posted, I will likely hit 60,000 views today (thanks everyone!), nearly 2,500 of your wonderful comments (thanks again!), 350 subscribers and I have met a number of people on the internet that I correspond with nearly every day, several that I am in touch with via email and and one I have met in person as well. I have even collaborated in the field with a blogger met on line, bringing our different talents to the photo documentation of a heritage site (coming to you soon, I hope). It is a great community to be part of, supportive of my efforts and encouraging in many ways. I plan on sticking around, though once I get under my belt a full 365 posts in a row without a missed day, I will probably scale back a bit. I find that post processing is taking ever more time as my level of skill increases, and I really should aim more for quality and less for quantity. We will see how that works out, it could be hard to break the daily habit. One image a day, most days? That could work too.
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 50mm/1.4 lens, ISO1250, f5.0, 1/3200 (+/- ~0.5 EV for top image, 3 brackets).
burnt embers 
I, too, have enjoyed your blog immensely! I have learned a lot about myself both personally and in the realm of photography, and have learned much about the local area we live in! It’s been a huge highlight for me to have found you online, Ehpem, and to have formed a lasting friendship. Isn’t the internet wonderful? I raise my virtual glass to you, good sir, in both celebration of what has come from the last year as well as what we all know to be wonderful posts that are yet to be published!
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What’s with the ‘virtual glass’? We really need to do a real one. We should put that in the calendar I guess.
You have been tremendously supportive of my work both through your comments, and through including me in your ~weekly Lightstalking roundups which have brought me a lot of views, and subscribers. So, thank you so much for everything. I am looking forward the next year.
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It’s been a great year Ehpem… Congrats!!!!
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Thank you David – its been nice having you dropping by!
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Congratulations on a year! 🙂
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Hi Sheila – thanks so much 🙂
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It does really demonstrate the possibilities!
It’s been a pleasure following your blog, Ephem. Congratulations on one year of excellent posts!
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Thank you Karen! I really appreciate your ongoing interest in my blog, and the great pictures you always seem to be posting on yours.
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Congratulations Ehpem, and thank you for sharing all of your wonderful experiences with us. I look forward to many, many more!
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Thank you Mrs. Toad. I expect there will be many many more 🙂
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Congratulations! 😀 Here’s to many more years of blogging! 🙂
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Thanks to all of you at TBS. I hope the same for you 🙂
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Happy blogiversary! I’ve enjoyed your work. Keep learning, even if it’s to learn when it’s time to slow down and fine tune. I’m celebrating a year with my new camera and the learning process of putting the dial on Manual. It’s a lot more fun to read the book that came with it now and see how much I’ve learned that I didn’t know at first and then be reminded of how much more there is still to learn.
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Hi amy – nice to see you again, and thanks for your great comment. That M setting has it own particular challenges if you are used to letting the camera make decisions, but whenever I am using it, it is instructive and makes me think harder (usually I use M to over ride a decision of the camera’s that I don’t like). I also find the camera manual a more comprehensible document a year later – all kinds of things that were meaningless to me when I first looked at it. Which reminds me, time to browse a bit in the manual again, always an instructive thing to do.
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Happy anniversary! It’s been great fun and educational from my standpoint and I’m looking forward to another year. I might add that your processing skills are bordering on a professional level lately.
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Thank you Ken – coming from a professional, that is one hell of a compliment. Much appreciated too 🙂 It was high time I upgraded my tools, but I think I must have learned quite a bit from Picasa over the last year, at least about what I would like to achieve when I could not quite get there – training my eye a bit I suppose.
I did push that software beyond its design limits and frequently had failures (though I think they were bugs – not saving my more extreme changes without radically altering them in the process, for instance). Anyway, I sure am enjoying this new software, even though it takes more time, it’s time well spent.
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Happy anniversary! The enhancements certainly tease something more out of this shot. Editing is certainly more time consuming, and can be more so than framing the actual shot. I’m glad we have this at our disposal, though.
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Thank you Mike. I expect darkroom work of this kind was much more time consuming than software edits to do the same thing, so I too am very please to have these tools at my disposal.
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Yes, I’m sure it was. And potentially more messy and smelly too!
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