Thistle Wasp
This was an interesting little wasp collecting from the thistles at Island View Beach yesterday. It has an awfully pointy abdomen.
I tried tone-mapping these images, as well as regular processing. Overall, for this wasp, I prefer the regular processing. In the next day or two, I will show a fly for which the tone-mapping works better.
(more…)
Sky Panels
.
This image of wires and clouds is tone-mapped from a single image. I was intrigued by how the processing resulted in slightly different contrast and density on two sides of the wire, creating panels a bit different from each other. It is an interesting reversal of the colour original where the wires are like lines drawn on the sky. In the tone-mapped version, I see the lines as edges of the panels rather than lines over a uniform background.
(more…)
More Natural HDR
I have hinted in previous posts that I have not been completely satisfied with the colour HDR effects that I have been getting – it looks a bit too HDR-ish for want of a better word; not natural enough for my preferences. However, I think I found one of the answers in my regular mail of the Lightstalking weekly roundup of photographs and blogs that the Toad finds interesting. He included a link to Dave DiCello’s blog about a new HDR plug-in (Merge to 32-bit HDR Plug-in) for Lightroom 4 which allows for manipulation of the merged image in LR4 and produces a more natural looking HDR result, as you can see in CiCello’s post (he has some awesome shots that he uses for comparisons). The plug-in comes from the Photomatix people and since I had recently purchased their software, I could download it for free, which I did.
Sahsima Drift
These photographs of the Sahsima transformer stone were shot at the same time as yesterday’s photograph (which is facing east from nearly the same location). These images also have the same problem of an incorrect white balance setting which led me to black and white treatments to recover something from the jpegs.
The upper image was processed with tone-mapping of a single image. The lower one is an HDR treatment of five exposures, that were not taken with HDR in mind and thus with uneven EV differences between the brackets.
(more…)
Trial Island with Erratic
This view of Trial Island is from Harling Point which has several glacial erratics along its southern shoreline. This was shot with my old SMC Takumar 200mm lens, an under-used part of my kit.
I took this several weeks ago and nearly deleted it because it was ruined in colour by one of those mistakes I make sometimes to not check the white balance settings. Since it was saved as a jpeg, there was no easy way to get it back to a natural colour, though I did try as part of my learning curve for Lightroom and maybe there is more I can do on that front, but black and white beckoned and so I took the ‘easy’ way out of that problem.
(more…)
Bronze Laughter
1
During our trip to Vancouver to attend the opening of the Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree art show we stayed in the Sylvia Hotel which overlooks this sculpture. Located in Morton Park next to English Bay the sculpture is called A-maze-ing Laughter and is by Yeu Minjun of China. Apparently it is extremely popular in Vancouver, so much so that a campaign was raised to keep the statue in place after the Vancouver Biennale ended in 2011. At $1.5 million, that is indeed a lot of interest; much of the tab was picked up by a Vancouver couple that have a very successful business.
(more…)
Top Posts & Pages – Click Thumbnail To View
Recent Comments
♦ FUJITA (藤田光学工業) H.… on Fujitar P.C 35mm F2.5 Asahifle… ehpem on Child’s Grave Kyle Hoyt on Child’s Grave ehpem on Charles Elliott Pole, Universi… Lisa Kadonaga on Charles Elliott Pole, Universi…
burnt embers 