Two Weeks in Spring: Ceres 2011

When I published “Broken Tree: Ceres 2010″ at the end of March, I promised I’d be going back to Ceres soon — to see what became of the leaning Atlantic Cedar. I went back to Ceres twice since mid-April.

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The tree fell sometime since last summer. All that remains standing is a splintered stump. You can see part of the tree just to the right of the stump.

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Here’s another shot. You can see the tree on the ground behind and to the left of the stump.

I took both pictures around the middle of April this year on a bright sunny morning. I like the contrasty light and the textures in these two images.

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What a difference in only two weeks. I took this photo yesterday morning. The lighting was softer (it was cloudy and the sun was in and out). And the new growth softens the textures of the trees.

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I think this image is my favorite. I was ready to snap this shot but the sun wasn’t cooperating so I waited and caught the light just right.

All four of the photos were taken with the same camera, my Bessaflex that takes old screw mount Takumar lenses. The first two were taken with a 28mm lens and Fuji Neopan 400 rated at 640 ISO, three and four were taken with my 50mm and Tri-X rated at 1250 ISO.

So what was I doing out in the woods in the sunshine with 1250 TX? Good question. I started the roll on Easter. I was experimenting because some of my shots with TX have disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised how well these two turned out.

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Cedar Lake Apparition: Ceres 2011

What is this thing I discovered lurking at the edge of perception? What wonderous forms did I find when I visited Cedar Lake several weeks ago?

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When we see the familiar we respond to visual clues. When we can ‘name’ things we satisfy ourselves thinking we’ve seen the essense of something. But have we really? People who supposedly cannot draw have made remarkable reproductions when asked to copy an upside down drawing. They are responding to shapes and lines instead of labels.

Sometimes it’s wise to tell your left brain to just shut up and go away. Sometimes it’s fun to invite your right brain, your dragon out to play.

I was playing last night (I love to play) and rotated this image of the opposite shore of Cedar Lake 90 degrees. A giant insect with dozens of legs? A kaleidoscope? Many things come to mind. Fun isn’t it.

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Here’s the original image of the opposite lake shore. Oh yeah. Trees are supposed to look like this. It’s a reflection. When I first saw this scan I was a bit disappointed but I played until I found the essence.

I shot the original in portrait orientation so I cropped square. Then I printed dark. I added a warm tint to the image. Then I rotated the photo just for fun and decided I like the rotated image. Yes, fun is good. My dragon is amused and so am I.

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Julia & Tracy

I tapped into my archives for this week’s portrait. The image, taken about 4 or 5 years ago, was converted to B&W from a scanned color negative.

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This is Julia, one of our six granddaughters, looking over Tracy’s shoulder.

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Red Bank Battlefield Park: April 2011

I took my mom for a second visit to Red Bank Battlefield Park a couple weeks ago. I was determined to get some decent images this time out and I did.

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This magnificent tree dominates the picnic area. It’s the largest tree I’ve ever seen. My 24mm lens would have come in handy but I only had one lens, a 35mm so I moved back further and further and further…until I found a decent composition.

If you look carefully, you can see a small group of people standing behind the tree on the left. You can just make out the flagpoles in the background. Yep, this tree is that big!

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This shot includes the south side of the James and Ann Withall House. Can you tell I had trees on my mind that day? I had fun with all the forms and shapes in this shot.

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I zoomed in with my feet for this one to get a closer look at the house and the tree on the right.

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Here’s a shot looking northwest (to the left of the house scene) toward the Delaware River. The Girard Point Bridge is on the horizon. The path is a nice place for a walk, or pull up a bench and watch the river.

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This shot looks directly across the river. What do you know? More trees. Who would have thought?

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And finally, the rear of the Whitall house (1748) — and still going strong. This house was used as a military hospital after the battle of Red Bank (October 22, 1777).

All the photos were taken under harsh midday light, not the best for good photography. I prefer the longer shadows of morning or late afternoon but you work with what you have at the time. I used my Nikon N8008s loaded with Ilford FP4+ film,  35mm AF lens and yellow contrast filter (to separate the clouds from the blue sky) for all shots. I like traveling with one camera and one lens. Life is a lot simpler — no fuss.

One of these days, I’ll have a look at the ruins of Fort Mercer and the monument in the north end of the park. If you want to know more about this famous battlefield, simply do a web search for Red Bank Battlefield Park or the Battle of Red Bank. The Colonial Army kicked Hessian butt that day.

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Oxcart: Saigon 1966

I found another reflection image taken during my stint in Vietnam 45 years ago. Maybe I’ve been saving this one (unconsciously) for Earth Day? You can’t get more basic than an oxcart.

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The young driver looked my way as he passed in his oxcart. I wonder if he knew I was taking his photograph? He was looking into a dark bunker. Glad I had my camera that day.

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Twin Granddaughters

Sometimes you just get lucky. Of course it never hurts to have your camera on hand to capture the moment. I got lucky twice — with my twin granddaughters, Maddy and Livvy.

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I took this photo three weeks ago. We were sitting at the table, I had my camera out, Maddy looked at me and… I captured a precious, spontaneous moment.

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This photo of Livvy was taken back in November, 2010 at the twins second birthday party. Liv was absorbed with her doll, completely unaware of me and my camera.

Both images came from the same roll of Tri-X rated at 1250 ISO — no flash.

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Cedar Swamp Reflections: Ceres 2011

I went on my first photo expedition of the year last week — finally. Ceres park is only one mile from my home. The morning was sunny bright. I couldn’t resist.

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I’m fascinated with the patterns on the water in the morning sun — swirls, shadows and of course the reflections of the trees. This shot and the one following were taken with my Nikon F3HP and 50mm lens. I had been shooting with my 24mm lens but wanted to get a bit closer.

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I turned about 90 degrees to my left for this view. The swirls and shadows are more pronounced and almost veil the reflections — almost.

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Here’s a wide angle view (24mm lens). It was the first shot of the cedar swamp.

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You can tell it’s spring. Plenty of rain makes for interesting puddles along the trail.

These photos were from the second roll I shot that day. The first roll nearly gave me heart failure because over half the frames had a vertical bar on the same spot. I thought there was something amiss with my trusty F3.

I rewound the second roll after only 9 frames so I could develop it (with my fingers crossed!) Whew — Every frame came out. I suspect the earlier roll was misloaded somehow or maybe a bad roll of film?? Who knows? Glad my F3 is working the way it should.

I just finished processing and scanning another roll of film that I shot yesterday. More reflections for next week. Stay tuned.

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Trees: Tone & Texture Revisited — Ceres 2011

Wednesday (April 5) dawned bright and sunny, a perfect morning. I thought it would be fun to revisit Ceres at the same time of year under similar lighting conditions as a year ago when I photographed last week’s image but with different viewpoints using my widest angle lens (24mm). I think I used 28mm last year.

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Here I’m on the trail looking back to where I shot last week’s image.

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Moving back and tilting the camera up introduced distortion. The strong verticals converged. I did this deliberately then cropped the image to a strong vertical format to help focus attention on the two large trees.

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Have some fun John. Here’s an almost straight up shot. I wanted to capture the full majesty of the larger tree with it’s arms stretched to the sky.

It felt good to get out again. I was growing weary of dipping into my archives. Time for new growth. I processed and scanned my film Thursday. Enjoy.

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Canh Sat & Me: Saigon 1966

Subtle reflections once again. More fun this way. Here are a couple of photos featuring Canh Sat aka Vietnamese National Police. We (US Air Police) paired up with Canh Sat at some of their checkpoints on the civilian side of Tan Son Nhut Airport, Saigon, Vietnam.

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These four guys were happy to pose for me. I think the guy with the bush hat was their boss, hence the plainclothes. I simply can’t remember the circumstances after all these years.

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I didn’t take this photo because that’s me, yours truly, 44 years ago when I was a lad of 22. Someone else (can’t remember who) used my camera for this shot.

Both images are from the same roll of B&W negatives. I was able to get decent images after all this time. Do you ever wonder what will become of your digital files over time? Score one for the archival quality of silver B&W negatives.

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B&W Photography: 16-bit Tonal Adjustments

You’ll be amazed how your photos can be transformed with proper tonal adjustments, adjustments that are a lot simpler than you might have thought. Once you discover how to play the powerful curves tool in your photo editor, your images will sing.

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What would you do with this image? It’s flat, all grays, no blacks, no whites, no contrast. I took this picture on an overcast, shadowless day. The negative was developed in Diafine, a compensating developer that yields lower contrast negatives. A double whammy.

Not to worry. Flat negatives scan better because the scanner has an easier time grabbing midtones. All the information is there in the scan. It’s simply compressed and needs to be coaxed and prodded with tonal adjustments using the curves tool.

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Here’s the transformed image. Quite an improvement over the flat, lifeless scan. I expanded the tonal range and increased the contrast using the curves tool in PWP (aka brightness curve). Once I was satisfied with the tonality of the image I used unsharp masking (USM) @ 10%/r=30/threshold=0 for local contrast enhancement. Then I sharpened again with USM set @ 50%/r=2/threshold=0.

I downsized the image for the web, saved the file and reopened it in the GIMP where I tweaked the levels and used smart sharpening with very low settings: amount=30%/r=0.3/threshold=0. When you downsize an image, sometimes you need to sharpen again to compensate.

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Let’s go through the tonal adjustments step by step. This screenshot shows the raw scan on the left, the transformed image on the right. The brighness curve dialog (lower left) shows the original histogram with a superimposed S curve. The original curve is the straight line rising at a 45 degree angle from lower left to upper right.

I established three control points along this curve and moved them to create the new S shaped curve. The dialog in the bottom center is the same curve but with the histogram view selected. You can see how I slid the bottom of the two double arrows to the left for the shadows and the other arrow to the right for the highlights.

All images will have a characteristic curve that rises gradually from the foot, steepens through the midtones and rolls over the shoulder at the top. The steeper the rise, the more contrast. The S curve for each image will differ somewhat. The trick here is to massage that curve until you like what you see.

The dialog on the bottom right shows the histogram for the adjusted image. It’s still on the dark side. I tried making all the adjustments using one curve, but got better results when I did a second transformation on the highlights.

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The image on the left is the transformation from the first screen, the image on the right shows the final.

This time around, I used two control points to anchor the shadows and two more to give the highlights a boost. Once again, the dialog on the left and in the center are two views of the same curve transformation.

The dialog on the right shows the final histogram. Note the shape and how the original histogram has been expanded to fill all the values from pure black to pure white.

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The title of this tutorial is B&W Photography: 16-bit Tonal Adjustments. Now I want to show you why it’s so important to work with 16-bit files. A 16-bit file can contain 65,536 discrete tones ranging from pure black to pure white. An 8-bit file has only 256 values to work with.

I converted my 16-bit scan to 8-bit for this demonstration. I went through the exact same transformations as I did with the 16-bit files I showed you. When you expand the tones of a flat image, you are stretching the histogram with limited tones to cover all the values from 0 to 255. Have a look at the histogram on the lower right. All the gaps are missing tones — not a good thing at all.

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And the gaps get even worse here. Compare the final 8-bit histogram to the final 16-bit histogram. Big difference. I used an extreme example and not all images require as large a tonal adjustment as this one, but when you want to make a lot of tonal adjustments (or even a few small ones), use 16-bit files whenever possible.

So now what? Try the curves tool on your photos. Play with curves and learn how to use them effectively. It just takes practice (and patience). You’ll learn that sometimes small tonal adjustments are all you need to really transform your images. Next time, I’ll show you a more subtle example.

Feel free to leave comments and questions. I’ll be happy to answer and help where I can.

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