Posts Tagged Singh-Ray
Sunset Storm over Albuquerque
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 30, 2010
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Taken with Canon 5D and Canon 24-70 f/2.8. ISO 100, f/11, 1/4 second exposure. Exposure balanced with a Singh-Ray 3 stop, hard, graduated neutral density filter.
What a difference a month (and some snow) makes
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on May 3, 2010
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People often ask me what is the best time of year to visit Yosemite. While winter is probably my personal favorite, there is no best time. The park is beautiful year round and unless you see it in several different seasons you’re doing yourself a disservice.
The park’s transformations are the most dramatic during the changing of seasons. Nothing highlights those transformations like this image. I shot basically this same scene last month with a completely different result. Higher spring water levels and the gift of a blanket of fresh snow made for a completely different feel.
Photographically, this is a challenging scene. Taken from full shade, the dynamic range in this frame is well above what the camera is capable of recording. One technique would have been to capture several frames, at various exposures, and combine them via software. Rather rely on the computer, I used a Singh-Ray 3 stop hard edged split neutral density filter. The level horizon allowed me to place the filter transition directly down the middle of the frame.
With the filter balancing the exposure there was another problem that I needed to address. Reflections are always darker, generally by about 1 stop, than the subject being reflected. If I didn’t point it out you may not notice but something might not seem “just right.” With the filter on the top half of the frame, I needed to darken the reflection to keep it natural looking. Since I always use a polarizer during the day, it was a simple fix. I simply rotated the polarizer to produce the maximum reflection and then backed it off to darken it slightly.
Even though I teach digital image processing, my preference is always to get the picture as close as possible in the camera rather than resort to processing tricks. It’s much more satisfying, to me, to do it that way.
Cheers
Flooded Meadow, Yosemite Falls
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on April 24, 2010
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A few months ago I finished reading Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing. While I have no intention of converting to Taoism it was a good read. An engineer by vocation and photographer by avocation, I sometimes struggle with my analytical mind. While creativity truly comes from within it’s interesting to see other approaches of connecting to that inner self. Often, a mix of the analytic and creative is required to make thoughtful images.
I made this image on the last workshop trip in Yosemite. While the group all marched out to Swinging Bridge, where they could should in relative comfort, I trudged out into the flooded meadow. (Budding nature photographers take note: waterproof boots are your friends.) Before I was close enough to compose a shot I knew that would be reflection opportunities. Once I got there it was just a matter of letting my creativity turn it into an image.
After working this scene for a bit, I tipped off a few folks in the group and let them have a crack at the spot. In retrospect, I wish that I’d tried a few more compositions before tipping my hand and losing my location. There’s always next trip.
Cheers
Graduated neutral density fingers
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on November 4, 2009
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Landscape photographers often encounter challenging light conditions. While the human eye is perfectly able to render a scene like this, the camera just can’t handle this range of brightness without help. One way of dealing with such a problem is through the use of graduated neutral density filter, often referred to as a “split grad.”
A split grad is a square or rectangular piece of resin or glass. Across half of the filter there is some degree of darkening. The transition from light to dark can be either smooth (a soft filter) or very abrupt (a hard filter). They’re used to darken just a portion of an image in an effort to make the dynamic range of the scene more manageable.
Split grads are fantastic tools but they have a drawback. When an image has no clear and level horizon it’s difficult to apply the filter without darkening more of the scene than you want. In the case of this image, from near Leidig Meadow, I’d have lost all of the detail in the rocks on the right edge of the frame. I needed another solution.
The answer came in the form of the thin black gloves that I was wearing that eveing. To get the color that I wanted in the water I’d already calculated my exposure to be 5 seconds. With 3 fingers in front of the lens I was able to roughly match the triangular patch of sky in the top of the frame. Next I tried several exposures and altered the amount of time that I left my fingers in front of the camera. 3 seconds out of the total 5 second exposure worked out to be the right formula. Since it wasn’t an exact match I did have to do some minor dodging and burning to even out the edges of my “filter” but it was a lot less work than trying to repair the damage from a traditional split grad.
The best part is that a quality split grad from someone like Singh-Ray can set you back $175. Fingers are free.
Cheers
Eye of the Beholder
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Random Thoughts on June 29, 2009
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Photography, and art in general, is incredibly subjective. I recently entered an open show at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center. My single entry was accepted, but the juror for this show rejected more pieces than he accepted. One of my local peers had a photograph rejected that took first place in another show on the same weekend. It is impossible to cater to the likes and dislikes of everyone who sees your images. While there is no denying that it is a great feeling when someone expresses admiration for one of your pieces or, better still, purchases one but really it is important to please yourself first.
I shoot landscapes and nature because I enjoy it. Since I’m not on assignment, it lifts any pressure to please someone else. Being free to create images the way that you see fit empowers you to find your own vision. All of us, as photographers, are influenced by other’s work. It is the act of shaping those influences into your own creative expression that lets your images sing.
Home Cooking
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on March 27, 2009
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Last night was the monthly meeting of a local photography club that I’m associated with. We wanted to start the night off shooting but the location ended up being a bit of a last minute decision. To further complicate things we only had about 30 minutes of daylight so it had to be pretty close to our meeting location. On a whim, I contacted the Principal of a local school, Garfield elementary. They have a small nature area that turned out to be just the ticket. The club members have varied interests but I think that most everyone found at least a little something to shoot.
I could see that there was color starting to develop in the sky so I went off in search of a scene to use it with. I like anchoring my scene with a strong foreground object so when I found this granite bolder I went to work. The nature area is a little pocket of green in a suburban neighborhood. I had to find an angle that got me the color in the sky, the rock in the foreground but hid “the hand of man.” I settled on this spot and couldn’t be happier with the shot. I’d never have guess that I’d get this sort of shot this close to home. Read the rest of this entry »
Taming the Gold-N-Blue
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on December 12, 2008
As of today, I’ve had my Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer for exactly a week. Several of this week’s posts were taken with my new toy. Because it is a polarizer, it’s difficult to recreate the effect in Photoshop (at least for someone with my post-processing skills). The first time you look through it, and give it a spin, you’ll notice that it’s wildly different than any other polarizer that you may have used. The first thing that you notice, after you download your images, is that nothing looks like it did in your viewfinder.
This filter has its roots in film. Before Photoshop was a standard component in the photographic workflow, filters were the primary tool to manipulate the color in your image. With film there was no notion of white balance (WB), although we still used it; we just called it something different. To compensate for each temperature of light we used a different type of film; tungsten being just one example. Really, we were setting WB in hardware. Today we set it in software.
I always leave my camera set to automatic WB, because I often adjust that setting manually. In this shot, the version on the right is what Adobe Lightroom shows me when I import the image. Getting the image to what I remembered seeing in the viewfinder required some radical adjustment.
Getting to the version on the left required moving the color temperature slider to, a very cool, 2850 and dropping the tint slider to -55. Those are adjustments that I’d never dream of making, in most cases, but they’re required to offset the reddish hue that his filter imparts. Your actual settings will vary depending on your light and conditions but don’t be afraid of big adjustments. It’s probably possible to set a custom white balance, in camera, to get you to a closer starting point but you’ll still likely want to adjust it manually in processing.
Bottom line – If you get to play with one of these don’t panic when you see your images. Stop, relax and cool down; everything will be fine.
A word of caution:
The effects of this filter can impart very strong reactions from people. To many “landscape purists” it’s unnatural or cheating. On the other hand many people really enjoy how it renders the image. Just like using saturation, vibrance, blending or any other technique to increase your image’s visual impact, this is just a tool. Landscape photography should be about your own personal artistic representation of a scene, not someone else’s notion of the the craft should be.
Shoot, experiment and have fun.
Cheers
Sunset from another planet
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography, Travel on December 8, 2008
If you’ve spent any time in the Sacramento area this time of year you know it can be dreary. The topology of the valley makes for idea fog conditions. While it may be sunny and bright 30 miles from here, in the valley it’s dark and grey; sometimes for weeks at a time. When an opportunity to escape the gloom presents itself, we take it. Last Friday was the annual member’s Christmas party at the Monterey Bay Aquarium so we made a weekend of it.
We spent Saturday at Point Lobos, a California State Preserve just South of Monterey, hiking and crawling around tide pools. The real show began at sunset. The amazing colors captured were the result of a very specialized polarizing filter, and some other filters, made by Singh-Ray; they weren’t produced in Photoshop or by any other software. It gives a really interesting, somewhat unnatural, effect that can be modified by rotating the filter. Unlike a normal polarizer it really impacts your white balance setting so shooting RAW is almost a necessity.
Details:
Canon 5D, Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm, f/16, ISO 400 @ 3 seconds. Threaded onto the lens is a Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer. The top 1/3 of the image was really hot so I used a combination of a 3 stop hard-edge split graduated filter as well as a 3 stop soft-edge filter, stacked on top of one another. I held the filters by hand in front of the lens. A tripod, of course, was required.
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