Peter Frailey Photography :: Blog: west 2012

Showing posts with label west 2012. Show all posts

2.16.2013

Black and White:Nik Silver Efex Pro:The Bow River

This image has been growing on me. It is one of several black and whites (actually all were color images converted to black and white after the fact) that I captured one day in June, 2012 while driving south from Jasper, Alberta to Lake Louise. The day was dark and dreary and the original color image was really rather drab... so it was perfect for experimenting with a black and white conversion.

The image above is the black and white as it was first created within Lightroom. It was just a matter of clicking the button labeled "black and white". I liked it enough to submit it as a 10" x 15" print to my photo club for our February salon. It received a nice score from the salon judge, Don Toothaker, so maybe that's why the image is growing on me!

However, always helpful, Don did suggest that I play a bit with the sky and background mountains to try to get more detail from that area of the image. I thought it would be hard to do, because my recollection was that it was quite misty in the distance. But when I got home from the salon, I opened the image in Lightroom and saw that I had never really done anything to the picture except click on the black and white button, and everything else was set at the usual Lightroom defaults. I do own Nik filters and was surprised I hadn't tried any of them. So, before going to bed, I exported the RAW file to Nik Silver Efex Pro as a 16-bit TIFF file and simply clicked on several of the 20 or so presets to find one I liked. The presets are great. You can start with any one preset and then make adjustments using a number of sliders. In this case I chose "high key", hit the "okay" button, and the image file popped back into Lightroom. Simple and sweet.

I'm not sure whether this is what Don had in mind or not, but I absolutely love the result, and I thank him for his suggestion.

2.07.2013

Photoshop CS5 "Content Aware": Sunwapta Falls Revisited

In my last post I showed the following image and lamented about how unfortunate it was that the top tree across the gorge ran right through the middle of the image. This is Sunwapta Falls in Alberta, Canada.

Of course, it is not the tree's fault that it bisects the image. Unfortunately, it also runs right through the bottom of the waterfall.

My solution in the last post was to try a bit of cropping off the bottom so as to move the trees down from the middle of the image. This was accomplished by cropping with a 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 3:2. But the fact remains that the top tree runs through the bottom of the waterfall.

Since I have little proficiency in photoshop, I figured this was the best I could do. But I tried using "Content Aware" in PS5. It was amazing. In a total of 10 minutes I was able to remove the tree in question plus another small fallen tree on the right, near the top of the waterfall. I even removed much of the chain link fence that is at the top of the waterfall on the left.

I like the result much better:

Now I need to decide if cropping at the bottom as shown in the image below, strengthens the image.

What do you think?

1.26.2013

Another Black and White, Sunwapta Falls

After posting a few black and white images the other day (prior post), I found this shot of Sunwapta Falls in Alberta, Canada in my summer vacation folder and decided to convert it to black and white. I like the result.

I do wish the fallen tree in the middle weren't there. My photoshop skills aren't at a level where I can remove this, though I might just for fun see what the "content aware" tool in Photoshop CS5 will do.

The fallen tree at the bottom has more character and does not interfere with the main part of the waterfall. Or, does it? Maybe it, too, is distracting?

I dislike having that first tree in the middle so much that I created a second crop where I was willing to nearly eliminate the bushier tree at the bottom just so I could at least move the top tree away from the center of the image and into the 1/3 position. I find it less distracting there.

Nevertheless, I haven't decided which of the two I like better. Note that the first image is a 3:2 aspect ratio image and the second one is 4:3, just a bit "square-er".

Either way, I do like the exposure. I haven't mastered the "soft" waterfall look mainly because I don't like tripods, and a very slow shutter speed is required. However, in this case, using shutter priority I set the camera at 1/15th second and held the camera on top of a wood railing on the bridge on which I was standing. Base ISO on this camera is 200 and the camera chose F22. If there had been any more light, I would have been out of luck as F22 is the smallest aperture on this lens. I do have a Neutral Density filter but not for the 67mm threads on this Olympus 14-54mm lens.

A neutral density filter would have allowed me to try an even slower speed, such as 1/8th. Thinking back to this scene, I should have tried 1/8th anyway. Though it would have resulted in a slightly overexposed image, the various adjustment sliders in Lightroom might have helped me pull back the exposure of the brightest areas.

1.20.2013

A few black and whites from the Canadian Rockies

I've been trying to find some photographs from our Canadian Rockies trip last June that will convert nicely to black and white. It is very hard for me to determine what will look good... until I try.

Biker's Solitude

"Trying" is easy in Lightroom. First I make sure that the "Navigator" feature is open. It is located at the top of the left hand panel. Then, below the navigator, is the "Presets" feature. I hover the cursor over the various "Lightroom B&W Filter Presets" and watch how the image in the Navigator changes. If the image has potential, I then create a "Virtual Copy" of the original color image and click on the preset to apply it to the virtual copy. You can then tweak the various sliders on the right hand tool panel to see if you can improve on the preset defaults. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.

The Vermilion River, Kootenay National Park, British Columbia

I think all of these images were taken on rainy, cloudy, and/or foggy days. It is my experience that dramatic skies come across well as black and whites. Another thing about drab days is that the colors are rather muted (boring?), so converting to black and white makes sense.

A Rainy Day Around Banff

All of these were taken in RAW format with either a Panasonic GH2 (since sold) or an Olympus E-M5. The lens was always the Olympus 14-54II attached to the camera via a 43-to-m43 adapter.

Pyramid Lake, Jasper Alberta

Bow River, Jasper National Park, Alberta

David Thompson Wilderness

Near Athabasca Pass, Canadian Rockies

Bow River, Jasper National Park

12.11.2012

The view from atop Sulphur Mountain, Banff, Alberta, Canada

The submission of the panorama below (the third picture below) to my photo club's November Salon caused me to go back to my pictures from June of this year to look again at the images I took atop Sulphur Mountain.

It had rained the previous day and through the night. But in the morning the clouds began to break apart and we could see that it had snowed at the high elevations. As it turned out, the top of Sulphur Mountain had about 3 inches of fresh snow.

We took one of the early gondola rides to the top, as we worried that the clouds would return. Fortunately, we had plenty of warm clothes. We knew before arriving in the Canadian Rockies that June could be a cold month and that snow should be anticipated.

[Larger Images: click on any of these images to see as large as 1600 x 1200 depending on your monitor.]

The panorama below was spliced together from four individual images. If you look carefully you can see the Canadian flag on a flagpole next to the gondola station. The pictures for the panorama were taken about half way along a very nice boardwalk that connects the gondola terminal to an observation building.

In two of the images below you can see the town of Banff. The river that runs through town is the Bow River. You can't tell from the pictures, but the Bow River was raging well above its banks. Rains had been heavy but this is also a time of snow melt in the mountains. You can easily see the brown color of the water.