Sojourns

Sanctuary

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An Old Friend

Shooting the moon is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance.  Simply put your camera in manual mode, select the sharpest aperture for your particular lens, and then dial up the shutter speed until you aren’t blowing it out completely.  If you let your camera decide all of the exposure information it will blow the moon out to pure white and start to expose the rest of the sky.  You have to dial back 4-5 stops from what your camera might guess is “proper” exposure for the information in the frame.  Go manual and check the histogram!

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Achoo!

Yes, it is Benadryl and Zyrtec season again!  The pine pollen is out in force this week, making it difficult to keep windows open or be outside.  For this photograph I used a polarizer on my 24 f/2.8 and stopped it about midway between where the reflections were strongest and where they disappeared altogether.  I wanted to have some reflection of the offending pine trees in the water behind the rocks where the pollen is collecting.

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Beacon

Today turned into an adventure day for the family.  First up was frisbee and swinging at James Island County Park.  Next we explored the Angel Oak on John’s Island.  And last we took a walk on the end of Folly Beach where I spent some time photographing the lighthouse, which has been shored up and repaired to keep it standing.  Years ago you could walk to the lighthouse and even walk up inside.  That all changed with hurricanes like Hugo which forever changed the shoreline.  This area is still one of the most picturesque in all of the lowcountry.

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Gnarled

I saw this old tree in Hampton Park near The Citadel while on my usual Thursday tempo run.  I didn’t have much time after the run to come back and get a photo.  And this was the best that it could be isolated given the lenses available to me.  I used my trusty EF 24mm f2.8 and cropped as much out as I could in the viewfinder while leaving the tree top clear against the sky.  There is a trash can behind the trunk, so this was the only angle that could cut that out.  Not a bad composition given all the variables.

My post processing on subjects like this could use some work.   I wanted to bring out the detail in the trunk a little more, but the light was so bright that it was hard to contain the scene in the first place.  I had to be gentle with the adjustments or I started getting a lot of posterization.  I may come back to this image at some point and try a black and white process.

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The Walk

Today will be a two-for-one entry.  I couldn’t decide which photo I preferred for my daily photo entry.  I suppose if I’d been about two feet taller taking the woman’s photograph walking by Colonial Lake in Downtown Charleston, my choice would have been easy.  While I liked the photograph since it captured her introspective walk, the bright line of the wave line in the water bisects her head to a distracting degree.  The white industrial trucks of a cinema production company ringed the lake as well, preventing a more serene composition.  I converted to black and white and then applied a tritone to the final image before saving for the web.

Silenced

I knew that I had “iffy” compositions and/or subjects for my Colonial Lake street photos, so I went back to an area I’m pulling a lot of subjects from on the old Naval Base in Charleston.  This is an abandoned industrial building near the piers and the waterfront park.  I was drawn to the vertical composition of the stacks against what I knew would be an empty sky.  I also knew it would work well in black and white, as you see here.  This image has a simple black and brown duotone applied before saving for the web.  I think this composition has more unity and harmony than the street scene.  But I’m less enamored of the subject itself.  Although I’ve done a lot of landscape so far, I prefer the human element.

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Clouds over the Cooper

I am still working on the blue sky and clouds assignment for someone.  This image gets a lot closer to the result desired.  I’m still hoping to find a little more benign clouds, and perhaps fewer of them.  In the meantime, this made for a nice lunchtime walk in the park near where I work.

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Nowhere

This railroad trestle is near Yeamans Hall Road and North Rhett in North Charleston. I saw this from the road to the left of the train tracks today and had this image in my mind.  The only thing missing is a train coming head on!  I waited some time for a train to appear, but had other appointments to make.  One day I’ll come out when I know the trains schedules and try to meet one.

The last two days I’ve been working on some new post-processing techniques.  They are doing wonders for bringing the images back to what I experienced through the viewfinder.  I am particularly enthusiastic about finally understanding sharpening and how the various techniques work.  You can read for yourself here at Ron Bigelow’s website.  There is a wealth of information there for how to analyze and optimize what comes out of your camera.  Taking the shot and uploading the digits to your computer are just the beginning of making a truly outstanding image.  Check out my Flikr photostream for the original RAW version of this image to compare what is possible.

Also, if you’re in Charleston and you’re interested in the locations of my photos, I have made the Google Maps locations public here on my blog.

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Reflections

Another view of the Ravenel Bridge from downtown Charleston, SC.  The lighting used on the bridge is fascinating.  You can read about it here.

I spent some time today learning new sharpening and noise reduction techniques in post processing.  I used a few of them on this image and found they are much more effective than what I have previously been doing.  With more time to fine tune, this image could really clean up well and be a fine art print.  I’ve still plenty to learn first!

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