St. Paddy and his Day

Salt Lake City has a St. Patrick's Day Parade, along with the rest of the known universe. I don't drink, so if I wanted to go it was to take pictures. What else would Some Dude With a Camera do when he has the opportunity?

They mark the route with shamrocks. Nice touch.

Nothing special to the shot but I was in love with the sky/clouds that morning.

Guy sitting next to us had some interesting hands so I snuck in a shot.

A bunch of guys in skirts marched past.

One of them was carrying St. Andrew's Cross, one of the flags of Scotland.

Behind the mall I found a door that had more than a couple locks and peepholes.

Kinda liked this truck...

Love the old ones: Pentax K 28mm f3.5

Nothing beats the feeling of using one of the old manual focus lenses Pentax is famous for. The build and the... solidity are just awesome in the hand.

While these photos are nothing amazing, they are fun for me simply due to the fact that the taking of them was a sensory experience that was enjoyable. And had to be worked for just that little bit harder.

Learning By Making Mistakes.....

Have you ever learned something then because you are lazy, you forget to keep doing it? I learned it the semi hard way, by making a correctable mistake that cost me only time.

Early on, cannot remember when, I read an article about HDR processing that encouraged converting and sharpening your RAW files before running them through Photomatix. I did that for awhile, but found the process tedious. On a recent evening I ran over to my local LDS Temple to get some shots with the rising full moon in the background. After returning home and being chronically busy I had Photomatix do the RAW conversion. I processed everything and was liking the colors etc... but when closely examining the photos I realized that they were not as sharp as is my usual work.

Curious as to whether I could do better with converting to TIFF using ACR and sharpening prior to running the files through Photomatix, I took the time to do the conversions, improving the White Balance and doing the Lens Corrections/Sharpening I usually do.

Below is a comparison of the results. The top photo was using the RAW converter in Photomatix and the bottom using ACR first. The bottom is quite a bit sharper and will print MUCH better in larger formats, also note that I was able to get the WB better. (Just trust me, I see this temple a lot) I also feel that I was able to pull more detail out of the brighter areas as well. Overall just a nicer image.

So here now are the photos processed the right way, and without the vignette I used on the first ones. They are just a bit better, especially on a calibrated monitor.

This was shot the same night just a little later, my main problem was that I had rubber ends on my tripod not my spikes and at 300mm I got just a bit of tripod movement when I had it sitting on the grass. Now I know though...

Three nights later I did some more work as part of a date with my wife. Dinner and Temple Photography is always better than Dinner and a Movie. I wanted to experiment with changing perspective and focal length. Of note, all of these were multiple bracketed exposures, converted in ACR with lens correction Profiles, WB correction & Sharpening. The HDR settings were kept essentially unchanged for all of them. My final post processing consisted of straightening (leveling) and perspective correction and cropping. One trick of perspective correction is to not over correct, I tend to leave it just short of perfectly corrected which seems more natural to me.

This at 17mm.

This at 15mm, portrait orientation.

This at 10mm and in Landscape orientation.

10mm as above but closer. I like this one the least as the perspective makes the sides away from the entry too large and makes the building look out of proportion.

Finally at 8mm with my Fisheye from essentially the same spot at the 10mm. (This was straightened but not perspective corrected.)

Taking Time the Only Way I Know How

There are times when life is so busy that you have to choose between many different "Good" things that it is bad to have so many choices. I am realizing that my Work/Home/Hobby balance needs to be constantly re-evaluated and fine tuned to stay ahead of the quicksand phase. By that I mean the phase where you are behind in everything and you just take a nap instead, ending up just as stuck as you were before you took the nap, just better rested. With the advent of spring this will be tested even more.

So, what did I do? I picked up my camera, because that is as good as a nap to me, and carried it with me a couple days this last week. I mostly took traveling pictures, waiting for the train, walking home from the train etc... but at least I took some pictures and that is good!

I find a happy warm glow when I am watching the sun rise. I warmed this up to match the feeling I get.

My trusty steed. This was an early Saturday morning (yeah I work some Saturdays, People don't leave the hospital and go home just because it is the weekend.) and it was only a single car, which was unusual enough to stick in my mind. Usually we have at least two cars, and four on weekday mornings.

This is a sign I see on a daily basis. It literally is invisible to me now, unless I have my camera in hand. Have to say that my clean socks just taken out of my shoes are definitely cleaner than the seat they are going on so I have a reason to ignore it.

The first three photos were taken with my 100mm Macro lens, it is one of my best. The rest of these photos were taken on another day with my Pentax SMC 28mm f3.5 (or "K" series lens, the first series of bayonet mount lenses they produced.)

I do like the sense of movement in this shot, taken earlier in the morning before sunrise, hand holding was tough though.

Coming home that night I decided to try looking out the back of the train, the 28mm focal length was perhaps a bit long for this type of shot, but I like it.

I have never considered a f3.5 lens as one to use to achieve a limited depth of field. Wide open this does a workman like job though, and the bokeh (i.e. the look, or rendering, of the out of focus areas) is fairly smooth and not busy or nervous. I really should use this lens more.

1/8 of a second exposure is tough to hand hold, but with the help of a concrete bench I was able to do it. I was glad to see that the man made streams have been turned back on at the lake. The sound is soothing to me after a long day of hustle and bustle. Even if they are a "Water Feature" rather than a real stream...

I'm a little different.....

...and I like to look at the world a little differently sometimes. On one day, I want hyper real, another just the facts ma'am, other days I think the entire world is some kind of joke and only I can see it. Other days I am just dying to take a picture that interests me. Yesterday all those desires and viewpoints were swirling along with the rain clouds. Fortunately my camera and lens are weather resistant and I don't melt in the rain.

Not going to comment on these, unless you leave a comment.

Ahhhh..... Walking about!!!!!

 If you have been reading my stuff/looking at my blog for long you will have realized that I LOVE to just walk around and take pictures of whatever I see that interests me. Sometimes I get a lot of... eh, whatever... type of photos, even to me, but often I get a lot of stuff that I like. You may not like them, but I really don't care so much... They help me remember a happy day, one spent with a camera in hand!

I see this building every Monday, always looking for a different take on it. I had decided to use one of my favorite lenses for walk about this day: the Pentax DFA 100mm f2.8 WR. I usually like a more traditional focal length like 24-28-35mm lens for walkabout. But... yeah... I'm different. If you click through the link you will see what those look like of this same building.

Light-Rail stops here in Utah are decorated with art installations, some I like more than others. I liked the juxtaposition of shapes at this stop.

This is all about shapes and shadows of shapes.

Flowers, the Monday after Valentines Day, NOT a usual happening in Utah.

This stopped me in my tracks. It is deliberately abstract and I will leave it like that. Write a comment if you want to know what it is.

There is a joke here if you can find it. And you are familiar with German pet names.

I really liked the patterns of these plants, I struggled with depth of field and shutter speed. I think this would be an excellent subject for focus stacking.

I am always captivated by the light on my beloved mountains at the end of the day. Had to make a panorama to frame it right. Sigh... I love how putting a camera in my hand incites appreciation of the world around me.

Panoramas? YES!

Anyone who appreciates cameras in small packages (Like ME!) but with high image quality has tough choices to make. There is a compromise to be made between portability and IQ that recent cell phone camera advances cannot obviate. Now, cameras are getting smaller, and some mirrorless cameras are very very capable and small. Until you put a quality zoom lens in front of it. Then you are stuck with a body that is too small to work well ergonomically with the lens. That (besides money) is why I have stuck with a DSLR. Problem is DSLR's are not really compact, especially with a big lens stuck on the front. Enter good old fashioned non-zooming Prime Lenses. Now before you recoil in horror, let me list some good things.

1) Primes tend to have better Image Quality (i.e. sharpness, resistance to flare, contrast)

2) Primes are smaller than most zooms. Especially zoom lenses that can approach Prime quality.

3) Primes can have a faster/larger aperture, and will typically deliver critically sharp images at wider apertures than zooms.

4) Primes are usually lighter than zooms.

5) You get more exercise "Zooming with your feet"

6) You miss more shots/You have to work harder to get the shot you want.

Did I shock you? Yes #6 is a good thing! Unless you are shooting a paid event where you have to get the shot. Then I use a zoom. But I would rather use a prime.

Some people argue that you miss shots because you cannot go wide enough. I call BS. Both of these shots were taken with a 35mm Lens on an APS-C (or cropped) sensor Pentax K-5. This equates to a slightly longer than "Normal" lens yet I think these look pretty good and I didn't feel particularly limited. Plus the resolution is amazing, I could print these pretty big with no problems at all. Try that with a ultra wide angle zoom that you cropped to the same aspect ratio!

Easy to get in a rut... Gotta break it!

I hate when I get busy with life and don't get to take pictures for fun. I shot a family of 10 right after thanksgiving which was a fun opportunity, but I don't get to share the photos here. So for the new year I plan to make more time for me. Somehow.....

Anyway, I haven't been completely deficient, as you saw in my last post I did go out around new year's and get a few shots. I find that a prime lens and free time allow the juices to flow nicely when I can grab a few moments.

These next two shots were quick grab shots in the mall while wife and kids were doing Build-A-Bear... which I can only stand for a certain length of time before my head explodes.

I liked the shapes of the decorations on the ceiling. Nothing fancy, just a quick and dirty shot wide open at f2.8 with my trusty 24mm.

The bears are kinda cute, but if you look at them for too long they start to get a "Chucky" expression on their faces. This is at closest focus and f2.8.

I find myself looking at common things in a totally new way with a camera in hand. I have punched this timeclock at my part time job for over 11 years. The wall is bare, painted hospital taupe, and suddenly quite stark when I make it black and white. Still pondering if this is rubbish or not, I took it today and I am still quite in love with the image. Will probably hate it in a week.

Due to it being President's Day the train was not crowded and I was able to lie down on a bench and rest my weary back. I stared up at this hand strap which I have seen and held many times. It looked completely different, and new, the light reflecting in the metal creating a pattern I had never noticed. I will never look at it the same again.

This image is a 4 shot panorama, I could have gone with 3, but I like to make sure I have enough data to work with, and you can never go back and re shoot something like this. I did a little to bring out the texture under the clouds and correct the WB. The old K200D tends to make these images too cold in camera. Nothing amazing, but I quite like the clouds.