A couple of the bloggers that I read on a regular basis have been talking about the value of taking the new post-processing skills that you have learned and revisiting an reprocessing images from the past.
That encouragement, along with a new e-book on processing landscapes, led me back to the images from an outing that is almost three years old. Debbie and I took a trip to Moab, UT where big skies, puffy clouds and castle-like towers abound.
These images are taken one evening as sunset approached. The first reaction of some people who have seen these images has been "Monument Valley!" I assure you it is not.
Moab is noted for the arches of Arches N.P. and for the courses of the Colorado and Green rivers in Canyonlands N.P. But upstream from Moab the Colorado valley broadens out for a few miles and it is ringed by these formations. If you look closely in the background of Road to LaSal and A Big Sky you will see the snow rimmed LaSal Mountains (famously seen in the background of photos of Delicate Arch or Mesa Arch and the Washer Woman).
Enjoy the images as I have in reliving the trip while inside on a rainy day.
Keeping up with the changes in the hardware and software around digital photography is always one of the challenges. With my day job being in business software I understand the benefit of adding features and fixing problems. As a user I understand the frustration of a new learning curve and the on-going expenses.
Liberty Memorial
My workflow prior to this latest cycle has been Photoshop-based. When I started with digital photography I adopted Photo Mechanic as my digital organizer and lightbox. Capture NX2 was my RAW converter. I used GIMP as the pixel editor. I had used Photoshop 5 to make some early attempts to composite or merge bracketed images. In time I did a trial down load of CS4 and was sold on the flexibility and the smooth interface. I own DxO, but found using a three package workflow, especially with TWO resource-intensive packages too slow for my tastes. The CS5 upgrade was an easy choice. The opportunity of Content-Aware Fill was the 'Aha' feature.
You might be asking "what about Lightroom"? I have never gotten started with LR, primarily for the cost of purchasing another package and time investment to relearn. But with the discussions on the improvements in the LR Develop module I was intrigued.
My post-processing mentors are split: one is an ACR guy and the other LR. Both recommended waiting until both the new LR4 and CS6 came out to make a decision on which new package to adopt. It was the LR guy who convinced me. He said since I already was comfortable with my Photo Mechanic - Adobe Camera Raw - Photoshop workflow I should invest in the CS6 upgrade to get the "Develop module" upgrade for ACR.
So, I've made the plunge! The new interface is nice. I'm looking forward to trying some of the new Photoshop features, like the improved crop tool. But ACR 7.1 was the reason for the upgrade. So I went looking for instruction.
I've found that the teaching community on the web for LR4 is more 'accessible' than that for ACR. But the underlying software is exactly the same and the interface is 90-95% identical. So I'm including the LR training in my reading. Michael Frye has a couple of very good videos here and here. Uwe Steinmueller has a good eBook on using Develop. Their landscape styles influence mine as well.
Western Auto
So I've begun teaching myself the new steps. I find the new controls clearer and more intuitive. I have to relearn where the starting points for various types of photos lie and rebuild my presets.
The images above are a couple of first efforts. Conversion in ACR 7.1 and post-processing with Silver eFex Pro and Color eFex Pro in CS6.
This is an image from earlier this year. This old movie projector was setting on the sidewalk outside an antiques store in a small town in Arizona.
This image has been lingering in the back of my mind as one I would like to use to try various post-processing approaches to finishing this one for display.
We spent Saturday night at the new Mabee Gym on the campus of Kansas Wesleyan University. The McPherson Bulldogs were in town to play the Coyotes.
The first half of the men's game was a tight-fought battle. But in the second half the Coyote's used great shooting and a tight zone defense to soundly defeat the Bulldogs.
Being a new gym, the lighting is better than most of the venues where we follow the Bulldogs. These men's photos were shot at ISO 2500, F/2.8, 1/400s and NEF format. At that ISO the raw images are very noisy. The images were about 1/3 of a stop underexposed. The lights also have a yellowish cast. These photos have been processed through DxO for exposure, white balance/tint, and noise reduction. Cropping and sharpening were done in Capture NX2.
I received a 18% grey card for Christmas, and this was the first opportunity that I've had to experiment with it. I took images of the card lying on the floor at various locations around the basketball court. I used each image to determine a white balance and tint adjustment. I then used these results to load and save a location setting for bulk processing the images. I was really happy how well (and how easily) the adjustments worked.
Saturday evening we attended the McPherson College vs. University of St. Mary basketball games at the USM gym in Leavenworth, KS. The Bulldog Men carried the evening to move to a 13-2 overall record and a 6-0 record in the KCAC. The Bulldogs have been receiving votes, but have not yet made the NAIA Division II Top 25.
The Bulldogs quickly jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first half. Sophomore G Aaron Frazier bucketed 13 points to lead the Mac men to a 45-38 half time lead.
The Spires continued to battle the Bulldogs in the second half. A 22-6 run by USM pulled them to within four with under a minute left in the game. McPherson went on to force several turnovers and hit 6 of 6 free throws to keep the lead and the win 100-94. Senior guard Mike Reese scored 27 to lead the Bulldogs over the Spires.
Shooting in this gym is very difficult. There is a 2.5 stop difference in the lighting between mid-court and the baseline area under the baskets. The lighting is a mix of traditional incandesent, high intensity vapor, and fluoresent. Takes a lot of adjustment!
The images were shot in NEF. They were first processed through DxO for exposure (0.5 to 1.25 stops), tint (taking out the green effect of the fluoresents) and noise, saved as JPG. Cropping and final color adjustments were done in Capture NX2.
First, I want to wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year !
We've been at home in Missouri after Christmas in Nebraska. We've had a great time with the kids and family. The weather across the midwest for the entire holiday season hasn't allowed for great photography. The natural colors on the plains at this season are buffs and grays, and with the cloudy skies it makes for a very monochrome color palate.
What do you do with a capture with little color? Work with the contrasts of the image and try to generate an interesting image in black and white. This image almost begins as sepia in it's original color. I've played with a number of settings to get to this "antique postcard" look.
The conversion is done in Photoshop CS4 using adjustment layers:
- B&W Conversion at default settings
- Exposure, with offset set at -0.065 (to generate mid-range contrast)
- Photo Filter, choosing Sepia filter, then increasing the density to 40%
The vignette is a large brush (1000 px) with a speckle pattern and 10% opacity. Used two overlapping passes to provide the graduated pattern. No sharpening to help with the antique look.
It was a gray and gloomy weekend in Kansas City. No good photo light. I took the opportunity to wrap-up my Christmas shopping and some other year-end tasks.
A week-ago I posted some basketball photos from the McPherson - Ottawa games. Those images were quick grabs after some initial post-processing. I took the time this weekend to do some more processing, primarily color- and better exposure correction and cropping. They can now be viewed through the original blog post. Follow the link to see them.
The men have done well since last week. They went 2-0 for the week, and go into the break 10-2. The ladies dropped their two games and are now 4-7.
Our weekend schedule this winter does not line up nearly as well with basketball as it did with the football season this fall. We took advantage of an alignment of the stars to spend the weekend with our daughter and younger son. This gave us the opportunity to see the Neil Simon play "Rumors" put on by the McPherson College theatre department, and the McPherson mens and womens Basketball teams play Ottawa University.
Shooting indoor sports is a challenge. The light in high school and small college gyms is dim and spotty by photographic standards. In the McPherson Sports Center the baseline of the court is darker by a full stop (or more) than the mid-court area between the two free throw lines. I've shot in this gym before and I knew the challenges that I would face. Even when you start with a good f/2.8 lens the compromise you often have to make is tp underexpose or shoot at high ISO settings in order to freeze action. This results in noisy (grainy) photos.
The womens team opened the evening with a 69-61 victory over the Lady Braves. This was one of the Lady Bulldog's better efforts from the field and on defense this season. The Lady Bulldogs are 4-5 overall and 1-1 in conference.
The McPherson mens team has a good season underway. They earned a 69-56 victory over the Ottawa men. They are now 8-2 overall and 2-0 in the KCAC.
I had done some research into changes that I could attempt to make my images better. The change in process that made these images come out as well as they did was a change to my post-processing workflow. The originals were underexposed as mentioned above. The raw files were processed through a software package called DXO to raise the exposure and remove the noise. DXO has recently come out with a new version (6.0) that I used for the first time.
Update 12/14: the images you see on this post now have been further processed. I started with the DXO processed images I originally posted. One or two of the originals were re-processed using DXO 6.1 to raise the exposure a little more. Then all were cropped, black- and white-point adjusted, and sharpened in Capture NX2
My sports photography has been centered on McPherson College football this season. This has been as much due to my personal scheduling as interest. Most volleyball games are either weeknights or on the same day as football, but in another town.
This weekend we got football and volleyball an hour apart in schedule and distance. We took in the Lady Bulldogs vs. the Southwestern College Moundbuilders in a post-season tournament game in McPherson.
The Lady Bulldogs are a young team, and have had their ups and downs this season. They finished the regular season with a 7 - 19 record. This placed them eighth among the ten members of the KCAC. The SWC squad finished ninth, but had beaten Mac in both of their meetings during the regular season.
The Lady 'Dogs started slow, losing the first game 18-15. From that point McPherson stepped up their game, especially their setting, and won the next three games for a 3-1 victory in the match.
McPherson's next match will be against the #1 seed Tabor College at Tabor's gym on Tuesday. Good Luck Bulldogs!
These images were my first try for shooting this sport. I'm really pleased with how they came out. I shot a basketball game in the McPherson gym last year before the upgrade to my equipment. The results that time were pretty disappointing. I'm much more satisfied with these images. To get fast shutter speeds I shot with the exposure compensation set to -2/3 of a stop. The ISO ran 2500 to 3200 to keep the 1/400s shutter speed and f/2.8 aperture I was using. To me the noise is acceptable given the limits of my D90, but I want to look into post-processing options for noise reduction. The lighting is about as the images came from the camera, so they are a little darker than the room appeared to the eye. They are PP'd with black point, white point and contrast adjustments.
There are images that have to be thrown out due to particulars issues of the venue: there is a bright sign at floor level that throws off the automatic exposure, and the camera occasionally captures the 60 hz cycling of the lights.
Volleyball offers different photographic challenges and opportunities from football. Obviously, you can get up close and personal to the participants much more easily, which is one reason I like these images so well for a first try. Inadequate lighting (from a photographic standpoint) and the resulting shallow depth of field make for interesting challenges as well. I would like to experiment with using manual focus, as the auto-focus would seek and find other targets (the net in front, or the crowd or player behind) than the one I was trying to capture.
