A bit of everything
i swear, I'll try to increase my update schedule to more than once a month! I really need to try harder, I've been slacking 
Today, I have several small things for you:
Some weeks/months ago I spent a day playing tourist guide to friends in Frankfurt. It was also my first chance to test the Sigma 10-20mm lens I bought two days earlier (yes that trip made me buy sooner). I shared one photo with you but never the whole gallery.
While we are on the topic of Frankfurt, I also spent a day in the local botanical garden in September and took lots of flower macros *yay*. Due to the number of photos, there are two galleries: Flowers and a separate one for Dahlias.
I live in a fairly old town with a real castle ruin and each year we have a fair there, which is always great fun but most years it conflicts with another engagement. But not so this year
I got two galleries for you from that: Some photos from the fair using my Lensbaby and at night they had a Keltic Fire Show, which I got some great photos from (if i may say so myself 
).
On we go: I spent a long weekend in Prague, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Marianske Lanske (Marienbad) in September. Truly spectacular cities with tons to see & do and just a dream for photographers. Almost all of the photos in the three galleries I have put online are HDRs from three exposures. I'm in a total HDR phase right now. The galleries are divided by location: Prague, Karlovy Vary, and Marianske Lankse. We spent three days in Prague and then an afternoon in Karlovy Vary and a morning in Mariankse Lankse and i mainly used my new Sigma Wideangle Lens.
Last but not least, I spent a Saturday at a small zoo that specialises in reptiles - you know how much me and my Macro lens love reptiles Here are my best shots in a gallery.
Sorry for dumping so many photos on you - I definitely need to update the blog way more often...
As a last side note (to german readers): Ich "darf" jetzt auch für die Arbeit bloggen und habe nach einer Diskussion über die Qualitätsunterschiede in den Aufnahmen mit einem iPhone und einem Blackberry einen Blogeintrag über das Thema geschrieben auf der Basis der grundlegenden Technik, die solche Unterschiede ausmacht. Für viele Leser hier sicherlich nichts neues, ich wollte es aber trotzdem erwähnen (Die Webseite selbst wird übrigens bald im neuen Design erscheinen).
Today, I have several small things for you:
Some weeks/months ago I spent a day playing tourist guide to friends in Frankfurt. It was also my first chance to test the Sigma 10-20mm lens I bought two days earlier (yes that trip made me buy sooner). I shared one photo with you but never the whole gallery.
While we are on the topic of Frankfurt, I also spent a day in the local botanical garden in September and took lots of flower macros *yay*. Due to the number of photos, there are two galleries: Flowers and a separate one for Dahlias.
I live in a fairly old town with a real castle ruin and each year we have a fair there, which is always great fun but most years it conflicts with another engagement. But not so this year
I got two galleries for you from that: Some photos from the fair using my Lensbaby and at night they had a Keltic Fire Show, which I got some great photos from (if i may say so myself ).On we go: I spent a long weekend in Prague, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Marianske Lanske (Marienbad) in September. Truly spectacular cities with tons to see & do and just a dream for photographers. Almost all of the photos in the three galleries I have put online are HDRs from three exposures. I'm in a total HDR phase right now. The galleries are divided by location: Prague, Karlovy Vary, and Marianske Lankse. We spent three days in Prague and then an afternoon in Karlovy Vary and a morning in Mariankse Lankse and i mainly used my new Sigma Wideangle Lens.
Last but not least, I spent a Saturday at a small zoo that specialises in reptiles - you know how much me and my Macro lens love reptiles
Here are my best shots in a gallery.Sorry for dumping so many photos on you - I definitely need to update the blog way more often...
As a last side note (to german readers): Ich "darf" jetzt auch für die Arbeit bloggen und habe nach einer Diskussion über die Qualitätsunterschiede in den Aufnahmen mit einem iPhone und einem Blackberry einen Blogeintrag über das Thema geschrieben auf der Basis der grundlegenden Technik, die solche Unterschiede ausmacht. Für viele Leser hier sicherlich nichts neues, ich wollte es aber trotzdem erwähnen
(Die Webseite selbst wird übrigens bald im neuen Design erscheinen). |
Project Entry: Edit John's Photo
One of my favorite bloggers, Brian Auer, is doing another Photo Project. He asked users to send him photos they would be willing to share for another "Edit my Photo" contest. I wanted to participate in this part of the project - but of course, I forgot about it... But I did remember to vote on which photo should be used for the editing part of the project (You can find all entries here).
The winning entry by John Huson
I really liked the photo that got chosen, because I was drawn to the structure in the wall. I really wanted to focus on the wall for my entry for the project because I think it has a higher draw to it than the person pictured. Brian supplied me with the RAW version of the photo so I had a whole range of options at my disposal to play with the photo.
I started out by opening the photo in Photoshop CS3 and the Camera RAW editior. Next I tried the different outputs for changing the white balance. I decided to go with the results from the tungsten light, which gave the whole photo a nice blue tint.
The photo with white balance set to tungsten light
Next I decided to use a Lomo action for Photoshop I had downloaded some time ago and had gotten really great results from in the past (You can find this photoshop action here).
The photo with the Lomo action applied
I really liked the direction this was going and also how that yellow thingy on the ground was standing out of the photo but the guy in the photo had become too dark and the texture in the wall did not jump out at you, either. Due to this, I decided to keep playing with the photo.
My next idea was to make a new layer with the original photo on top of the lomo-rized version and try different blending modes. The one I decided on was "overlay"
The guy in the photo is looking even worse but the wall had gotten a really nice texture. Now that I liked the wall, I decided to see what I could do to bring the guy in the picture back to a look where you can see his face. For this I made two additional layers on top with the original photo. In the lower one I used the masking tool and only left his face visible and used the blending mode "Lighten", which brought back the details in his face but he still did not have enough contrast in comparison to the rest of the photo, so I selected the whole of him in the next layer and masked this and used Overlay again. This increase the contrasts in his clothes and his skin a lot. Lastly, I decided to use a curves adjustment layer and played around with it until I was satisfied. The result of this I liked to much, that I decided to enter it as my entry into the project:
My final edit
If you want to partcipate in the project, you can do so until October 16th
The winning entry by John Huson
I really liked the photo that got chosen, because I was drawn to the structure in the wall. I really wanted to focus on the wall for my entry for the project because I think it has a higher draw to it than the person pictured. Brian supplied me with the RAW version of the photo so I had a whole range of options at my disposal to play with the photo.
I started out by opening the photo in Photoshop CS3 and the Camera RAW editior. Next I tried the different outputs for changing the white balance. I decided to go with the results from the tungsten light, which gave the whole photo a nice blue tint.
The photo with white balance set to tungsten light
Next I decided to use a Lomo action for Photoshop I had downloaded some time ago and had gotten really great results from in the past (You can find this photoshop action here).
The photo with the Lomo action applied
I really liked the direction this was going and also how that yellow thingy on the ground was standing out of the photo but the guy in the photo had become too dark and the texture in the wall did not jump out at you, either. Due to this, I decided to keep playing with the photo.
My next idea was to make a new layer with the original photo on top of the lomo-rized version and try different blending modes. The one I decided on was "overlay"
The guy in the photo is looking even worse but the wall had gotten a really nice texture. Now that I liked the wall, I decided to see what I could do to bring the guy in the picture back to a look where you can see his face. For this I made two additional layers on top with the original photo. In the lower one I used the masking tool and only left his face visible and used the blending mode "Lighten", which brought back the details in his face but he still did not have enough contrast in comparison to the rest of the photo, so I selected the whole of him in the next layer and masked this and used Overlay again. This increase the contrasts in his clothes and his skin a lot. Lastly, I decided to use a curves adjustment layer and played around with it until I was satisfied. The result of this I liked to much, that I decided to enter it as my entry into the project:
My final edit
If you want to partcipate in the project, you can do so until October 16th
Not all HDRs are equal
16/Aug/09 21:08 Filed in: Photo | Processing
As you might know, I really like to work with HDR files from time to time and I always prefer to keep them pretty close to natural looking (just with a higher dynamic range). Some time ago I spent a day playing tourist guide to friends in Frankfurt, which was kinda fun since you never look at cities you consider your home the same way as tourists would (in fact, this was the first time I had my camera with me in Frankfurt). During that photo shoot, I took almost exclusively three RAW files of every file to be able to make HDRs since the sky was super blue and I didn’t have an ND filter with me.
One subject was especially suited to HDR: a dark gate under an overhanging on which the sun was shining.
This is how it would have looked as a normal photo (totally unprocessed)
It’s really not too bad but the gate does not really pop and you can’t really see all the details in the structure. Therefore I took three shots with the AEB automation with exposure of +/- 2 to get extreme differences in exposure.
As I said, I had taken a lot of shots for HDR processing that day, so I decided to do a batch processing in Photomatix, which is pretty great, even though I can’t do much more with my Mac while this is running. I always let it do three versions of the photo (the two options you find under tonemapping and the fusion option with automatic lighting). The best version was this one:
As you can see, it is pretty close to the originall, just the gate itself is a lot lighter and the reflections in the glass are more pronounced. There is also more contrast in the stones. But I wasn’t totally satisfied with it, so I tried a few more ideas:
The first was a version for which I made the HDR in Photoshop CS3 and then used the tonemapping plugin of Photomatix in Photoshop. The result can be seen below and while I liked this version, the details in the gate do not come out at all, in fact, I have a lot of artifacts in the darker areas (remember, click any photo to see a large version).
Then I decided to try Hydra, a HDR app for Macs (I am still using the first version, though), which has pretty good results sometimes, too. This was the result from Hydra:
I didn’t really like this result because it did none of the things I wanted to accomplish, so I decided to fire up Photomatix once again and do a manual processing with it of the photo. I also decided to play a bit more with the levers in Photomatix than I usually do to get a bit more extreme results than usually. This is the version I finally decided on:
As you can see, its a much more moody picture than any of the other versions and the details look like they are supposed to look! It’s really amazing how different you can process an HDR and how different the results can look.
What do you think, did I decide on the right version?
One subject was especially suited to HDR: a dark gate under an overhanging on which the sun was shining.
This is how it would have looked as a normal photo (totally unprocessed)
It’s really not too bad but the gate does not really pop and you can’t really see all the details in the structure. Therefore I took three shots with the AEB automation with exposure of +/- 2 to get extreme differences in exposure.
As I said, I had taken a lot of shots for HDR processing that day, so I decided to do a batch processing in Photomatix, which is pretty great, even though I can’t do much more with my Mac while this is running. I always let it do three versions of the photo (the two options you find under tonemapping and the fusion option with automatic lighting). The best version was this one:
As you can see, it is pretty close to the originall, just the gate itself is a lot lighter and the reflections in the glass are more pronounced. There is also more contrast in the stones. But I wasn’t totally satisfied with it, so I tried a few more ideas:
The first was a version for which I made the HDR in Photoshop CS3 and then used the tonemapping plugin of Photomatix in Photoshop. The result can be seen below and while I liked this version, the details in the gate do not come out at all, in fact, I have a lot of artifacts in the darker areas (remember, click any photo to see a large version).
Then I decided to try Hydra, a HDR app for Macs (I am still using the first version, though), which has pretty good results sometimes, too. This was the result from Hydra:
I didn’t really like this result because it did none of the things I wanted to accomplish, so I decided to fire up Photomatix once again and do a manual processing with it of the photo. I also decided to play a bit more with the levers in Photomatix than I usually do to get a bit more extreme results than usually. This is the version I finally decided on:
As you can see, its a much more moody picture than any of the other versions and the details look like they are supposed to look! It’s really amazing how different you can process an HDR and how different the results can look.
What do you think, did I decide on the right version?
Some new photo galleries
11/Jul/09 20:00 Filed in: Photo
Sorry for being so quiet for so long - but somehow I am fresh out of ideas on what to write currently. But I was out taking photos several times in the last few weeks and I added a link to the photo galleries with those photos in my photo album overview.
The galleries include:
Two galleries of visits to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. One with a normal Macro lens and one with my Lensbaby.
One gallery with photos from a visit to the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.
One gallery with photos from a special rose exhibit in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt.
One gallery with photos from a trip to the Opelzoo near Frankfurt.
Enjoy!
The galleries include:
Two galleries of visits to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. One with a normal Macro lens and one with my Lensbaby.
One gallery with photos from a visit to the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.
One gallery with photos from a special rose exhibit in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt.
One gallery with photos from a trip to the Opelzoo near Frankfurt.
Enjoy!
Increasing your Flickr efficiency
As many of you probably know, I post a lot of photos on Flickr and when you start to use it a lot, you start to spent large amounts of time on it, since you have a lot of new photos by your contacts that you want to take a look at and you might also be spending a lot of time interacting with other users in the Flickr groups. This can suck up a lot of your time and while Flickr is already very easy to navigate, there are some things that could be better. For this there are some utilities that can make your life easier and your Flickr browsing easier/ more efficient. Today I want to focus on some Greasemonkey scripts that I have found very useful. If you don’t know what Greasemonkey is, it’s a Firefox extension that allows scripts to alter the way a website looks and/or behaves. If you are using Safari as your browser, you can try out GreaseKit, which allows you to run the with Safari but not all scripts work and none do with Safari 4 (at least non of mine).
Here are my favorite scripts:
- Flickr Refer Comment - this script will automatically add a line of text at the end of your comment on a photo stating where you found the photo (e.g. your Flickr homepage, a group page, etc.). This won’t help you but is very helpful for the person you leave the comment. For other browsers you can find a little bookmarklet for doing the same thing by clicking here.
- Flickr Rich Edit - this script will add little buttons to your comment box so that you can access bold, italic, link and quote with the click of a button instead of having to add the HTML code.
- Flickr - Move commet form up - this script is one of my favorites - it will move the comment box under the photo instead of having it at the end of the page. This means that you won’t have to scroll down all the way to leave a comment. I tend to leave a lot more comments with this enabled.
- Flickr Auto Page - another one of my favorites. This script eliminates the need to click on the next page link when you are viewing photos in Flickr, it will automatically load the next page beneath the current one in the same window/ on the same page. With this enabled I breeze through 10 pages of photos without even realizing it.
- FlickrPM - this script will add several links/icons next to a username. These will allow you to access their photostream, their profile, their favorites etc. with the click of a button.
- Flickr Buddy Icon Reply - this script is especially useful when you interact with a lot of users in the Flickr groups. With this you can either add a users name to your comment box or their little avatar, so that you don’t have to type the name when you are replying directly to someone.
- Flickr AllSize+ - this script is pretty useful if you either post in a lot of groups or like to share your photos outside of flickr using your flickr photos. The magnifying glass will bring you to an intermediate screen including all the links to the different sizes of your photo - making it way faster to access them.
- Flickr On Black Buttons - This script will add two buttons allowing you to show the photo on a black background instead of the standard white one of Flickr - a lot of them really pop on black.
if you want some more scripts to check out, here are some more links:
Best Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts
10 Must Have Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts
10 Really Useful Flickr Greasemonkey Userscripts
Scripts tagged Flickr on userscripts.org
Am I missing any essentials? What are you doing to increase your efficiency?
Trying my Christmas present
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I am talking about my christmas present, which I tried out last week for the first time (don’t even ask....). For Christmas I got a Lensbaby Muse. If you don’t know what a Lensbaby is, it is a special lens that you can use with an SLR camera that has a special optics in it, so that you can take photos in a way that only part of the photo are in sharp focus. An example would be a focussed middle section with everything blurred out towards the edges. The great thing with this lens is that you can have the sharp part anywhere in the frame that you want to have it, you just have to tilt the lens in that direction.
I first wanted to get a Lensbaby Composer, which is the newest version of the Lensbaby lenses and allows you to lock the lens once you have decided on a sweet spot and has a regular ring for shifting focus. But the problem was that the Composer is a lot more expensive (even though Lensbaby lenses are far less expensive than your regular DSLR lenses) and that no shop in Germany had them in stock and I needed to get it before I went back to the US the week after Christmas. So I went for the Muse, which is the classic version of their lens and a lot of fun to work with. The hardest parts are that you need to shift your sweet spot with your hands and by doing so you also focus the lens. As you can imagine, I am getting a lot of out of focus photos at the moment
The Lensbaby lenses are very much manual - its not just that you have to focus the lens, but you also have to use the lens in manual mode or Aperture Priority mode, since you have to set the Aperture into the lens with your hand. You get 5 or 6 different aperture rings with the lens and can buy additional ones that you can cut to your liking (for example using a star shape instead of a circle). Depending on the aperture you will get a different level of blurring from the sides.
In addition I also got the Macro kit for it, which is a fancy way of saying that I got two close-up filters They are specifically made for the lensbaby and get screwed onto the top of the lensbaby, like they would on a normal lens. With my obsession with flowers I had to have them
Now, my first try with the lens... I decided to take the lens with me for a trip to the Botanical Garden here in Atlanta. It was very different and strange at first because I hadn’t tried the lens much before this but I soon got into it and found out how to take photos I liked. Even though I had a „What now?“ moment in there, as well: Somehow I thought I couldn’t find a focussed sweet spot with the lens, so I thought that the wheel for adjusting for your eyesight had been somehow gotten changed, which happens to me from time to time. So I started changing the wheel - until I thought about it and realized I did not have any Autofocus-able lens with me... What to do? I tied to take photos that I thought were sharp and then checked them at a zoom level on my display till I felt that the sharpness was okay in the photos. Took me a while....
Overall, I really, really liked my first experience with my new lensbaby and have, in fact, already gone out again for a second try with it - to the Georgia Aquarium. I think, I am getting addicted to it....
I first wanted to get a Lensbaby Composer, which is the newest version of the Lensbaby lenses and allows you to lock the lens once you have decided on a sweet spot and has a regular ring for shifting focus. But the problem was that the Composer is a lot more expensive (even though Lensbaby lenses are far less expensive than your regular DSLR lenses) and that no shop in Germany had them in stock and I needed to get it before I went back to the US the week after Christmas. So I went for the Muse, which is the classic version of their lens and a lot of fun to work with. The hardest parts are that you need to shift your sweet spot with your hands and by doing so you also focus the lens. As you can imagine, I am getting a lot of out of focus photos at the moment
The Lensbaby lenses are very much manual - its not just that you have to focus the lens, but you also have to use the lens in manual mode or Aperture Priority mode, since you have to set the Aperture into the lens with your hand. You get 5 or 6 different aperture rings with the lens and can buy additional ones that you can cut to your liking (for example using a star shape instead of a circle). Depending on the aperture you will get a different level of blurring from the sides.
In addition I also got the Macro kit for it, which is a fancy way of saying that I got two close-up filters
They are specifically made for the lensbaby and get screwed onto the top of the lensbaby, like they would on a normal lens. With my obsession with flowers I had to have them Now, my first try with the lens... I decided to take the lens with me for a trip to the Botanical Garden here in Atlanta. It was very different and strange at first because I hadn’t tried the lens much before this but I soon got into it and found out how to take photos I liked. Even though I had a „What now?“ moment in there, as well: Somehow I thought I couldn’t find a focussed sweet spot with the lens, so I thought that the wheel for adjusting for your eyesight had been somehow gotten changed, which happens to me from time to time. So I started changing the wheel - until I thought about it and realized I did not have any Autofocus-able lens with me... What to do? I tied to take photos that I thought were sharp and then checked them at a zoom level on my display till I felt that the sharpness was okay in the photos. Took me a while....
Overall, I really, really liked my first experience with my new lensbaby and have, in fact, already gone out again for a second try with it - to the Georgia Aquarium. I think, I am getting addicted to it....
