Edit your photos and see the difference…but not too much
Eagle Lake, Acadia National Park, Maine – Edited version
At least use something to bring out the colors and enhance sharpness or clarity. Adobe Lightroom 4 is inexpensive but a very powerful editing software. Every aspiring photographer should have one. I have Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 & Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4. The CS5 is too complicated for me, this is mostly used by the pros, I only use it for stitching panoramas, Elements 10 I don’t use it that much. I don’t work for Adobe but their product is worth the try.
I’ve seen many landscape photos here in WP that are really good but are not even edited. Edit them and see the difference!
Eagle Lake, Acadia National Park, Maine – Unedited version
You see here I just adjusted the shadows, highlights and took out some of the blue color. Also adjusted the vibrance, saturation & clarity. Just basic stuff including sharpness in the end. Some people just overdo stuff, the resulting photos look like crap and fake. Don’t add the color that is not even there.
Okay, here are the things that Photoshoppers do to their photos; Color Matching, Freaky Detail, Luminousity Mask, Water Intensification, HDR, Manual Blending, Focus Stacking etc etc. Holy macro you don’t need to learn them all, LOL! People want to see nature’s beauty as it really was, not some digitized BS.
Peace.
Abe
Winter storm Ukko
Cape Neddick, Maine
It was a terrible morning when I woke up, I thought it was just a 3-inch snow but it was worse than that. Today was my trip driving down from Portland, ME to Philadelphia, PA. I was thinking how the Nubble lighthouse would look when there is snow! It was just 46 miles down the I-95 and so I went there and Maine oh Maine it was beautiful!
Nubble Light, Cape Neddick, Maine
It was windy and snowing but I was able to take some shots.
Sohier Park, Cape Neddick, Maine
The 3rd photo is of the house with “No Trespassing” sign in the rocks but were covered with snow. Thought it would make a nice foreground.
If you are familiar with the place these photos are the 360-degree field of view of Sohier Park.
Hope you like it and keep shooting!
PS. I was able to make it home in one piece after 10 hours of driving. I’ve seen 6 accidents along the way in Connecticut but nothing serious.
Peace.
Abe
Maine, it’s been 5 days goodbye for now
Bass Harbor Light, Acadia National Park
I sometimes say I love my job, I get to travel in the Northeastern United States for work and having a good time like taking landscape photos, run, hike and climb a mountain and stuff, LOL. But of all places so far Maine is the best. This is my second trip to Maine, the first one was work related too. I have to come back here at my own will and take photos in the fall season.
Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth
These are all the photos of lighthouses I’ve taken during my stay in Bar Harbor and Portland area. There are still so many beautiful lighthouses in Maine that I need to go like Permaquid Point and Marshall Point.
Nubble Light, Cape Neddick
Bug Light, South Portland
Spring Point Ledge, South Portland
My only complain about this whole thing is the weather, it gets so cold up in here! Going back to Philly tomorrow! LOL!
Just for fun.
Peace!
Abe
The Absence of Color
Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Compass Harbor, Acadia National Park, Maine
Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Ship Cove, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
I guess this is what you do when everything else fails; the sky is not interesting, no color, it’s winter etc etc. Just include a huge foreground with different texture, shape, size, arrangement and black & white it! LOL.
Just for fun.
Happy Saint Patrick’s everyone!
Abe
Valley Forge National Historical Park
Valley Forge Encampment
Huntington’s Quarters
Huntington’s Quarters 2
When I am home this is the park where I run, almost 10 miles in a circle. I run an average of 5-6 miles of that each time. Valley Forge in Pennsylvania was the site of the military camp of the American Continental Army over the winter of 1777–1778 during the American Revolutionary War. American history was made here. During these times, the continental army trained here and became a stronger unit. But many also died because of plague and disease. (wiki)
These photos were shot during sunset period or when the sun was low using an iPhone 5 in panoramic mode. The phone can actually produce a total of 28 mega pixels but I always crop mine to 1:3 which results to only 17 mega pixels, not too bad for a phone camera huh? This is the number one reason I bought this phone because of the panorama feature, I am very impressed with it. I know there are apps like this but the native app in the iPhone 5 nails it. All you have to do is click a button and pan the phone left to right and it automatically stitches the vertical strips of photos to produce one big panorama. Just don’t point it to the sun it will give a purple flare, LOL.
You don’t really need a DSLR all the time to make good photographs, do you?
Just for fun I thought I’d share…
Peace!
Abe
Mist of Niagara
Mist of Niagara
I wanted to say thanks to all the people who still check my blog. I still got views. LOL. I have been out for a very long time because of work, I do field work for the largest wireless company in the US. And also I’ve been busy with fitness. Needed to lose some pounds!
Anyway going back to the photo above. My last visit of Niagara Falls was in the summer of 2006 with my family. I haven’t discovered the joy of taking landscape photos that time. Not much is changed except this time I was sent to do a 3-day job during a winter. Actually the weather was so bad, there was not much color at all. But what the heck, this is the most beautiful waterfall in the US or even the world, I had to take photos of it, know I mean?
This was a 7-stitched panorama and I used photomerge in Photoshop CS5 to stitch them and cropped it to 1:3. When taking landscape photos you need to consider the foreground. A foreground to me is a reference to show how majestic this waterfall is.
I will be taking massive panoramic landscape photos soon during the spring season. So stay tuned.
PS. Taken with a point-and-shoot Panasonic camera. Does it still look good? LOL
Peace!
Abe
The Haunted Prison – Eastern State Penitentiary
Dark Chambers – f/8, 30mm, ISO 100, 1/30 sec, 9-stitched pano HDR, 38 Mega Pixels
The Eastern State Penitentiary is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and was operational from 1829 until 1971. The penitentiary refined the revolutionary system of separate incarceration first pioneered at the Walnut Street Jail which emphasized principles of reform rather than punishment. Notorious criminals such as bank robber Willie Sutton and Al Capone were held inside its unique wagon wheel design. When the building was erected it was the largest and most expensive public structure ever constructed, quickly becoming a model for more than 300 prisons worldwide.
The prison is currently a U.S. National Historic Landmark, which is open to the public as a museum for tours seven days a week, twelve months a year 10 am to 5 pm. – Wiki
I first heard about this place when I was reading Tony Sweet’s website that he was conducting an HDR workshop. Must be a special place for him to conduct workshops here. I shrugged the idea of coming over because what can I photograph in an old prison? And also I am not a big fan of HDR. I only use it when I need to depending on the lighting situation.
When I read about vanishing point effect in photography I got interested in this place again. The hallways and spooky environment and texture must be good for 180 degrees stitched panoramas. I researched for some photos in Flickr and decided to go.
The photo above was a result of 9-stitched vertical frames panorama in HDR. The place was very dark and when you meter at the center most part of the frame the side frames of the panorama become very dark. 9 frames at -2…0…+2 HDR equals 27 frames total taken. I used Photomatix 4.1 to batch bracket photos by three’s at base shutter of 1/30th second and saved as tiff-16 bit and exported them to Adobe Photoshop CS5 for stitching. The result was a 2GB file. I finally exported it to Adobe Lightroom 4.1 for for some adjustments, cropped it to 6 X 18, converted it to B & W and applied strong contrast. The B & W adds to the spookiness of the place in this particular scene.
The next photo is a 180 degrees panorama of a well lit hallway. I metered at the center of the frame and it turned out okay on the side frames. It really depends on your light source. I also set white balance to cloudy to make it warm.
The Vanishing Point – f/10, 15mm, ISO 100, 1 second, 13-stitched pano, 28 Mega Pixels
I like the texture of this part of the prison, I used a high ISO in this shot. The thing with high ISO is that you will get more noise and you lose sharpness. But with the texture like this you can never tell if it is a noisy photograph.
Textured Prison – f/8, 30mm, ISO 1250, 1/200 second, 12-stitched pano, 59 Mega Pixels
Al Capone’s cell VIP treatment.
Al Capone’s Cell – f/4, 15mm, ISO 1600, 1/80 second, 1 RAW HDR
Here is a 3 RAW HDR of a barber shop inside this prison.
Prison Barbershop – f/8, 15mm, ISO 1250, 1/4 second, 3 RAW HDR
We avoided the hospital and death chamber part of the prison, the missus did not like the idea. But I will be back to take more photos, it turned out to be a good place to shoot.
Hope you enjoy it!
Abe
