Panorama Fountain – Noblex

Panorama /

I got a couple of nice photos on Seneca Lake with my Noblex 135 panoramic camera a few weeks ago. Delta 100 film shots. Required some multi-image scans and Ps compositing to hold detail in the fountain and the shadows both. These were taken on the Noblex 135U camera. I had to scan them twice, once for the shadows and once for the white fountain and blend them in Photoshop to get something usable. There was plenty of detail in both. There was a TON of white spots to fix, but the Photoshop Dust/Scratch filter handled most of that. I […]

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Shadows in Hartford

Shadows /

I’ve always loved urban shadow photos, but recently attended a talk with David S Wells, a well-known photographer from Rhode Island and he discussed and illustrated many of his now-famous vintage photography of urban shadow work, mostly from Philadelphia. I was in Hartford, CT for the Hartford Marathon (viewing, not running) and needed a bit of a diversion as we waiting the very boring time for our daughter to finish. So I started wondering around and found several neat photos that will definitely become part of my portfolio.The first was a neat image of a fire hydrant and the surrounding

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Infrared 590nm + R72 filter – Cranford, NJ

Infrared /

I have an Olympus E-M5 Mk1 that I had modified back 3-4 years ago by LifePixel to have a 590nm (Super Color) IR Filter. At the time, I had an unmodified, identical body, so it made sense to have two bodies exactly the same except one was IR and one was unmodified. The camera has served me well and I recently wanted to shoot it in pure black-and-white, vs. a Super Color image where I had to process it afterwards by swapping the R/B channels and tweaking the color channels to extract as much color information as possible. I had

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The Bench in Black and White

Film /

“The Bench” got another treatment in February when, as the post in the snow, was lit by that wonderful late-afternoon sun. The light comes through just over my neighbor’s house for about 10-15 minutes about an hour before sunset and creates this great light. I looked out my office window and saw how nice the light was and grabbed my Kodak Retina IIa, that had a roll of the wonderful Kodak Double-XX black and white film it. I metered with an incident meter, because I wanted the highlights properly metered. I decided to allow most of the shadows to fall

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Palm Trees, Bark, and LAB color

Uncategorized /

Went to Florida a couple of weeks ago and the palm trees always interest me with their super-textured bark, overlapping scale-like thingees and how they render. Using my Olympus E-M1.2, I took a bunch of photos. Then the post processing. One was particularly photogenic, so I brought it into Lightroom for iPad and use Black-and-White mode, tweaking the color sliders to get the contrast that I wanted. Then I ran it through Color Grading, which has rapidly become my goto for processing B&W. Many, many years ago in the 80’s I used to tone BW prints with either Selenium or

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The Bench

Uncategorized /

I have this teak bench in my back yard that gets the most glorious sun very late in the afternoon. Throughout the year, it looks different with the seasons. This week it snowed and I looked outside my office window and saw it was bathed in the late afternoon sun. I had less than 5 minutes to run outside and grab this 2-shot pano.

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Sometimes the best camera is your phone

Uncategorized /

So the mantra with many notable photographers is to Always have a Camera with you. If you travel for business, like I do, you can’t really take a camera everywhere. It’s just not practical and you have explain to your boss, colleagues, and clients why you have a nerdy camera with you. So I don’t do that and won’t unless I have a chance to make a pre- or post-trip on my own.So the modern equivalent is the smartphone. They take as good a pictures as most digital cameras for normal photos, shockingly good. This was a photo taken at

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Martha’s Vineyard Beach

Uncategorized /

Was bored at the beach in Martha’s Vineyard at Long Point in September and decided that the waves looked nice, even at mid-day. The beach traffic is very light at this beach and so late in the season, especially light. There probably weren’t 40 people on 100 yrs of beach. There was also a bunch of seaweed growing out of the surf which made for very interesting patterns. Took my iPhone X out and started snapping. Took about 100 photos and these two sets of triptychs are the result.

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My adventures with LAB color

Uncategorized /

I’ve been experimenting with a Photoshop technique that has intriguing me after working with a friend in the Essex Photo Club. I’m sure it’s been done before, but it’s essentially a way to extract very subtle color from subjects that are otherwise fairly colorless. My usual target is bark, as it’s mostly monochromatic. It’s a multi-step process and I am still learning 1. White Balance the RAW file before it comes in to push the image as neutral as possible. 2. Bring it into Photoshop as a Smart Object so that you can re-apply Camera Raw if needed.3. Convert it

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Infrared Black & White

Infrared /

I got out my Infrared-converted Olympus E520 that was purchased maybe 10-12 years ago. I kept the 14-54 (good thing). It’s got a bit of a hot spot, but that’s fixable. This camera was bought, off Ebay, I think, already converted when I had my E-1 or E-3, I can’t remember when. It looks like it’s a 820 nm cutoff filter. I shoot it in black-and-white and bump up the contrast in the camera. As long as the histogram shows that I”m not blowing the highlights, it’s all fixable in post.

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