Sunday, Sunset Sunday

This past weekend was the first lazy Sunday that we have had in over two months which was rather fitting given that rather massive storm that rolled through Friday and Saturday.  By mid-day Sunday I was going rather stir crazy and wanted to get outside for a bit. Two things I really love about this time of year are 1) all that rain cleans up the air, and 2) early sunsets mean I can get outside, take some pictures and still get home in time for dinner.

Yesterday was the best of both worlds.  The storm that rolled through all last week did a fantastic job of cleaning the air, and Sunday was a beautiful day with an early sunset and enough clouds rolling in to make an interesting color.  The four of us packed up the car and went down to Golden Gardens. As soon as we got there the sun was nearing the clouds. I quickly got everything ready, went down near the water lined up the shot and within 5 minutes managed to get the best shot of the evening.

Goodness Gracious Great Ball of Fire
ISO100, f/11, 1/400 second

The sun went down pretty quickly after this so I consider myself lucky I got there in time.

Once I got "the shot" I figured I would kill some time playing around. I haven't taken a panoramic shot with this camera and figured I might as well try it out.  To add to the fun, I remember reading that for maximum resolution you should shoot panorama with the camera in portrait mode for a landscape shot and in landscape for a portrait shot. I like the shot, but the sky isn't as interesting as it was 10 minutes earlier, and I find it odd that it looks as if I am standing at a corner even though the sidewalk went straight from my direct left to my direct right. Looking at this makes me interested in trying to create those "tunnel" type panoramas I have seen a few times online.  Maybe I will try to figure out how to shoot/process one of those sometime soon.

Panorama of 11 shots taken in portrait mode.
Full resolution is 19,885 x 5,251 pixels

 Of course, I had to play with my new Rokinon 14mm while I had the chance.  I'm still trying to figure out the best uses for this lense ASIDE from astrophotography (something I have yet had the opportunity to do with this thing).  Two things I noticed from my previous attempt at using this lens: 1) it is difficult to focus, primarily because I never feel that I can get close enough to see enough detail to properly focus; and 2) because this lens has such a wide field of view, you really need something in the foreground to add interest to the shot. To get that "item of interest" I walked down to the water and set up right near a rock.  It was quite the precarious position as the rocks were slippery, I wasn't wearing the greatest of shoes, and I was carrying a camera around my neck.  I spent a few minutes down there and eventually got the shot below.

Composite of three exposures.

I had the damndest time trying to get the rock properly exposed, and still feel that it is quite under-exposed.  In fact, this shot is even a composite of three exposures, one for the sky, one for the water, and one, trying to expose for the rock. Even with the composite, the rock is underexposed. I probably could have gotten it if I was able to take a longer exposure, but there was no way I would be able to hold still long enough, I was slipping all over the place.

What I really want to do is get the shot I saw a few weeks ago from the bus while on the Aurora bridge.  While looking north as the sun was setting, I could see Mt Baker bathed orange reflected off the clouds.  I haven't seen anything like it the entire time I have lived here. It was awesome. I was pretty upset that I didn't have my camera with me, especially given that I brought my camera to work a few days earlier with the intent of taking sunset pictures. Oh well, I'm going to keep my eyes open for similar conditions in the future and figure out how the hell to get the shot.  Maybe I could find someone to let me in to or on top of the the UW tower on Brooklyn. Either that or maybe I can get to the top of the condo tower near there, or Hotel Decco. Regardless, next time I think conditions may be good for that shot, I'm going to find a way to take it.

Skyscrapers

For those of you who don't know, Kyra gave me a really awesome camera as a "push" present. The upshot is that I now have a really awesome photo setup.  The downside is, due to the timing of said gift, I don't get much time to go out, set-up, and take pictures.  This means that instead of heading out into the mountains to take epic pictures of mountains, stars, sunsets, and northern lights, that I have to stick closer to home.

This has lead me to start exploring urban photography, be it buildings, cityscapes, and urban parks.  My first foray into this world was the oh so well known "Kerry Park" shot of Seattle/Mount Rainier taken during the blood moon.



This opened up a whole new set of opportunities for me.  I realized that I could go out, play with my camera, take some pictures, and still be home in time for dinner. . . or something to that effect. This discovery lead me to what is perhaps my favorite picture to date, the Rizal Park shot. I saw an image on ChromeCast and really wanted to get a similar shot. It was an image taken of Seattle from somewhere south of the city.  It included traffic lights from I-5 swooshing through the city.

I spent a week "scouting" spots on Google street view that would give me the perspective I wanted.  I finally found some potential spots up near Rizal Park.  One Sunday evening, Kyra gave me a hall pass so I packed up the car and drove across town. The first thing I noticed upon arriving at Rizal Park is that it was one sketchy area. I really did not want to set up a couple thousand dollars worth of camera equipment and sit there alone for a few hours waiting for the appropriate lighting.

And now I wait.
Taken from my phone while waiting for the light

I hopped back in the car and drove around a bit.  A few hundred yards down the road I found an entrance to the off-leash dog park. Something told me to check it out, and I'm glad I did. I followed the path for a few hundred yards then noticed that there was a section of fence that had been removed. Not only that, but it happened to be right at the top of a good 15-20ft drop off so there was nothing between me and the view.  I set up the camera, the tripod, took a few test shots, and waited.


About an hour later, the blue hour began and I started shooting.  I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but I know I wanted the car trails so I needed a long exposure without overexposing. Additionally, I wanted to make sure the whole scene was in focus.  To accomplish that I needed to set the aperture at f/22 and let-er-rip.  I ended up with the RAW exposure below.

Zoom Zoom Seattle - RAW file (after cropping)
ISO400, 24mm, f/22, 60 seconds

 Honestly, I was quite impressed with the RAW shot, but wanted to lighten it up a bit, after playing around in lightroom for a little while I ended up with the final product as shown. The single biggest change that I noticed during post-processing was enabling the lens profile. If you flip between the two pictures, maybe you can see it.  To my eye, enabling the lens profile appears to "push" the middle back a bit and "flatten" the image. Anywho, here is the final product.  I really like it and am currently getting it printed on museum-wrapped canvas.

Zoom Zoom Seattle - final product
Specs in previous version, note the change from lens profile

Note, I'm still pretty new, and was even more so when this was taken.  I mentioned that I shot this at f/22 in order to a) keep everything in focus, and b) get a long enough exposure to get great car-trails. What I didn't know at the time was that shooting at high apertures reduces the sharpness of the image. I also didn't realize that you really don't need to shoot at f/22 in landscapes to keep everything in focus. In reality anything from f/9 to f/16 should keep everything in focus without loss of clarity.


Jack provided me with a few ideas on how to accomplish the aforementioned goals, but without loss of clarity.  It involves image stacking and I'll get into the details of that below. However, I forgot to mention a third goal, I wanted to accomplish goals 1 and 2 using a single RAW file so image stacking is kind of meh. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I may have a solution. . .neutral density filters. I can stop up, toss on a neutral density filter, and take the shot.  It may work, it may not, but I can try it.

I had fun with my first blue hour photography session and couldn't wait to get out and try another one, but from where?  I didn't want to repeat the same shot, but I still wanted something "Seattle". The city had recently opened a Giant Ferris Wheel along the water front and I really liked the idea of getting a shot of the Ferris wheel in front of the city skyline. After a few days of Google-foo, Nicole told me that Piers 62 and 63 were public access and had unobstructed views of the Sound and the City.  I took off from work an hour or so early and ran down to the pier to take a look for myself and take a quick test shot to see if I could fit the scene in the frame; everything looked good, I had the scene, now I just had to get down there.

The next morning I received a push notification from my Star Walk 2 app indicating that Venus, Mars, and Jupiter would be very close to each other in the next few days and that the best time to view them would be a few hours before sunrise. I thought this was perfect and called my friend Dan o see if he wanted to wake up very early on a Saturday morning to take some pictures of the city and planets.

The morning arrived, I picked up Dan around 5am and we headed downtown to the water front.  Venus, Mars and Jupiter were VERY visible so I figured this would be a great morning. As I mentioned earlier, Jack gave me the idea of taking multiple exposures, each with varying objectives, then combining them in Photoshop to create the final image.  I figured this would be a great time to try it. My goal was to get a blue hour shot of the skyline with and the planets.  To do this, the plan was to get three exposures, the first, exposed for the planets, the second for the city lights, and the third for blue hour.  The three exposures are below.

Exposed for Planets
ISO 100, f/9, 100 seconds

Exposed for Buildings / Sky
ISO100, f/6.3, 9 second

Exposed for City Lights / Sky
ISO100, f/14, 14 seconds

I took the three exposures, stuck them in PhotoShop and performed a variation of the Lighten blend mode, called "Screen".  According to the Adobe webpage, Screen looks at each channel's color information and multiplies the inverse of the blend and base colors. The result color is always a lighter color. . .The effect is similar to projecting multiple photographic slides on top of each other. the resulting picture, Morning Star, is below.

Morning Star
The three above, imported to Photoshop, blend mode set to "Screen"

After a successful "blue hour" I was feeling pretty good and figured that we should stay there throughout the morning and see if I could capture a good sunrise photo.  The difficulty with capturing any type of shot, sunrise, sunset, etc. is that if you expose for the sky, to get the pretty colors, then you underexpose the foreground; in this case the buildings.  If you expose for the buildings, then the sky gets washed out, or at a minimum, you loose the color detail.  So, I thought I would try another multiple exposure-blending. The two shots below were taken about 90 seconds apart, the first exposed for the sky, the second exposed for the buildings/foreground.

Da Buildings
ISO100, f/11, 1/8 second

Da Sky
ISO100, f/13, 1/20 second

The two shots below were taken about 90 seconds apart, the first exposed for the sky, the second exposed for the buildings/foreground. I imported these into Photoshop and tried all of the various auto-blend modes, but none of them worked out so I ended up doing it manually using layer masks. The result, Smoky Sunrise, is below.

Smoky Sunrise
The two above imported to Photoshop, manual blending

I hope you enjoyed reading about my first forays into cityscape photography.  I learned a lot over the few photoshoots Every time I go out, I learn a lot and have a lot of fun.  these were some of the more challenging post-processing shots so far. Additionally, they took the most time on a per-shot basis, but I enjoy it.  Given the new baby and the now rainy weather, I have the feeling that I'll be sticking close to home for a while.

Glass, Grass, and . . .

My parents came to visit a few weeks ago and my mom really wanted to go to the Chihully Glass Museum.  I looked it up and thought it would be a pretty neat opportunity to practice taking pictures in a very unique setting. The glass museum is nestled right next to the Space Needle and I was trying to figure out how to get some spiffy pictures, perhaps including the Needle itself, however, I didn't want it to seem too cliche as I find way too many shots of the Needle and don't find them very interesting.

My original thought was that we could head to the museum right around sunset and that would give us the opportunity to do some shots during the blue hour.  However, I read on the FAQ that they do not allow the use of tripods or monopods so that was a bit of a bummer, that and we had a busy day and I knew we would be hungry before sunset/blue moon. And I knew no one else would want to spend hours here waiting for the sunset.  So, I scoured Google Maps/Street View trying to look for a cool vantage point or cool picture.  You can even do a mini tour of the museum so I was clicking through rooms looking for something inspiring.  Unfortunately nothing struck so I was headed in without any real game plan.

As we toured the museum I felt kind of strange. Sure, there was all of this beautiful glass work and some of it was fun to photograph, but there were so many people in there and so many people with cameras that I felt a little out of place and overwhelmed.  Even so, I managed to snag a few pictures worth sharing.

Glass within Glass within Glass
ISO 1600, 1/80th second, f/4.0

The Glass Forest

ISO 1600, 1/10th second, f/4.0

Party Bowls
ISO 1600, 1/6th second, f/4.0

Glass Boat

ISO 3200, 1/25th second, f/4.0

Once we got outside things started to change. It was a bit chilly and a bit breezy so there weren't that many people outside.  That and there was just more room, and the light was better. . .well more familiar to me and and easier for to shoot. I was wandering around looking for some way to capture the space needle when I noticed that the sky looked rather nice. I turned west to try and capture some sunset/sky pictures, but the building was in the way and nothing turned out.

Swirled Reflections
ISO 200, 1/10th second, f/4.0

Sewing with 5 Needles
ISO 1000, 1/50th second f/4.0

Just then I looked down and noticed the rather large glass globes situated all over the place.  As I walked closer I realized that I could see the reflection of the Space Need in the ball.  Ah hah!! There was my shot, a great way to get a photo of the Space Needle and the glass art at the same

Two Big Balls and a Loooong Needle
ISO 800, 1/30th second, f/5.0

I spent the majority of the next hour wandering around outside looking for different glass objects from which to capture the reflection of the Space Needle.

Glass Nymph
ISO 800, 1/40th second f/5.6

The Units
ISO 800, 1/20th second, f/9.0

Oh, and I also found a pretty spiffy log too.

OhYeah, HI MOM AND DAD!! 

Boo!

Sorry for the delay between posts. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, taking care of a new baby takes most of my time; I actually work all day while at work, then when I get home, Kyra hands over Andrew so that she can finally take a break and do the things she wants to do. Andrew is still young (just turn two months today) so he doesn't really go to bed too much earlier than we do (if at all). When he does go to bed, Kyra and I are exhausted and barely have the energy to lie on the couch before going to bed ourselves.

But I digress. There was a huge full moon a few weeks ago, but I didn't really notice until I went to take out the trash on evening.  I walked outside and though "ohhh, that's cool".  I went back upstairs grabbed the camera and stood in the middle of my street taking shots of the moon. The idea was to bracket the moon inside a hole in some trees. However, I was trying to do this handheld while standing directly under a streetlight. . .it didn't work out, but it gave me an idea. Fortunately, Kyra was kind enough to let me go out for a little while, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed out to Woodland Park (which is just down the street).

Unfortunately, by some clouds moved in and I wasn't able to get a crisp picture of the moon.  Fortunately, the clouds created an eerie atmosphere.  I set up the camera in the parking lot, framed the moon between the split trunks of a tree, and fired away. I took a variety of shots and really liked the one below.

I finally got around to posting this around Halloween and thought it would be a fun idea to shop in a "scary face".  After searching for "evil round face" I found the perfect one, and wouldn't you know it, I didn't even have to re-size the face to make it fit.  So, enjoy. . .I'll try to post more as I have some from the Chihully Glass Museum and a few more from Carkeek Park.