Timing is Everything

At twilight, just a few minutes can make a major difference in the image that you can capture. The image above was taken on October 5th, the night following a full moon. I knew from checking the US Naval Observatory’s website that I would be able to capture the moon next to the Lincoln Memorial while shooting from the walkway on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The image above was taken about 3 minutes after the “official” moonrise time provided by the USNO, but it was blocked from my view by the trees next to the Memorial. Although the twilight blue of the sky (about 30 minutes after sunset) was starting to darken, there was still sufficient ambient light to illuminate the side of the bridge and the Potomac River below. I chose a longer time exposure to trace the tracks of automobile lights on the bridge and the road along the riverbank below.

The second image was taken only 10 minutes later when the moon had almost cleared the trees, but the sky was now darkened and there was no ambient light to illuminate the side of the bridge or the river below. I moved my shooting location to the middle of the sidewalk so the right half of the image would not be a completely black void. The result is acceptable, but it would have been better had the moon shown up ten minutes sooner.

The question naturally arises about the possibilities for a better image on the previous night, when the moon was full and would have been above those trees sooner. Unfortunately, on that night, the moon would have been too far to the right of the Lincoln Memorial to be included in the frame.

The next full moon will be on November 3rd and from this position on Memorial Bridge it will be much closer to the Lincoln Memorial than it was on October 5th. In fact, it may well be obscured by the Memorial for a few minutes. Nevertheless, the timing of the sunset and moonrise indicates that there will be a better possibility of capturing the full moon in the picture before the twilight period fades.

Technical data for these images: Both images captured with a Nikon D-200 and an 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens and the ISO at 200. The first image was shot with the lens extended to 82 mm. The exposure was set at f/20 for 5 seconds. The second image was shot with the lens extended to 132 mm. The exposure was set at f/18 for 1.5 seconds. Both images were adjusted in Camera Raw and Photoshop.

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From One, Many

I find it is occasionally a good idea to go back and look at images you haven’t seen in a while. Often as not, a new idea may occur to you about how it might be interpreted. For example, the above photograph was taken about a year ago when I visited the gardens of Versailles, about an hour away from Paris. (Tip: If you go there, check to see if you can time your visit to coincide with a scheduled fountain display.)

The original was captured in film (Ektachrome 100VS). After the film from the week-long trip to Paris was processed, I didn’t see anything in the fountain series that stood out. But this week, I went back and looked over the slides again and I saw some new ways this one shot could be presented.

The image above is the full frame of the shot and was scanned on a Nikon ED-8000 film scanner and then processed in Photoshop CS3. The original scan, as a 16-bit TIFF file was the starting point for all four of the images shown here. The first image was processed using a very modest curves adjustment layer, a medium boost to the blue and yellow colors using a hue/saturation adjustment layer, and sharpening with the Unsharp Mask.

The next image involved only a crop of the original image, but the result is something quite different. The viewer no longer sees a large fountain, but might imagine a story of a female figure struggling up a waterfall.

The third image is an even tighter crop, followed by a conversion to grayscale using the Channel Mixer adjustment layer. The contrast was enhanced, with a more aggressive use of the curves adjustment layer than the original color image.

The fourth image started with the cropped color image, and I introduced one of the many filters available in Photoshop. The command sequence for this one was Filter > Artistic > Plastic Bubble. If you want to experiment with these special effects, be aware that the final result can vary considerably depending on the size at which the final result will be viewed. There is a control in the lower left corner of the filter dialog box that enables you to reduce the size on the monitor from the default 100 percent. Be sure to play around with the sliders in the upper right portion of the dialog box; their names vary depending on which filter is being used.

Finally, I opened the original scan (a TIFF file) with Camera Raw, a somewhat unorthodox procedure since the Adobe Raw tool is designed for digital photographs originally exposed in the Raw format. I made adjustments in the exposure, fill light, clarity, vibrance, saturation and curves tools. I then opened it in Photoshop, and used only the Unsharp Mask to sharpen the image.

I don’t know that any of these versions would be considered outstanding, but the point here is that you have many tools available. Just spending some time using them will enhance your skills for the times when you do get a great image.

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Hidden Gems

When photographing the monuments and public buildings in Washington, DC, we most often gravitate to the locations that are best known, such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial. But there are many potential subjects that are less well known that offer opportunities for a strong image. The photo above is a case in point.

The Arlington Hemicycle is located in plain sight at the end of Memorial Drive, the main approach to Arlington National Cemetery. The site is accessible at any time of day and the security guards who occasionally pass by do not seem to mind the use of a tripod. The Hemicycle and Memorial Drive are actually key elements of the overall design of Arlington Memorial Bridge and were built as a single project, completed in 1932. The Bridge axis, angled southwesterly from the east west Mall axis, continues with Memorial Drive as it crosses the Boundary Channel Bridge to entrance of the Cemetery. There it terminates at the Arlington Hemicycle, originally intended as the ceremonial gateway to Arlington National Cemetery, with Arlington House rising as the focal point on the hill above. In 1997, the semicircular wall was adapted to incorporate the Women in Military Service Memorial. To get a sense of the overall design, go to the following link (http://wikimapia.org/4936837/Arlington-Memorial-Bridge), which includes an impressive aerial photograph of the entire site. Use your mouse to navigate the image.

I had found the structure a few days earlier when I was scouting possible shooting locations at the Cemetery. The image above shows the effects of the golden light of an early summer morning (taken last July). It actually is a combination of seven separate images “stitched” together using the Photomerge routine in Photoshop CS3. I set up the tripod in a low perspective to emphasize the reflections in the pool. I was there perhaps five minutes, taking a total of eleven images.

Technical data: I used a Nikon D-200 with an 18-200 mm lens, set at 18mm. The seven exposures were exposed at ISO 400 with slightly different apertures and shutter speeds. A typical exposure was f/9 at 1/250th second.
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Paris at Night

When photographing a subject that has been the subject of millions of previous efforts, it is advisable to try for a slightly different take than the usual fare. Otherwise, your resulting image may fail to attract the attention of jaded viewers.

I was in Paris last week and, like hundreds of others, decided to capture some night images of the Eiffel Tower. Most of my fellow shooters had no tripod, so that gave me a number of options not available to them. For Image 1, I positioned myself on the Ièna Bridge on the west side (Right Bank) of the River Seine. I set the camera for a long time exposure that would trace the taillights of vehicles traveling toward the Tower. This image was exposed at f/16 for 15 seconds. One of the advantages of such a long exposure is that pedestrians walking by tend to fade into a ghostly blur, an effect that heightens the sense of motion suggested by the traces of the vehicle lights.

The second image was taken about 150 yards from the first. There is a small carousel at the edge of the Place du Trocadero. Although a time exposure of an illuminated carousel is a common technique, with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop, I couldn’t resist. This image was exposed at f/16 for 1.3 seconds. The starburst effect with the two street lamps is a side effect of using a small aperture such as f/16.

Both images were shot using a Nikon D-700, a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, and an ISO set at 200.

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Chasing the Moon

We all know that the moon rises in the east, and many photographers in the Washington DC area seek to capture an image of the full moon as it rises above the monuments on the National Mall. The most popular location is on a hill in Arlington Virginia, in front of the Netherlands Carillon, and if you go there on any clear night when a full moon is expected, you may see as many as 20 photographers lined up with their tripods. Most of the time they are disappointed because the moon rises in a different location every night and it rarely rises in perfect alignment with the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. But as the image above shows, there are times that it will.Native Americans, long before colonialists arrived in the US, were aware of the moon’s apparent random pattern and dubbed the moon “the Wandering Old Man.” But the moon’s behavior is not random. It follows a predictable 19-year cycle, called the Metonic cycle, which was independently discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton who was born about 432 B.C. Simply put, this means that a given location on the horizon from which a full moon rises will not be precisely repeated for another 19 years.
There are other requirements for a decent photograph of the full moon. Obviously, good weather conditions are desirable. In addition, it is best to be shooting about 15-20 minutes after sunset, when the color of the sky is a deep blue, a time often called “the magic hour.” Taken together, it becomes quickly apparent that such a. combination of factors is indeed a rare event.
The photograph above was taken on September 5th of this year, one night after the full moon. The photographers that night had done their homework in advance, which involves obtaining the data on the precise location of the moonrise on the horizon and the use of a compass to plot the proper shooting location. The full moon the previous night had risen a little too soon and little too far to the south.
There are a number of sources for data on the moon and other celestial bodies. I rely on the website of the US Naval Observatory (http://aa.usno.navy.mil). Look under the Data Services link for the application that provides the “Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun or Moon During One Day.” You can look at any day in the present, past, or future. For example, the next full moon will be on October 4th, 2009 and will break the horizon at 5:41 PM EST in the Washington DC area. The azimuth reading is the compass sighting that tells you where it will be, in this case about 75 degrees east on due north. This means that it will be well to the north of where it came up on September 5th (about 85 degrees).
The above image may be doubted as “real” by some skeptics, but no Photoshop trickery was used here. The size of the moon is due to the telephoto lens used for the shot. The color is due to the haze and the low angle on the horizon. Here are the technical data:
Camera: Nikon D-200 on a tripod with an Nikon lens.
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 18-200 mm 1:3.5-5.6 G ED.
Exposure: 0.8 sec at f/5.6, at ISO 200, lens extension at 170mm.
Adobe Camera Raw adjustments:
Opened in ProPhot RGB Color space; 16 bit; 2592 x 3872 pixels (native)
Color Temp: 5700 K
Tint: -6
Exposure: +45
Recovery: 0
Fill Light: 1
Blacks: 5
Brightness: +48
Contrast: +25
Clarity: +53
Vibrance: +37
Saturation: 0
Photoshop CS3 processing was a single curves adjustment layer with very minor adjustment to increase contrast, masking for trees, blend mode set at luminosity. Unsharp mask dependent on size of print.

To see more of my efforts to capture the moon, check out my website at www.photographybykent.com

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New Image Opportunities on Capitol Hill

The recent completion of the new U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on the east side of the building is providing numerous new photographic opportunities for local photographers. The underground Center has been open for several months and the final touches on the main plaza above ground are almost complete. Even though you cannot use a tripod without a permit, you still can find much to capture. And if you want a time without a lot of people in the scene, Sunday is the best day of the week. And if you can be there during a congressional recess period, so much the better.
This image was taken last Sunday, August 30th, around 8:45 AM. It actually is another example of the “photomerge” tool in Photoshop. It is four separate images, captured in quick sequence without a tripod and then combined during post-processing on my computer. Here are the steps I followed to assemble the image in Photoshop CS3:
1. Opened all four images in Adobe’s Camera Raw window.
2. Selected all four images so all four would undergo the same adjustments.
3. Opened all four images in Photoshop.
4. Navigated to File > Automate > Photomerge…
5. The Photomerge dialog box opened (See Figure 1 below).
6. Chose “Use Open Files,” checked “Auto” under Layout, checked “Blend images together” at the bottom, and clicked “OK.”
7. After a minute or so, the results are presented (see Figure 2 below).
8. Clicked on the Layer drop-down menu and chose “Flatten Image” to eliminate the unsed portions of the four files. This significantly cuts the file size.
9. Trimmed the rough edges (Crop tool), straightened the horizon (Ruler tool, then Image>Rotate image> arbitrary) and saved the file.

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Monarch Migration Underway

The annual migration of the Monarch butterfly is in its early phase. About eight years ago, when I photographed a monarch in my back yard in late summer, I had no idea that it was a participant in one of nature’s great mysteries. But a few days later, I picked up Sue Halpern’s “Four Wings and a Prayer,” and learned that the butterfly I had photographed was about to begin a journey of more than 2,000 miles.
The above image was taken on 23 August 2007 in Michigan's Upper Penninsula along the southern shore of Lake Superior. The Monarch was just a few days into its journey, gathering nectar after it had crossed Lake Superior from Canada.
Until 1974, even the destination of the migrating monarchs was unknown. Much about the routes they follow and how they navigate is still unknown. But this much is known: a monarch emerging from its chrysalis in August in Canada will probably fly all the way to Mexico, spend the winter there, and leave in March. Then it will fly north, laying eggs (if it is female) on milkweed along the Gulf Coast in Texas or Florida before dying there. The butterflies from those eggs will continue northward, breeding and laying more eggs along the way. Their offspring continues the northward journey, each living about five weeks.
The genetic rules change in August. These monarchs have a lifespan of seven months. Four or so generations removed from ancestors that left for Mexico the previous summer, they head southward and the cycle begins again.
The mysteries of the migration are being unraveled by hundreds of individuals who capture monarchs in September, place small tags on their wings, and then release them, hoping that the same butterfly will be found in Mexico and the tag number reported. One area where considerable tagging occurs is in Cape May, New Jersey. The geography of the Atlantic coast and the Chesapeake Bay funnels the monarchs down the New Jersey peninsula to Cape May where they face an eleven-mile trip over the open waters of the Delaware Bay.
But many others are involved and more information can be found at the Monarch Watch website: www.monarchwatch.org. And for those who want to track the progress of the migration, check out this website: http://www.learner.org/jnorth.
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NASA’ Earth Observatory

If you want to see what is happening on our planet, a good place to check out is NASA’s Earth Observatory website . The site posts an “Image of the Day” and the image above was taken on April 29th, the 10th anniversary of the site’s publication.

The photos are in the public domain and can be downloaded in a variety of sizes and formats. This photo shows two cyclones in the cold waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, just off the southern tip of Africa, where winter is approaching. The image was posted yesterday. A new feature on the Earth Observatory website is “World of Change” which will document how our world—forests, oceans, human landscapes, even the Sun—has changed during the previous decade. Read more!

The Practice of Problem Solving

Just because the weather is difficult, doesn’t mean you can’t practice your craft. For example, it’s been cloudy with sporadic rain for the past several days and today I decided to try my “50-foot Assignment.” This is a restriction that I occasionally impose on myself that permits me to take a photograph only of subjects within 50 feet of the door of my house. This is a useful way to train yourself to be a better observer of your surroundings. In addition, when a drizzle is threatening to become a cloudburst, it is also helpful to be able to get back indoors quickly. I decided to take a Nikon D-200 with an 18-200 mm zoom lens and a tripod. It was pretty easy to find something today, because a small patch of English Bluebells (not the native Virginia Bluebells, my subject on April 18) was at peak bloom in our back yard. I set the tripod low to the ground and looked for a decent composition. The advantages of a heavy cloud cover include a soft, even light and highly saturated color. The water drops hanging from the stems and blossoms were an added bonus.

Unfortunately, I was only able to stay long enough for 5 quick shots before the rain resumed and I was forced to duck back inside. After picking the best of the five and making adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw processor (a future topic), the final result is shown above. The ISO was set at 400 and the image was shot at 1/40th sec and f/5.6.

I was relatively satisfied with the outcome, given that I had such a short time to shoot. But I was frustrated that the short depth of field caused so little of the subject to be sharp. Using a higher f/stop would be one way to attack that problem, but it would have the undesirable side effect of causing the background to become sharper which would tend to distract from the subject. It would be nice if I could have greater control over the sharpness of the primary subject while keeping the far background completely out of focus.
An alternate approach might be the technique known as “Focus Stacking,” where a number of images are taken of the subject, each with a different part of the subject being in focus. The multiple images are then run through a special software application that merges them into a single image. In essence, the software selects only those portions that are sharp. Since I haven’t yet purchased one of these programs, it will have to be the subject of a future discussion, so stay tuned……
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Virginia Bluebells

It’s easy to miss the chance for a good image if you don’t keep track of the calendar, especially in the spring. At this time of the year, the landscape photographer is overloaded with opportunities as the season of renewal races with frenetic speed. But the opportunities are usually brief and so it helps to maintain a “schedule” of what is going to happen, when, and where. For example, every year in mid-April, a nondescript wooded area in northern Virginia is briefly transformed into a dazzling carpet of blue and white. Bordering a stream known as Cub Run, this 75-acre tract in Bull Run Regional Park seems to have the perfect conditions for the Virginia bluebell.

The plant has a fleeting existence above ground, appearing for just a brief period each year. There are only a few weeks of warm weather before the life giving sunlight is blocked out by the emerging leaves of the overhead tree canopy. The bluebell must grow rapidly and it quickly reaches a height of about two feet. Then clusters of bell-shaped blossoms emerge just as the first insect pollinators, critical to the plant’s survival, begin to search for nectar.

The Bluebell can be found in many places in the Northern Virginia area, but one of the best locations is at Bull Run Regional Park, near Centreville. Other locations include the nearby Stone Bridge across Bull Run on the eastern edge of Manassas battlefield, Great Falls National Park, and the adjacent River Bend Regional Park.

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Photography: Painting with Light

The word, “photography” derives from the Greek language as “writing with light.” But I find it easier to think of it as painting with light. A photographer’s subject must be illuminated, and the color of the subject is determined by the color of the light striking it. There are many ways to change that color (choice of film, adjusting the white balance, etc.) but the starting point is the light source one is using and for the landscape photographer, that usually means the sun. So knowing what happens with sunlight at different times of the day as well as different times of the year helps me anticipate photographic opportunities before they happen.

The subject here is the Francis Scott Key Bridge, from a vantage point on the Washington, D.C. side of the Potomac River. Figure 1, on the left, was taken about 30 minutes before Figure 2. The latter, shot a few minutes before sunset on September 21, 2004 using Ektachrome VS 100 slide film. Anyone who lives in the Washington area knows that the Key Bridge is not painted gold. The normal color of the bridge is shown in Figure 1, but the color shown in the second image is as I saw it and not the result of a Photoshop technique. The magic lasted only a few minutes and probably was witnessed by only a few people, mostly boaters and the staff of the boathouse from whose dock the picture was taken.

All landscape photographers are aware that sunlight is composed of many colors (or wavelengths as the scientific folks would say). These colors are shown in a rainbow or when the light passes through a prism. We also are familiar with the yellow or red light that is often associated with a sunrise or sunset. The warm golden tone is caused is the fact that the sun is close to the edge of the earth’s horizon and the light must pass through a greater amount of the earth’s atmosphere. The air scatters the shorter wavelengths (violet and blue) while the longer wavelengths (yellow, orange, and red) pass through.


Knowing that a sunset can produce this effect, however, is not enough to capture an image like the one in this example. It is also necessary to know where the sun will set. In this case, the bridge runs almost due north-south (a bearing of 18 degrees east of north when crossing from Virginia), meaning that the upriver side faces almost due west. And September 21, 2004 was one day before the fall equinox when the sun sets precisely at due west. Therefore, I knew that for a few days around that date I had a good chance of capturing a image of the bridge being illuminated by a golden sunset.

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Action Panorama Images

Sometimes it takes time for an idea to be implemented. I happen to live just 5 minutes from Great Falls National Park, and last summer I went over to photograph the annual whitewater festival that features kayakers navigating the falls. I'd been experimenting with Photoshop's "Photomerge" capability and thought this would be a good opportunity to try something a little different: a sports action image.

For those who are not familiar with Photomerge, the software basically stitches together several photographs to make a single image, hopefully so seamless that the viewer cannot discern the effect. Most often, the subject is static with the photographer using a tripod to carefully pan the camera in a precise arc from one side to the other in order to capture segments of the overall image. Then, back at the computer, the separate images can be aligned and blended by Photoshop's photomerge function.

In this case, however, there was considerable action and movement, especially the large volume of water coming over the falls and the competitors navigating the falls one at a time. In addition, there were several people moving around the scene. Safety personnel were standing on the rocks and one or two kayakers were maneuvering around the base of the falls to assist anyone who made a mistake. And most importantly, competitors were coming over the falls one at a time.

My camera was a Nikon D-200 using a Nikon 80-400 mm VR zoom set at 340 mm. Most often, a panorama is shot with the camera oriented in the horizontal, or landscape, format. But this time I concluded that a vertical, or portrait, format would enable me to zoom in closer to the scene. The downside was that this would require 6 exposures across the face of the falls instead of 3 to get the full width of the scene. I also decided to try to shoot the image without a tripod, because I needed to react quickly to the action. My settings were ISO 400, 1/1000th of a second at f/8.0, shooting RAW.

I photographed each kayaker as he or she came over the falls. If I felt that I had captured a good image, I then quickly swung the camera to the left and took a series of overlapping images moving to the right across the face of the falls before the next competitor arrived. Because of the changing light conditions and the passage of time (the event lasted about 2 hours), it was necessary to capture the whole scene at essentially the same time.

For a variety of reasons, I did little with the results until recently. But finally, I opened up the RAW images and selected the set that seemed to have the most promise. As I launched Photoshop, I wondered whether the photomerge function would be able to handle that thundering water and the fact that some of the people appeared in more than one image. Putting together a set of images of buildings with straight lines or even a landscape in which nothing is moving is one thing. But this could turn out to be a joke.

The initial steps are always: File > automate > photomerge. I brought in the six images and selected the default layout option, "Auto." Although it took some time, I was stunned to see that the results were flawless. The water had been perfectly blended together and the software had chosen one image of each person in the scene. I flattened the layers (photomerge creates a separate layer for each image that is used), cropped the scene as needed, and then adjusted contrast, brightness, and sharpness. It looked great on the monitor.

But how would it look as a print? Even though I have an Epson 7600 printer in my studio (which can in theory print something 24" wide and as long as the amount of paper left on the 100-foot roll), I decided to be cautious and started with an 8' X 20" version. This, in effect, was the same as enlarging a single 10 megapixel image to an 8" X 10" print, which is definitely not a stretch.

The result was as sharp as a tack. I realized that it could easily be doubled in size without any obvious degradation, giving me a 20" X 42" panorama, almost 4 feet wide. But committing to that amount of ink and paper makes one nervous. Will the printer perform without any hiccups? As it turned out, it took about 50 minutes for the job to run and I was nervous as a cat until the cutter blades completed the task and I placed the print on the viewing table. Everything was fine, even though it was nine months between the time the image was taken and the print was finally produced.

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