Baby Geese at Richland College

Hi Folks,

I go out and take photos and I feel like I don't have a good way to share them. I could blast large groups of photos via text to various people but that seems invasive to me. So I'm going to try to post a blog entry more consistently. I will then send a link to people who might be interested in the topic. I would encourage you to subscribe so that you get notified when I do an updates. It would also encourage me to be more consisten knowing that others are enjoying my content.

I'm visiting my brother up in Richardson. Richland College is close by. They have a dammed up stream flowing through it and it seems to be a gathering place fo Canadian Geese. I saw two broods of chicks and at least three females sitting on eggs. I've posted the best here and created a gallery of more if you are curious. Also in the group is a barn swallow, an egret, a scissortail flycatcher, among others.

I hope you enjoy:

Testing various techniques for photographing flowers

I am hoping to start making blog entries more often. Of course, I've made this decision at least twice before and didn't follow through. I would appreciate folks subscribing and adding comments. I think that would cause me to be more consistent. I believe you need to create a user id for this and since this is a Google product, using a Google ID should work. I am experimenting with different techniques taking pictures of flowers. This started from watching a YouTube video that suggested a longer lens, wide aperture, and shooting down low. I used my Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z lens and some sample shots are thus:

The problem I see is that the close and far edge of the flowers are not in focus. These were shot at 200mm, f/5.0, 1/640, ISO 100. The calculated depth of field is 1/32 of an inch with the subject distance at 20 inches (roughly the closest this lens can focus). To address this issue, I tried focus bracketing and stacking. A few samples using this technique are here:

If you look very closely, you can see stacking artifacts. The wind was blowing slightly when I captured the images. So, the challenge would be to either wait until the wind behaves or spend more time in the software that stacks the images and remove the artifacts. From experience I know that even with stacking the depth of field has issues when two surfaces overlap in the image that have a large difference in depth. The close surface will create a fuzzy band when the far surface comes into focus creating a halo edge around the close surface. Kodak calls this "subject failure". Only hand editing using area cloning can resolve this tyep of issue and with the details of the flowers, that's not going to work. So... how about ignoring the YouTube video, go with a wide angle lens, stop down, and get a depth of field that is the depth of the flower? The DOF calculator in PhotoPills says a 35mm at first/8.0 has a depth of field of three inches if the subject distance is 20 inches. Great!! Well... No. For a 35mm lens, the subject distance is closer to eight inches. At that subject distance, the depth of field drops back down to 17/32 of an inch. But... here are a few samples anyway:

The problems here are multiple. The far back edge of the flower still isn't in focus and the soft defuse background is gone. The background could be faked by post processing but that defeats the purpose of all this experimentation. So... I think strategic use of focus bracketing will be what I will do if the conditions are right. Otherwise, I'm going with the single shot at 200mm perhaps stopping down as much as possible but the DOF is still not going to cover the entire depth of most flowers. The other challenge is most flowers point up so to get a good shot of the open flower, the camera is more verticle than recommended.

Walkabout Along the Gulf Coast - Day 4 - Historic Galveston

I did other things on this day but the big thing was taking pictures of the neat architecture in "Historic Galveston".

I was basically just cruising up the coast after spending the night at Galveston Island State Park. I was looking, again, to find some shipping activity and I did find where they build the drilling platforms. Then I saw the big cruise liners and thought I'd go look but you can't really drive by them so I thought I would park and walk over.

I had noticed signs for "Historic Galveston" and so I packed my architectural lens. What is that you ask???

The short answer is a "tilt-shift lens" but that will likely cause you to ask, "Perry... why are you such a dick!!!" So, to prevent that I'll explain. (Grab some coffee)

The film or the image sensor is a plane. And the lens is a plane. Almost all cameras put those two planes parallel. This causes the "point of focus" to be a plane and that plane is also parallel with the image and lens planes. Fine...

But now you need to photograph a tall building. What do you do? You point the camera up. Now the image, lens, and focus planes are not parallel with the face of the building.

That isn't really a big deal most times because the depth of field is enough to make your eyes happen. But there is another problem which is called "key stoning". The face of the building tapers off because there is now a "vanishing point" above the building. To rephrase, the sides of the building will taper towards a vanishing point.

Modern software can fix this but it is a post process munging and back in the film and print days, there was no software. What to do???

The solution is to keep the image, lens, and focus planes parallel with the sides of the building. "Detach" the film and lower it down. This requires the lens to produce a sharp image on a much wider circle including not only where the film or image sensor normally is but also where it is after it has been (here is the big word) shifted down.

The "tilt" part of "tilt-shift" lens is even more fascinating but I'll leave that for another post.

All that to say... huy guys... looks at these neat buildings!!!

Enjoy!

Walkabout Along the Gulf Coast - Day 3

As I mentioned, I slept at a KOA and woke to find the same four (or five depending upon how you count) planets lined up. I took a picture this time and I labeled them.

What isn't shown is the International Space Station. It came trucking from the Northwest to the Southeast at 5:45 a.m. and its path crossed right through the planet's elipitcal plane that we see the planets lined up on. Why didn't I take the picture???? Well, I had changed to the 500mm lens to get a close up of the ISS but I wasn't really prepared for that either and it basically passed through without me taking a decent picture. Oil well...

So... I packed up and started driving eventually ended up at Galveston Island State Park. Here is the day's path:

Breakfast was in a little place in Palacios, TX. There was a lot of shrimp boats. Here is a small sample of those pictures:

I crossed over the Colorado River

While driving I came across a nice old church and an old windmill. I eventually ended up at Port Lavaca. I was hoping to see some shipping activity but all the cranes were silent. I walked out on a long wave break and took a few random shots.

I eventually ended at the state park. When I got here at 6 p.m., the place was empty. Since then, the place has been flooded with Boy Scouts. All the sites are reserved so I'm not sure what will happen. Its almost 10 p.m. now... I'm going to sign off and hope for the best.

Walkabout Along the Gulf Coast - Day 2

This is day 2 of my Texas Gulf Coast Walkabout. When we last left off, our adventurer was camping out on Goose Island...

I woke up around 5:30 to four "stars" lined up. I found some random star app and it gave me this image:

The image is accurate but those are not the four planets I saw. Further up the line is Saturn. I didn't get any photos on this morning but I did on the following mourning so be sure to look at that blog entry.

The journey for the day took me from Goose Island to Carancahua Bay and Port Lavaca / Matagorda Bay Koa Holiday.

I went back to the place where I saw the Crested Caracara but never managed to get a shot. There is actually a pair of them. While searching for them, I came across a grain storage facility. The area is covered in corn (I guess -- looks like corn to me). The videos are pretty rough but here are some still photos to give you an idea.

The previous day while driving around I cross a brige for a bayou. I stopped and found these really interesting flowers:

And the bayou itself:

I eventually found the KOA campsite, wrote some Ruby code for my accounting project, and took a nap. Life is hard!!!