Editor's First Picks

Lake Superior Rocks!

Harvard Sailing School

Two of my pictures have been selected as Editor's Picks in the BetterPhoto.com contest in July. Basically that means the judge(s) have found them interesting, we'll have to wait a few days to see if I am a finalist.

BetterPhoto.com is a great place to improve your photography. In addition to online photography classes, they provide professional critiques and useful forums for discussion.

Medium Format Digital: First Impressions

Beaver Lake
(Mamiya 645AFDII, 35mm, P30 Digital Back)

Taking digital landscape photographs in the middle of a sunny day is difficult to pull off. Since the sun is directly overhead it has a tendency to flatten the image. In addition to that, the range of light from the shadows to the highlights is wider than the sensor is capable of recording. To compensate for this you usually have to use special techniques which involve combining two or more different exposures. For example, on July 14th I posted a photograph of Beaver Lake which was created by combining three different exposures.

The sky was filled with puffy clouds and I wanted to take a picture of a spot Dave and I found riding our motorcycles yesterday. I was also dying to try out my new Phase One digital back and medium format camera which arrived this week. I just assumed I would have to create an HDR photograph using multiple exposures.

The sensor in the digital back has almost 3 times the detail but I was pleasantly surprised to discover out it also had enough dynamic range to photograph the scene without having to do an HDR composite. It nailed the exposure with zero tweaks to the exposure.

Very Cool!

Update: I posted a little more detail on this shot in the Luminous Landscape forum.

Images of Boston

Harvard Sailing Boats

Faneuil Hall Marketplace - Changing Weather
(HDR photograph)

Urban Jungle - Old City Hall
(HDR photograph)

Windows

A few more images from our Boston trip.

The Faneuil Hall Marketplace was pretty amazing; imagine a mall with 20 million visitors annually. It was literally wall-to-wall people.

Pool Party!

Pool Party
(Casio EV7 - Point and Shoot)

We all stopped by to see our baby granddaughter Zoe swimming in her pool!

Something got her tickled and she started laughing. By the end we were all in stitches!

Boston at Twilight

We're leaving Boston today and heading to Rockport which is an old fishing port town.

The sunsets were fantastic while we were here, unfortunately we were always on the wrong side of town. Night before last we were on Fan Pier and the pretty sunset sky was behind us since the rain clouds were heading out to sea. Last night they were in the west but we were on the west side of downtown but we were able to catch this last bit of light on the clouds over the Back Bay area of Boston.

Back in Boston

View from Royal Santos Hotel
(Canon 1d mk III, 24-105mm lens)

We are back in Boston from our side trip to Plymouth and Cape Cod.

Our hotel room has a beautiful view of downtown from across the Charles River.

Plymouth Courthouse

Courthouse in Plymouth, MA
(Canon 1d mk III, 24-105mm lens)

We drove from Boston to Plymouth today to take in the sites for a few days.

We received the initial prospects for our log today. #1 was our favorite prospect with #3 our second choice. Please let us know what you think. You can see all of them here.

The next step will be to make our final decision and then do a few rounds of revisions until we get exactly what we are after.

Two if by Sea

Two if by Sea - Boston Skyline from Lopresti Park
(Canon 1d Mk III, 24-105mm lens, 6 shot panoramic)

Boston Skyline from Cartlon's Warf
(Canon 1D mk III, 24-105mm lens)

The pictures speak for themselves.

What a beautiful city!

Bench Rock Nature Trail

View From Bench Rock Bluff HDR
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens)

Male Eastern Tailed Blue
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens)

The Bench Rock Bluff Nature Trail is part of Indian Creek Park 30 minutes drive North of Rogers, AR. This is not the best season for a hike, but I am scouting photography locations. The hike is a little over a mile long, the first half follows the top of a bluff line returning below the bluff on an abandoned road.

Another Notch!

We have invested years in this nature photography project, spent a ton of money on equipment, education and travel. Countless hours have been spent learning the tools of the trade and a few prints have been sold.

We're not sure where this will end up, but since we love doing it we are moving forward.

Developing a corporate logo and identity is one of the first steps and lets everyone know you are serious about what you are doing. Next will come a real website to replace our gallery site.

We have hired LogoBee to design a logo, stationary, etc. We used when we were creating our Strategy Systems look several years ago. In the end we didn't use any of their logos but we liked their products and the costs are very reasonable. Our 8 preliminary logos should be available here sometime next week. Let us know what you think.

Green Dreamin'

Composite Family Photo

(Canon 1D Mk III, 70-200mm lens)

Green Screen Photograph

Sometimes you just can't be where you really want.

Beth and Drew are normally in Brisbane, Australia where they serve as missionaries. While stateside Beth had Daniel at the young age of 40. Oops!

So now it is time for a new family photo to update all of their supporting churches. The only problem; they wanted something Australian as a backdrop. I'm not going to Australia anytime soon so if they wanted me to take their photograph we were going to have to improvise.

By photographing on a background consisting only of a primary we were able to superimpose their likeness (less the annoying green) onto the backdrop they liked much better.

After a few touch-ups we get a pleasing result less the $2500 expense of flying the photo man to Australia. Of course the baby was goofing off -- guess you can't have everything.

Van Winkle Trail

Van Winkle Trail HDR
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens, 3 exposure HDR)

Van Winkle Village HDR
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens, 3 exposure HDR)

Little Clifty Creek HDR
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens, 3 exposure HDR)

Zebra Swallowtail
(Canon 1D Mk III, 24-105mm lens)

Around 1850 Peter Van Winkle built a small mill east of Rogers, AR on the Little Clifty Creek. The mill was one of the most productive in the area after the Civil War providing lumber for rebuilding Fayetteville. It was also the principle source of lumber for the famous "Old Main" building on the University of Arkansas.

The mill grew into a small village with hotel, store, blacksmith shop and dwellings which were active until the early 1900s. Peter Van Winkle died from a stroke in downtown Rogers in 1882.

An archeological excavation of the community was started in 1997 by the University of Arkansas. The area has new been developed into a two part trail in the newly developing Hobbs State Park and Conservation Area. The village and ruins are part of a well developed 1 mile trail north of highway 12. On the South side of highway there is a 5 or 6 mile nature trail that is basically an overgrown trail with very little improvement.

This area is typical of the hardwood forests covering most of N.W. Arkansas. The very dense foliage is difficult to photograph due to the extreme range of light from the sunny areas to the dark shadows. These photographs were produced by taking three different hand-held exposures which were later combined using Photomatix HDR software.

Fire in the Sky

Sunset HDR of Our Office Building
(Canon 1D Mark III, 24-105mm lens)

We are in a stormy weather pattern which creates some great sunsets. Since we are working hard on our next software product, Strategy Enterprise, we don't have a lot of time for photography but you can't pass up a great sunset!

Moving up to Medium Format

Mamiya 645AFDII

Mamiya ZD Digital Back

Faith and I have made the decision to move up to medium format for our landscape photography.

We were planning to upgrade to the yet to be announced Canon 1DS Mark III. While the rumor is that the Canon 1DS upgrade will be to 22 megapixels; digital sensors for medium format cameras are twice the size of a full frame 35mm sensor so the base image quality should be much better.

The lens technology in 35mm cameras is already strained by the resolution in the current 1DS Mark II camera, especially for wide angle landscape photography. Part of a Canon upgrade would probably mean a whole new set of glass. Medium format lenses are more expensive but have better optical qualities since they have to capture the higher level of detail provided by the 6x4.5cm filter.

This is a whole new ball game for me. While the Canons are a complete unit requiring everything to be replaced when you upgrade, medium format cameras have the camera body with either a film or digital back. If you need more resolution you can replace the back and keep clicking. The other nice thing is that you can purchase backs from several different vendors.

The digital back I am getting has a 22 megapixel sensor which is almost twice the resolution of my current equipment. In addition to the increased resolution you have the option of not using the anti-aliasing filter which will give me much sharper raw images which will also make a huge difference in image quality.

I will use my Canon 1D Mark III for wildlife photography as well as casual walk-around shooting. It will also be backup in case I have any problems with the Mamiya while traveling.