This would probably have been better if I’d gotten closer to the grass in the foreground, to make it a bit more defined.  Shot this at f/3.2, so the grass is really the only thing in sharp focus.  There as plenty of light for f/11 – I even shot a few frames that way.  But I liked this version better, with the shallow DOF seeming to accent the softness of the fog.

I like the shot, even though I’m not convinced it works perfectly.  And I did fall for running it through the Velvia action, which I added as a new layer over the original, with the opacity turned down to about 30%.  The original had a very pastel pallet, which was nice, but the Velvia action bumped the colors up just enough to give back a bit of the punch.  (I’m not sure that it really comes through well on here, though.)

Still playing with the fog here, this time leaving it natural without an enhancements aside from a slight S-curve.  My processing varies wildly, even within photos from the same shoot.  I tend take them as they come – some shots demand minimal processing, while others are better off when enhanced.  Sometimes it’s just fun to take a photo and go a bit crazy with it.

And here I am breaking rules and shooting into the sun, with silhouetted foreground elements.  It took several tries to get this one right; the meter is nearly useless in situations like this.  Meter the foreground and you’re blow the back way to hell; meter the back and everything will be too dark.  I just spin dials and chimp until I’m happy.  It’s not scientific, it’s not drawing on reams of photographic experience – it’s just eyeballin’ it until it works.

This is what happens when I go out in the morning without any real plan, on these mornings when I’m just happy to be out enjoying the world.  Sometimes there’s a good scene, sometimes not so much.  Without the fog, this morning would have been a bit bland.  So thank goodness for the fog.

With 2009 now officially behind us, I’ve taken a moment to look back across my body of work in the past year and pull some favorites.  The photos that follow are those shots that I like the best – chosen for technical accuracy, subject interest, and overall aesthetic.  I also want to note that while I had a number of photos from commercial assignments that I felt this way about, I haven’t included them here – this collection is almost exclusively made up of my personal work.

I don’t believe in making new year’s resolutions; a change in calendar years is an artificial benchmark in time without any real meaning.  But still, it’s as good as time as any to look back and review what we’ve done on this last orbit around the sun.  I’m pleased with what I’m able to show for my time; and I’m setting the bar even higher for next year.

So here’s my best wishes to everyone for their coming year – may it be filled with great images!

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]]> http://brentpennington.com/2010/01/best-of-2009/feed/ 0 http://brentpennington.com/2010/01/frederick-again/ http://brentpennington.com/2010/01/frederick-again/#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:35:06 +0000 Brent Pennington http://brentpennington.com/?p=1703 Once more Frederick the Duck is my subject of the day.  I got my hands on a new telephoto lens (review coming soon), and spent yesterday afternoon outside, post-snowstorm, trying it out.  Subjects were limited, so one the way home I stopped by Abington to see what Freddy was up to – and of course to drop off another supply of cracked corn.

Frederick was being a brat and wouldn’t come out of his brush-pile cave while I was standing there, so I worked myself to the end of a peninsula nearby, just distant enough that he felt safe and emerged.  I’m not sure what got into him,  but instead of eating he put on a bit of a show – splashing, bobbing, even trying to take flight at one point!

Frederick splashing around

In the past, there’s been a time or two when I’ve gotten right down to ground level and Frederick has taken it upon himself to defend his territory, demonstrating that it is his, and not for me to intrude.  I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with the positioning – when I’m hunched down, or even lying on the ground – he may stop perceiving me as human and instead as some kind smaller, less-intimidating creature.  At which point he tries to intimidate me, strutting around, flapping his wings, and making a general pest of himself.  Albeit it, a very photogenic pest.

Momentarily airborn

Whatever the reasoning, it’s always enjoyable to watch his antics.  Although I’ll point out here that I try my best to do so from a distance, so I don’t cause him any undue stress; these shots were all taken between 200-400mm.  After a few minutes he seemed to settle down, and I said goodbye.  Of course, that’s all the time it took to take almost a hundred shots of him.  The hard part was weeding them down to the very best!

Yep – had that nightmare.

A short re-cap: since I began my archive, I’ve used idImager freeware to apply keywords, maintain a database, and search out files. The software was functional and best of all, free. I’d generally build up a month’s worth of photos, then spend a Sunday transferring them to an external hard drive, keywording them, and backing them up to DVDs.

The beginning of the end came when I got a new desktop computer, which applied a new drive letter to my external HD. I didn’t notice the problem at first and continued to transfer and keyword as usual. Until I tried to use idImager to search for photos one day, and discovered that everything that was recorded as being under the old drive letter was no longer accessible, and had to be redirected to manually.

I should have stopped right there and changed the drive letter, re-mapped all the new files, and been done with it. But instead I kept re-mapping old files as I happened to search for them, and soon my archive was completely fragmented, with random folders out of each year re-mapped or still “missing” to the software.

Simply put, what I did was dumb from the start. (Although it is annoying that idImager would map files to the drive location as part of the keywording process, with no way to alter that via a batch process.)

As a result, I got to rebuild my entire image archive. Multiple years of photos all re-keyworded. Except this time, I think I got it right. I’m now using Adobe Bridge for my keywording/archiving. It’s simpler and more intuitive than idImager, and best of all, Bridge is already a major element of my workflow. I can keyword my photos as soon as they come out of editing. (The physical process of applying keywords is even much faster and easier.)

Searching for photos in Bridge is also easier, with many criteria to choose from beyond just keywords. And because of the way the keywords are stored, I can plug the drive into any computer running Bridge and still search the archive without having to load any additional files/software. No more intermediate database to get in the way!

In the end, this was something of a blessing, even though it took several evenings of work to get everything working again. Rebuilding the archive gave me the chance to review my entire body of photographic work. I cleaned out some stuff that was complete junk and rediscovered some gems in the process. And I have a superior system in the end, which will result in significant time-savings.

I hope anyone reading this takes two things away with them: first, the importance of having an archive as a way to not only preserve, but also access, your collective work; second, some idea of one solution to the problem of creating said archive. I’ve had Bridge almost as long as I’ve had an archive, and I only wish that I had done it this way from the start. It would have saved weeks worth of overall labor. So hopefully someone out there will learn from my mistake.

****For the record, I want to make it clear that this is not a statement against idImager’s software. Their program offers many, many features, the bulk of which I never bothered to use. For me, it was purely archiving software. In the end it turned out not to be the best solution for me. But plenty of people decide they don’t like Bridge, or Lightroom, or ACDsee. idImager is another option, and a good one, to explore.

And that’s my goal – to tell the story of my Thanksgiving through photographs.  I had a wonderful day, full of great people and great food.  I had a lot of fun shooting these photos.  I hope they tell tell story.  And I hope that your holiday was just as great, and that you managed to capture at least part of your own story.

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It was overcast, and although I’d initially thought about shooting B&W images, they turned out looking better in color.  With the subdued colors I found found myself looking more at details than landscapes, which provided a good opportunity to run the lens through several different apertures.

The weather began clearing at the same time that we started down the trail. The elevation of Ricketts Glen meant that there was snow at the top of the trail, which provided us with some of those iconic snow & foliage images that happen all to rarely. However, by the time we really started down the gorge, most of the snow had melted off, or never managed to collect at all. Still, a dozen waterfalls and brightly colored leaves are a combination that’s hard to beat, and I ended up with several shots I am very pleased with.

The combination of the new 7D and Slik tripod worked out very, very well. The Slik is all the tripod I’ll ever need and does its job very well. The legs are tight and don’t flop open or closed and it is rock solid. I used it extensively, since most of my exposures were a second or more in length. Had I been willing to lay down on the wet rocks, I could have gotten even lower than I did.

The 7D also met all my expectations. Aside from some quick shots I posted earlier, this was its first “trial by fire.” I used the 28-135mm IS & 17-40mm lenses throughout the day, and since I was working with waterfalls, nearly all my exposures were taken at ISO 100\ and f/8 – f/16. A combination of a polarizer and ND filters helped extend the exposures past 1 second.

Focus, metering, and performance were all excellent. (There were only a few occasions when the auto-focus selection didn’t get the spot I wanted, in which case I switched to manual point selection.) I started out using my wireless remote, but soon found it difficult to juggle the remote, tripod, and camera between locations, so I switched to just using the 2-second timer, along with the mirror lock up. (If I was going to be more stationary, I’d have stuck with the remote, which worked fine.)

The only problem I encountered came when I attempted to used a second ND filter in conjunction with the other two. The combination of all three filters threw off the white balance and resulted in a strong red color cast throughout the entire image. Attempting to correct for this with a user-defined Kelvin setting was only partially successful. Taking a custom white balance might have worked as well, but instead I just removed the second ND filter, since it wasn’t having that much of an effect on the exposure time anyway. Once removed, the default Cloudy white balance once more worked correctly.

Battery life during the day was excellent – four hours of shooting – most of them long exposures with mirror lock-up – still left me with over 75% battery power, according to the battery info screen. While I initially lamented the change to the new battery pack, I have to say, it really does seem to be an improvement in terms of power capacity and usage.

Since all of the day’s shooting took place at ISO 100 or 200, I can’t report on noise performance. At the settings I used, noise wasn’t an issue, which is what we’d all expect. I can say that I very much like the look of the images capture with the camera, and I do feel that they are an improvement over previous models.

On a final note, the increased megapixel count does eat into storage space. If you haven’t guessed it yet, 18mp reduces your shot count per memory card; my 8GB card now yields about 300 shots, depending on the circumstances. The greater implication here is that any card under 4GB in size becomes almost useless in any sort of serious shooting situation. I’d say that 4GB is the smallest size you should buy; if you plan to do wedding or commercial work, don’t bother with anything smaller than 8GB, with 16GB being an even better choice.

All of the following were shot RAW and processed to DNG using Adobe DNG Converter 5.5, which is currently the only third-party way of working with the 7D files. Since these are all shots I had an interest in keeping, they have been edited in Adobe Camera Raw, and again in Photoshop – but those edits are restricted to exposure, cropping, etc. There has been no cloning or noise reduction applied.

The first series continues my growing love for bird photography. These were taken through a kitchen window as songbirds visited the feeder outside – given the situation, I was even more impressed with how well they turned out. Photographed with the 7D + 70-300mm IS @ f/8, ISO 1250.

The second series comes from Salt Springs State Park, where we stopped to visit the llamas. Same post processing steps, same camera setup, except these were shot at f/5.6, ISO 400.

I am very pleased with these preliminary results. ISO 1250 is somewhere I’d rarely venture on the old 50D (and pretty much never on the 30D), yet on the 7D it looks very good. There is a low level of noise in the image, but as early reports stated, it looks more like fine film grain than digital noise. The level of feather detail that remains is even a bit of a surprise to me. Naturally, I’d expect the performance to decrease somewhat in a scene with deep shadows, but here in a well exposed image, I feel I can safely say that ISO 1250 is perfectly usable.