photography

What’s in a picture? #1

By Chip Cain | Published January 21, 2012

I thought some of my readers might be interested in how I get to the end result for some of my pictures. With this in mind this post is the beginning of a not-so regular series showing how I get to my final picture.

Saint Stephens#3

One cool late  afternoon in December of last year (2011) I took a walk around Harrisburg PA with camera in hand and pack on my back. One of my first stops was along front street with the Susquehanna river and the sun to my back. In front of me was Saint Stephens Episcopal Cathedral. The sun gave some warmth to the walls and the trees growing along Front street provided the shadows. I thought it might make a nice picture; not great, but I knew I could work with it.

After taking a few shots from several different perspectives I shuffled down the street keeping my eyes open for the next possibility. One I got home and found time to review my photos, the ones from Saint Stephens seemed a bit lack luster. Part of this was my exposure setting, not having my camera stopped down enough, made this series of photos dull and uninviting. (See pic#1 below)

Fortunately I shoot in RAW format which I recommend to just about everyone who will listen. Shooting in jpg format doesn’t provide the same opportunity to salvage a an almost-there photo as does the RAW format.  I use Adobe’s Lightroom 3, my software of choice for editing photos in RAW format. I won’t post every step that I did in Lightroom, however I can tell you one of the first things I do is increasing the blacks using the provided slider. How much to increase it is a personal preference choice. Let’s just say “Till it looks good.”  In addition to bumping up the blacks I most often open the brush icon to dodge and burn areas in the photo. Again, I do this until it looks good; well, to me anyway. (See pic#2 below)

I felt the second photo was indeed an improvement over the first but it still seems just a bit ho-hum. Sometimes that happens and there’s not much you can do but to move on to the next photo and work on it. However in my case I recently upgraded my onOne Perfect Suite 5 photo editing software to onOne Perfect Suite version 6 and I was eager to try it out. This is not a detailed review of On One’s software nor will I provide every step I took while using Perfect Suite 6: that will come in other postings. So I hope this time out it will suffice to say I added several textures. Perfect Suite 6 is loaded with presets for all kinds of textures and lighting option (it also offers much more) and after choosing a preset I would tweak it using the built in sliders to get the look I was after before moving onto the next preset that intrigued me. This was a trial an error process and a whole lot of fun. The first picture you see in this post is the result.

Knowing that this has not been a very detailed posting please feel free to ask your questions in the comments section: I will do my best to answer them.

 

The Guitar

By Chip Cain | Published November 18, 2011

For the third year in a row I was asked to take photos for the Glen Rock Library fund raising event. besides the wine tasting there live music from a band called ’3 Dollar Suit’. The photo you see here is from the lead guitarist in the band. It was taken while they were on break and the guitar was sitting on a stand.

The Guitar

Holbrook Arizona & The Sunset Winds I Found There

By Chip Cain | Published October 20, 2011

Sunset Winds #5

This past May, as I traveled to visit and photograph several National Parks I stopped in Holbrook Arizona to visit my friend Steve. My first evening there had Steve busy but he was sure to tell me where to set up my camera to get some great open shots of a south western sunset. I was there in plenty of time since it was about 200 yards from the where I would be sleeping for the next two night. My equipment was lite: two camera’s (Nikon D300s & Nikon D-90) and a flip video I had attached to a gorilla pod which I attached to a fence post. I started the video which happily recorded a glorious sunset, which I am sure Steve ordered just for me. On my D300s I mounted my 18-55mm kit lens because I wasn’t happy with my initial shots using my 50mm prime. The slower lens gave me better results. On the D-90 I had a 55-300mm lens that I ended up ignoring for most of the evening. Taking a few shots to get the shutter speed and aperture set where I wanted them I jumped ,in first with more traditional shots of sunsets with wide open horizons. Then when it became dark enough for the feel and effect I was after I began taking pictures for the series I call “Sunset Winds”. I took over two hundred photos of the sunset that evening with about 50 of them using a long exposure technique I have been working on for a while.  It was this technique that gave me the Sunset Winds. This particular photo was a .5sec exposure at F36. My goal was to keep a horizon visible and yet reflect movement in the sunset. I have titled this series of photos “Sunset Winds”. You can find this series in my Gallery.

Musical Squares

By Chip Cain | Published August 28, 2011

In April of this year I was working on a garden project building a shed for a community garden which for me proved to be fortuitous. Nearby, that same day, a large number of old pianos were being unloaded, or rather tossed from trucks into a pile. It seems they had been in a warehouse and subsequently over the years cannibalized for parts. Also fortuitous, I would say providential, was that I had my camera with me to document the construction of the shed. But as often as not I was taking pictures of the pianos, rather than the shed.

These pianos would split apart as they were pushed off the back of trucks generating loud resonating sounds and exposing parts to pianos I had never seen. The trucks came and went with gaps of time between deliveries which I put to good use with my camera. I took close to 400 pictures that day; the majority of which I will keep. The percentage of good to bad photos for this serendipitous photo shoot was definitely to my favor.

When I began to edit these pictures I found many that naturally seemed to call for a square cropping rather than the usual rectangle. It is these square pictures I have posted in a gallery titled Musical Squares. I hope you enjoy them.

And Wake Up Where?

By Chip Cain | Published April 7, 2011

One more thought for the day. Recently I was laid off of work and so I will be pursuing a dream. With my wife’s encouragement I will be traveling across large swaths of the US taking pictures and talking with people. I have allowed 60 days for this trip. If you are interested in knowing more please surf on over to the website I have created for this trip. It’s called And Wake Up Where.

Sunflower

By Chip Cain | Published April 7, 2011

It’s been awhile since I posted one of my photographs. So, here is one I took last fall while visiting a sunflower farm. That day I took almost 300 pictures (digital cameras are great) and of the 300 I kept just over 40. This is my favorite. It’s a bit more subtle than the rest by showing the beginnings of the flower and in the blurred background is a sunflower in full bloom. It hints at what the flower will become. This is similar to our own lives: our future is not always in sharp focus. I hope you enjoy the picture.

Hatteras Island Flight

By Chip Cain | Published October 24, 2010

In an earlier post I had mentioned I was at the beach during a particularly stormy week. One of those stormy days was windy with thick clouds but not a lot of rain. On that day I took a long walk along the beach  walking backward to protect my camera, and body, from the stinging grains of sand picked up by the near gale force winds. I walked this way for over a mile to get to a pier where I was hoping for some great photographs. Later it dawned on me I could have driven to the pier parking lot and saved myself some very laborious steps. But if I had done that I would certainly have missed many opportunities to photograph waves I might not see again for many years. On this day and at this time I did not see anyone else brave enough, and perhaps dumb enough, to be out in this weather except for a very brave bird. Unlike me who was walking backwards this bird was struggling to fly into the wind, clearly buffeted and struggling to keep from being pushed to the sand. To explain how difficult this must have been for this bird I was walking backwards faster than it could fly forward into the wind. This unintentional slow-motion flying provided a great opportunity to take a few pictures. Below is my favorite of this courageous bird. I have titled it “Hatteras Island Flight”.

dsc_1865_0

Summer is Over

By Chip Cain | Published October 15, 2010

I’m sitting here looking out on a bright day in October and at first glance you could imagine it is one of any number of days we had this past summer. It even looks warm. But a closer look shows that the dogwood leaves on the tree across the street have a tinge of red,  and although the other trees I can see are still green I know just out of view is a Pin Oak tree with leaves as brown as they will get. Today it will get to 60 degrees and soon the average high will be in the 50′s and I will need to dig up my tropicals; plants I have forced to live where it’s not natural for them to be. Banana trees, Elephant Ears and Cana lilies may have been found in the garden of Eden but are not found as usual adornments to gardens in Pennsylvania: mine has them. All surrounding my water garden filled with water Hyacinths, also not designed for these northern climes. And yet even last week these Hyacinths were bucking the trend and putting forth blooms as if to say “We are are stronger than the cold: bring it on!”

Here is a picture of that conversation with the weather.

It’s been too long . . .

By Chip Cain | Published October 6, 2010

It’s been too long since I posted anything here. I have been busy putting together a WordPress site for the Harrisburg Camera Club of which I am a member. That followed by two weeks at the beach has left me with too much else to do.

But while at the beach I was able to take way too many pictures. So on top of everything else I will need to find time to process all those digital negatives (yes I always shoot in RAW). During week two of my vacation tropical depression Nichole came through the Carolina’s, I was on Hatteras Island NC, bringing with her fierce winds and generating some awesome waves. Here is my first picture from that trip.

I hope you like it. More pictures to come when time comes to me.

Waiting

By Chip Cain | Published July 18, 2010

Waiting

I was in Harrisburg last week, a city I’m happy to drive the 20 minutes it takes to get there so that I can take pictures. This particular morning the humidity was low and being summer the lighting was too bright: even at 8:30am in the morning. So I stopped by the train station and found this scene standing at the top of the stairs looking down. As calm as this scene seems I only had a second or two to get the camera to my eye. You see, a train had just stopped and the doors were sliding open., One second later the station man stopped looking at his watch, the man on the bench looked up and twenty people filled the space that was empty except for these two. This was my luck for the morning: spent on this one photo. I think it was worth it.


Dreaming Harrisburg In A Reflection

By Chip Cain | Published April 25, 2010

A few weeks back I took a photo of a sculpture that can be found on Second St in Harrisburg. It is one of those sculptures that is made of shiny stainless steel which reflects back its surroundings. At the time I took the photo I wasn’t seeing the reflection: all I saw was the sculpture itself. But when I got home and processed the photo all I could see was the reflection; so with a little cropping to keep it all reflection here is the resulting photograph I call ‘Dreaming Harrisburg In A Reflection’. I hope you like it. To see a larger version click on the picture.

Dreaming Harrisburg In A Reflection

City Textures

By Chip Cain | Published March 1, 2010

The photo above is the first that occupied space in a new gallery I have titled City Textures. The photographs found in City Textures are part of my ongoing project to capture various cities without indication of  place or time. Hopefully they will inspire others to see the cities they live in with fresh perspectives. Occasionally I will post new photos of my works here; perhaps they will interest you to view my growing collection of photos. Let me know what you think.

Bragging Rights

By Chip Cain | Published January 21, 2010

I can’t help but share the fact  that recently three of my photos were selected as the winning selections for a Best of 2009 photo contest. To see where this took place and my winning photos visit  Towner Jones Photography .

While you’re there take the time to look around, especially if you want to improve your picture taking craft.  Rob Jones, the owner of this website, provides many good tips and links to many more tips. And he does this all with a very personal touch: you can tell he does it because he enjoys what he does.