In the Hangar

When I was a kid I had an encyclopedia of airplanes, and I loved to look in it. The National Air and Space Museum holds some of my favorite planes, so naturally, I spent an inordinate amount of time photographing them. Here are some of my favorite shots.

HDR: 1/60, 1/25, 1/10 sec at f/4.5, ISO 1600, 20mm

1/50 sec at f/3.5, ISO 1600, 10mm

1/20 sec at f/4.5, ISO 800, 22mm

1/30 sec at f/4.5, ISO 800, 19mm

1/40 sec at f/4.0, ISO 1600, 16mm

1/100 sec at f/3.5, ISO 1600, 12mm

Atlantis

This post has been a long time coming, but dental school has a way of keeping me from my photography. My family went to The Bahamas over thanksgiving for my mom's 60th b-day. We were lucky enough to stay at the famous Atlantis resort, and the photography was pretty good. I must say, my kind of vacation is one where there's a camera in my hands. I only half joke that I usually don't take photos while I'm on vacation, I go on vacation to take photos. Atlantis did not disappoint.

This was an interesting shot to post-process. I originally shot this as an HDR (I bracketed three shots with different exposures to merge them later), but after processing them through my HDR software a couple times the photo just wasn't coming out. It just looked kind of unrealistic and I couldn't get the contrast that I wanted.

1/30 sec at f/11, ISO 100, 22mm

Then it dawned on me that HDR was designed to take scenes with light ranges beyond the ability of a camera sensor to capture and then merge them into one shot. Well, interestingly enough, all the light in one of my exposures actually fit in my cameras sensor range so no parts of the image were overexposed or underexposed. I realized this when I looked at the histogram for this shot. The left side of the histogram represents the dark tones starting at black and represents brighter tones to the right, so the big bump kind of in the middle means that most of the light was about medium brightness. You can see that the range of light in my shot just barely fit my camera sensor's range. If there were completely under or overexposed pixels, you would see tones piled up on the far left or right of the histogram respectively. Achieving this wide range of light in one shot is one of the keys to getting a good exposure, and I did it rather accidentally. So instead of trying to process an HDR, I just took the original shot as is and I think it looks pretty good. I just enhanced a few things in Adobe Lightroom like contrast and sharpness and I also photoshopped out some distracting buoys in the foreground. That's not cheating right?

I normally only put up one photo per post, but seeing how infrequently I've posted lately, I might as well show you a few more from the trip.

HDR: 1/250, 1/60, 1/15 sec at f/11, ISO 100, 10mm

1/15 sec at f/3.5, ISO 800, 10mm

1/25 sec at f/4, ISO 1600, 15mm

Morris Arboretum

What better place to go to see autumn leaves than an arboretum. This fall, I went with my photography club to the Penn-owned Morris Arboretum. We got there just in time because Hurricane Sandy hit the next day and blew down all the leaves. Here are some of my shots.

1/125 sec at f/4.5, ISO 100, 22mm

1/25 sec at f/4.5, ISO 125, 18mm

HDR: 1/60, 1/25, 1/25 sec at f/4.5, ISO 100, 100, 250, 18mm

This last shot wasn't actually at the arboretum, but I took it on the drive home.

The Battleship New Jersey

Some classmates from my dental school and I just organized the official Penn Dental Student Photography Club. We call it Dentography! We already have 40 members, and we just took our first "field trip" to the Battleship New Jersey. I even talked one of the docents into taking us below deck to see the old dental facility. The New Jersey is the most decorated ship in US Navy history and fought in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf wars.

I processed this photo using a technique called HDR. Basically, I took three shots with the same composition; one overexposed, one underexposed, and one just right. I used a program called Photomatix to choose the best pixels from each shot and merge them into the final image. I also did some enhancing with Adobe Lightroom. You can check out my camera settings below the photo.

HDR 1/800, 1/200, & 1/50 sec at f/5.0, ISO 100

13mm (EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM) Canon 7D

Up the Stairs

One of the things I love about photography is looking at a photo and just letting my eyes wander around. Our eyes will first lock on to the most interesting or prominent subject before they migrate across a photo. Curiously, our eyes tend to first look at faces almost instinctually. See for yourself next time you flip through a magazine or a photo album; notice where your eyes focus first. Our eyes next scan other objects in the photo, but often in a predictable progression. Eyes seem to like following converging lines like a road shrinking into the distance or climbing steps in this case. This photo is fun to me because my eyes have a definite path to follow. They first hit that orange stone in the center, then drop down to those broad steps at the base. Then I wonder where the steps lead and I follow them as they zig-zag up and disappear around the corner. At that point, my eyes are free to float around a little until they lock on to the next interesting thing. If you look at a photo several times, your eyes don't always lock on the same thing first or follow the same path, but you might see patterns. Believe it or not, considerate photographers (which I am most often not), actually take all this into account when composing photos. Next time you see a cool photo or even a piece of artwork, be mindful of where your eyes wander. It's a great way to enjoy photography and also develop an artistic eye.

1/15, 1/4, and 1.0 sec (HDR) at f/11, ISO 100

250mm (EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS)

Magical Christmas Hall

Longwoods Gardens turns into a remarkable Christmas display this time of year. They have half a million lights! If that doesn't say Christmas magic, I don't know what does! This is just one of the huge halls in the enormous conservatory greenmansion (not greenhouse)!

Crossing Bridges

Orange and Pink

I'm not sure if you'd call this color orange or pink, but whichever it is, there's a lot of it!

In the Hills of Hawaii

Are You Lost?

Recognize this waterfall?

Sunset Pine

This is one of the first HDR's I ever took. It's really hard to shoot into the sun without the HDR technique because of too much backlighting.

Modern Industrial Art or Window Shutters?

Corrugated tin seems to be the universal building material in Nicaragua, whether it's used for roofs, walls, or window shutters.

Mirrored Shore

A Bit of Snow

It's 49 degrees here in Philadelphia. I feel like a little snow might be appropriate.

Mountain Waterfall

Surf Meets Sand

Cauldron Linn

Constitution Day

I meant to post this photo a couple days ago, because it was Constitution Day! This room is where the Continental Congress met, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and where the US Constitution was signed over 220 years ago here in Philadelphia! The chair in the front is the actual one that George Washington sat in! Aside from crazy people, Philadelphia is a cool city with a great history!

Ceiling of Green

Cool tree. 'Nuff said.

Golden Meadow

Zion National Park is well known for its scenic drives and intense hikes through beautiful deep canyons, but this is what it looks like from high ground! The scenery is just as picturesque!