Getting Closer

In my latest round of photos from Longwood Gardens I tried to look for interesting patterns and details and zoom in on them. I really like macro photography. I even liked it as a kid before I knew what macro was when I looked at the 'guess the object' pictures from the Highlights magazine. My problem with macro photography is that I don't have a good lens for it. The best thing I have is an inexpensive 55-250mm telephoto with a 3 ft minimum focal distance and the glass isn't very sharp. I still used it, though, and I think the shots turned out pretty well. Not all of these are truly macro shots, but they constitute a closer look.

1/80 sec at f/4.5, ISO 400, 50mm

1/250 sec at f/5.0, ISO 400, 100mm

1/125 sec at f/5.0, ISO 400, 123mm

1/100 sec af f/5.0, ISO 400, 145mm

1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, 171mm

1/60 sec at f/5.0, ISO 400, 55mm

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

Space Shuttle Discovery

It's always been a dream of mine to see a shuttle launch, but that era has passed. The next best thing is to see one in person at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. I've watched the Shuttle Discovery launch and land many times on TV, but I really wasn't prepared for just how magnificent it is in person. I literally spent hours staring at it, taking hundreds of photos, and reliving my childhood fantasies of spaceflight. My wife finally had to pry me away to go see the other exhibits, which too were very cool. I'll post more on that later.

The hanger that held the shuttle was dimly lit except for bright splashes of direct sunlight creating a very wide range of light from dark to bright. In this situation I'd normally use a tripod and shoot bracketed exposure HDRs, but tripods weren't permitted in the museum. This made it really difficult to get great shots, but I think a few turned out pretty well.

1/80 sec at f/4.5, ISO 1600, 22mm

1/250 sec at f/5, ISO 1600, 123mm

1/40 sec at f/4, ISO 1600, 16mm

1/40 sec at f/3.5, ISO 1600, 10mm

1/80 sec at f/4.5, ISO 1600, 22mm

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

Water Lily

Here's to my flower. Happy 4 year wedding anniversary!

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)

Branching Out

Most of my recent photos (besides my portraits) are taken with my wide angle 10-22mm lens, but I decided to try something different with this shot, so I pulled out my 50mm f/1.4 portrait lens. The bokeh (blurred background) and shallow depth of field give a really nice touch. In case you are wondering, no, I haven't gone anywhere tropical lately; unless you count the tropical room at the nearby conservatory in Longwood Gardens. Seems like that's the only place I shoot these days. I need to branch out more this Summer = goal.

A Brand New Subject

In anticipation of the arrival of my son, Nathan, I needed to clear some space on my hard drive because I only had about 2GB free. A big problem for a new dad who can't keep his finger off the shutter button. Given the size of my photos, that was only enough room for about a hundred shots. So after hours of sorting through my entire photo library of ten thousand photos, one photo at a time, and four thousand deleted photos later, I finally had 80GB to fill with shots of this little guy! Three weeks after birth, this sweet boy has hundreds of photos, and I'm down to 70GB. I'm going to need a bigger hard drive at this rate!

I'm extremely proud to be a first time dad, and I'm thrilled to get to know Nathan better every day! He's such a good boy and puts up with me constantly snapping shots. He must think that daddy has two different faces, one of them shaped like a camera with a bright light on top.

Photography tip: I always aim the flash to bounce off the ceiling or a wall. That way Nathan won't go blind and it casts a softer light without harsh shadows.

Yellowstone River

This great spot in Yellowstone was perfect for capturing this winding river. I think Ansel Adams would have liked this view (he probably did). Interestingly, there was a bald eagle soaring high above. I got some great photos of it with my telephoto lens, only to realize later that it was not set to auto focus.

The Bison Have Left

I came across this huge herd of bison grazing in a wide grassy valley in Yellowstone National Park a few years ago. I was driving around the rim of the valley when I spotted them congregated along a little stream, so I pulled over and just watched them for a while. Some were licking their young and most were getting a meal followed by rolling in the dirt. A few were plowing their heads into each other in pretty intense battles. Little plumes of dust were popping up all across the valley. After a while they wondered off to the far side of the valley and left behind the aftermath of their visit: trampled, upturned soil and grass blades mowed away all along the stream.

Merry Christmas!

Oh Christmas Tree

Just one more week until Christmas and what a great time for my 100th blog post! That fantastic light at the top of the tree isn't an ultra bright light bulb, it's actually the moon! It was so bright and full that it looks like the Christmas star when it's lined up just right!

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)!