Bounced Photon

Fargo 1942

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:30 +1000

1942 Fargo one ton truck by Chrysler. Picture taken at the Thirlmere Festival of Steam 2012. Not exactly a steam device itself, truck, however, was a prominent display item at this Australian country event. Created at first in 1913 by Fargo Motor Car Company in Chicago, Fargo truck business changed few owners over the last century. Yet almost a hundred years later it is still produced by a Turkey manufacturer. This particular one appears to be built by Chrysler in Canada and shipped over for the Australian Army. It is likely a civilian model (not 4x4) powered by 6-cylinder 90bhp engine with 3-speed transmission.

The image is a HDR composite from 3 bracketed photographs (-2, 0, +2 EV) taken handheld. Quite a good resulting sharpness for crouch style photography. After the event NEF format files were reviewed and edited to remove optical distortion, lens softness, purple fringing and exported to 16-bit TIFs. Combining those 3 TIFs into a single HDR file that what gives us 3-in-1 picture with a lot of available details of the scene. As our monitors are not yet ready to display that sort of depth we create a slice of this big-pie-of-a-picture by tonemapping. We pick the best (the one with a cherry) and save it as 16-bit TIF for next level of processing. Next step is the most creative in my opinion. That where I choose to expose miniature surface details and add even more depth to the main object with the help of tonal contrast, desaturation, selective bokeh and vignetting. I am sure that even Mr. Chrysler himself would’ve been proud to see this picture.

Location: Thirlmere Festival of Steam, Thirlmere, New South Wales, Australia

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Road To Sinyavskoye

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:40 +1000

A morning walk through the summer aromas of wild flowers and herbs in a Russian countryside. A hardly visible track leads the way through hills to the small village of Sinyavskoye. It is about 5km from Tanais railway station and there are several paths to choose. A dirt road goes along the wheat fields on the right. That’s the way the old bus will run getting summer residents to their dachas. Another trail on the left is showing the way via the meadow and along the rail tracks and the river. The quickest way, but with meadows getting flooded periodically it might be tricky to get through without getting wet. The scenic walk and my favourite one is along the hill slope. If you are lucky to be in the right time you can find ripe mulberries, sloes, and raspberries together with numerous birds, poisonous vipers and other local residents.

The panorama is a stich of 10 vertical images (2 rows of 5 shots) taken handheld with short breaks to keep the mozzies away. Original images were treated against the lens distortion and softness, with then some extra work on contrast, tonal correction, colour balancing and with few dodge-burn touch ups.

Location: Sinyavskoye, Rostov Region, Russia

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Dairy Park Farm Sunset

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:06 +1000

Not long ago we had a chance to stay at Dairy Park – a working farm in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Days were spent enjoying farm activities mustering sheep and cattle, driving around on ATVs and sitting near the fireplace after delicious dinner made from all the locally grown produce. One afternoon after seeing how sheepdog works and being amazed by the intelligence of this animal we drove up to the one of the highest hills on the property. Just as sun was setting down and the temperature was dropping to zero, I thought that I should have taken the gloves from the cabin. Frozen fingers, however, were very much worth the view. Perfect timing, perfect location and the sunset was stunning.

On a technical side this photo is very simple. Just a single shot handheld on manual settings to darken the picture and capture the beautiful colours of the sky. No white balance or other adjustments will make it better, so I left it as is only applying noise reduction.

Location: Dairy Park farm, Mandurama, New South Wales, Australia

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Rural New South Wales

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 23:22 +1000

Driving through long and empty roads of the New South Wales I was highly tempted to enjoy the beautiful scenery outside instead of keeping my attention on the road. The last time I was going this way about a year ago. That year Australia was on an edge of the record 9-year drought with 95% of state officially having not enough rain. Not surprisingly most of the land had not much growing, yellow or brown was the colour of everything below the horizon. With the end of 2010 all of that changed. There is now record amounts of rain pouring down, dams filling up, rivers are flowing on the roads and colours slowly change to greenish-bluish. In a particular spot where I stopped once again, instead of dry grass I am now seeing new green plants, a small tree and a pond. And if you have a closer look you can even notice a little duckling in the pond too.
For this photo I took 12 pictures handheld (4 sets of -2,0,+2 EV) to cover the landscape around me as much as I can. I remembered that last time I had to work with a pretty small picture (link above) and thought it will be easier to crop later rather than return and re-shoot at the location. You can imagine it wasn’t too easy to align all of these handheld shots into a 1 single HDR panorama. There were few misalignments and ghosting which took some time to fix. Saying came to mind once again that it is better to get it all right when shooting than spend time fixing later. On technical side this could be the most work-intensive picture to date for me taking over 3 days of work (24 hours plus). 12 NEFs were first treated for any lens imperfections they had and exported to 16-bit TIFs. Those were then combined into a panorama HDR file and send off to tone-mapping. Out of that a resulting 16-bit TIF was looking promising, but a bit flat on the dark side. The shadows and a contrast were corrected on a final step with colour desaturation to a more believable level. Final touches were to make the white balance right and reduce magenta colour cast followed by selective noise reduction and sharpening. Selective it is as grass was more prone to noise and could take more sharpening whereas sky was the opposite and liked noise reduced smoothness. Resulting 8462 x 4469 pixels panorama is pleasing to eye and could enjoy a really big canvas.
Location: Murringo Road, 250 km south-west of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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QVB Christmas Tree 2010

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:33 +1000

Guess what? November just began, but Christmas is already around the corner. Well, at least according to the shops that are selling decorations and radio advertisements wishing Merry Xmas. Following the fashion stunning Christmas Tree at the Queen Victoria Building appeared on its usual place as well sparkling with thousands of crystals.
Last year at the early morning of December I managed to take a quick photo of the tree and recently it was honored with a publication in Sydney Magazine. This year I decided to make version 2 of the image, this time taking my tripod and giving it treatment and level of detail it deserves.

Here it is, a tone-mapped HDR from three bracketed shots. Post processing involved lens correction on RAW files, creating the HDR file itself, exporting it to 16-bit TIFF and then a lot of artistic layered work on contrast with dodging and burning to bring out shadows and to add volume. Finishing touches were reducing the noise and adding a dash of vignetting.

Location: Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Sydney Festival First Night

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:40 +1000

Huge crowds, fantastic sounds, unusual dance performances, that’s all was there for everyone at the Sydney Festival First Night. All types of music was played around the city during the night, from traditional bagpipe tunes to 100 saxophones at once, from funk and hip hop to tribal Polynesian rhythms with a grand finale of soul hits from Al Green. A perfect blend of contemporary and classic.

The stage before St Mary’s Cathedral, Hyde Park Fountain site, was featuring DJ Dexter of The Avalanches fame, Papua New Guinean Drum Drum log drumming group and the Pacific Islander Krump crew Royal Fam among the other artists.

The photo was taken handheld while holding a camera up above the crowd. It was then processed for optical distortions with a touch of pseudo HDR and tone-mapping finishing up with extra contrast and lowered noise.

Location: Hyde Park, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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The Air Raid Shelter

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:35 +1000

Cockatoo Island dockyard in Sydney Harbour was of a significant strategic importance during WWII. As one of the main repair facilities in the Pacific for vessels damaged in the naval battles of 1942 it was critical to protect it from possible air attacks. Therefore, several projects were undertaken and included building of the tunnel through the island rocks, the first aid station, search light and a number of concrete air raid shelters. Even though impressive by the appearance I wonder how good those wooden doors were as a protection against an explosion shockwave. If I remember correctly, the good design of such a shelter should include a barrier against an explosion with the entrances usually placed on its sides. Anyway, the shelter was luckily never tested as there were no air raids on the Sydney Harbour as far as I know.

The sunset HDR was made out of the 3 standard exposures -2,0,+2EV. I set up a tripod low on the concrete path and was lying on the ground looking on the camera’s LCD screen. The tourists were passing by with their shadows moving along the shelter walls. That gave me an idea and I asked my wife if she would not mind to be a part of the composition. A bit of work on tone-mapping, contrast, desaturation, sharpening and here comes the picture of Cockatoo Island Air Raid Shelter.

Location: Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour, New South Wales, Australia.

By the way, one of my first and favourite works just recently won a 2nd place in a little "The HDR Effect" challenge run by ACDSee. Nice Happy New Year suprise for me.

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QVB Christmas Tree

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:17 +1000

Every year there is a huge Christmas tree set up in the Queen Victoria Building, the nineteenth century shopping centre in the centre of Sydney. It is big and it spans three floors from the roof to the bottom. What is fantastic is that it has a different appearance every year. This year it is sparkling with thousands of crystals and lights creating a stunning view as you can see.

I took this photograph early in the morning on 24 of December 2009. Not many people at all in the CBD before Christmas holidays. This is a tone-mapped HDR out of a single RAW processed with moderate saturation settings. There was not enough light in that part of the QVB, mostly natural light, so the post-processing helped to bring out the colorful details of the tree and the glass dome.

Location: Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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The Foggy Road to Anvil Rock Lookout

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:49 +1000

Going to the Blue Mountains for couple of days to watch Geminid Meteor Shower sounded like a fantastic idea. Sit and relax at night on a cliff 1km above the sea level with a cup of tea and plenty of time before the sunrise - what could go wrong?
1. The weather. It was supposed to be a good day with few showers clearing at the evening and with increasing sunshine the next day. So, forecast was not ideal, but there seemed to be a good chance of skies clearing at night. As soon as we got up to the Blue Mountains we drove into the fog-like clouds. They followed us all day long and became really thick at the evening. Did they know our plans?
2. The road. Anvil Rock lookout is just few km from Blackheath. It is facing north and has a great viewing area. It must’ve been a perfect place to see the Geminids appearing past the 11pm at north-east. The problem is that we never got there. All those few kilometers the road is like a washboard. You get a similar experience when driving along the railroad ties. I am sure there are people driving there on 4WDs following the 80km signs, but we really felt that we might lose a wheel or two before getting anywhere on our sedan. Having enough after 300m we decided to stop and walk to the nearest Pulpit Rock lookout. This is the picture with a view at particularly that moment.

The photograph is a composite of 4 shots I took manually to have a broad perspective of the surroundings. The .NEF files were then processed for removal of optical distortions, noise, vignetting and stitched into a panorama. A bit of curves, vibrance, more noise removal, crop and here it is the mystical road to the Anvil Rock and Pulpit Rock lookouts.

Location: Hat Hill Road, Blackheath, Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

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A Lone Tree

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:33 +1000

Avoiding a highway and going along the deserted road through the country NSW paid off with beautiful late afternoon views of numerous farming fields and grazing grounds.

Location: Murringo Road, 250 km south-west of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Australia Fair Street Organ

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:50 +1000

Playing old-time favorites including Along The Road To Gundagai, Jingle Bells, Memories Are Made Of This and many other at Canberra Floriade every year since 1992 is this magnificent and grand instrument. It is known as one of the largest and finest outdoor auto pipe organs that ever came to Australia. The 73 key Concert Street Organ was built in 1992 by following the original 19th century design by Johnny Verbeeck in Belgium, the organ manufacturer with the family history and traditions of organ making going back to 1884. Some of the organs back in those days were operated by organ grinder turning a big handle that activated the blower and card feed mechanism. The modern ones are commonly using a belt drive and a small motor with a battery. The instrument is played mechanically by passing the book music with perforated holes representing notes through the reader. That allows pipe valves to open whenever a hole passes by and to produce a sound. That is a fantastic instrument which I hope to see and hear again.

In this HDR I combined the original background with tone-mapped front which in my opinion gave the picture a bit more realism and put the focus on the street organ. The 3 shots were taken from the tripod set on a low level. There were a lot of people nearby with children coming closer to touch the instrument and tourists like me taking hundreds of pictures. However, I was lucky enough to wait till the right moment and have few shots with no one in the frame. I have few more photographs of it from the back including one with the owner demonstrating a book music which I will hopefully process and upload sometime later.

Location: Commonwealth Park, Canberra, ACT

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Ford Truck at Walsh Bay

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:22 +1000

Walking along the beautiful bay shore with people enjoying Friday’s morning sun it sounds unbelievable, but about 100 years ago this place was the center of bubonic plague outbreak. Filled with rubbish and infested with rats I doubt it was a popular weekend spot. However, as time passed and Sydney changed, Walsh Bay became busy cargo terminal with tones of wool shipped around the world every year. Many of the port buildings are still there reminding about its past. Nowadays, Walsh Bay is a modern amusement complex with bars, restaurants, shops and a theatre located (or better to say hidden) in the very centre of Sydney.

Ford truck on the picture was neatly parked at the back of a restaurant. By my rough guess, it is a Ford F-150 (or 250, 350?) pickup truck built in USA around 1985 (let me know if you know for sure). It is known as the best-selling truck in US for 30 years and is now a popular classic vehicle for restoration projects among the enthusiasts.

The photo is no exception as most of the other ones I posted. It is a HDR image blended from 3 shots taken with different shutter speeds from a tripod. It was then tone-mapped into a nice and mostly grey tiff file. The major work after that was on adjusting the contrast, making the white white and other colors as bright as they should be. May be a little brighter for some, but I think it came out pretty naturally looking. Or am I just used to it now?

Location: Walsh Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:10 +1000

Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk on display with a smile after a day of aerobatics at Temora Aviation Museum.

P-40 is all-metal fighter and ground attack aircraft designed in US and used in 28 nations during the World War II. It was the main fighter aircraft used by the Royal Australian and New Zealand Air Forces. This particular one was assembled in 1st Aircraft Depot at Hobsonville, New Zealand in June 1943 and assigned to 2nd Operational Training Unit. After the war it did escape the fate of being scrapped and was eventually bought by Allan Arthur. It took 8 years to fully restore the aircraft and I was lucky enough to see its amazing display that day at Temora. Only 19 of them remain airworthy out of 13,738 built.

This is a tone-mapped HDR from 3 RAW files shot handheld with my Nikon D90.

Location: Temora Aviation Museum, Temora, New South Wales, Australia

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The Tea Centre

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:25 +1000

The tea store and the tea room at The Glasshouse. Pleasant relaxed ambience, friendly service, hundreds of teas to select from – an awesome place to visit for a lunch or a Devonshire Tea. I counted 121 boxes with teas at the background shelf, but there is definitely more as it continues to the left. So far, I tried about half of them and I will be happy to go for a second round after I am done.

Established in 1993 in Paddington suburb of Sydney The Tea Centre now consists of 7 retail shops around Australia and supplies tea to more than 500 restaurants and cafes. Annual turnover is about 25 tones of tea and with 180 different varieties each of them is said to be of a great quality with no artificial flavors or preservatives.

Image is created out of 3 bracketed exposures [-2,0,+2] shot hand-held and merged into a HDR. The HDR file was then tone-mapped into a 16-bit TIFF and post-processed mainly for contrast, color and light details enhancement.

Location: The Glasshouse, Pitt Street Mall, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200mm VR @ 18mm | f3.5 | 1/20s 1/90s 1/6s | 320iso

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A Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:14 +1000

Yep, that’s right, it is indeed a mechanical horse on the edge of a cliff. Would be priceless to know what that guy thinks while he walks around it. I myself looking on the selection of metal details and how it’s all fitted together thought that it must have taken hellavalot of time to get it all into the form. Funnily enough I didn’t even question myself at first whether it is a horse or what. It must be because it is. Shape is made very well with all the horsy proportions and horse looks. However, what’s the name? Guess what, you have to buy a guide to know it. That is a unique idea of itself to set hundreds of artworks at the public display and did not put a single sign with a name. Just a number. But that’s alright, there is a positive side to that. It got me (and probably hundreds of others) wondering what name could have been chosen for it. Trojan Horse 2nd Edition? Or A Bit Rusted Since the Bronze Age? Your version?

Sculpture by the Sea 2009 is annual open-air exhibition set along the Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk for thirteenth time. The impressions of more than 100 artists carved in rock, shaped in bronze and even stuck into the liquid foam are displayed from 29 October to 15 November 2009.

This is a tonemapped HDR from a single RAW.

Location: Tamarama beach to Bondi beach coastal walk, New South Wales, Australia

Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200mm VR @ 29mm | f5.6 | 1/750s | 200iso

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Captain Cook Bridge

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:52 +1000

One of the 3 bridges offering a crossing over the Georges River to the South of Sydney. Commenced in 1962 and built in 1965 as a part of F6 Freeway project linking Sans Souci and Taren Point shores. The light traces above the bridge on the right are airplanes on their approach to the Sydney Airport.

This is a stitched panorama from a couple of 1-minute exposures. Post-processing: curves, reducing yellow color cast, noise removal and minor dodging.

Location: a view from St. George Sailing Club, Sans Souci, New South Wales, Australia

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The Watchtower at La Perouse

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:28 +1000

While hurrying down a slope to the Botany Bay shore to capture quickly setting sun I turned back and saw a small rainbow touching the ground. At that day of changing weather small pack of rain clouds patrolled Sydney watering various locations. That is the kind of weather when sky is putting up a great display and a final act most of the times coincides with a sunset.

The Macquarie Watchtower was built at around 1810s as a military guardhouse and a lookout station with an intention to intercept smugglers. A preventive officer who lived there would watch all vessels coming along the coast from the tower’s flat roof. Ships that entered the bay were required to stay mid-stream until the clearance papers were checked by a customs functionary.

I had about 3-5 minutes to photograph everything I wanted here. Sun was setting down quickly and I did not want to miss that. In a hurry I set my tripod at the lowest position possible. This helped to remove the background views of parking and distant bay creating better composition. Lying on the grass I then made a quick bracketing set varying exposures and focusing straight on the tower. That came out fine with a rainbow, but there was so much to see around including the sky. For next attempt I decided to do a panorama in 4 parts: 2 below the horizon and 2 above. Focus is set and I am switching it over to manual to stop re-focusing between the shots. Vibration Reduction is off too and here we go, 3 clicks and [2,0,+2 EV] is captured. Looks good on the preview and I am gone to the rocky shore. But when I looked on the pictures on my PC afterwards I was upset by a mistake – one of the panoramic sets has the tower in soft focus. Looks like something went wrong with my manual setup. However, I was lucky first shots came out alright and I was able to use the tower from there.
The next part of workflow is as usual: create a HDR file from every AEB set (3 RAW - 1 HDR), stitch 4 resulting HDRs into one panoramic HDR, tonemap into a 16-bit tif and do some post-processing for contrast and colors.

Location: La Perouse, New South Wales, Australia

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Port Botany

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:04 +1000

More than two centuries ago this place was named Sting Ray Harbour by Captain James Cook who just landed here in New Holland and caught few sting rays after a Sunday fishing trip. Renamed to Botany Bay later it is now a place of the major port in Australia, Port Botany. A number of berths for container ships and bulk liquid carriers allows for handling of around 10 million tons of various imports and exports in a year. 10 mil. tonnes that’s about 256 Sydney Harbour Bridges exported. If you are still wondering why did I say New Holland, that was the name of the continent at the time. Common for 180 years it was changed to Australia in 1824.

For this picture I made a number of photographs from the tripod with different exposures and a hope that it might merge into a HDR. However, as there were many moving subjects (e.g. ship, water) it proved to be more rewarding to use the single RAW and tonemap it lightly. Numerous lights around the port created thick yellow tone on everything, so I have to reduce the color cast a bit and also enhance the contrast of some areas.

Location: Port Botany, New South Wales, Australia

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Nikon D90 | 18mm | f7 | 1s | iso200

Embedded

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:47 +1000

Sydney’s tallest building, Sydney Tower, gets reflected in 20 level office tower. Walking along the Pitt Street at one time I was stunned by clear and almost full size reflection of Sydney Tower in one of the glass buildings nearby. I observed it for a while moving around and noticing how reflection is changing and disappearing at some spots. After that I started to think about capturing the view noticing when would be the best light and the best time. Sometime later with Tower glowing in yellow light of setting sun and sky deeply blue I took around 27 shots handheld from different places to select just a few for further processing.

For this image I chose 9 shots (3 vertical AEB sets with three -2,0,+2EV photos in each). 3 HDR files came out of those 9 images and finally they were stitched into one big HDR panorama. I then tonemapped it lightly and processed to enhance the contrast, color and few minor things like noise and shadows.

Location: Pitt Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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A Living City

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:33 +1000

It is not an alien invasion, not a frame from a sci-fi movie, but a living and breathing city, almost real and shockingly impressive. When I was standing there on the dark lane I heard the sounds of an invisible heart beating, breathing of an old building, saw the skin pulsing on a worn brick wall. It has really created an impression of an old organism being alive, calmly living there and serving humans for as long as it is required. What would it think about everything around it? Does it get irritated by the unpleasant smell or loud partygoers on Fridays?

I Dwell In The City And The City Dwells In Me is a public artwork by Kim Bridgland, Adrian Hill, Aline Joyce and Theresa Schubert. It is a part of a Laneways By George - Hidden Networks project. The exhibition consists of 8 creative works transforming hidden lanes and little streets in the Sydney centre. Installations are on display from 1 October 2009 until the 31 of January 2010.

3 RAW shots on a tripod combined into a HDR, tonemapped and post-processed.

Location: Bridge Lane, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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