Tag Archives: technique

Building a Bridge One Bit at a Time

One of our work projects includes the construction of a long span bridge for the light rail line to run over. I have been down on many occasions since the construction started on this section but much of the early work was the preparation of the ground and the creation of the foundations for the final bridge. We now have the piers in place and the construction of the bridge itself is underway.

This type of construction involves casting the bridge in sections in place rather than offsite and then bringing them in. Steel supporters called travelers, hold the formwork in place as each section is cast. When it is cured, the traveler moves out onto the new section and the process is repeated. This happens symmetrically about the pier, so the bridge grows out in both directions at once keeping everything balanced.

The process moves quite quickly so, each time I go down, the bridge has got noticeably larger. There are actually to sections happening at once to make the two halves of the bridge. They grow towards each other, and the final casting will connect the two cantilevered spans to complete the bridge. That will happen later in 2024. The section of the bridge is hollow so it will be possible to access the insides of it in the future. If I get a chance to go inside at some point, expect more images here.

Experimenting With Enhance Levels in Lightroom

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In one of the bigger updates of Lightroom and Photoshop, Adobe introduced the Enhance functions adding either resolution or noise reduction. The noise reduction has been very effective for some of the shots I have taken with very high ISO levels. I decided to edit a shot with varying levels of noise reduction to see how things look. Since I had a bunch of cheetah shots taken in low light, I figured that would be a good subject.

You can vary the noise reduction level from 1-100. I made five edits with one unchanged and the remainder at 25, 50, 75 and 100. I then layered them in to one file to show the comparison. The unchanged edit is on the right while the 100 noise reduction is one the left. I felt like my previous experience had been that a level around 50 was a good outcome for much of what I had shot. When I looked at these results, I again concluded that the middle level was the best compromise. The 100 was just too much and 75 looked like things were a bit smudged. You can judge what you think. I shall experiment with levels each time I use it but it does give me a good idea of what to start with.

iPhone RAW Image Exposures

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When RAW capture first became available on my phone, I started to use it. Initially, I had to use a third party camera app which was fine but it did have some quirks about it and some things that just didn’t work right, despite some extensive communication with the developer. Then the camera app of the phone got updated to allow RAW capture and I have been using that ever since. There is something very strange about it, though. When I import the images in to Lightroom, they are always about one stop overexposed. I am curious whether this is a function of the raw format for Apple in order to preserve details in the shadows or whether it is a weirdness with my phone. Included are two images – one with the base settings after import and one edited. This is representative of what I get. It doesn’t hurt the end result but it is rather strange. Anyone have similar results?

Playing With an Old CRJ Moon Shot

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For some reason, I recently came back to an old photo I took of a Delta Connection CRJ900 as it climbed out of O’Hare. It had climbed right by the moon as it was rising in the eastern sky towards the end of the day. I had liked the photo at the time but now I was thinking about how to do a better job of editing it. Now I have been using the masking tools in Lightroom a lot more, I figured I could take different approaches for the jet and the background. The results were a lot better than my original efforts and I quite like how it now looks.

Time Lapse Experiments With Ice

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I used to play with time lapses a fair bit. I would shoot a series of images and use LRTimelapse to process them. However, that software had a license agreement that meant, when they upgraded the software, they required you to update your license and the old version was deactivated. This was very annoying. I figured I would be able to keep using the old version but apparently not. I don’t do it that much to justify the cost and was disinclined to use that software after this experience.

My latest cameras have a time lapse function built into them which I had been meaning to try out. I had done this on my little M6 but not with the latest bodies. What to use them on, though. I figured an experiment doesn’t require me to be original in the subject. Just try it out and see how it works. Consequently, I thought melting ice would be good enough. My first effort was not successful. I hadn’t given it enough time to record the melting fully. Second was better but, while the timing was okay, I had focused on the ice cube when it started melting and it slid across the plate as it melted and out of frame. The mode on the camera sets focus and exposure on the first shot so this meant everything was well out of focus.

This is why you experiment with things. The last try worked pretty much as intended. (I should note that I did all of these in the evening, so the lighting didn’t change during the shoot.) I had a long enough time for the ice cube to almost fully melt, it didn’t move, and the lighting was fine. Watching the ice disappear and the cube gradually sink into the water that is progressively growing was rather fun. This isn’t some epic revelation of the nature of melting ice, but it did teach me about some functionality of the camera.

Getting Down to the Level of Fungi

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Ever since I have had cameras with flip out screens, I have been far more likely to get down to the right level for a photo. Lying on the ground was something I would only do in the right circumstances. Walking through the arboretum with Nancy is not the right time to get grubby doing that. However, now I can let the camera be low down and check the shots from a slightly more comfortable height. This was the right thing to do when I was taking some shots of some mushrooms. You get a totally different perspective from ground level!

Which Do You Prefer and Do You Care?

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As mentioned in other posts, I have been playing around with lower shutter speeds when photographing planes at Boeing Field. Getting a blurry background to emphasize the speed of the plane is the goal and it also removes some of the annoying distractions that a cluttered airfield can provide. I use filters to reduce the light in order to get the shutter speed down without having ridiculous apertures. Naturally, I end up with a bunch of blurred photos which get deleted but the selection process for the keepers is what this post is about.

I have some photography friends that don’t like the effect that the differential speeds of the parts of the airframe have on sharpness. A sharp nose might mean a pretty blurry tail since the relative motions as I pan are different. When I am filtering through the shots, I often “focus” on how the nose looks since it is like having the sharp eyes on a wildlife shot. I care less about the tail unless it looks terrible. However, getting the middle of the airframe sharp might result in a sharper overall shot even if the nose is a little blurry.

These are the things I was thinking about with these shots of a 777X landing at Boeing Field. The reason for the post is to see what matters to other people. These shots are a mix of which part of the airframe is sharp and which bits are more blurred. I may spend a fair bit of time deciding on which is best, but I wonder whether anyone looking at them is going to like the same things as me or will even care about it. Maybe the composition of the image is all that they care about, and the pixel peeping is irrelevant. I would really appreciate feedback if you have an opinion.

Strange Little Isolated Tree

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Sometimes you just don’t have the right gear with you. I had gone to Juanita Bay after work and was only carrying one camera with the 500mm on it. Looking down in to the water to one side of me, I was quite taken by a stump in the water that had a new growth of a small tree coming from the top of it. It was too far away to get a decent shot with the phone so the 500mm was the only option. I took a sequence of shots to stitch together later on. I quite like the separation that you get with using such a long lens for a shot like this. I wonder how large the tree will ultimately grow to be given the limitations of its home!

Clouds in the Mountains

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The North Cascades Highway gets snowed in for the winter, so we decided to take a trip up there before the snow arrived. It was also a good time for fall foliage, so we wanted to see what the mountains had to offer. The colors in the trees as we drove up were very nice but, the higher you get, the more you are into the evergreens and the foliage becomes sparse. However, we had something equally attractive awaiting us.

It was an overcast day as we drove up with any hints of sun from the lower levels gone as we got higher. There were some really cool bands of clouds to see as we drove. At one point we had the valley in sight and the tops of the mountains but a band of cloud in the middle. It was while on a stretch of road with nowhere to stop so no shots of that. However, as we got up to Diablo Lake and then Washington Pass, we got plenty of mountain tops in and out of the clouds.

I experimented with both normal shots and HDR. With the shadow of the valleys and the brightness of the clouds, the dynamic range was pretty wide, and I thought HDR might give me some more processing options. I was glad I made that choice as it really helped to get detail in all parts of the images. That will be our last trip up there this year. The snows will be getting heavy before too long and then it will be a waiting game until the pass is cleared in the spring.

Focus Stacking the Lily Pond

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A walk in Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle took us by one of the ponds that is covered in lilies. Unlike when I was in Juanita Bay, this pond allowed me to get down to water level. This provided a far more interesting perspective across the pond to the trees behind. It did put me very close to the foreground elements so I focused stacked some shots to provide a deeper focused range across the shot. I far prefer the lower angle as it really emphasizes the foreground elements in a way that isn’t possible when higher up.