Tag Archives: technique

Snowdrops at Longstock

I am going to be repetitive on the blog for a while. I have already photographed some snowdrops on my bike rides and posted about it. Then I made a more specific visit to see some snowdrops. This will not be the last snowdrop post this year either. In Longstock, there is the Leckford Farm Shop run by Waitrose. Last year I saw lots of bluebells in the grounds when we visited. Dad told me it is a good place for snowdrops too, so Nancy and I diverted in there as part of a walk we were doing in the area.

At first, I only saw a few small clumps on flowers along the path. It had me wondering whether we had missed the peak. However, I just needed some patience. As we got closer to the shop, the area under the trees was covered in snowdrops. They looked really great. With snowdrops, if you are close, they appear to be quite well spaced. Taking shots from further back and lower down helps make them look really dense. They feel that way when you look at them but getting the photo to reflect that sense is a bit more of an effort.

Revisiting Boneyard Tour Shots With Reflection Removal

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I have been a bit critical of the reflection removal tool in Lightroom but, while it seems to have become less effective on some shots, it still can do the job on others. This got me thinking back to my visit to Davis Monthan AFB’s storage facilities in the days when the Pima Museum was still able to operate a bus tour of the rows of stored aircraft.

I tried my best to get clear shots through the windows of the bus and often did okay. However, when something of interest was on the opposite side, I was taking a lot more chances when trying to get a shot without any reflections in it. A friend of mine, Karl, regularly posts images from the day and month many years before and he recently had some DM shots, and this was what triggered this idea. I worked my way through some of the original shots that I wouldn’t have previously used because of the reflections. I managed to rework some of them to make something far more usable.

Thinking Back to LAX and Old Favourites

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I’m not sure what it was that got me to these pictures. I was working on something other project and then found myself looking at some shots from a visit to LAX a long time ago. Two planes jumped out at me from that day. One was a Lufthansa A340-300 and the other was a British Airways 747-400. Both were taking off later in the day and the light was very nice. I decided both deserved a re-edit.

The backgrounds for both jets were a little busy and so I decided to try something similar to my processing for airborne shots but that I hadn’t done much on the ground. I used the smart masking tools to select the aircraft. Then I inverted the mask to select the background. This allowed me to take the lighting down for the background and also make things a little cooler with the white balance. Then I could warm up the plane a little more and brighten it up. This helps to separate the aircraft from the background and make it more the focus of the shots.

The BA fleet of 747s are long gone now and passenger 747s are definitely a rarity. The Lufthansa A340s are still operating but only because of the delays to new aircraft deliveries. It won’t be too long before they are heading to the desert. This will be a nice reminder of the fun stuff I used to be able to photograph.

Flame Details in the Bonfire

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Bonfire night celebrations in Winchester included a big fire and fireworks demonstration in Wall Park. The bonfire was started in dramatic (i.e. fake) fashion with two cannons firing towards it and it igniting. It was quite a spectacle although clearly a bit contrived. The whole thing is contrived of course. As the fire got established, I found myself entranced by the flames. Watching fire is like watching the waves. Every one is slightly different and I can spend a ridiculous amount of time just staring at it.

Getting images that actually reflect what I saw is something I haven’t practised so I was winging it a bit. The brightness of the most intense parts of the flames is so much more than the cooler areas that it is hard to reflect the detail that can be seen without blowing everything out. I went with underexposing to try and show more of what was interesting to me. Then I would look up at the hot particles above the fire as they rose and dispersed. They looked beautiful as they swirled around and cooled.

Reworking an Old Shot with Modern Denoise

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Periodically, when thinking about the latest processing tools that I have available, it takes me back to some older shots that would be interesting to rework. This shot of one of the Blue Angels jets was taken at NAS Oceana during one of their air shows. I was shooting with the 1D Mk IIN and at ISO 800. At the time, this was a really high ISO and resulted in a lot of noise in the images. (As an aside, I did find that printing did not show the noise at anything like the level that was apparent on screen.) Even without the denoise function, the latest raw convertor makes a decent job of the file but I figured I would use the denoise too. I think the file comes out really cleanly as a result. It also helps that, as an 8MP file, the processing is a lot quicker!

The Reflection Removal Tool Seems to Have Broken

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When Adobe introduced the reflection removal tool, I was really impressed by its capabilities. I played with a number of shots that I had taken through windows, and they worked out really well. There have been some updates that Adobe has made, and it feels like it isn’t working as well as it should. I was at Glasgow Airport waiting for a flight home and an Emirates A380 was taxiing out so I grabbed a few shots through the glass. There was a really obvious reflection in the sky area of the shot. I figured that the tool would knock it out easily. Instead, it didn’t even recognise it was there. That is the first of these images. I tried a couple of different shots and none of them worked. I wonder what they have done to the tool that has made it struggle here. I ended up making manual selections and using the AI remove tool to try instead. It was okay but not a great result.

Processing With Masks – A Video

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Every once in a while, I post about some change I have made to my processing techniques for my images. I have posted in the past about how I have been using the masking tools in Lightroom to work on images – particularly those with poor lighting conditions where the background and the subject need significantly different edits.

I have recently tweaked my approach to improve it. This involves an extra step to try and get a better selection of the subject and the background. This also addresses some of the issues I find with Lightroom’s selection algorithms. Sometimes it picks things that just don’t make sense. Anyway, I did a full process of an image and recorded the whole thing with my explanation as to why I was doing what I was doing. It is not a short video so only for those with a serious interest. However, if you want to check it out, here it is.

Taking a Chance With the T-38 Landing

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The T-38 chase planes that Boeing operates from Boeing Field did not fly as often as I would have liked. I’m sure they got plenty of use out of them, but it seemed to be a lucky break if one was up – particularly if I was in any place to see them. Consequently, I was always wondering whether I should make sure to get a sharp shot or take a chance on getting a more interesting look to the image. On this occasion, I decided to go with the latter. I dropped the shutter speed down to 1/100th of a second and hoped. A few came out okay. The cluttered background at Boeing Field is always a problem so a bit of blur helps put the focus on the plane.

Super Bugs at Bremerton

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One of the last air shows I attended before we left the Pacific Northwest was at Bremerton. The unusual thing about this air show was that I didn’t head there alone. Instead, Nancy came along with me. It is a long time since she last came to a show with me, but the good news was that she enjoyed it! One of the parts of the show that she found the best was the US Navy’s Super Hornet display. They ripped up the sky for a while. Their blast across the field from crowd rear particularly amused her!

The conditions not ideal from a lighting point of view but there was humidity in the air with the upside that the jet was created plenty of spluff. One of the passes in particular created a lot of cloud activity. It made for a difficult image to process given the contrast with the cloudy background and that its own clouds needed not to be over exposed. I suspect I shall probably try reprocessing this again in the future as either my techniques improve, or the software gets more advanced. I did have a bit too much lens for the closest part of the pass – oh well…

Stormy Sunday Atlas 777F

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A stormy sky doesn’t immediately inspire you when going for some aircraft photography but, if the light on the subject can end up being okay, a dark background can suddenly seem like a great option. One Sunday an Atlas 777F was up on test at Paine Field. The sky was dark and gloomy but not a solid cloud background. Instead, the clouds were stratified so there was more detail and texture to see.

As the 777 came down the approach, it was not brightly illuminated but it was picking up a good amount of light compared to what I had expected to be the case. This did require some thought about the camera settings. When the sky is dark, I often significantly over-expose. This is because the clouds will dominate the metering response and the subject – which is usually quite dark – really disappears. In post processing I can then bring the exposure back down but there is sufficient light on the subject to get a good image of it against the sky.

In this case, I had to be more careful. With good light on the subject, the dark sky would result in blowing out the plane. Therefore, I had to keep the exposure compensation off to allow the subject to not get too overexposed and not leave enough latitude for processing it to where I wanted it to be. The results came out okay. This was more important for the longer shots. Once the plane was close in, it started to dominate the metering response and, once on the ground, the illumination was more balanced.

Once they touched down and brought in the reversers, you could see that the conditions had not long ago been wet as the runway still had plenty of water on the surface and the reversers kicked it up in the air.