White in the real world

Hurray! Temperatures warmed up into the 20s (wow! double-digits!) so I took my walk outside in the park near our house. It was mid-afternoon, but the sun was already dropping, making longish shadows on this lonely, cold bench. I was shooting into the sun. Set my white balance on Sunny (since it was).

Back home, in Photoshop, I ever-so-slightly adjusted the exposure in the RAW editor to lose a touch of blue in the snow. I then used a B&W preset to convert this already almost B&W image.

Shutter: 1/125, f/18, ISO 100, focal length: 130mm

Trying to get it eggsactly right...

Two days ago, I posted a photo of a white paper towel, before and after processing. Today's photos show the results of playing with white balance.

The first image, my favorite, was shot with the white balance on my camera set to Tungsten. I had the egg in my homemade light box. The bulbs in the lamps are nothing special, just hardware store light bulbs. I had one of the lamps turned away, so the majority of the light source came from one light only. I had a cable release attached to the camera, which was mounted on a tripod.

Shutter speed: 1/6, f/16, ISO 200, focal length 91 mm

This one below has the white balance set to auto. This one is handheld, so the focus isn't as sharp. At this point, I had both lights turned toward it (hence, the double shadows). All I have to say about the color is UGH.

This one below is shot with the white balance set to fluorescent. There is a big fluorescent light in my basement (where my light box is) hanging above and just behind where the camera and I were standing. Another UGH on the color scale. 

Lesson learned? White balance matters, and maybe I should invest in a gray card...

These flowers have been toweled off

Yesterday I posted a riveting image of a paper towel with a patten of dots and circles. Today, I converted that image to black and white, and added it as an overlay on this image I shot last spring (ah....spring....) of some crab apple flowers. Look closely, and you can see how the dots and texture in the overlay roughs up the surface of the flowers and branches. It's subtle, but it's there. Compare the two images zoomed in and you'll see.

Towel overlay

Original

Are you starting to see spots??

Every time I use these paper towels in my kitchen, I think the pattern would make a cool overlay for photos. (I'll try it and post the results tomorrow).

What surprised me was how hard it was to take a picture of a white object without a flash. This looked white in my viewfinder, and in the LCD screen on the back of the camera, but the sensor was obviously picking up the tans reflected off my backsplash. I'm posting the original, and the processed image. I think I should have probably played around with the white balance setting?

Shutter speed: 1/50 f/6.3, ISO 1600, focal length 84mm

Processed

Original

Texture's last stand

This is the last of the late December shots from my themes-in-hand trip to Arizona. We were in the McDowell Mountains, chasing Phainopoplas, so I had my camera set on "sports" mode to hopefully catch flying birds in the gray light. I zoomed way in on an arm of a dying saguaro, enjoying its texture. Used a bit of levels, and the clarity slider in the RAW editor, to bring out more detail. I usually think of saguaros as green, but this one, on its last legs, I think, had faded to gray.

Shutter: 1/250, f/6.3, ISO 640, focal length 270mm

Tomorrow, we'll go back to Illinois and all the snowy, or indoor light-box shots I can scare up!

Feline...

While we were in northern Arizona, we were lucky enough to see a bobcat dash across the road in front of our car. Actually, it wasn't dashing so much as loping, but neither of us had a camera close enough at hand to get a shot.

Fast forward a week, and we are at the Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson. It's kind of a living zoo, with plants, animals, and birds native to the Sonoran Desert region. Here, I had the opportunity to get my bobcat picture.

Shutter speed: 1/160 f/5.6 ISO 400, focal length 119 mm

A place to be meditative

Inside the Chapel at Mission San Xavier Del Bac, Tucson. It was quite dim inside; I cranked my ISO setting as high as it would go. The amount of detail in the altar is amazing. For a larger picture and some history, you can read here. When we walked through the door posted earlier in this blog, this is the view that greeted us.

Shutter: 1/30, f/3.5 (as wide as I have!), ISO 1600, focal length 25mm, handheld

This lost some sharpness when I did a Save for the Web. The image is straightened a little, and corrected somewhat for color cast. No other edits.