Again, noontime light is awful for photos. But that’s when I was able to get out. So what does one do during this time of day? Roll with it. In meandering around the cemetery I found this old stone which caught my attention. It’s not fancy or overtly special, but the way the light raked across the surface really caught me. And apparently, during this time of year, I’m on a black and white kick.
General
Chromatic Aberration a.k.a. Purple Fringing
While not a spectacular or creative photo by any means, I was really surprised by how much Chromatic Aberration was visible in this shot.
(The photo used in the banner has the CA removed…)
It was taken on a bright and clear day around noon, so the light was pretty terrible (harsh) for photos, but that being said the amount of fringing on the original image was a shocker. Here’s a copy of the original image with the CA. Checkout the highlights in the flourishes on the top of the column under the word “School”.
As you can see lightroom did a really good job removing/reducing this “purple fringing” in my banner image.
Mmmmmm
Sometimes the way light hits ordinary objects makes them pop. This is one of those moments. The setting sun was streaming in through my kitchen window and just hit these items just so…
Blue to Grey
We finally get a decent stretch of weather with some beautiful blue skies and what do I do? Strip out the color and go greyscale again. At least there are lots of different tones in this photo…
Words of…
I came upon this tree and saying in Oakwood Cemetery. I stripped out the color from the original image by adding Adobe Lightroom’s “Red Hi-Contrast Filter” preset. What may (or may not) be obvious is the other photoshopping I did to the image to increase the “canvas” size around the carving to make it more horizontal that it actually was in real life.
(I have gone back to re-shoot it and this version does not have the expanded canvas. I have put a smaller copy of the photoshopped version down below.)
Here’s a wider shot of what the tree looks like. The rope hanging from the branch is a nice “touch”. I’m guessing / hoping that it was from an old swing. How long the chair has been there is anybody’s guess.
Oh, like me you’re probably asking yourself “What does it say?”. My best guess is this:
“WE ARE HERE TO CREATE NOT MERELY SURVIVE”
In My Kitchen
This old scale has been in my family for years. I think it came from my mother’s side… Anyway, I have photographed it before. My best guess is that those other photos were taken back in 1990 when I was at RIT. Those photos were taken on a medium-format camera with Tri-X film.
This latest photo was taken with a digital camera (Panasonic FZ1000) and I chose to work with the RAW image format this time. I’m finding myself slowly warming up to RAW – but not ready to jump in with both feet yet – so I’m shooting both JPG and RAW at the same time. For reference here’s the JPG version of the same image. Extracting as much data/detail out of the shadows of the RAW was pretty cool. As you can see I also did some minor rotation and cropping to square-up the image.
Exposure on both JPG and RAW (technically .RW2 files) was:
f 3.4
1/1300 second
ISO 125
-0.7 exposure bias
On Target
I love guns. I am also a proud supporter of the 2A and member of the NRA. Now that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the photo.
This is really just a phone pic (Samsung Galaxy) but I just loved the lines of the rifle as it sat in shadow. If you’re interested in the shooting aspect of this photo please read about it here. BTW – the rifle is actually an air gun made by Diana of Germany. It is known as a RWS 34 in .177 caliber.