Assignment 5: WHITE

I was thinking about using winter for this assignment and then it occurred to me that might be limiting to some.  White being the predominate color in winter does make for a suitable topic for all.

What will you do with “white”?  Indoors, outdoors, studio locations?  Contrast it?  Highlight it? Subtle or bold? Color or B&W treatment?

Since I am doing these assignments every other month, I am giving you more time to post your photos which I would like you to go out and photograph this time. Be creative and have fun!

A white landscape in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora, North Dakota. By shooting at an angle away from the sun, the sky washed out and blended into the Badlands.

As in the other assignments, do not send me your photos. What I would like you to do is post them on your blog, flickr or other photo sharing site, personal website or any other place on the Internet where you can place a link to it here by making a comment to this blog entry. Then we can visit those sites and learn what we did with the color, White.

Please, have your photos posted by Wednesday, February 3, 2010. Don’t have a place to post? Might be a good time to start up a blog or join a photo community like flickr or Exposure. As I do for all Assignments, I’ll put together a recap with my comments.

If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I will be happy to answer them. By the way, I would really appreciate it if you would help spread the word about this so we can get lots of people to participate. Thanks!

Featured Item: Pandigital 7″ Digital Photo Frame

Pandigital 7″ Digital Photo Frame
With interchangeable charcoal and white faceplates, the Pandigital PanImage 7″ Digital Photo Frame brings high-style to your home or office decor. The bright and sharp 7″ LCD screen showcases all of your digital photos and video with amazing color and clarity. Optional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth adapters allow you to transfer photos, video, and music wirelessly. With 1GB of internal memory, this Pandigital frame can store thousands of compressed image files.

Price: $ 64.95 + Free Shipping (USA Only)

View 111: Senior Night

The Baldwinsville Bees Varsity Ice Hockey team for 2009-2010 celebrated their senior teammates last Friday night with the annual Senior Night festivities.  Seniors will graduate from high school this June and move on to colleges, trade schools, military or start their working careers.  It was a large group of twelve seniors who skated out through a tunnel of hockey sticks held high by the underclassmen players.

John Waldon (16) being introduced during the Baldwinsville Bees Ice Hockey Senior Night on Friday, February 5, 2010 at the Greater Baldwinsville Ice Arena.

Click Here for More Photos from Senior Night

Most had smiles on their faces, some were a bit apprehensive and all got a welcoming hug from their parents.  The players had a rose for their parents to thank them for all the support in allowing them to play the game of ice hockey.  Many starting when they were only 4 or 5 years old.

Senior defensemen Jeff Abbott enjoying Senior Night for the Baldwinsville Bees Varsity Ice Hockey team

The game didn’t go the way Baldwinsville wanted.  Ithaca took a 3 to 1 lead into the third period.  Baldwinsville fought back and tied the game late.  Using a borrowed Nikon D700 digital SLR camera and my Nikon 70-200 VR f/2.8 lens, I captured the moment:

Baldwinsville forward Parker Ferrigan (18) scores the tying goal against Ithaca in the third period while Ithaca defenders Gabe Mendola (19), Luke Mendola (20) and goaltender Cooper Belyea (29) try to stop him during Section III High School ice hockey action on February 5, 2010 in the Greater Baldwinsville Ice Arena. Teams skated to a 3-3 tie.

Now, that’s Hockey!

Book Review: Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography

I finished reading Brenda Tharp’s Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography book last weekend.  I closed it up and thought to myself what an excellent book for people who have been doing photography for awhile, understand the numbers of photography and take good photographs.  Those people are like me.  Looking for something or someone to show them the next step to go beyond a “good picture”.  I, also, thought this book makes a good follow up to another book I have read and will tell you about it soon.

Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography makes it easy to understand a lot of photographic theories and rules you may have read about and practiced.  Maybe not knowing the “why” of them.  The first six chapters explain the direction and quality of light, visual design, motion and composition.  The author uses her own photographs to illustrate the photographic principles she talks about.  The photos themselves are beautiful and I didn’t find any fault with how they were used.  Nicely convening what the text explained. This book is only 157 pages long but the photos teach as much as the text.

Ms. Tharp lists some photo exercises to help you learn, too.  Easy to follow instructions on how to open your mind to seeing elements photographers use to tell stories in their works.  Something I found very valuable was the kind of questions she asks herself before taking a photo.  If this is something you may not do, it is a good habit to learn.  Her list of questions was longer than mine.  I now will ask myself if there’s a creative technique to better express my vision of the scene before me.  I tend to work fast and get my photos without too much thought to being creative.  I hope to improve on that this year.

The last five chapters builds on all the information in the first six and adds more ideas, techniques and information on how to stretch yourself photographically.  She shows you fun and interesting ways to open up your creative side while still remembering the nuts and bolts which make a good photograph.  That is the key I have been looking for.  At times I have opened up the door a crack to be stopped.  Ms. Tharp finishes with a way to self-evaluate your work which is a very hard thing to do for most of us.

For less than $20 (at Amazon.com), you get the experience of an outdoor professional photographer right at your fingertips.  The book can take a short or long time to read depending on how long you linger over the incredible photographs.  It is a book I will re-read in full or a chapter at a time often.  An excellent reference for even the most advanced photographer.

As an example, if you would return to my first post for this week, View 110: A Cold January Day,  the three photos I used came about as I did some of the exercises in the book.  The first photo, Ski Trail, is using lines to lead you to the horizon.  The second photo is an example of dominance in a photo.  The last has the shape of a light post to anchor the sunset beyond.  Things all discussed in the book and found during a walk through a park on a cold January day.

I do have one warning for you.  This book was published in 2003.  The text and photographs were produced before digital photography exploded in the later part of the last decade.  Film and how film effects photos is referenced and talked about.  If you have never used film, just glance over those parts.  If you have used film in the past, it is easy enough to convert what she says to what a digital camera can do with ISO and white balance settings.

If someone came to me and was ready to really get into photography.  Owns a digital SLR or advanced Point and Shoot camera.  And, was willing to invest some time into learning the equipment and the craft.  Here are the two books I would tell them to get, read and reference often.  First, Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.  Second, this book, Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography by Brenda Tharp.  These two books read in that order, I believe, would give any person the knowledge needed to enjoy photography and create photographs they would be proud to share with the World.

White Calm

But calm, white calm, was born into a swan

– Elizabeth Coatsworth

Swan on Webster Pond.

There where thousands of ducks and geese on Webster Pond but only one swan. He was a calm in a sea of flying feathers and noisy neighbors.

This is my photo for the Assignment: White.  I’ll be posting my recap next week.  Thank you all for participating.

View 110: A Cold January Day

Ski Trail. A cross country skier's trail near the shore of Onondaga Lake on a cold January day.

Hibernation. Utility hookup for boats hibernate in the Onondaga Lake Park Marina in January.

Muted Sunset. A cold January sunset.

HDR Strikes Back!

There I was facing a photographer’s nightmare. A great subject in late afternoon Sun causing deep shadows on one side and bright light on the other.  A range of “stops” I knew my camera was never designed to capture.  Then I remembered my previous work in High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography and looked the nightmare in the face and took this set of photos.

HDR set of three photos taken at -2, 0, +2 exposure stops.

I faced the AT-AT right out of a Star Wars movie at Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Star Tours attraction in Walt Disney World and knew I had gotten what I needed to defeat the extreme light conditions.  My blaster being Photomatix by HDRSoft to merge the three photos together and produce the image I saw.

The AT-AT protecting the entrance to the Star Tours attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida. Image produced by Photomatix from the three photos above.

Now, where did I put my Lightsaber?

Balance

A Canada goose balances on one leg on the Webster Pond ice near Syracuse, New York.

It’s been a year and a half since I published Why do Birds stand on one leg? and it continues to garner about two views a day.  Any time I see birds standing on one leg, I tend to pay more attention since it is a topic searched and read daily on this blog.

Another question which came to my mind is: “How do birds stand on one leg?” The Canada goose pictured here is resting.  He might even be sleeping in the warmth of the sunshine after days of cold January weather.  Why doesn’t he fall over? It didn’t take me long to find the answer.

Professor Reinhold Necker has published some interesting articles on bird behavior.  One of them goes specifically into how birds stand on one leg.  Long legged birds like flamingos and herons have a locking mechanism in their knee joints to securely keep their legs straight when standing on one leg.  Shorter birds like ducks and geese, rely on several systems: the inner ear, muscles and joints and an additional sense organ found in a bird’s vertebrae.  This sensory organ works directly with the bird’s legs to help it balance when performing tasks like preening while standing on one leg.

Our feathered friends continue to amaze me on how they have adapted to do things I could not do for longer than a half a minute (maybe!).  Yet, they do it effortlessly for long periods.

View 109: On Webster Pond

Ducks fill the sky over Webster Pond in Syracuse, New York, after being startled by a visitor to the park.

Taking advantage of a warm and sunny January day, I visited Webster Pond just south of Syracuse, New York, to photograph the waterfowl who call it home.  I wanted to try and capture the faces and grace of the ducks and geese.

Portraits of some of the residents of Webster Pond.

Webster Pond has hundreds of Canada geese, Mallard ducks and domestic geese gone wild.  People come daily to feed them with various mixes of seed and corn.  I saw families with young children enjoying the afternoon feeding the waterfowl.  The smiles on their faces and sounds of their laughter I hope nurture a love for wild creatures in the generations to come.

Mallard ducks flying over Webster Pond. Taken with the Nikon 80-400 VR lens.

Ducks can fly.  The gift of flight Man was so jealous of, he created machines so he could join the ducks and birds of the world in the great blue yonder.  Ducks beat there wings very fast unlike the long beats of bigger birds like Canada geese and raptors.  When coming in for landings on water or ice, as Webster Pond was mostly covered in, they glide and pitch from side to side to slow down and angle for an open area devoid of others.  Their landings in water ending in a long splash.  Their landings on ice a much more comical slide often ending on their behinds but always popping up on their webbed feet with dignity.

I used the Nikon 18-200mm VR and Nikon 80-400mm VR lenses to bring you these images.  Though the 80-400 VR is an older and slower focusing lens, with practice it can be used for fast moving subjects like birds in flight.  It does need very good light in order to do so like my day on Webster Pond.

Snow Photography

Welcome to my first Friday post dedicated to photography.  This is in keeping with my stated goal I talked about last week.  Here we go…

In the last few weeks, I have received some inquiries on how I get my snow to look white.  With my latest assignment dealing with the color, White, I thought this would be a good time to write about snow photography.

Camera light meters are designed to expose for middle gray.  If you are surprised by this fact, this will go a long way in explaining why you are getting gray snow and not white snow in your photographs.  By the way, this tip works for white sandy beaches or any landscape or object which is predominately white in color.

A couple of years ago I went out early one morning to photograph the first snowfall of the season.  I stopped by my favorite tree in a field and started composing.  Here is one of the first shots from that day.

Tree in a field of gray snow.

Ugh…after a few minutes, I checked the photos in my camera’s LCD screen and got some pretty gray snow landscapes.  You see, my meter was doing exactly what Nikon’s engineers had told it to do.  When faced with a large white subject, it meters a middle gray color.  I can not be mad at my camera for doing its job as programmed.

Luckily, we are much smarter than a light meter in a camera.  To properly expose for snow, you have to allow more light through the lens to compensate for the camera’s meter.  You can do this a couple of ways.  First, you can manually change the aperture or shutter speed (but not both).  You do this by using Aperture priority mode to open up one or two f-stops (smaller aperture numbers) or using a slower shutter speed in Shutter priority mode like moving from 1/250th of a second to 1/125th (+1 stop) or 1/60th (+2 stops).  The second and much easier way is to use your camera’s Exposure Compensation adjustment button (or dial) to “dial in” added exposure of +1 or +2.  If you don’t know where your Exposure Compensation, or EV, button is, check your camera’s manual for its location.  You know where the manual is, right?  It’s the book still in the box your camera came in. Just kidding!

Here’s the same scene after I changed the EV on the camera from +0.0 to +2.0.

Tree in a field of white snow.

Big difference, eh?  This can be kind of unsettling at first.  If you look at the LCD on the “blinky” or histogram screens, you will see you have drastically overexposed the shot.  Don’t worry, when you pull it into your favorite photo editor, all will look just fine.  You might have to adjust a few hot spots.

This tip is mostly for those of you who use digital SLR or advanced Point & Shoot (P&S) cameras where you can control aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation (EV).  For those with P&S cameras, look for a mode or scene setting for snow and/or beach scenes.  Those should work to make your snow white again.

Remember, each camera is different so go out and experiment.  Find yourself a snow covered scene and put your camera in aperture or shutter priority mode and start with an EV of 0.  Take a shot, change the EV to +1.0, +2.0 and then +3.0 and see which one looks best.  That way the next time you have a beautiful snow scene or white tropical beach in front of you, you will know what to do.

If you have any other tips for photographing snow or other white scenes, leave me a comment.  If you wish to share your “white” masterpieces, check out the photography assignment post on this blog.