Shooting Like Liberty Valence

077A0654PPS9B&WruggedBordersRusselLiberty Valence was a gun slinger, and according to lyrics to the song made famous by Gene Pitney (writers: Hal David, Burt F. Bachrach, Burt Bachrach): “…the point of the gun was the only law that Liberty understood.  When it came to shooting straight and fast, he was mighty good.”

I’m finding that in sports and wildlife photography “straight and fast” are especially rewarding. So far in using my new Canon Eos 5 Ds, it was in game practice at the Patriots summer training camp, and more recently in following the pursuits of Ospreys in catching fish in my neighborhood (Occupessatuxet Cove, RI). Verily, I must say that the 5 Ds was quite responsive, i.e., fast. Since all shooting so far has been by hand held method (not tripod), I’d also have to say the 5 Ds was “straight” (i.e., steady).

The photo of this post was taken after the Osprey was perched a while on a branch back-lit by the sun on an overcast day. The camera was able to catch the energy released by the osprey, most easily seen in the wings and powerful talons. However, something was missing, and the easiest fix was to frame the subject and this “energy release”. This was done in Perfect Photo Suite 9 Borders (specifically, Russel). Oh yes, prior to the Borders being added, I tranformed the photo to b & w in PPS9 Black & White module (Rugged).

Ignore the Noise

077A0368APPS9BWcyanBigSoftie

This photo is of Patriot’s Training Camp at the beginning of August, 2015. It was taken with my new Canon Eos 5 Ds. I had set the Exposure Compensation to -1 to allow for the bright sun usually present during camp in the middle of summer. This was a mistake since I had a polarizer filter on and for some reason this made all of my shots under-exposed more than I would have liked. Nonetheless, I corrected for this error in Photoshop Camera Raw processing.

I had not had much opportunity for using my new 5 Ds since it was an extremely hot and humid summer, and there was not much opportunity to get to shoot in optimal conditions, or even conditions where shooting out doors would yield some success. I was in New Hampshire in mid August and would have liked to have taken some night photos of the galaxy, but unfortunately it was overcast.

The last several months living in New England was surreal, due to the so-called Deflategate imposed on the New England Patriots and Roger Goodell and the NFL. True to form and as everyone with an ounce of intelligence had know this whole affair against the Patriots and specifically Tom Brady was a witch hunt; and as expected was proven to be so after being brought before the Federal Judge on appeal.

So, this photo is an apt description of how not only to deal with real life but also the game of football. That is, Bill Belichick is fond of using the phrase of “Ignore the noise” to have his team focus on the true elements of the game and not superfluous creations (viz. Goodell and the NFL). I tried to describe this phenomenon photographically by showing how the football mind might see the game action unfold amid the chaos of the practice field. This was accomplished with Perfect Photo Suite 9, using their Black & White module (cyanotype, specifically) for the “background” and leaving the foreground subjects RGB.

Blaming the Camera

The last 2-3 months have been difficult for me to get the right mindset for photography. After my trip to Germany in Spring where I took a ton of photos and a small minority were sharp and descent, I became disheartened as to why I still struggle with taking sharp photos. I even tried recalibrating my Canon lenses (24-105mm L; 70-200 L) but these appeared to be fine.

I lost faith in my Canon 5D Mark II and while this may sound trite I blamed it to a degree, even though I knew I also was at fault with poor technique. I had to find my way out of this state of dismay. Then I read about Canon’s new 5DS camera which has 50 megapixels and was geared to take really sharp photos. I decided to get this camera by selling my 30D and 5D Mark II cameras, figuring that if I still got less than sharp photos the camera could not be blamed. In addition, the 5DS had other features which I could grow into,e.g., setting aspect ratio.

The photo in this post is of Point Judith Lighthouse in Narragansett, RI, taken on a mostly sunny day in mid afternoon summertime, less than the perfect shooting time advocated by professionals, but right up my alley (read post, Mixed Metaphor). I had taken several photos of this lighthouse getting used to my new camera, but this one was descent since clouds had rolled in to provide some shading to much of the seascape, but still keeping the lighthouse lit, so to say. Settings were manual mode, f22, 1/125, ISO 100; Canon 24-105 mm L @ 32mm. Little post processing was done to the photo. I believe the 5DS may be a keeper. Note: there are some slanting vertical “lines” in the blue sky between the lighthouse and white clouds; this is a result of the camera catching the sun’s rays in the suddenly clouded/shaded foreground.

077A0108DxOa

Spring: Post Mortem

There still is life in this body and this blog. The exigencies of surviving winter trumped all other interests including posting to this blog. Let me explain.469iPhoneDxO

It was a terrible winter. Since arriving in New England 36 years ago from Wisconsin I used to laugh at the responses of locals on how terrible the winters were. In short, they were nothing in comparison to those of the Midwest. However, this past winter made up for all previous 36 winters by being the winter-from-hell, if that could be fathomed. The snow was constant from February on, and the temperatures were routinely in the teens or single digits, as meteorologists are fond of saying.

I tried to take photos but the body was not conditioned for it. What shots I took were not worthy even to be tossed into the waste basket—shivering has a way of destroying sharpness.

The first photo in this post was taken with my iPhone after sunset. Oh, by the way, it was snowing. It is of a lone soul skiing across Occupessatuxet Cove. The Cove was frozen from February to the beginning of April—quite a feat since it is salt water. As bad as it was in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Boston were even worst.

595iPhoneDxOThe second photo is of the breakout, my take on surviving the Winter That Was. It was taken in Nuremberg, Germany, in one of the many local restaurant pubs which had wonderful German food and beers. In this shot there are Nuremberg Bratwurst and potato pancakes, plus the obligatory beer, in this case a doppelbock from the local brewery next door.

Photographically, there is not much to talk about since the best camera available was the iPhone. The winter shot is grainy due to the low light; the second shot is delightful in its own right due to its mere content.

Split Toning

Hobbit5Armies

 

Some of the so-called film look of movies has intrigued me, since they create an atmosphere or specific time period to better portray the story. In my exploration of style journey I was drawn to this element. For some reason I am drawn to the “blue-ish” cinema look of the latest Hobbit movie, The Battle of the Five Armies. I’ve included a photo from the movie of Bilbo Baggins (credit is from Warner Brothers Movies).

IMG_5650DxOPPS9I assume this blue effect was created with a filter (I will have to research this further), but for me to create this look the quickest I could think of was split-toning. So, that is what I did in a creative fashion in this photo of a barn at Sugarbush Farm in Woodstock, VT.