Brunswick Ohio 2011 / July 18, 2011 by Harold Brown

I went to the Brunswick Family Restaurant Car Show in Brunswick, Ohio this past Saturday. There were lots of cars and motorcycles to admire. Took a few pictures and then kicked back and enjoyed a dog and coke. Well, by a few I mean 387 pictures. I am still working on the photo gallery posting a few pictures a day. Check out my photo site for other photo galleries from past Brunswick shows in 2010 and 2004. [mapsmarker marker="11"]

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada / July 15, 2011 by Harold Brown

The next time you are in Las Vegas, Nevada take time out to visit Red Rock Canyon. Just 17 miles away, it is a quick drive to the canyon, and you will get to see some great sites. We visited the canyon in July 2006 and really enjoyed the scenery. There are lots of things to do including hiking, rock climbing and horseback riding. If you want to see the opposite of man made mountains in Las Vegas, check out the Red Rock Canyon and see what the Mojave Desert has to offer.

Scenic Drive The scenic loop is open every day of the year with times changing slightly according to the season. It features a one-way 13-mile scenic drive.

[dropshadowbox align="center" effect="lifted-both" width="autopx" height="" background_color="#e8b31c" border_width="1" border_color="#dddddd" ]White-tailed antelope squirrels are active year-round, and are most active during the day.[/dropshadowbox]

[dropshadowbox align="center" effect="lifted-both" width="autopx" height="" background_color="#e8b31c" border_width="1" border_color="#dddddd" ] Note the vivid colors of the rocks[/dropshadowbox]

If you would like to see a few more of my pictures from the Red Rock Canyon follow this link. Hopefully these pictures will inspire you to get out and see the world.

[color-box color=yellow]Click on your favorite social media icons below, or leave a comment and let me know what you think.[/color-box]

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ScanCafe: Give it a try! / May 7, 2011 by Harold Brown

I have done a lot of picture scanning over the years and for the most part I am happy with what I have done. I do make a few adjustments while scanning, trying to get a better scan, but that doesn't make me an expert. Most of the pictures I have scanned were from the 1930's through the 1960's. They were are all in family albums, and most were black and white. Scanning them required taking the albums apart. However, when it comes to my 35mm pictures I have the negatives and slides available, which make for better results. Fantastic, except for the fact that this can take a lot of time and money to get a decent result. After scanning you will probably still want to process them through your favorite editing application, but that is optional of course. I prefer Lightroom and Photoshop. Then key wording, captions and posting to my website are the final steps. So the time invested adds up very quickly. Working with the RAW, jpg or tiff pictures for publication to my site is where I want to invest my time. If I could find someone that did a decent job scanning my pictures and then I worked with them after that point, that would be perfect for me.

Based on the above a friend and I decided to send some slides to ScanCafe and see what they could do. I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about shipping costs or wait time. That is posted on their site and has been commented on by a few people. I read all of the ScanCafe site very carefully and read a couple of reviews. I was not surprised or shocked by anything that occurred, and I didn't go bouncing off the walls with wild speculation waiting on the delivery of my photos and DVD. The slides and a few prints were processed and returned in less than 2 months. In total we sent just under 600 slides and prints. It was their $130 plus S&H box that they provided to ship everything in. We bundled the slides into groups of 50 and numbered them. When they were returned they were still in the bundles of 50 that we had sent, and all fit onto a single DVD. Each numbered bundle was on the DVD under a directory with the same bundle number. That made it very easy to identify each bundle and what it contained. I did not see anything that was damaged and the scans were well done. The 4x6 paper prints looked about what I typically can achieve and unless I had a lot of prints with no negatives, I wouldn't have any prints scanned. A few slides had some scratches and dust that had not been removed, but most were in good enough shape that not much repair work was required in my editing apps.

Some people will probably be concerned about their photos, negatives and/or slides being sent to India, but regardless of where your photos are sent, there is always a chance of them being lost or destroyed. Even if they never leave your house there is a chance of them being lost forever. A real world example dates back to the 70's when my friend worked for a well known department store. A courier would drive to each store and pickup the film that had been dropped off for processing. One day the courier accidentally left a bag of film in a restaurant and it was mistaken for a bag of trash and was thrown into a dumpster. It was never recovered. My friend was instructed to tell the customers that their film and the courier had been killed in a fiery car crash to keep their customers from pursuing the matter further. It actually worked. So there are no guarantees with anything you do.

Seeing is believing and so here are some examples of slide conversions done for me by ScanCafe. The photographs of the bridge were taken on the July 4th weekend in 1977. The trio is a lounge band called "Something Different" and was photographed around the same time period. They were filmed in the basement of my friends house and the yellow cast is how the slides looked back then. All were stored in plastic cases that were provided by the processing lab.

Most of the digital versions of my slides were color balanced properly, had low noise and minor spots and marks on them. Next time I will try out there pro services to see how they compare to the standard service. ScanCafe offers a great value when it comes to digital transfer of slide film. Next up will be some negatives as well. Give them a try and be patient. It takes a few weeks to get your photos back.

Photoshop CS5 Vs Microsoft ICE / April 23, 2011 by Harold Brown

I love panoramas and over the years I have used various software applications to create them. Now that I am using Photoshop CS5 I really don't need any other software to create them. However, not everyone uses Photoshop so how does Photoshop Photomerge compare with other applications? I recently tried out Microsoft's ICE (Image Composite Editor) on several pictures, just to see what it could do. Without any work other than cropping, how well does ICE standup against Photoshop CS5? I picked two pictures that I took in South Africa in front of the Breakers Resort at Umhlanga Beach. The reason I picked the two photos is because of the 5 fountains that I could use to help understand what was used from each picture. Note: If you use Photoshop, you can see exactly how the picture was stitched. I did nothing other than to drop them into each application using the automatic features of the applications to see how well each one handled the stitching function. Since the ICE application is a free download it doesn't have to be perfect to have great value. What I discovered was that ICE did a great job with the pictures that I selected, with the benefit that it is free. Let's take a look at the results.

So here are the two pictures that I started out with. My sister-in-law is standing in front of the resort and I took her picture. However I couldn't get the full name on the wall so I took a second picture of just the Breakers Resort name by itself.

I dropped the above two pictures into ICE and the result was almost perfect.

[color-box color=yellow]

Notice the shadow from the roof has a slight shift where the picture was stitched together. [/color-box]

Now let's look at the results using Photoshop CS5 Photomerge.

Note that both applications stitched the photographs together almost exactly the same. The left 2 fountains are from the left picture and the other fountains are from the right picture. There are three barriers that can be seen in the foreground. The middle barrier is from the left picture in both examples. The "Breakers Resort" is from the right picture. Notice the roof line shadow is different thought. In the Microsoft ICE software the shadow from the left picture is lower than the shadow from the right picture. In the Photoshop CS5 version the shadow from the left picture is slightly higher than the shadow from the right picture, and it is in a different location. So Photoshop did a little better in the shadow area of the picture. However, the big difference is in the amount of data Photoshop was able to keep as compared to ICE. To do the stitching in ICE the left picture has more zoom applied to it than the right picture. Photoshop was able to keep more data from both pictures and did a slightly better stitch as well.

But is this a fair comparison? Could ICE do better? I decided to try to use the other stitch options that ICE provided. Using the Automatic feature it used "Planar Motion 3". I decided to try other camera motion options provided, and I found that the automatic feature did indeed select the best setting. This is a very high level compare of the two products and of course Photoshop allows me to do a lot more with the picture once I have created it. Using ICE you may need to go to your photo editing program of choice and get more creative.

The above CS5 examples were created with "Blend Images Together" checked. Let's take a look at the results of a photomerge without checking "Blend Images Together.

The results were cropped based on the usable image created. Notice the shadow of the roof line has been resolved and the objects used from each of the pictures has changed. The stitching no longer takes into account shadows or color matching. Since the two images are almost identical in exposure and color, turning off blending in this case produces good results, but a small amount data from each picture is lost compared to the CS5 blended version, but still more data than the ICE version.

Just for fun I selected the Geometric Distortion Correction in CS5 to see what the results would be.

I love panoramas because they really help the viewer better understand the environment where the picture was taken. A picture of sand could be a beach or a sandbox, maybe it is quicksand! Help the viewer understand what they are seeing by providing a perspective. Remember to think panorama the next time you go out to take photographs. Make sure your photos overlap by as much as 40%. Too much or too little overlap will prevent the automated panoramic features from performing the stitch. Remember to that GPS GEO tagging can add an even higher level to the viewers perspective!

Great Pictures Are Everywhere / February 17, 2011 by Harold Brown

Every Christmas I take a picture of the Christmas tree. This past year was no different and I took the usual pictures, but I decided that I wanted to take some close-ups of the ornaments. I did that a few years ago, so I thought I would do it again. Later as my wife and I were looking at the pictures we have taken at Christmas, she commented on various things we had done throughout the years. A very pleasant conversation talking about the time we have shared, and all brought on by a few pictures that together tell a story.

Thinking through the Rule of Thirds / February 5, 2011 by Harold Brown

First, let me say that I pretty much have never gone along with the crowd. I was born in the early 50s, so I saw the craziness of the 60s and the ridiculous fashions of the 70s. I never engaged in that stuff, so perhaps that is why I have never understood the emphasis on the rule of thirds, and I never will. I always have to come to my own conclusions, and don't like being told how to do something as if I cannot think for myself. In fact I feel that the rule of thirds was created by someone who felt they were a bit smarter than the rest of the crowd, and this was their way to educate you quickly. It's origins date back decades, but who is to say that it is correct? In my opinion it is not. The rule might be good for many of us on the right occasion, but it assumes that everyone takes pictures for the same reason (one picture is no different than the next), and/or has no idea how to compose a shot. I take my picture based on a lot of things, and while taking the picture I ask myself some simple questions. First, and foremost is the question why am I taking the picture? Is it a picture of my wife, or a picture of the ocean with my wife in the picture? That makes all of the difference in the world. Sometimes you take a picture to put yourself or friends at a location (like vacation pictures). Now I am not saying that many of your pictures won't be using the rule of thirds, what I am saying is that you should think about what you want to show people when they see the picture you have taken. If you try to apply the rule of thirds all the time you are going to have some crap pictures. The same rule is used in video and I actually saw a video demonstrating this with a boring background. The talent centered version was actually better because in the rule of thirds version you could see more of the boring and busy background. The guy making the video didn't see that. Pretty funny. I have experimented with this a bit and the average person sees little difference between a centered subject and rule of thirds subject. In those cases where the background is interesting they sometimes prefer the thirds version, but not always! This is especially true with picture of people you know. Some people tend to look at the person and pay less attention to the background (and vice versa). Sometimes my wife doesn't like a picture because she doesn't like the outfit she is wearing and pays no attention to composition.

Let's take a look at the picture of the squirrel. I was out for a walk to get some fall color pictures. I love the curiosity of squirrels and some of the crazy stuff they do, and I never fail to take a picture of one when I have the opportunity. In this case I wanted to get the picture of the squirrel with the fall colors. To do that I had to place him to the left of the picture. I didn't place him to the right because the background wasn't as good. So in this case the picture was driven by the background and color. If I centered the tree I felt it was too drastic, and almost created a split in the picture. The anchor point to the picture is the tree and the subject is a squirrel on a fall day. I got the photograph I felt was composed the best and there it sat in my picture folder for 5 years before I did anything with it.

Being spied on as I walk through the woods

I really liked the picture so I kept it and filed it away. While I was going through my picture folders confirming that all was backed up (very important) I ran across the picture, and thought I need to get this published on my photo site. The problem was, although the picture was composed just perfect (to my taste), it needed to be more dramatic. The tree needed to be the anchor of the picture but understated. The squirrel is obviously the star of the show and he needed a rich colorful background to offset him but not overpower him. The theme I wanted for this picture is that he was watching my every move. The setting is a fall day in a dark wooded area.

I changed the lighting of the picture to draw your eye more to the squirrel by darkening all the edges and applying a gradient to the left side of the picture that reduced the exposure and brightness. I didn't take the pictures based on any rule, I took it based on all the natural elements of the area. In fact many times with nature shots you don't know what is going to happen next. You need to get the shot.

Now let's look at the above picture taken in Hawaii. The elements in the area forced me to take the picture as you see it. Placing the subject to the right brought in more of the junk sitting on the porch of the hotel, as well as people I didn't want in the shot. Placing her more to the left brought in the door to the lobby which was open, and that didn't look all that great either. So the picture is composed based on the arrangement of those things around the subject. For both the pictures in this post, I took the photos based on the factors of the area and not any type of rule that I had memorized.

When looking through the view finder or LCD look at more that the subject of the picture.

A group of schoolboys from Hilton College in KwaZulu-Natal started a tradition of occasionally painting Joe.

What I do when looking through the lens is check for distractions in the view finder, and compose the picture in the frame the way I feel it might look best in print or on the web. If the background is great, the rule of thirds should work, but not if the background is a distraction.

The stone placed by the road side is painted from time-to-time with a new subject incorporating the shape of the stone. The stone stands on it's own, and dead on center is great for a picture. The stone is of greater importance/interest than it's background. I liked the blue sky and wanted to see more of it in this shot, like it was a backdrop in a portrait.