Exploration (Part 1)

For me as a landscape/nature photographer, there are two most compelling motivations in photography, and both can be filed under "exploration". One is the exploration of familiar places, the other is - guess what - the exploration of new places. :-)

In this post I only want to describe my experiences when exploring familiar places (that's why it is also entitled Part 1, yes...) - and actually, there are two approaches to that: one is the "wow, how many times have I been here, why did I never see that before?!" and the other is that "darn, I know that this is a wonderful scene, but the light today is just no good".

Both have one thing is common: it's necessary to "absorb" a place before the photographic opportunities will open up. And of course, sometimes both comes together quite luckily at the first instance. And sometimes, it just takes incredibly long! :-)

I don't know how many times I've been at Burghausen's citylake (called Wöhrsee, a dead branch of the Salzach river). I live in Burghausen for more than 5 years now, and I've been taking walks with the dog something like umpteen times in the area. Regarding the lake... I've had some photographic opportunities (link opens my Picasa Web Album with a search for "Wöhrsee"), but nevertheless, it just took me a lot of time to really absorb the place, find out where to go with the camera, etc. etc.

During my walks with Toni I often have the camera with me, and one late November morning I walked down the natural ramp (along the hill that goes from the new part of town down to the lake) which ends at the upper part of the lake, it was foggy and damp, and when I walked across the small bridge that leads over the Mühlbach (small creek which feeds the lake) I stopped, awe-struck by this scene (also in my "November" album):


First Attempt

Back then, I was totally confident with the photo and considered it as one of my favorites, even though I felt that somehow, something was missing (I'd never admit that without a superior picture as proof, of course). But this was the very "why did I never see that before?!" moment for me. It's just absolutely lovely how the old reed is arranged in layers. I returned to that place many times since then, always looking, waiting... in early February then, I made this photo:


Final

That's the reason why I label the old one from November "First Attempt" now (the colors are a result of applying a film simulation for Lightroom from the "Cold Storage Collection Vol. 1" - I really love playing around with these, they can be bought at Life in Digital Film and mimic all kinds of film including cross processing and whatnot).

The second example is the same scene again, and the result of playing around with the film simulation presets looked interesting and promising - this is another snapshot that I made when I had just the camera with me:


Sketch

The result is pretty unreal of course, but it was something like "ahaaaaa!" for me to see what's in there. So I went there again the next day, packed with tripod and everything, to make a long exposure (10s) that would render the water and the reflection of the reed and trees into something abstract that would go well with the false colors of the cross processing look of the preset that I chose:


Final

Using the square crop put more emphasis on the trees in the top third and how they stretch their snow-covered branches above the lake. This image is available as a fine art print from seenby.com/seenby.de and was selected as "Editor's pick", too.

I want to close with two further remarks: 1. when I was still relatively new to photography, I was always looking at others marvelous photos, sighing and thinking "darn, I live in such a boring place, I wish that we had (tall mountains, vast plains, the sea... whatever) nearby..." - and yes, I know better now! ...and 2. it's important to learn and refine the skills of recognizing photographic opportunities - we don't always have enough time (like, 5 years!:-) to really absorb a place and carve out it's beauty in a photo.

Eggenalm

I always enjoy browsing through older photos that I made. This is a picture from November 2008 when we made a late-autumn hike to the Eggenalm and Fellhorn. It was a bright, but hazy afternoon, and I was using a polarizer with the Nikon 18-200VR (a lens that I sold in the meantime - which I regret) to somewhat eliminate that haze:


Eggenalm (FinePix S5Pro, 1/30s @ ISO 100; f/8, 40 mm DX)

I was using the S5pro for a couple of months back then and returned to my practice of shooting only raw, despite the infamous JPEG qualities of the camera. Going back to these photos today reassures me that this was and will be the best thing to do. I have all the detail, all the information, all the light and shadows in their purest form, as the camera's sensor saw it, in the file on my harddisk, and I'm free and open to play around with it whichever way I want. The strong and smooth black & white appearance of this new edit would have been impossible had I used only JPEG.

What I want to say is (once more:-) ...even if you're new to digital photography, and particularly to using a DSLR camera - store your raw sensor data from day #1. Set the camera to raw+JPEG in case you're feeling uncomfortable with raw processing now. You can get back to the raw data later when you're more firm with post processing and reach the limits of JPEG - and you'll be glad to have your raw data then.

Winter time, underexposure time

As I browse through photos on Picasa Web, Flickr and who knows where else I can't help but notice that too many people trust their camera's automatic metering too much. This is especially problematic in winter - on overcast days it might be relatively gloomy, but nevertheless, the subject we're taking photos of are in fact brighter than average.

This leads to a lot of underexposed photos being showcased on the web - our perception is mislead by the dark and gloomy winter days, the camera's LCD can't be trusted anyway (except for the blinking highlight warning or histograms). Here's a JPEG directly out of my Fuji S5pro in Aperture priority mode:


Trees (auto) (FinePix S5Pro, 1/70s @ ISO 100; f/8, 116 mm DX)

On the dark background of the blog it might not immediately look too much underexposed - but it is (if you click on the photo you'll get a 912px wide version with a white border, just check how much the bright - foggy - sky differs from the plain white of that border). The problem is of course the camera's metering: it treats everything it "sees" as being 18% grey (which is about the same as reflecting 50% of the light) - but for a winter scene like this, it's clear that it is not 18% grey!

In situations like these, I set an exposure compensation of +1 stop (even though "they" always say that it is not necessary with matrix metering yada yada yada because this "intelligent" metering technique "knows" the scene...) and the result (again, JPEG straight out of my Fuji S5pro) looks like this:


Trees (+1) (FinePix S5Pro, 1/35s @ ISO 100; f/8, 116 mm DX)

Of course, you can simply adjust exposure in post processing. But that's lame, and the most important part of a correct exposure in the digital domain is: capture as much light as possible without blowing out the highlights (hmmmm, I think I should have this as a boilerplate to insert into every other blogpost:-) because the right side of the histogram (the lights!) contains more detail!

And that of course means: the photo contains more data to work with in post processing. JPEGs with their limited bit depth will benefit from that a lot if you need to post process them (but in reality of course - here's my other boilerplate - you should shoot raw all the time).

Both of these photos where taken with the 70-300VR lens with the camera on my Giotto's 9970 monopod with Manfrotto RC234 tilt head. They are not exactly pieces of art, I just thought about this problem on my Sunday morning walk with Toni & Fuji and wanted to have illustrations. :-)

Prints, Cards, and E-Cards (aka: what's new)

I've found some references to FotoMoto on the web now and thought I'd give it a try. It is a service that integrates into websites, photoblogs etc. and offers visitors additional functions for ordering prints, greeting cards or e-cards by directly tapping into the site with some - for me - black magic scripting. Or whatever. It even integrates into Lightbox and other scripts - w00t!



It doesn't matter where the content comes from. FotoMoto picks the photo and offers the functionality. If someone wants to buy a print or greeting card, you'll get a notification and should upload a hi-res version to the FotoMoto website. For the very first time, even I can really understand what "Web 2.0" means. :-)

The above photo was made with the AF-Nikkor 2/35mm - a very nice, small and relatively lightweight "normal" lens for DX/APS-C sensors. More on that later!