.NET Performance : Photos

Week 24 Photos

nick — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:09:18 GMT

Stuggling, but only 3 weeks to go now...

My first book cover - Introduction to Psychology, 12th Edition by Dennis Coon

nick — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:36:42 GMT

Posting high-resolution photos on your web-site brings in the occassional request for permission to use the photos is some publication. I've had requests before from Israel Ministry of Agriculture to use camel shots from Broome in one of their publications, and Busselton Online (which doesn't seem to be online anymore :)) wanted to use one of my shots of the area on their website.

A couple of weeks ago I got a request from Cangage Learning to use of of my Antelope Canyon shots on the cover of one of their text books. The website page for the textbook is online now, and my Canyon shot made it through the review process to make the cover. While not on the same scale as a Nat Geo cover, making the front cover of a book by a reputable publisher is a nice achievement.

Printing a calendar for Christmas Presents

nick — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 04:49:07 GMT

Last year I used 13 of the photos I took from my 6 month trip around Australia in 2005 to make a calendar for a Christmas present for family and friend. The print company I used was Kainos Print from the ACT, and the actual order form for the calendar is here - they make the process quite simple. The final proof for this years calanar (4+MB PDF) is up on my site if you're interested in seeing how it turned out. Generally I was very happy with the result, and plan on using Kainos again this year.

The main change I need to make for the years images is to lighten the dark images significantly (March and May look very dark when not in direct light). Other than that, the 2007 calandar looks great.

The 2008 images will come from my trip to Arizona, Utah and Nevada before the MVP summit. Wupatki Pueblo is pencilled in for Jan, and Antelope Canyon will be in there too.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy, please drop me an email. Cost will be around AU30 including postage in Australia. Happy to send OS for a bit extra postage, but be warned that the public holidays and school holidays in the calandar are mostly Australia-specific.

The Wedding Portrait - An exercise in Photoshop

nick — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 04:01:14 GMT

A couple of weekends ago I had my first attempt at photographing a wedding. Portrait and event photography isn't something I'm particularly interested in - I much prefer landscape and sport. The bride was a close family friend, and the wedding was not overly formal and they didn't want a professional photographer for the event so I got the call up (owning a Canon 1 Series DSLR will do that). Overall, I found the photography enjoyable, but I should have been more prepared by carrying some drink and sports bars in my camera pack - you don't want to miss any of the action ducking out for a drink or a snack, so by the end of the event I was pretty thirsty and hungry.

I decided to print on photo out at A3+ (13" * 19") for the couple, and wanted to do a black-and-white print to give it more of a classical feel. The photo below, taken during the ceremony was the starting point for the print.

In terms of photographic quality, I'd describe the starting point as nice but with some obvious problems. I was too far away for the flash to have much of an effect in the strong sunlight that broke through during the ceremony (it was pouring rain 10 minutes after this), and the shadows in the original shot are a serious problem. The easiest Photoshop tool to cut rid of the severe shadows is to use Image | Adjustments | Shadows/Highlights..., but you can't apply this effect to an adjustment layer, so you have to start duplicating layers, which I don't particularly like to do. Knowing that Shadows/Highlights was going to come into play, and that it can give a weird fluorescent look to green vegetation like the background in this image, a mask to cover everything except the bride and groom was needed. Given that, the bottom-most visible layer would only contribute the green background to the final image, so I could blur and darken this to de-emphasize it, as shown below. This was done after duplicating the base so that an original was still available.

Next, I created a duplicate of the original layer, applied a fairly aggressive Shadow/Highlight adjustment, with Shadow amount set to 70%. Then, I brushed in a layer mask so just the couple where left from the layer.

On this layer, I removed any skin or lens blemishes with the Healing Brush and Blur Tool. Once I was happy with the result, I added a subtle lightening using an Adjustment Layer, and then took a duplicated Shadow\Highlight layer, applied an aggressive sharpening, and masked out everything but the eyes. The final layers look like:

Next, I grouped all the objects into a Smart Object, and used Convert to BW Pro 3 from The Imaging Factory on a rasterized copy of the Smart Object. The main options where to apply a light yellow-orange filter to enhance the skin tones and to bump up the contrast by setting the Paper Grade equivalent to around 3. The final result:

The left sides of the couples face, which was in really deep shadow, has been recovered well, and thanks to a little blurring, no artifacts are visible in the recovered areas. The job done by Shadow\Highlight is particularly impressive around the grooms chin and neck which look to be in total shadow in the original.

Overall, I was quite happy with the result. The end image (to my eye anyway) didn't look over-done, and the print looked fantastic.

Grand Cayon Pano - Trying a Different Pano Merge Tool

nick — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:21:34 GMT

I've been using the inbuilt Photoshop Photomerge tool for about 2 years with pretty good results, but was having a lot of trouble with some of the canyon shots from the US trip trying to get a good merge. The preview view in CS2 Photomerge is simply too small to work out if the placement of the images is correct. For this pano, I used a tool called The Panorama Factory, which uses the old style of merging where a series of points is defined in each overlapping image so assist the software with the merge.

One of the nice features of the tool is that the warped images produced during the merge process are saved, which makes applying manual touch-ups to fix up ghost blurs much easier. You simply bring in a section of the warped images, overlay over the blur, and feather-in with a soft brush. I managed to get 7 images perfectly merged with no lines visible even when viewed a full resolution.

A Warm Sleeping Bag is Always a Good Idea

nick — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:06:20 GMT

When I bought a sleeping bag rated to -15 degrees, it seemed like real overkill. After all, Australia has never, ever recorded a temperate that low (-9.4 at Charlottes Pass on 29 Jun 1994 is our lowest ever recorded temperature). Camping up at Mather Camp Ground on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on my first night in the States, it seemed very cold. The next morning, I was having breakfast in the Marketplace dinner, and they mentioned it got down to 7 degrees. It seemed a lot colder than that, until I mentally switched over to farenheight. 7 farenheight is -14 celcius, and it was a bit cold even in the -15 rated sleeping bag. I was trying to set off my flash in the tent during this shot, and managed to drain 12 AAA batteries during the exposure.

[Update: The -9.4 at Charlottes Pass was in farenheight, which is -23 celcius, so the sleeping bag wasn't that extreme after all]

Antelope Canyon Magic

nick — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:44:48 GMT

Antelope Canyon is actually on Navajo land just outside Page, Arizona, and you need a Navajo escort to get into the Upper Canyon. I went on the photographer tour with Antelope Canyon Tours, and it was well worth the money with the extra time and help we got in the Canyon. During this shot, the guide was actually standing beind me throwing dust and sand off the floor into the light shaft so the camera could pick it up. If you go to the Canyon, make sure you where some warmer gear, as its a least 10 degrees colder once you get inside.

Bryce Canyon At Dawn

nick — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:10:55 GMT

One thing that this shot doesn't show is how cold it was here - something like 10 below zero on the celcius scale. Most of the other photographers coming from warm hotel rooms didn't last too long. I was in full thermals, then long hiking gear, with Gortex on top for warmth. In addition, I got a litre of hot drink into me before heading off to photograph. Bryce is a magical place - it's hard to grasp the scale until you focus in on the full size trees in the amphitheater, and realize this stitched image takes in a number of kilometers of scenery.

Moonlight in the Grand Canyon

nick — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:09:32 GMT

There was a fantastic full moon on my first night down in the Grand Canyon. This is a shot of Bright Angel Creek (the tent sites are near the trees) in moonlight. This photo is totally untouched - this is how it came out of the camera. Its a pretty magical place.

A quick shot from today

nick — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 05:13:07 GMT

This is one of the incredible things I saw driving between Flagsatff and Page, AZ today:

Wupatki Pueblo

Photos of the Trip - Week 22

nick — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:06:53 GMT

Full Week 22 Gallery

US Trip Planning: South Kaibab Trail

nick — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 06:42:36 GMT

Length: 10.3km
Descent: 1418m
Google Earth Path of Trail

Photos of the Trip - Week 20

nick — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:38:10 GMT

After a bit of a lay-off, I'm attempting to go through the last few weeks of 2005's six month adventure around Australia before the end of this year. Thinking back to home many shots I took in Tassie, that could be a stuggle.

Full Week 20 Gallery

Photos from The Trip - Week 17

nick — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 09:48:16 GMT

After a long break while I moved house, did a fair few .NET articles, and got settled back in with on-site work, the next long-awaited installment of The Trip.

Full Week 17 Gallery

This Morning's Sunrise

nick — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 07:33:00 GMT