Spicewood Photography Blog

Here (doesn’t) come the sun

John Margaglione — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:46:56 +0000

On our second attempt to catch a breathtaking sunrise at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, we had a bad case of deja-vu as the sun once again failed to break through the clouds for several hours after sunrise. All this despite my iPhone telling me that it was partly cloudy as I pulled into the park at 6am.

This time we made things a little more interesting by choosing a spot on the far side of Enchanted Rock, past Moss Lake. The idea was to catch the sun rising above Enchanted Rock, with reflections into Moss Lake. This entailed a brisk hike along Echo Canyon trail, racing against the clock to get into position before the sun crested above the Rock. We found an excellent spot on the side of the lake, although by excellent I am referring to the view, not the ergonomics. Tree branches encroached on our spot like an evil child with a poker.

But just like last time, the best pictures of the day came while we were waiting for the sun to show up. When the sun was very low on the horizon, well behind the Rock, its light reflected off of the thick clouds and onto Moss Lake. This is probably the thinnest the clouds were during the first two hours after sunrise. My wife took this picture with a 16-35mm zoom at f/22 on a Canon 50D.

Enchanted Rock and Moss Lake at Dawn I

What made the scene so interesting is the pink light on the lake. It looked like rose gold, and played beautifully with the water plants at the edge of the lake, forming sharp contrasts of both color and intensity. I pulled out the 180mm macro and took several shots of the water plants close to the edge. This shot was taken at 180mm at f/22 on a Canon 1Ds Mark III.

Water Plants at Dawn

We spent over an hour sitting at the edge of the lake, as the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. I had just cooled off from the brisk hike moments before, but now I could feel my core temperature dropping. My wife pulled out an emergency blanket from the medical kit and we waited out the wind and cold wrapped up like refugees.

A few other oddities popped up as we hiked around the area, including this strange muddy stream. This shot was taken with a 24-70mm at f/16 on a Canon 1Ds Mark III.

Mud Flows

As we made our way back to the original path, we crossed through the Moss Lake primitive camping area. A number of small, unmarked paths wandered off from the main path. This colorful path was well marked by tree roots and stones. Image was taken with a 16-35mm at f/22 on a Canon 50D.

Root and Rock Path

Overall, the trip was worth the 4am wakeup call. One good image is worth a night of lost sleep. I also find it interested that the best pictures always happen in the first hour after sunrise. It seems like the keeper rate goes from 80% to 10% in a very short amount of time. The adage about shooting during the golden hours is still some of the best advice around.

Taking Sunset Pictures for Dummies

John Margaglione — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:50 +0000

When we left the Balcones Canyonlands Natural Wildlife Refuge, I couldn’t help but think: a rare miss. I took only a handful of pictures during the first two hours of hiking through the rather monotonous trails leading to the Sunset Deck, and the harsh mid-afternoon light was either blinding or completely absent through the thicket of trees.

The few pictures I did take during the hike seemed destined for failure as well: as soon as I got the tripod set, the camera set, and the focus set, the light was gone. Literally. The sun had moved and the light was just plain gone. And a 180mm macro needs a LOT of light to function if the target is waving merrily in the breeze. I did get one cooperative Admiral butterfly to pose just long enough to get a pleasant shot.

Admiral Butterfly in Live Oak Leaves

But this isn’t why we went to Balcones Canyonlands today. We went to take sunset pictures from Sunset Deck, a short 1.7 mile hike that apparently can be completely discarded in favor of a car and a loosely paved road. But seriously, what fun is that?

We made our way to the appropriately named Sunset Deck about a half hour before sunset. The sun was heading toward the top of a nearby hilltop, with a winding road and a winding river to the left. Promising. We set up our cameras and took a couple of test shots to get everything just right. Rule #1: Frame the shot well before the sun is in position.

Taking pictures of a sunrise or a sunset is tricky business. You have less than a minute while the sun is in transition from too bright to just plain missing. The best pictures happen when the sun is exactly halfway hidden, and the flare from a good lens makes a gorgeous red star over the rest of the picture. A really good lens will even remove the spot flares and only leave the star. I have good lenses, bordering on great. But mostly good. So I got a little spot flare along with my star. Nothing Photoshop can’t handle. Rule #2: The best flare effects happen when the sun’s disc is halfway obscured by the landscape.

We decided to use 6 and 7 stop HDR exposures to capture the full range of colors in the sky and the nearby water. That meant that, at most, we would get two tries to get everything just right.

The sun started sinking into the hilltop, and our first set of exposures started. Really slowly. Turned out the polarizing filters were still on, and the exposures were plodding along at 2, 4, 8 seconds… We quickly stopped the exposures and pulled off the polarizers. Much better. So, rule #3: Keep the polarizers off for sunsets (keep them on for sunrises!).

We each got one good capture and one not-so-good capture of the setting sun. Here is the keeper.

Sunset Transition

After the sun was below the hilltop, we changed lenses to better reach the curving waters of Lake Travis surrounding Pace Bend Park. The water was glimmering silver and gold, and practically glowing compared to the now-darkened landscape.

Gold and silver highlights appear on water as the sun sets

A few minutes later we packed up the gear and were on our way. After packing up the gear, we started the 1.2 mile hike back to the car. Thankfully a full moon was overhead, lighting the way. There was also a road that led back to the trailhead, which was a much better option than taking the trail back. It still took the better part of 20 minutes to make it back to the car, and that was moving at a pretty good pace. So, last Rule, #4: Make sure you can get back to your car in the dark. Flashlights are a necessity, or a full moon. Having both is even better.

So, to summarize:

Rule #1: Frame the shot well before the sun is in position.
Rule #2: The best flare effects happen when the sun’s disc is halfway obscured by the landscape.
Rule #3: Keep the polarizers off for sunsets (keep them on for sunrises!).
Rule #4: Make sure you can get back to your car in the dark. Flashlights are a necessity, or a full moon.

I will be posting more pictures from this trip to my website, Spicewood Photography.

My HDR Workflow

John Margaglione — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:49:27 +0000

I need to write down my workflow, as the HDR process can get really annoying if you miss a step, either in the field (resulting in a botched picture) or in the digital workflow tools (resulting in hours of wasted time).

So here it is. If you have additional steps or better ways of doing these things, please leave a comment!

BEFORE YOU START SHOOTING

Set the camera in aperture mode. It is important that you use the same aperture for all shots in a series, as the depth of field must remain constant in order for the HDR software to properly process multiple exposures into one HDR image.
Set the ISO to 50 or 100, depending on the necessary exposure times. Use the lowest ISO possible that will still take a crisp image. If it is a windy day, or if your subject might move, use a higher ISO setting. Never go above ISO 400, though, as the HDR process will amplify the noise from the camera.
Use a remote trigger with the camera. If this is not possible, use the self-timer mode with a 10-second lag. It is important that the camera be absolutely still in order to get crisp images. The shutter release on the camera will cause a slight shudder, but that is generally not a problem.
Use a sturdy tripod for every shot. Processing times are much shorter when the HDR software doesn’t need to re-align your images. I suggest a carbon-fiber tripod, as it is lightweight in the field and solid as a rock even with the largest pro-body camera and heavy lenses.
Set the camera to take 5 to 7 bracketed exposures. The higher the dynamic range of the scene, the more images you will need. Keep the images within 1ev of each other to ensure smooth transitions in the final image
Put your lens in Manual Focus mode, and turn on Image Stabilization if available. If y want your photos to be as crisp as possible, then don’t rely on the camera for focusing, use your eyes. See the following section on how to get the best possible focus from a dSLR.
Always shoot in RAW mode. RAW files store far more information on the scene, and can be manipulated to produce an accurate image +/- 1ev from the original. These can be used if there is most of your images in a shot are unusable and you still want an HDR product from a single exposure.

TAKING THE SHOT

Compose the picture to your liking.
Focus the image using manual controls through the viewfinder or LCD (if your camera supports Live View).
Zoom in on the image using the LCD (not the lens). Focus again manually, using the LCD. Repeat with higher levels of magnification if available.
Wait for the light; wait for the wind to die down.
Take the shot using a remote trigger.
Review the images. If the first image is too dark, consider shifting the exposures to the right (e.g. from [-3ev, +3ev] to [-2ev, +4ev]). If the last image is too washed out, consider shifting the exposures to the left. If both the first and last exposures are too black/washed out, then consider compressing bracketing to use 1/2ev stops instead of 1ev stops.

AT THE COMPUTER

Download the images into your favorite software (I use Apple’s Aperture).
Use auto-stacking of images if available, this makes it much easier to do the next step, especially if you take multiple images of a subject.
For each image, remove images that are too black or washed out, or do not add any additional detail to the image. Combining images takes a long time unless you have a very, very fast machine. I use a MacBook Pro and it takes several minutes per photo.
For each set of exposures, choose the best one and tag it with text like “Best Exposed Photo”. This photo will be your reference photo, the one you will use to ensure that you are not going overboard with the HDR processing.
Create a new album with only the tagged photos in it. This will be your reference set.
If your HDR software supports RAW files, by all means use them. If not, you will need to export all of your photos to 16-bit uncompressed TIFF files. This can take up a LOT of space. WIth a 21MP camera each image is 120MB! Time to invest in that external terabyte drive you have been thinking about.
Open up your HDR software. I use Photomatix Pro because it has a great batch feature, although this feature only works well if you have the same number of exposures for each photo. Note to Photomatix: let me specify the batch exposure counts like this: 5, 5, 3, 7, 7, 7. Or better yet, give me a really nice GUI that lets me set different parameters for each subset (each set of exposures).
Create HDR masters in OpenEXR format. I prefer OpenEXR, but you could go with the HDR file format as well. There are several great arguments for both formats on the web. Note that there several settings that you can use when creating your EXR masters that help with things like background/subject movement and such. Because I use a tripod and remote trigger, my images are almost always perfectly aligned, so I don’t have to do any repositioning. The one exception would be if I am shooting water that has ripples. If you don’t turn on the background movement feature the water will look really strange. I don’t apply tone curves, so that option is left unchecked as well. Reduce noise/reduce chromatic aberration might be useful if your camera does not handle blacks well. Again, I generally don’t turn any of those on, and if you shoot at low ISO, you shouldn’t need them.
For each EXR master, you will need to do a tone mapping. This is where those master images are needed. Modify the tone mapping parameters until you manage to get a natural color balance. This is different for almost every picture, and can take a significant amount of time.
Save your images to 16-bit TIFF images, and make sure to tell the program what ICC printer profile you will be using to print.

That’s about it. Some thoughts on the process:

Creating beautiful, accurate HDR images is extremely time consuming. As such, you might want to consider taking fewer pictures and spending a lot more time on each one. Some people use digital cameras as a crutch, taking dozens of pictures in the hopes that one will come out well. In my experience this just is not true. Spend as much time as it takes to get the right angle and wait for the light, and you will seldom be disappointed with the results.

Pay special attention to the weather forecast the day before the shoot. If it is going to be windy, you might want to concentrate on very wide-angle shots, or shots of rock formations! Definitely don’t go out to do work in a forest.