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The view from the Flagstaff Bastion; one of the five bastions at the Charles Fort in Kinsale, Ireland.

Flagstaff Bastion by CJ Kern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

When I climbed into this elevator, I felt almost as if I had landed on the set of Blade Runner! Had to be one of the coolest elevators I have been able to ride. I took up and down the eight floors of the building a few times while deciding the best angle to get this shot, which by the way is a 5 shot HDR shot hand held. I did lean my body against the wall of of the elevator to get a bit of stability while shooting the series, all at ISO 800.

Ich bin absoluter Herbstfan. Die Temperaturen sind ( meistens ) nochmal richtig angenehm, die Sonne steht tiefer und lässt alles ganz anders wirken, genauso wie die Herbstfarben eine tolle Stimmung verbreiten.
Gestern waren wir mit den Kindern unterwegs auf einem Waldelebnispfad und hatten sehr viel Spaß. Ausgestattet mit einer “Rehspunggrube”, einem “Fusstastpfad” (dafür ist es leider schon zu kühl, so das wir ihn lediglich unter dem Laub gesucht haben ) , einer Seilbahn über eine Grube usw. kann ich den Weg nur empfehlen.
Heute gings auch viel raus. Zuerst wurde im Garten getobt, danach haben wir die Straße mit Kreide verziert und am Ende sind wir noch zu einem Spielplatz mit einem kleinen Tümpel marschiert.

Hach…ich kann garnicht aufhören zu schwärmen. Ich fühl mich einfach gerade so richtig ausgeglichen.

Herbst ist toll!

Yeah! This building in Berlin is pretty cool . Shot images in two of the atriums, as well as in one of the elevators (that one was a hand held 5 shot HDR). Here is the first shot I decided to post. It felt like I was standing in some kind of holodeck waiting for my chosen “reality” to begin!

Say thank you to One-stop photoshop studio for his interesting re-touching.

This is another attempt at a HDR shot of the cathedral. I like this one.

Photographed by matteo77

Vedi grande su sfondo nero

– License

Canon 30D, 17-40f/4L
Three exposure HDR, manipulated in photoshop

Singapore Flyer.jpg, originally uploaded by anthonli.

An HDR view of the Singapore Flyer.

I’m not sure if it’s the camera lense or the window pane, but the Flyer seems to be tilting away.

Here are the four images of mine that are currently in “The World’s Best Photos of Sigma 10-20mm and Vertorama“.

Just click on the image and it will redirect you to a Flickr Photostream of mine. Happy browsing!

This is the start of a series of blogs on the real cost of wedding photography, and to be honest, photography in general.

This first post is about the kit that is used.

I use Professional Canon cameras and have done for years and years and years – I am a member of the Canon Professional Network. I find them easy to use with a large range of lenses available to me as well as providing everything that I need in a camera.

The kit I use currently are two Canon EOS 5D MArk II. A fantastic piece of 21 megapixel camera equipment that gives me outstanding images every time. Why two bodies? Well, it saves changing lenses to often and I have found that changing lenses in dusty churches is a pain for getting dust on a sensor and the other reason is back-up. That is a word I will use a lot of in this series of postings. You can never have enough backup!!

Clients are paying me to photograph their wedding – so it is vital (I’ll say  that again VITAL!) that you have a back-up camera. If you find a wedding photographer relying on just one camera run a mile. What happens if that camera decides not to work? (And yes it does happen, even with Canon kit!!).

Cost of two Canon EOS 5D Mark II – £3600

Then we have the lenses. I use four main lenses:

Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS L USM – cost £1539.00

Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L USM – cost £999.00

Canon 17-40mm f4.0 L USM – cost £596.00

Canon 24-105mm f4.0 L IS USM – cost £928.00

I also use a 50mm f1.4 that is the cheapest lens I have – £99

S0 that little lost costs around £7700.00

How about flash units? I have two Canon 580 EX II Speedlights – cost £299.99 each.

So you can see that with the standard kit I use the total cost is knocking on around £8300.00

When you add filters to the lenses (for protection more than anything else) and the other little bits and bobs my whole camera set-up is close to £9000.00

… and you can see the difference in the quality of images I produce from you ‘Uncle Robert’s” consumer level DSLR with a standard kit lens – especially when you want an image enlarged!

I need to ensure that all my kit is serviceable, up to date, clean and will function when I need it to. That means replacing the kit everything three years, so every year I need to save about £3000 just to set aside for new kit.

More to follow ladies and gents…

Andrew Miller

www.andrew-miller.co.uk

www.rubusphotos.co.uk

Well, let me start off by saying CONGRATULATIONS ROUGHRIDERS!!!!  WooHoo!!!  They won tonight and they are in the Grey Cup!!!  I’m a huge Rider fan!!  WooHoo!!!

Okay now that I released my excitement I  can get back to the real reason I started this blog….

My assignment this week was to take an image and convert it to black and white through Photomatix.   I decided to photograph one of our local wineries.  Here is a photo I took of the winery in color.  I inserted this image because I absolutely love it and I’m proud of it.

Okay now, I’ll show you how the HDR images in black and white turned out and this is how I did it:

1.  Take your photo or your series of photos (you can use a single raw image if you wish) and make adjustments in Photomatix to taste.

2.  Click on Process.  If you don’t like the result, you can click on tonemap and make further adjustments.

3.  Once finished making adjustments to your desired image, click on process, then click on tonemap and take your saturation levels down to zero.

4.  Make adjustments to the way you want your photo to look like and experiment with those sliders, don’t be afraid to move those levels around.

5.  Click on process and if you do not like the resulting image, you can click on tonemap again and make further adjustments.

I’m beginning to realize there are really no rules when it comes to making adjustments in Photomatix and HDR.  It is up to how you want the images to look like.

Here are some sample photos of HDR in black and White:

Nous entamons une série avec le photographe Serge Ramelli.

L’objectif est de permettre d’en savoir plus sur l’homme, ses méthodes de travail, sa vision de la photographie et de partager une expérience.

Bonjour Serge, pouvez-vous vous présenter ?

Je suis photographe pro depuis 3 ans, je suis autodidacte, il y 4 ans de cela j’ai passé quelques jours de vacances avec un designer photgraphe qui m’a montré les possibilités de la photographie numérique en terme de prise de vue et de retouche, le virus m’a pris du jour au lendemain, j’ai commencé à prendre des cours de photos sur Internet et j’ai passé tout mon temps libre à faire de la photo. Au bout d’un an, j’ai réussi à gagner de l’argent avec, pour moi c’est la rêve de pouvoir gagner de l’argent avec un activité aussi créative !

D’où vous est venue la passion de la photo ?

Très jeune, j’ai toujours été passionnée par l’image et plus précisément par le fait d’être réalisateur de film, faire un film demande beaucoup de ressources en termes de personnel et d’argent, faire de la photo est beaucoup plus simple et instinctif, je fais donc de la photo pendant que je me forme en tant que réalisateur de film, qui est mon véritable but.

Que recherchez-vous lors de la prise de vue ?

Je recherche des paysages grandioses, dramatiques, qui communiquent une émotion comme dans certains films au cinéma.

Comment décririez-vous vos photos ?

Comme des cadres cinéma, qui donne une ambiance d’un moment, j’essaie de plonger le “spectateur” dans un univers plus joli, plus grand que la réalité.

Pouvez-vous nous présenter une de vos photos que vous aimez particulièrement et nous expliquer votre choix ?

J’aime beaucoup la photo que j’ai prise du Lapin Agile, ce soir là, je donnais un cours de photo à un ami, on essayait de prendre les photos classiques des marches de Montmartre, après avoir remballé le matériel, j’ai pris mon scooter pour rentrer chez moi et par hasard je suis tombé sur le lapin agile, il y avait une ambiance d’un autre temps, j’ai ressorti tout de suite mon matériel et j’ai fait une photo HDR.

Le Lapin Agile par Serge Ramelli

Vous êtes un des grands spécialistes du HDR, comment avez-vous découvert cette technique et comment avez-vous fait pour la maîtriser ?

En lisant un article dans un magazine il y a 4 ans par un photographe Danois dont je ne me rapelle plus le nom j’ai vu ma première photo HDR, j’ai fait wow je veux faire cela, il parlait du logiciel Photomatix, ensuite j’ai passé tout mon temps a essayer de comprendre ce logiciel. A l’époque, il n’a y avait pas beaucoup de tutoriaux sur le sujet, mais bon j’y suis arrivé. Depuis, j’ai fait des tutoriaux sur mon site pour d’autres qui voudraient s’y mettre : http://photoserge.com/turoriels-hdr/

Comment travaillez-vous (préparation, prise de vue, traitement des images) ?

Je travaille toujours sur trépied, j’utilise la minuteur couplé avec le bracketing +2 – 2. Vous pouvez voir la vidéo ci-dessous pour les réglages : http://photoserge.com/turoriels-hdr/

D’où vous vient votre inspiration (photographes, univers, sujets …) ?

Principalement des films tels que Amelie Poulain, les films de Luc Besson, certains films de Spielberg, bref le grand cinéma !

Quel matériel utilisez-vous ?

Un Canon 5D MArk 1 et Mark 2, avec un objectif Canon 17-40 F4, Canon 50 F 2,8, Canon 100 F 1,8 macro

Quels conseils donneriez-vous à un photographe qui débute ?

De lire touts les livres de Scott Kelby, l’homme est un pédagogue de génie, j’ai quasiment tout appris avec ses livres

Quels sont vos projets en cours ?

Je commence a travailler sur des projets publicitaires, je suis un projet de photo pour une marque d’huile dans la compétition de Moto.

Où peut-on retrouver vos photos et suivre votre actualité ?

sur mon site www.photoserge.com

Avez-vous des artistes préférés parmi ceux présents sur mabellephoto.com ?

J’adore le travail de Philippe Sainte-Laudy, couleur, composition, tout !

Merci Serge Ramelli !

Retrouvez la galerie de Serge Ramelli : galerie

La conciergerie par Serge Ramelli

Place de la Concorde par Serge Ramelli

• tutoriel sur Bokeh.fr : tutoriel HDR
• mercredi pratique de Phototrend.fr : mercredi pratique HDR

This shot is a bit different than some I have posted recently. For one, we are not in an URBEX (Urban Exploration) environment. You might also notice that I have chosen to process this to look a lot closer to what you would see if you were standing right next to me. What do you think? Not a bad place to shoot. Lots of great shapes for the eye to explore!

Since finishing the Worldwide KAP Week 2009 Book, I’ve had more time to do photography, and to at least attempt to do KAP.  Last weekend I got out of the house for a few hours to do some KAP up on Mana Road, a dirt track that runs from Waimea to Mauna Kea’s Summit Road on the south side of the mountain.  The weather in Waimea was rainy, and my plan was to keep driving up Mana Road until I came out above the clouds.  This worked out better than I thought, and I eventually got to do some KAP at a large water shed.

The photo received some positive comments when I posted it on Flickr, including one from someone who said how much they enjoyed seeing pictures of Hawaii that don’t appear in the tourist literature.  In looking through the photography I’ve done, I realized a good percentage of it has been done at beaches, or in places that are stereotypically tropical Hawaii.  I hate getting stuck in a rut, so the comment on the water shed photo was timely.  Exactly the kind of direction I need!

Yesterday my wife took my daughters to dance, so my son and I threw our stuff in my Jeep and headed out.  My plan was to hike out to some remote kipukas on the slopes of Mauna Loa and try my hand at KAP there.  The wind was favorable, but as it turns out the weather wasn’t.

A kipuka is a forested cinder cone that has been surrounded by fresh lava.  This cuts off the kipuka from the surrounding area, making it a pocket ecology.  Kipukas are common wherever there are cinder cones out on a relatively flat area near an active volcano.  The saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea has dozens of kipukas that host native Hawaiian flora, and numerous endemic Hawaiian birds.  My son packed binoculars to do some bird watching, and I packed my KAP gear.

By the time we got to the turn off to Mauna Kea Summit Road, it was obvious our plans had to change.  A line of clouds was blowing through the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and already the area we were planning to hike was covered by clouds.  Rather than turn around and call it a loss, we pulled in at Puu Huluhulu, a large kipuka situated at the turn off to Summit Road.  My son and I have hiked this area frequently, and it’s a favorite of ours.  I had some level of hope that we could reach the top before the clouds rolled through, and that I could get a kite and camera airborne before things socked in.  But the clouds moved faster than we did.  By the time we got to the top everything was an opaque mass of white.  My kites stayed in my bag, but my camera didn’t.  A day that’s bad for kite aerial photography is often a good day for ground photography.  The most obvious subject to work with was the twisted trees that grow on Puu Huluhulu.  It’s trees like this that originally inspired the art of bonsai.

But there were a number of other subjects that also drew my eye.  Completely overcast skies often make for poor landscapes, but they make for great macro photography.  This plant is about as big as my palm, though the adult plants grow much larger.

When the clouds and the wet and the cold finally got to be too much, my son and I hiked back to my Jeep.  The misty photography and macro photography felt good, but I was still disappointed that we were packing it in and turning around.  But then I remembered just how close the far end of Mana Road was.  Even better, Mana Road does lead back to Waimea.  It’s not the smoothest ride home, but it was a chance to keep the day from ending before it had really started.  I asked, my son said yes, so we headed out Mana Road.

Not too far in we ran across a really picturesque stream bed.  The water wasn’t running, which was a little surprising given the amount of rain the area had received recently, but we were fairly high up so things had probably drained well before we got there.  The clouds that had made KAP at Puu Huluhulu impossible had cleared the air between Mauna Kea and Puu Oo, one of the two active vents on Kilauea.  The two steam plumes from Puu Oo and from the lava flow entering the sea near Kalapana were both clearly visible.  I set up my tripod and lined things up to make a panorama.  When I metered the sky and the ground, however, I found I couldn’t get both the foreground and the steam plumes in the same shot.  The sky was just too bright, and the overcast sky made the foreground too dark.  So I wound up shooting it as an HDR panorama.  It wasn’t quite the look I was after, but it served to balance the two strongest elements in the frame.

By the time I’d finished the panorama, my son had hiked up slope to a really pretty tree.  Rather than follow, I hiked down the stream bed until I reached the pools I’d spotted while photographing the panorama.  The overcast sky made for nice reflections, so I arranged things for a low angle shot that would pick that up.

The same soft light that made for good close-up photography on Puu Huluhulu also made for nice macro photography here.  Some recent experiments at work using CombineZP made me want to try the technique in the field.  The idea is to take pictures at a range of focuses, and use CombineZP to take the sharpest part of each shot and combine them into a single image with infinite apparent depth of field.  I don’t know how enamored I would be of this if I didn’t have CHDK running on my A650.  One of my favorite scripts is a bracketing script that will bracket whatever your last control setting was.  I use it to do HDR photography, but it can also be used for CombineZP.  The A650 can be set to do manual focus, so once MF is selected, the bracketing script can be set up to rack focus through a nice wide range, taking pictures along the way.  I set this to do 37 focus positions, shifting by 3 clicks in focus each time.  (The A650 has well over a hundred focus positions, so techniques like this are quite straightforward.)  When I got home I put the files into CombineZP, and got this in return.

A few miles down the road my son spotted nene off to one side.  I stopped and got out, with some faint hope of photographing them.  Unfortunately the A650 doesn’t have much in the way of long focal length in its zoom range.  I’ve tried several times to photograph nene with my 20D, but light, weather, or the patience of the birds has always thwarted my attempts.  I was overjoyed to find these geese to be very patient with me.  They let me get quite close without reacting much at all.  I was happy to walk away with a couple of good photographs of them.

Mana Road is miles and miles of beautiful scenery that changes every time you go around a bend.  I’ve been out on it several times, and each time there is something different to photograph.  I still haven’t figured out quite how I’d like to photograph the koa forest the road winds through, so that’s still one I have to return to once I have a clear idea in mind.  Just past the koa forest, though, the road became quite muddy.  At one point the road dropped away entirely, and I was looking out past my Jeep’s hood into space.

I’m sure there are those who would give a loud “WHOOP!” and hit the gas, but I’m not one of those.  I hit my brakes, turned off the engine, and got out to look.  I saw a muddy slope with about a 25% grade, maybe 40′ high, and covered in skid marks.  I wasn’t keen on the idea of driving it, but of course I had to photograph it!

The wind was too gusty to get a stable kite shot, so I opted for my 20′ carbon fiber pole.  This is a converted breem pole I picked up for $20 and stuck a ball head on for photographic work.  Setting up the shot took about as much time as setting up a tripod, and the CHDK intervalometer script meant I didn’t need to remotely trigger the camera.  All that was required was a little patience waiting for the “click!” sounds coming from the camera, and lining things up between shots.

After photographing my Jeep and the slippery slope, I wound up backing out and going down the lower road.  This avoided the inevitable skid, and got us back on track.  A little further down the road we came across a water shed.  This is smaller than the water shed I’d photographed the previous week, but being closer to the road it offered more opportunities for close photography.  These water sheds are essentially large catchment systems used to collect rainwater for the cattle that graze in the surrounding fields.  The roof of the shed has gutters that are piped into the tanks.  When it rains (which it does quite frequently) the rainwater runs off the roof, through the pipes, and into the tanks.  The water in the tanks is then diverted to troughs for the cattle to use.

I’ve driven past this water shed several times, and have made numerous attempts to photograph it.  But I’ve been disappointed with the results.  I know the picture I’m after, but I just never managed to get it.  This time I got close.

Ideally I’d have liked to be about five to six feet to the right, and aimed the camera more to the left.  Unfortunately there’s a barbed wire fence in the way that makes that angle painful, if not impossible.  I’m still working out how to get the shot I’m after, but this one worked out better than the others I’ve tried.

I did finally get a kite airborne once.  I was on the leeward side of a stand of trees, so the air was minimal and tossy at the ground, and blowing like a freight train higher up.  Kite handling was rough, heavy, and not fun at all.  I clipped on my KAP rig and tried to do some photography of a water tank that’s managed by the water department.  With the wind through the trees and the altitude of the rig, I couldn’t hear the shutter whenever I told it to take a picture.  So it was no surprise when I got home and saw that the only picture I had from the one KAP session of the day was a picture of my feet when I tested the shutter on the ground.

Ah well…

So it was the KAP outing that wasn’t, but I still had a good time.

- Tom

Belly up to the bar my friends. Actually, a few years ago when we stopped, you could still do that, albeit carefully (check out the photos at the end of this posting from 2007 here). All the cool old retro stools, rugs, counters, etc have been stripped by idiots taking a lot more than photos. If you’re traveling on 395 between Olancha and Lone Pine, check it out before it’s gone completely.

This is an HDR photo, finished off with a little Lucis filter for added punch.

Stream in Chantilly forest

I went to Chantilly with Serge Ramelli (photoserge.com) to try and shoot some autumn photos. By the time we arrived, the clouds had covered the sky entirely and we had a grey and rainy setting. Pretty boring.

As we left though we saw this little stream which I found quite interesting. As the street lights came on it gave it a warmer orange glow which fit perfectly with the blueish light that the sunset was giving us.

I shot this in HDR because I wanted to get all the light of the background behind the grids but I took out the “glowy” or painterly effect.

I particularly liked the effect of the water.

Details are:  Aperture: f/9  –  Exposure: 25 sec  -  Focal lengths: 18mm

The countryside on the Dingle Peninsula, Ireland.

Field of Heather by CJ Kern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This is captured at the Audi Showroom located at the corner of Victoria and Swanston Streets. I like the shiny metal and sleek rings for its logo. Audilicious baby!

HDR (-1, 0, +1), f/4.5, 0.6 secs tripod mounted

Low Hall Pump House is a Grade II listed building constructed in 1885 it houses Marshall C Class engines from 1896.

Information from www.leavalleyexperience.co.uk

The building was constructed of London stock brick with blue engineering bricks around the doors and windows.

The two Hayward Tyler steam pumps that moved the effluent were situated in a pit at the front end of the building. The steam power was generated by two boilers situated in the left bay.

It is also recorded in the Councils minutes of 1885 that Tangyes of Birmingham also installed a single horizontal engine for the cost of £420 which was situated next to the pit, however, what this engine was installed for still remains a mystery today despite research.

Accommodation for the chief engine room attendant was provided in No. 1 Farm Cottages in Acacia Road at a rent of 10/- per week.

The pump pit was filled in during the 1970s and is currently being excavated

The Pump House 1896

In 1896 the two 1885 bays were enlarged and a third bay was added to the left of the building. The Marshall C class steam engines, boilers, and plant equipment were also added at this time; however no plans of the 1896 extension have been found to-date.

Tenders were invited by the Council in early 1896 for designs on a way to connect the new Marshalls engines with the original 1885 Hayward Tyler steam pumps.

We have presumed that this must have been successful and the engines did in fact power the pumps via overhead line shafting, of which can still be seen today.

In addition to this various pieces of workshop equipment were placed in the pump house. The engines also provided the power to drive these machines. Originally fuelled by coal, the steam plant was converted in the early 1900s to work from domestic refuse which was burnt elsewhere on the site.

However, by the early 1970s the general state of the boiler made the raising of steam then a rather haphazard affair. The installation of electrically powered pumps then sealed the engines’ fate, and a large part of the 1885 buildings was demolished The Great Eastern Railway also provided a connection to the site from Lea Bridge Road. The site also had a small locomotive shed and locomotive at one. From 1928 the pumps moved sewerage directly into the LCC sewerage system. time.

The Pump House Today

The pump house today contains what are believed to be the only surviving pair of “C” class horizontal steam engines built by the Lincolnshire firm of William Marshall Sons & Co.

•  The engines are also Grade II listed along with the steel beams within the building.

•  The installation of these engines and a boiler cost £220.

Today, Marshall’s are best remembered as builders of traction engines, but in their nineteenth century heyday the firm produced an extraordinarily diverse range of products, from threshing machines to tea plantation equipment.

The two engines bear the makers’ numbers 27834 and 27835 and were installed in the pump house during the spring of 1897, being steamed for the first time in May of that year.

The engines were not designed to (and cannot be) run together – rather, one engine would have worked for two weeks running continuously whilst the other received maintenance.

It would have taken about forty minutes to disconnect one engine from the flywheel and to connect the other. This process was generally carried out in the early hours of the morning when the sewerage flow was at its slackest.

The Low Hall Manor and the Farm

The area now occupied by the Museum was purchased from the Bosanquet family in 1877 by Walthamstow Urban District Council.

Prior to this, the 200 acre site had been farmed from at least the early mediaeval period (traces of a moat which surrounded the mediaeval manor house and farm survived until comparatively recently).

Although the site is therefore of considerable antiquity, today nothing remains above ground of the original seventeenth century manor house and farm as they were both completely destroyed by a flying bomb in 1944.

In 1997 the site was excavated by MOLAS (Museum of London Archaeology Service), and a number of interesting artefacts were found. It is proposed to display some of these at the museum in the future.

My practice

This is a close up of a valve from William Marshall Sons & Co. “C” class horizontal steam engine. I took three different exposures and using Photomatix – for info on this technique see my high dynamic range post – I created a tone mapped image, which I then converted into black&white.

Report : 2006 Commercialisation Training Study Framework AIC DEST

As part of Backing Australia’s Ability – Building our Future through Science and Innovation the Australian Government announced the creation of the Commercialisation Training Scheme (CTS). The CTS will provide around 250 awards each year for higher degree research1 (HDR) students to study for the equivalent of one semester to obtain a graduate qualification in fields such as commercialisation of research or management of intellectual property.

The objective of the CTS is to address this skills deficit and, by doing so:

• enable Australia’s next generation of researchers to better understand the commercial potential of research and better plan research activities in order to achieve commercial benefit;

• enhance the career outcomes of HDR students;

• provide a more highly skilled and valued research workforce for employers; and
• generate flow-on benefits to the broader Australian community through the enhanced delivery of innovative research-based products and services.

While there has been general acknowledgement that researchers would benefit from additional commercialisation skills, there has been little detailed examination of the research commercialisation skills, knowledge and experience most valued by those involved in research commercialisation in Australia. The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) sought to address this lack of research by engaging the Australian Institute for Commercialisation to undertake a study designed to:

• identify the research commercialisation skills, knowledge and experiences that would best equip Australia’s next generation of researchers with the know-how to bring research-based ideas, inventions and innovations to market;