Cat Pier
Not much in the way of subjects out at the Pier, either. I made an effort to get out as early as possible, and the daily regatta appeared to be underway, but as you can tell by the list of the two sailboats, the winds were very strong and I suspect they were staying close to shore:

The range of tones in this image is very limited due to the flat lighting, along with the large expanses of grey sky and water. The haziness from the humidity also made the island in the background a neutral-grey shade, so there is very little contrast to this image. But if I work the contrast too hard, the shadows under the Pier will lose all of their detail, so I have to be careful with this one. I started off with Fill Light of 8 and Vibrance of +21. I left Exposure and highlight Recovery alone.

I started off with a pretty wild Curves setting:

I realized, based on what I wrote in the paragraph above, that I needed to be gentle with the low tones, but I wanted to spread the mid and upper tones out a bit more. So I started with my basic contrast-reduction curve, and then pulled the mid tones down, too. I liked it, but I ended up pulling the upper and mid tones down even more, and actually reducing the amount I’d pushed the lower tones up.

Then I added Saturation at +16, resized, and Smart Sharpened 80%:

The exposure was fine. There were no blown highlights, and I did the best I could to get the limited tones in the image represented by the most information. This was a scene that would have been tough to get terribly wrong.

Compositionally, I take a very different view of this image from those of the most recent past. Getting away (for a moment) from the bright saturated big subjects I’d been gifted with recently, this has a nice stark, sad feeling to it. The list of the two sailboats give it a sense of imbalance, and the bright red buoy in the foreground gives a strong visual anchor. A friend of mine suggested that I needed to go out and shoot the pictures that tourists don’t see – the mangy mooses, the mud seasons, and the part of fall after all the leaves have fallen but before the snow makes everything pretty again. I think this might just be one of those images.

Globe Compass
If one momentarily ignores the terrible light and the lack of contrast, this is actually the image I try to get of this scene. The cruise ships are still coming in to port, so it’s been very easy to get people in my images, and I’m pretty happy with this one:

Given how hard I’ve been pushing my images and risking blown highlights, it’s surprising I ended up increasing the Exposure on this shot +0.85 stops, and then only using highlight Recovery of 15. I brought the Fill Light up to 23, Saturation to +18 and Vibrance to +12.

I got crazy with Curves again:

I again started with my usual contrast-reduction curve. Then I grabbed the mid tones and pulled them up and down to see what I liked. I found they looked good pulled up, but I also liked the upper tones pulled way down because it really accentuated the texture in the clouds. Once I had the mid and high tones as I wanted them, I found the lows were a bit too high, so I pulled them back a bit.

I finished off with a Vibrance of +22 to restore the color saturation, and then resized and Smart Sharpened 80%:

This is another one of those shots that I just can’t believe the before and after are from the same file! I did under expose this image pretty badly, nearly one full stop. It was difficult to juggle between blowing out the sky and keeping any shadow detail. If I had more time to shoot, I would have probably pushed the exposure up at least 2/3rds of a stop, but I think it worked out okay.

As I said above, I’m pretty much thrilled with this image compositionally. I do like the shadow I had leading into the frame from the 21st’s images, but in its absence, this is the framing and positioning I’m looking for. The texture of the grey clouds adds some interest, and I think it looks pretty good.

My weight this day was 181.2lbs.

So for the time being, I will be taking a brief hiatus. There is a wonderful pond at the facility where I will be working, and there is a large family of geese there. Once I’ve gotten in and settled, I will ask for permission to use them as my daily subject. Since the winter is approaching, having something I can get to without a 30 minute walk or dealing with parking may not be a bad idea. Though it does mean you may have to suffer though some pictures shot through glass! Hey, it’s not like I’m a pro – I don’t need to freeze for my art!

To the few that have been reading, thank you very much. I’ll do my absolute best to begin putting up images soon, though I expect I’ll be taking a slightly more varied approach to my compositions when I resume.

Cat Pier

I barely breathed on this during the RAW conversion, with the highlight Recovery just getting up to 5, and the Fill Light at 17. I tried pulling the Fill Light up more, but the shadows under the pier were either fairly well lit or completely lost to shadow – there really wasn’t much middle ground to recover. Then I pulled the Vibrance up to +17 and opened it up in Photoshop.

I made an effort with both Curves and Levels, but neither made any useable difference. I added a Saturation adjustment of +16, resized, and Smart Sharpened 80%:

The fact that I made effectively zero changes to the image is all the justification I need to say that I got the exposure on this one perfect. The light was great, and it really was just very easy to get this one right.

I was originally a little bummed that there wasn’t a more unique or compelling subject for this image, but I don’t believe I’ve gotten a sailboat this close to the camera and this perfectly positioned in the frame. I think it’s a great image and I’m very happy with it!

Globe Compass
I finally got everything into this image I have been trying for for the past two weeks or so. There have been a number of cruise ships in town lately, so getting people into my image here has been far easier:

I technically underexposed this image as I was trying to minimize the blown highlights. Many people were wearing white and it was causing some problems with overexposure. I pushed the Exposure back up +0.40 stops, then used highlight Recovery at 15 and Fill Light at 21 to pull up the shadows a bit. Then I hit the Vibrance at +17.

Then I used the slightest little touch of Curves set for contrast-reduction (pulling up the lows and pushing down the highs,) and Saturation of +8. After resizing and Smart Sharpening 80%:

So again, I underexposed it a bit to contain the highlights, but not so much that I feel it was a “mistake.” It was a technical decision more than an error I feel. Normally I’d have been worried about loss of detail, especially in the darker tones, but since I did so little to manipulate the image after the RAW conversion, I think I made a good decision. I actually had another image of the scene that was more brightly exposed, but I wasn’t as happy with the composition, and I felt the exposure on this image was not so bad that it was distracting.

As for composition, this is the image I’ve been trying to get ever since I noticed that light post shadow. It comes right in from the bottom of the image and leads right up to the people walking through. The people are in exactly the position I want them in the frame, and they do a great job of mirroring the Globe in the scene. Finally, I managed to keep my own shadow out of the image, so that for me makes this the best I’ve done to date. Which is good, since it’s likely one of the last as well!

My weight this day was 183.4lbs.

Cat Pier
Not a lot of good subjects out this day, either. I hadn’t weeded through the various images I made this day before now sitting down to put them up here, and I see why – there was no one remarkable shot that said, “THIS is the one to use!” I liked this one the most though – the ferry is in a pretty decent location, and with the low tide the pier shows up nicely:

This was pretty much just overexposed, so I started by pulling the exposure down -0.4 stops. I still needed a highlight Recovery of 23 on top of that. The better side was that the lower tones were very well exposed, but I pulled the Fill Light up to 9 just for taste. Then I pushed Vibrance up to +22 to try to get some texture in the water.

I used Curves to increase the contrast, but just BARELY nudged the lows a little darker and the highs a little lighter. Any more and the colors became far too saturated, so I stopped there – resized and Smart Sharpened 80%:

As I said, I completely woofed the exposure on this one. It really was aggressively overexposed in the camera. This was another one of those times where I had forgotten how much can be “fixed” when working with the RAW image from the camera. In part because I have become so used to the great light over the past weeks, and in part because I’ve been getting better exposures, I had forgotten. Still, I’d much rather have better exposures in the camera, but the occasional slip is to be expected at my level.

I know the composition is a bit boring, with the stern of the ferry so far in the distance. I like the way the cribbing is showing due to the lower tide, though, and I think it becomes the main subject. Given that distinction, though, the section of the cargo ship in the background and the ferry become a little distracting. Again, far from my best, but the color and texture are nice to have.

Globe Compass
Again, I was just too late with this shot. I didn’t think to bring my flash, and this image really needed some additional light to get the full range of tones compressed down. So much like the Pier image, this one will be more rescue than reverie:

To begin the rescue, I pushed the exposure up +0.80 stops. Normally I’d say that meant I really missed the exposure, but the sky was so light I had to keep the shutter speed up to keep it from being completely blown out. I pushed the highlight Recovery up to 55, and the Fill Light to 40. At this point the foreground is getting really washed out and I probably should have even backed that off a bit, but I decided to see how bad it would look. Finally I pushed Vibrance up to +28 to try to get back some definition to the colors.

I used my usual contrast-reduction Curve, but with a bit of a twist. Instead of leaving the center of the tonal palette pinned, I pulled it up the curve a bit, because I wanted more of the darker tones lightened, and fewer of the lighter tones darkened:

Then I added a Saturation adjustment at +27, resized, and Smart Sharpened 80%:

From an exposure standpoint, anyone trying to generate technically-correct output would have walked to a different position with a smaller range of brightness, or brought their own lighting with them. This range is simply too large to be represented with my camera. So this really was just a rescue operation. From that standpoint, I think the post-processing went well, but the original exposure was still poor.

Compositionally, the late hour of the day means that the lightpost shadow I’ve been working with is missing, and the couple are a little too far to the left of the image, but otherwise I really like how this came out. Once the tones were compressed to fit the scene, the result was very pleasing I thought. If nothing else, images like these just encourage me to shoot better the next day when I can.

For some reason, I failed to note my weight this day, so I guess I’ll have to wait until I put up the next day’s images…

In my very first entry, I subtitled this ‘blog my “Unemployment Photography Project,” since that’s what motivated me to start in the first place. I even named the folder in which the pictures are stored “Unemployment Project.”

You’ve likely surmised at this point that my current tenure as an unemployed professional is about to come to an end. I accepted a position and will start anew on Monday, the 28th. I will ultimately be relocating as part of this transition, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I suspect these next few entries will be my last for a little while until I get settled again, and then I’ll select some new targets and get back out there with my camera!

Cat Pier
This image has been waiting far too long to make it up here! Again, with the sun getting lower in the sky each day, I have started getting out earlier to push the shadows around my images. For this one, I was very lucky to find this large tanker coming in to port. I took my time and waited for it to move into my usual frame. I then took a series of images so that I could pick through them after the fact. I liked this one the best, with the tanker filling the frame and the tugboat pushing alongside:

The RAW conversion was very easy, I set the highlight Recovery to 11 along with the Fill Light, and pushed the Vibrance up to +17.

I did end up playing with Curves in Photoshop, and here’s what I settled on:

I puled up the center, but the lighter tones (specifically the face of the ship’s superstructure) really washed out, so I pulled those back down. The shadows in the Pier were still a little too dark, so I pulled them up a bit over the previous curve. Then everything looked a little overdone, so I pulled both the middle and low points back down a bit. I turned the layer on and off to make sure I preferred it. I then added Saturation of +20 to regain the richness lost by lightening the image. The I resized and Smart Sharpened 80%:

Because I had so long to work with this scene, the exposure was absolutely perfect. I could have left the highlight Recovery alone, but I felt I liked the overall feel better with it at 11. Much the same could be said of Fill Light as well, but I do love to try to bring up the shadow detail as much as I can.

Compositionally, the only thing I would have changed about this image is the speeding fishing boat right at the right edge of the frame. I’d prefer it either further back into the frame, or out entirely. Besides the large ship and it’s superstructure, I love all of the detail in the scene. The intricate piping and walkways on the tanker, the tug, everything. The one detail I’m totally enamored with is the reflection of the tug in the hull of the tanker. It was tough to see in the RAW conversion, but by pushing things together a bit, it really comes through in the final image.

Globe Compass
Can I just say I’m still loving this light? The circular polarizer did it again, and if I had to stick with this totally un-processed RAW conversion, I’d still be happy:

Of course, I don’t have to stick with it, so the first step to overworked joyousness was highlight Recovery of 23, Fill Light of 19, and Vibrance of +22.

And as it turned out, that was the only step. I just resized and Smart Sharpened 80% and here you go:

I love the exposure here. I had a few little blown highlights, but I’ve come to expect those in this scene, and the detail I kept in the darker tones is completely worth it to me.

Of course, I’d love to have some people in my image, anywhere in my image. But as I keep getting out earlier, I keep steering that shadow from the light post nearer to where I like to put my people, and I like the way it helps to frame it up.

My weight this day was 184.6lbs.

Still, I didn’t waste the last good day and got out to enjoy it!

Cat Pier
There were lots of little sailboats and smaller craft out on the water, but as I was approaching my shooting spot, I saw this larger sailboat in the distance and decided to wait for it to enter the frame:

There were very few blown highlights, but I decided to push the overall Exposure down -0.3, and that left me with a highlight Recovery of 16, to which I added Fill Light of 16 as well. I pushed the Vibrance up to +13, and then took the image into Photoshop.

I added the Curves setting below. I tried pulling up the normal low-tone point I do, and it caused the water to lighten up too much without really helping the cribbing under the pier. So I used this instead, which I preferred:

Then I added a Saturation of +10, resized and Smart Sharpened 80%:

I like the position of the Pier and the sailboat in the image, and the position and strength of the sun give a lot of texture to the shadows. I especially like the shadows cast on the sails of the ship, especially the stern-most sail with the texture of the rigging over the sail and shadow. I wish the moored sailboat just behind the Pier weren’t there, and the cargo freighter behind the main sailboat is a bit distracting, but I think the bright white of the sailboat draws enough attention.

I played a bit with the exposure shooting this scene. I shot a few slightly more underexposed, but I preferred this exposure. I did have to push it back down a bit, and I still needed some highlight recovery, but I liked the overall result, especially with the detail I was able to bring out in some of the deeper shadows. If I were shooting in JPG this would probably have been a little overcooked, but I’d say the exposure was about the best it could be for shooting in RAW.

Globe Compass:
When I got this one home I was pretty much floored – the saturation and depth of the colors, especially the sky, are just breathtaking. This is one image where, even in the absence of my usual people, I’d be perfectly happy leaving it untouched. Of course, I rarely do, but it’s nice when it all comes together:

Something about the light yesterday was just like cheating, as this image didn’t need much RAW work either. The highlight Recovery was just 13, and I decided to push it a bit with Fill Light of 17. I popped Vibrance up to +12 just because I can, but frankly it would have been fine without it.

I played with Curves a bit in Photoshop, but I think I pushed about as hard as I could with the Fill Light during the RAW conversion. So I just threw in Saturation of +9, resized, and Smart Sharpened 80%:

I’d love to have had some people in the image, besides those hiding on the bench in the background, but I’m still very happy with the position of the lightpost shadow. As I’ve been mentioning, I continue to go out earlier to try to push the shadow over further in the image so it leads into the scene. Ultimately I want it pointing down the sidewalk to the left, leading right to the people who I will ultimately be able to position properly. And given that there was a cruise ship in yesterday, it’s somewhat surprising there was less foot traffic as I was shooting.

But I love the exposure. This is probably the least I’ve had to push the RAW conversion of this particular scene, and I think it shows. I did use a circular polarizer to darken up the sky, but I just love everything about the colors and light of this particular image. As the days cool off, we’ll see what happens to my exposures, though.

My weight yesterday was 186lbs.

Cat Pier:
I managed to catch the outbound ferry this time, but due to the shipping lanes, it was difficult to get it where I like in the image:

This is an interesting image. I want to keep as much of the shadow detail as possible, but I also want to have an even balance of tones throughout the image. When I started the RAW conversion, I set the highlight Recovery to 21, and the Vibrance to +33. While I would normally push up the fill light to lighten the shadows, take a look at the histogram:

You can see that it’s already pretty well bunched-up. If I push in the Fill Light, I’ll have even less detail in the deeper shadows. To restore the lightness in the shadows without pushing the detail up too far, I used Curves. I pulled up the low-tones in Curves, but I kept the mid- and high-tones where they were. This lightened up the shadows under the Pier, but didn’t collapse the histogram in towards the center as much as the Fill Light would have. I then increased the Vibrance to +21 to make up for some of the lightening in the water. Finally, I resized and Smart Sharpened 100%. Since the light here generates less contrast, the higher sharpening percentage helps enhance the detail:

I already mentioned that I’m not thrilled with this image compositionally. With school back in session, the midweek activity is down significantly. This is making it harder to get interesting subjects into my images. But as you can see looking at the histogram above, the exposure here was perfect. There were just the slightest blown highlights, but they were easily corrected. With the softer lighting, it was very easy to take advantage of the detail in the rest of the image. Not my best capture at this location, but it’s at least well-exposed and I think the finished image is acceptable, if not stunning.

Globe Compass
Remember how I mentioned a few entries back that a better photographer would have taken advantage of the shadow from the light post to help pull the eye into the image. Well, I am trying to become a better photographer, so I started getting out earlier to see if I could get it right. I think this one is pretty close given the position of the sun this time of year:

Now, while I love the composition, the lighting needs some work. The RAW conversion did the bulk of that for me. I used highlight Recovery of only 10, but I did push the Fill Light up to 20. The lighting was fairly even, but unlike the Pier image, the histogram was well spread-out and I needed the Fill Light to push the shadows back into the histogram. Because the sun is filtering partly through some clouds again, I increased the Saturation to +18, which helped all the colors, then I brought the Vibrance up to +15 to boost the blues and greens.

In Photoshop, I used Curves and pulled up the center of the Curve. This lightened things overall, which helped the image look even sunnier. I then added a Vibrance adjustment at +15 to further boost the sunny feel. Then resized and Smart Sharpened, this time 80% because there was enough sun to enhance the detail, here is my final image:

Compositionally, I’m beside myself with this image. I’d like the light-post shadow to be running more to the left of the Globe to pull your eye in to that space between the two, but I think if I came out that early, the sun would be too high this time of year and the shadow would be too short. I was initially disappointed that the sun wasn’t out fully for this image, but then I noticed that because of the clouds, the shadow is softer. This makes it easier for your eye to focus on the details of the Globe than it would have been if it were a hard, sharp-edge shadow. And of course, I’ve got my people in, too.

For an exposure standpoint, I think I did fine from a purely technical standpoint. The original image had some shadows that were sitting pretty low in the histogram, but I also had some just-barely-blown highlights as well, so I think I made the best compromise – again from a technical standpoint.

From a more artistic standpoint, I can’t remember the last image that was “saved” as much by the post-processing. When I first looked at this image on the screen, I was bummed that it looked so grey and cold. When I started playing around with the RAW conversion and saw that it could look bright and sunny, I was floored. In a few of the past images I’ve made of this scene, I’ve been able to rescue the detail of the image when it’s just a flat, dark, mess. But they’ve still looked cloudy, grey, and kinda depressing. This is the first one that I actually felt the mood of the image shift due to the post-processing. I’ll tell ya – if I ever get a truly compelling subject to shoot, look out! I’m ready to make something out of it!

My weight yesterday was 187lbs.

Cat Pier
Nothing spectacular in terms of composition, but I still think it’s a decent image:

The RAW conversion for this was almost too easy. There were just a few little spots of blown highlights, so I didn’t use any highlight Recovery at all! That’s a big first for me! I did push the fill light up 19, and pushed the Vibrance to +15.

Into Photoshop, I played with Curves and Vibrance, but nothing appealed to me. I just resized and Smart Sharpened 80% and was happy with the result:

The subtle changes result in subtle differences, so you might not really even notice what I’ve done. I’m still not thrilled with the composition, but I suppose it has a stark, lonely feeling due to the scarcity of subject matter. What I gave up in composition I more than got back in exposure. This is far and away the best image I have had to date out of the camera. Part of it is softer lighting, as the sun was partially obscured behind some thin clouds. The other part is being able to adapt to that light with the camera and optimize the exposure without relying on Photoshop to save me. Maybe I’ll be okay on that trip after all!

Globe Compass
Or maybe not. I blew the highlights out on this one pretty badly, but it’s still salvageable:

Okay, I take it back. Once I got into the RAW conversion, I saw that this scene was basically the polar opposite of the Pier image above, but I’ll get to that in a second. I set the Exposure to -0.35, the highlight Recovery to 38, the Fill Light to 18, and the Vibrance to +20.

In Photoshop, I pushed up the Vibrance until I noticed a slight darkening in the sky. Then I resized and Smart Sharpened 80%. I tried both Curves and Levels, but neither added anything to the image without giving up far more, so I just enjoyed the image I had:

Compositionally, there are a few things I’d have liked to change – I’d prefer the couple be walking out of the frame rather than into it, and I’d also prefer they be further into the scene. Also the ugly crane growing out of the top of the Globe is a little distracting, but what am I supposed to do? I’m not exactly shooting for National Geographic here. I’m guessing the dock workers would be amused if not outright peeved to have some amateur photographer walk up and ask them to move their crane!

When I said this image was the polar opposite of the Pier image above, I was referring to the lighting. I tried to get rid of all the blown highlights in this image, and just ended up making the whole thing far too dark. Even though the highlights were blown quite a bit, I think the exposure here was just about perfect. When you compare the before and after images, you’ll find that the middle and low tones in the image have been left almost untouched. It’s just the upper tones that have been pushed down to even out the exposure. Because of that, I know that the details in the darker parts of the image have as much information in them as possible. And when I push the lighter tones down, I’m just compressing that information, increasing the overall detail in the finished image.

Short story, I’m happy with this one.

My weight this day was 187.8lbs.

Cat Pier:
This was a tough one. I didn’t get a lot in the way of subjects to work with, even with the 4 images I brought home of this scene. I had to choose between one with more varied subjects but confusing composition, and one with cleaner composition but a more plain subject. I think I may have put two images of the same scene up here once before, but it’s something I generally avoid – I like to commit to the one image and do the best I can. In this case, I’m going to include the second image to show why I’m not keeping it. So first the non-keeper:

And now the one I will actually bother to post-process:

Like I said, it was a difficult decision for me. I just feel that the second powerboat in front of the ferry breaks up the scene too much and doesn’t draw your eye to any one part of the image.

So taking the second image through its RAW conversion, I set the Exposure to -0.35 (to kill some of the blown highlights on the ferry,) set the highlight Recovery to 29, and set the Fill Light to 14. I also set the Vibrance to +28. The effect of the Recovery and Fill Light sliders was to compress the lights and darks of the image together a bit. It brought up the lost detail in the shadows on the Pier, and also pushed the highlight detail back into the ferry.

A side-effect of this manipulation, though, was that the whole image looked kind of flat and “grey.” In Photoshop, I used Curves and pulled up the center of the curve (leaving everything else alone) to get back the lighter tones in the sky. But since It also pulled up the low-tones, I get more lightness in the shadows of the Pier as well. The net effect is that the image looks less flat and grey, but there’s more detail where I want it in the darker portions.

Then a quick resize and 80% Smart Sharpen and here’s my result:

You can see that the lighter whites and greys are a little muted, but the darker tones have been pulled up and there’s overall more detail throughout the image. As I said during the RAW conversion, I pushed the Exposure down -0.35, but I still feel the exposure was pretty much correct overall for the scene. I probably pushed the highlights a little too hard, but I’m not focused on the detail there, so I think the exposure is okay. I mentioned above that I chose this image’s composition over the other, and it’s not just because it’s less cluttered. The placement of the ferry and pier relative to each other and within the frame is just better overall. I’d like to have gotten something besides another ferry in the image, but I don’t think I’ve shot this particular ferry before, so I guess that’s better, right?

Globe Compass
So the title is “On the First Shot!” And so it is. This is the only image I made of this scene for this day. Normally I take a few test-shots first to get my exposure correct and, lately with this scene anyway, adjust the circular polarizer. I had just gotten into position this day when this couple entered the frame. I’ve been shooting under the same light for so many days that I just set to my usual exposure and made this one image. I liked the composition so much I called it a day. I could have played with the exposure a bit, but I wanted to see if I could bring home just the one image and have it be right:

The RAW conversion was quite gentle on this image – highlight Recovery was 19, Fill Light was 18, and Vibrance was +17.

In Photoshop, I tried all permutations of Curves I could think of, and they just didn’t help the image. I settled on a Vibrance setting of +27, and that did the best job of darkening the sky without making any of the rest of the colors seem odd. Then resize and Smart Sharpen 80%:

Clearly the exposure here is mostly just luck and memory. I’ve found that, with the circular polarizer fitted and bright sunlight, 1/200s shutter speed with an aperture of f/11 is about right for this scene. Since I had to do so little with the RAW conversion, I’d say my memory was correct for this particular day. And this is my absolute favorite style of composition for this scene. The couple is exactly where I would put them, and everything else is just right.

Well, almost everything. That odd little shadow in the lower-right-hand corner is me! It’s generally taboo to have your shadow in the image, but It’s so far away from all of the subjects that I don’t find it distracting here.

My weight this day was 188.6lbs.

Cat Pier
Right to the un-retouched image:

There were just the slightest bits of blown highlights on the four boats/ships in the image, so I set highlight Recovery to 15. I pulled the Fill Light up to 10, and set the Vibrance to +8. This seemed to be the best compromise between over-working the image and having the shadows lost to my eye.

In Photoshop, I tried a few different Curves options, and they all made the image feel less alive. There’s a texture to the extremes of light/dark in this image that I like for some reason. I know I normally try to hammer those extremes flat, but to my eye today, I just like this image without too much tweaking. I did throw a Vibrance adjustment at it to the tune of +21, and that’s it. I resized and Smart Sharpened 80% and called it an image:

The composition here is actually pretty interesting. The (what I assume to be a) lobster boat near the right edge of the frame, the second craft just clearing the Pier, and the cargo ship and tug in the background all add some detail to the image. Exposure-wise, I think I nailed this one, since I just barely clipped a few highlights (that weren’t really important anyway.) I know there isn’t a huge difference between the original and the final versions, but I do like how there’s a little more light under the Pier, and the trees on the island in the background are a little greener.

Globe Compass
Interestingly enough, there was more commotion and more people around the Globe yesterday than there had been with either of the two cruise ships recently in town. I guess the holiday weekend really does “bring ‘em in!” Still, I had a hard time getting people where I wanted in the frame, but I’m comfortable with this:

After my experience yesterday, I decided to obsess less about the highlight warnings in the camera, even given my lengthy discussion of trying to improve my exposures. I figure that if we do print the vacation photos, they’ll be small and the detail won’t be missed. And mistakes are the best way to learn anyway. All of this is a long way of saying I blew out the highlights of this image a little harder than I would have liked. Highlight Recovery was set to 36, Fill Light to 13, and I pushed Vibrance up to +18 because I liked the effect on the trees and the sky. Near as I can tell, Vibrance is basically a Saturation adjustment that only effects the greens and blues, and leaves the reds (typically skintones) alone.

Once into Photoshop, I used Curves. I pinned down the center tones of the image to normal, and pulled the upper tones a little higher. It was a very subtle adjustment, but I liked it.

If you look carefully at the curve, you’ll see that the low-tones have pulled themselves down a bit, which is just how this tool works. So again, this is a REALLY mild version of the contrast-increasing Curve that I’ve used before. Then I resized and Smart Sharpened 80%:

Again, I’m not as happy with the composition of this image as the one from the 5th. Even though it’s quite similar, the people are a much stronger part of that image, which I prefer. Sill, it came out well, and between the light and the circular polarizer, the colors are still wonderful.

I suppose I’m just starting to expect more. When I began this project, I was out entirely for the experience of being out and about. The images were almost secondary. Now that I’ve been doing this for nearly a month and a half, I’m starting to expect more of my images. As much as when I started, I’m still looking forward to getting out with my camera, regardless of the images I bring home. But with some time shooting, I do have higher expectations, and I intend to try to continue improving.

My weight yesterday was 189.6lbs.

So for the Pier image, I started around what I would normally use for exposure (using the camera’s meter) and the camera reported some blown highlights. So I started increasing the shutter speed 2/3rds of a stop at a time and kept checking the review image for blown highlights. I ended up well over two stops faster than I normally shoot this scene, and I was still getting highlight warnings. I also noticed that the images seemed to be getting uncommonly dark. I checked the histogram, and the bulk of the histogram had moved down to the 2nd or 3rd stop from fully exposed. By that time, any good subjects to capture in the scene had gone away, so I called it quits and moved on. When I got home, I found that even the normally exposed images had almost no blown highlights, and being 2/3rds of a stop down from there eliminated them completely.

What I ultimately learned from this exercise is to trust the camera’s histogram over the highlight warnings. In the future, if a large part of an important element in the scene is showing the warnings, I will adjust the exposure to improve the situation. But so long as it’s just small edges of elements of the scene, I’ll go by the histogram first, and worry about the highlights once I get in the computer.

So since I’ve managed the blown highlights in RAW in the past, why was I even concerned? I had three major reasons. First, I had noticed in the past that Photoshop and my camera didn’t agree on what constituted “blown” highlights and was curious how far off they were.

Second, I am planning a vacation soon. I will probably just take a small, point-and-shoot camera, and I don’t want the huge file size of shooting RAW, so I won’t have all the extra control I’ve gotten used to. My ability to meter exposure has gotten better, but it’s still not good enough and I want to improve.

Third, shooting directly to a JPG image in my camera vs. converting the image from RAW when I get home has a few advantages. First off, the images are smaller, so I can store more on a single memory card. Second, my main camera can take much longer image bursts (to capture fast action) in JPG, and it writes those images to the card much faster so I can begin shooting again sooner. Finally it reduces the time necessary to get the images to friends and family. This last point isn’t important to me right now, but it may be in the future.

So I had a fun experiment and learned a bunch. I look forward to further experimentation.

Cat Pier
After filtering through the 5-10 images I made of the scene yesterday, I liked this one the best. I’m having more fun with this new framing, and I like the array of sailboats in the image as well:

For the RAW conversion, I did very little. I brought the Fill Light up to 15, and set the Vibrance to +15.

I went to Curves and just pulled up the center of the curve. This is the first time I’ve been happy with the overall effect, but just to check, I tried pulling the low-tones back down a bit. I didn’t like the darkening, but the resulting lightening of the upper-tones looked great. So I removed the point in the low-tones and added one to pull the upper-tones higher:

Then the usual resize and a Smart Sharpen of 80%:

This image was really underexposed in the camera, but that was part of the experiment I mentioned above. Each image I made had progressively lower exposure, and I made the decision that this image was the best compromise of exposure and composition. It didn’t need much in post-processing, so I guess I should be happy overall.

I wish the image had a stronger main subject, since it’s somewhat broken up between the sailboats and the pier, but I do like the gull flying in from the right edge of the frame, and it does have lots of detail and texture, so it’s not as bad as it might have been. I do like this lower framing of this scene, so I’m happy for that, anyway.

Globe Compass
I went back to my usual instincts for setting the exposure on this scene. There are some blown highlights on the girl’s shirt and the bench in the background, but I’m much happier with the lighter overall exposure of this scene vs. the Pier image:

I decided to pay a little more attention to the RAW conversion this time, specifically focusing on what’s going on with the highlight warnings in Photoshop, and my perception of the detail in those areas. I focused on the girl’s shirt, and I felt that a highlight Recovery of 29 did a great job of putting detail back into the shirt without darkening the scene too much. Here’s a detail shot zoomed to 100% to show the increased detail in the shirt. On the left is the image with no adjustments in RAW, on the right is the image after the highlight Recovery of 29:

You can see how many more shades of white there are on the right, and how much more texture you can see in the fabric. In addition to the Recovery, I set the Fill Light to 22 and the Vibrance to +27.

In Photoshop, I did something similar to what I did to the Pier image above in Curves, pulling up the whole curve, but I didn’t add the extra pull in the upper-tones that I did for that image. I just liked this look better for this scene. Then the usual resize and Smart Sharpen 80%:

I’m comfortable with the exposure on this image. Yes, I had some blown highlights, but it makes the darker parts of the scene so much more detailed and rich than if I had shot at a lower exposure. I love the family passing through the scene and with them walking in a line, along with the gentleman entering the frame in the distance at the left, it adds a great visual line to the scene. The circular polarizer made the sky look stunning as always, and overall this is one of my favorite images of this scene so far.

My weight yesterday was 191.2lbs.