Awash in the Midday Sun

Baker River upstream of Baker Lake. Aug08, 2019

High Noon

Of late I am enamored with creating painting effects out some of my photographs. In particular, I am enjoying creating such photographs out of images taken in bright noontime light.

Traditionally photographers are coached to take images in soft light; especially favored are the hours around sunset or sunrise. During this time of day shadows are less harsh and subjects are side-lit. Contrasts are less severe and colors, if not muted, are generally more pleasing. These times of day are referred to as the Golden Hours.  I do like morning and evening photography, but it can be inconvenient to locate oneself several miles up a trail or in the wilderness in low or fading light.

Recently my wife and I took our 4 dogs for a walk along the Baker River Trail. The trailhead is about 2.5 hours from our home. We arrived in late morning and returned mid afternoon. The only option I had for photography was during bright midday light. The sky was nearly cloudless. It was a beautiful day for a walk but less than ideal for photography. To record our trip I took several shots of the dogs and Deb as well as a few of the surrounding landscape. such as the image below.

The river was a crystal clear turquoise blue with some of the deeper pools taking on an emerald green tone. The river bottom and banks are lined with multicolored granite boulders. However, the bright sunlight washed out much of the colorful beauty and limited my ability to adequately capture the look and feel of the place. Back home in the computer, after doing a bit of standard processing to adjust white balance and tones, I played around with processing filters provided by my copy of Topaz Labs software and decided I liked the creation atop this page. Perhaps a less realistic look, but to me, a more realistic feel.

It's What You See

Backyard Thistle

Going to Seed

We are fortunate to have a bit of property around our home. Most of it is wooded and intensely overgrown second and third growth woods, largely comprised of Red Alder, Douglas Fir, and Hemlocks. There is a cleared section out back that I suspect was established by a previous owner to attract deer, for hunting purposes I suspect. On the periphery of the cleared area is a boundary zone consisting of brambles, nettles, and thistles. We typically take the dogs for a walk to this out back area twice a day.

In the spring we investigate and attempt to identify species of plants growing and blooming. During the summer months we pick blackberries. And with autumn beginning to emerge we are now noting what is going to seed. I have been observing various thistle blooms transforming themselves into explosions of downy seed bundles. Last evening I wandered back up with my camera and electronic flash to see what I could capture.

I mounted the flash on a stand so I could position it at various angles and heights relative to the camera's position. The flash was synced to the camera via a pair of remotes and through trial, and a lot of error, I decided postponing the flash at about the same height and at a right angle to the camera's view presented an appealing perspective. I then made several exposures while adjusting the intensity of the flash's output. To capture this image I used a 16mm prime lens on my Fuji X-T2 set to ISO 200 with a shutter speed of 1/200 sec and aperture of f/14. Larger apertures did not allow for the depth of field I was looking for. To process the image I first made basic adjustments in Lightroom then further refined the image in Photoshop using Nik plugins to reduce noise and improve color tones. But the real magic with this image occurred when I processed it using a set of Topaz filters; thankfully many of the settings employed were provided as suggested presets. 

Thoreau is quoted as saying, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." The more time I spend capturing images, and especially trying to create a photograph that is representative of what I feel, the more I find I am able to see. 

Artistic License

When is a photograph not a photograph?

I have no plans to answer that question, nor do I have any inkling as to how one might do so. I'm not a professional photographer. I've not studied art. I barely know how to use the post-processing software (Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop) I use to process images I take with my Fuji X-T2 mirrorless camera. I have taken 15,000 images over the past 5 years, of these I would say I am proud of a dozen or so photographs. I know what I like. But what I like is continually changing.

A few years ago I was enamored with panoramic photos. I have also gone through several waterfall phases. Living where I used to (the mountains of West Virginia) I chased colors in the fall and thought they were marvelous, until I fell in love with the soft pastels of springtime. I guess you could say I'm fickle.

Most recently I have been messing around with a piece of software produced by Topaz Labs.  It allows me to create "photos" with a more painted-like (painterly) quality. Case in point the images in this post. Awhile back I went for a hike in the noontime sun, a horrible time to take pictures. Harsh contrasts. Overblown highlights. Muted colors. I took the color picture above to capture an image of the bright white peak on the horizon that I was pretty sure was Glacier Peak in the eastern Cascades. The noontime sun and haze washed out its details so I tried processing the image as a black & white photo. Better I thought. Then I transformed it using some of the Topaz software. Realistic? Not quite. Representative of what I saw? Absolutely. The painterly version is more representative of my memory from that day than either of the other two photos. So when is a photograph not a photograph?

Honestly, I don't know or care. But I do know I like the top image - at least for now.

Now You See It - Now You Don't.

Admiralty Lighthouse, Whidbey Island, WA.

It's all a matter of perspective.

The Park Service and the lighthouse organization that manages and cares for this structure does an outstanding job. It offers tours on a daily basis and the staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and courteous. The lighthouse appears to be well-maintained and presents itself as a favorable subject for photography, with one exception. Scattered around the grounds close to the structure are a collection picnic tables. The tables do not lend themselves to any desirable photographic composition.

While waiting for sunset I evaluated a number of prospective locations from which to capture an image. A few locations minimized the presence of the tables, and I figured with some effort and Photoshop's help I could eliminate them from the final photo. As I explored different vantage points I became aware that if I shot from ground level atop the hill alongside the house I could avoid including the tables. Only problem, to include a sizable portion of sky at this low angle the lighthouse appeared to tilt and recede into the frame. There are ways to correct this situation during post processing but I decided on a more traditional approach, use of a tilt/shift lens.

Through the use of a tilt/shift lens one can adjust for such artifacts in perspective. The low to the ground perspective also offered the opportunity to eliminate a good bit of foreground which lacked any pleasing characteristics. The photo presented is an assembly of 3 images taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera mounted on a Benro tripod using a 20mm lens tilted upwards from vertical and shifted along the horizontal axis. Images were initially assembled and processed in Adobe Lightroom and further modified in Photoshop, largely using Nik plug-in filters to reduce noise and enhance tonal ranges. A final bit of editing was done using Topaz software to accentuate the soft glow on the horizon.

Environmentally Friendly Timbering

Deception Pass Bridge - final edit

Deception Pass Bridge - original file

No trees were harmed in the making of this photograph.

Wandering about on Pass Island at Deception Pass State Park one foggy morning I came upon this pleasing scene. The presence of the bridge was softly disguised by fog streaming through the pass. The morning sun (behind me) was starting to burn through creating pleasing tones. Only problem, from this vantage point a tree was in the way. I tried to position myself differently to minimize or eliminate the presence of the tree but couldn't find anything I liked, so I captured a few images anyway.

Back home I found I had a number of pleasing other images from the morning, but the presence of the tree in this shot bugged me. I wanted the bridge to be the subject of the photo, but the tree front-and-center was a distraction. I was about to skip further processing when I decided to give a little electronic tree trimming a try. Being not the most skilled with Photoshop my digital arborist skills proved to be pedestrian at best, but I judged the end result acceptable; at least as a first try.

So, is this sort of manipulation honest, or not? Debatable for sure. But not debatable is the benefit of electronic timbering, at least in a location as beautiful as Deception Pass, over the real thing.  For the record, this image was captured with a Fuji X-T2 using a 16mm prime lens at f/11, 1/200sec exposure at ISO 200 and processed using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop using Nik plug-ins to reduce noise and enhance color tones.