Home But Still Sorting Photos

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

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Here We Are! A Photographic Adventure

SUMMARY: Another challenging photo shoot--how we got to the final gorgeous photo.

I adjusted my SLR for what I thought would be the appropriate setting, handed the camera to my friend with pretty much no instructions, and tried to get Boost and Tika to sit cheerfully beside me. But could it be so simple? Nooooo!

Just as my friend started to snap the photo--That's when another hiker appeared in the distance with his own dogs, which greatly distracted mine. Plus the exposure setting I picked works best if the correct part of the image is in the focus area--first attempt, other dogs just sighted by the Merle Girls and I quickly grabbed Tika's collar. And it's a bit over-exposed:

Second attempt: I'm doing my part in looking at the camera, plus there are 2 people trying to get my dogs' attention. Boost was willing, but so was one of their border collies. Plus Tika still wants to take off--and now WAY over-exposed.

More explanation: Jan 17, 2011: Here's the thing: I had the camera on Program mode, but because most of my shots included large fields of snow, I had set the exposure compensation to plus 1 and 2/3 stops, so whatever f and time the Program mode picked, it would make it 1.67 stops slower. (Because by default it will try to make all that white into middle gray, and I want all that white to be white.) It was also overcast, so not bright light, but a lot of reflected light everywhere, from sky and snow. Rough conditions to try to get a good reading! So the f & tv that the camera picked would depend on where its metering point was. I was using centered spot metering, which makes it more sensitive to the exact center of the image. I didn't think about that when I handed my friend the camera. So, naturally, she started with me and dogs in the very center, so we were pretty large as a percentage of the spot metering area, so really there shouldn't have been *any* exposure compensation because our colors are kind of midrange, and that compensation I set meant that, yeah, we were overexposed. The ones were we *weren't* overexposed are the ones where we are off-center, so the spot metering was metering off of a mostly reflective white snowy area in the middle of the frame, so the exposure compensation worked the way I had intended. I just got lucky that she started aiming off-center (not even sure whether intentional or not, and I didn't think about it until after we were done). So if I'd been shooting in manual, if I had spot metered at the center where it was mostly snow, I'd have picked, say, the f I wanted, adjusted the time so that the camera thought it was metered correctly, and then made it 2 stops slower to accommodate the bright white. If I had spot metered at where I and the merle girls were, I'd have set the f I wanted, adjusted so that the camera thought it was metered correctly, and then just used that.

Third attempt: Boost is still cooperating, but now *I'm" looking at the other dogs and hanging tight to both of my girls. Still badly overexposed.

Fourth attempt: Got me and Boost, although it's kind of obvious I'm hanging onto them both, and STILL overexposed--

Fifth attempt: Other dogs are out of range, I'm trying to get the dogs to just stay in place, but apparently the focus area is now on the right thing, because the exposure for the 3 of us isn't nearly so bad:

Sixth attempt: OMG, it's almost perfect! Everyone's looking at the camera! We're not terribly overexposed! (Just a little.) The background and snow are over-exposed still, but not completely burned out, and that's expected because the difference in reflected light is so large.

So now it's up to photoshop (Elements)! First, I let the Raw Editor pick what it thinks is the correct exposure and saved the following copy of the same file. The snow and background now come out clearly (thank goodness I shot in RAW), but now the Merle Girls and I are a little too dark.

Used Photoshop's Photomerge Exposure tool to create a better-exposed photo by combining the two preceding photos--all I had to do here was to select those two versions of the photo and tell it to Merge. Amazing!

And now just a tweak--the background is nice but all those additional trees on the right don't really add anything, and we're supposed to be the primary subjects anyway. A quick crop--

And then auto-color correct to remove some of the extreme bluish tint, and voila!

Any of you photographers out there have any comments on the process or results?

New Year's Day in the Snow

SUMMARY: A few photos.

Home away from home when I arrived Friday evening.

Then snow fell overnight.

So this is what it looked like twenty-four hours after the 1st photo.

Another view of their cabin. I'd live here!

This is what you'd see looking out through those windows:

Out and about, late morning. We weren't the first out in the beautiful new fresh 4 inches of snow, but pretty close.

Tika loves the snow.

(Not so much snow in her face--every time I threw the toy, it collected snow, so when she shook it, she got snow-face big time. Not popular with this pup.)

But she loves to run and play.

Although, after a couple of hours in the snow, she cleverly figured out that she could follow someone else who was breaking the trail.

Karey and Dan point the way. Dig watches their shadows.

Hey, look--it's 1:11 1/1/11!

Tika in the fresh snow out on the deck.

Boost, too.

We didn't really plan on coming up to the snow to sit in front of the computers (we each have our own here).

Really, we didn't!

Even grumpy Dig got excited, and she and Boost played wildly for about 4 minutes in the snow in the yard.

Tika, Boost, and Dig ran a wild game of chase around the front yard.

Heading out to destroy fresh fields of snow!

Beauty everywhere.

After and before assorted humans and five excited dogs pass through.

Wayyyy below us, a train passes under I-80 on its slow winding way up the Sierras.

New Year's Eve in the Sierras

SUMMARY: Hike drive drive drive and then arrive.

went for our usual Friday walkies; friend's illness dragged her down a bit this week but we still covered 3 miles and it was a beautiful morning to be out.

Looking back under the bridge at reflections in the Guadalupe River:

Even for my dinky point-and-shoot, Mr. Mockingbird was willing to hold still briefly.

Boost played much leashie.

Despite our current cold snap, the Fremontodendron (flannel bush) shrubs each had one big flower on the west side; go figure.

The buds are beautiful, too.

The four-hour drive on a holiday Friday was just about perfect; only one or two spots where I briefly had to slow below the speed limit. What a pleasant start for the weekend.

Coming into Sacramento, looking across the wetlands:

At 2000-3000 feet, sprinklings of snow; at 4000 feet, actual snow; at 5000+, wow, snow snow snow!

It's like driving into a Christmas postcard! I hardly ever see snow any more, maybe once a year if that, and its beauty lifts my spirits so high that my whole body can feel it.

Coming over the summit at Donner Pass (although every time I come through at this time of year, I think of those poor souls in the Donner Party who happened to try to pass in a year when the snow came earlier than ever and fell to a record depth--so this is nothin'!).

Although it wasn't snowing during my drive, I began to wonder whether I'd know where to turn, since many of the signs past the summit were obscured by snow stuck to their fronts.

But I arrived, got here, and had to immediately pull over and take a shot of this fairytale house nestled among the snowy trees. Thomas Kincaide got nuthin' on me!

And here's our home away from home, with MUTT MVR alongside.

And looking in towards the front--they got a little drift, and always the most interesting icicles!

And here we are, just before midnight, snuggled in front of the fire.

Happy 2011, everyone! Today it's snowing snowing snowing! Will be an interesting weekend.