Once upon a time...

This is a story of a memory which may or may not be very accurate.

When I was very young I seem to recall going to Art Class and the teacher asked us to draw a scene.
Being a typical kindergartner [or first grader?] I took the beautiful array of colorful crayons and began to make my picture.

I colored grasses and trees, skies and clouds with a flourish of colors. The world would be as I deemed it in my child's eye. The clouds would be purple, the sky would be orange, the leaves would be wild colors of green, yellow, blue, ...anything my heart desired.

I put the sun in the upper right corner with multicolored rays emitting from it.

The Art Teacher came around and told me that the sky was blue. The grass is green and so were leaves on the trees. I was told to do my picture over.

I recall telling this to my father. I was very heartbroken that I had to color things the way the teacher saw it. My world was brilliant and imaginative [I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to express this to her] and her world was dull and unexciting.

I want to believe that my father talked to the teacher. But I do know that he did talk to me about it. He told me it was perfectly okay to draw the world in any color I wished, and if I wanted to the sky to be orange or purple, that was fine.

And so I bring you to my next photography experimentation. The Infared Converted camera.

It allows me to giggle and smile at a world not seen by many.

Magical.

Wild.
Where skies can be odd colored, where trees can be white or pink at my choosing.

Infrared photography is best done in the summer, but being who I am, I couldn't help but try it out in the brilliant snow.

And if I want purple clouds?

I sure can have them!

Who says dreams don't come true?

Am I camera Crazy?

Mid February isn't supposed to be quite this cold.  Wow! This morning it was -12 F.
Yesterday it did warm up to about 10 degrees and if you could get out of the wind, it actually was pleasant.

I had put off my errands in town most of the week so yesterday I grabbed my list and went.

I really don't like going to town.  I especially dislike going on Saturdays.
But there you go, I really just ended up putting it off until I had no other choice.

However, I put my Olympus E 420 in a camera bag and brought it along.  Sometimes an opportunity will present itself and ... well, you never know.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

And it did!  I love this curve in the gravel road.  I wanted to explore some more, but there were chores to do when I got home.

Point and Shoot Fujifilm

And the road conditions on the ridge were getting a bit nasty.

Regarding my Olympus camera.  I do love it and it is generally my go to camera for hiking because it is a lightweight DSLR.  It isn't the tanks that the Nikons are.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Nikon and the Nikkor lenses.  But the Nikon D5200 is sort of a primadonna.

Apparently it doesn't like cold or damp ... or humid weather.

However it really loves doing Still Life photography!

Nikon D5200 with Nikkor 40mm micro lens

And I love doing this work with it.

So.
Naughty me.  I began to look into mirrorless cameras.

A few years ago I saw an ad for an Olympus OMD-D E-M5 Mirrorless camera.  A man sets the camera on a tripod and watches as a storm approaches.  Rain slashes the window he is standing by.  The camera is shown, water droplets are covering it.
Zoom into the back of the camera and live view. Lightening flashes and the man in the house uses his smart phone to remotely take a photo.

In 2012 this camera was $1,499.  Ouch, way beyond my reach.
Now the camera is being discontinued.  A new and improved model will take its place. The price was affordable even to me.

Kudos for Olympus.  Their mirrorless line will take all lenses from the previous DSLR's.  Nikon and other companies have all gone with special lenses.

The nice thing about the Oly lenses is that they are lightweight enough to work with a mirrorless camera.

Olympus E 420 kit lens

My Nikon weighs approximately 44 oz with a 'kit' lens. Generally I carry an extra lens with me while hiking.

The Olympus OMD-D E-M5 weighs 22 oz. with the M. Zuiko ED 12-50mm lens I ordered. 

Well there, the cat is out of the bag.

I am looking forward to hiking with the Oly.  I won't have to drag around a heavy weight tripod with it either, I can go for a lightweight one! 

I won't have to worry about snowfall getting the camera damp as it is weather sealed as is the lens.

Just color me happy.

My Nikon D40 is being retired.  I sent out an email to a friend who has kids who are interested in photography.

Nikon D40 free to good home.  It will get a good home and lots of use also.

Olympus E 420 kit zoom lens

I am looking forward to all sorts of great adventures and hiking with a lighter camera.

Now to figure out how to make these cameras earn their keep.

That is the hard one!

Oh and for those of you reading?  Happy Valentines Day...one day early!

Nikon D5200 50mm lens

Enjoy your Saturday.  It looks like mostly indoor work for me today.  

How do you photograph?

Yesterday I was driving to work and I was looking around the Bad Axe river valley for something interesting to photograph.
I was looking to stop the Subaru and take a photo.

I wasn't looking for 'leading lines', selective focus, DOF, POV, long exposures, or anything special at all.

I was just looking to see what caught my eye.

That's what I do.

Since I was small, my dad would play games with me.  He'd have me use my hands to create a 'focus box' to frame a photo in.  He would let me look through his camera lens and pretend to take photos.

He never gave me rules.
He never told me I had to be balanced.
Or that I had to follow the rule of thirds.

He let me explore with a child's inquisitiveness.
I was curious.
He let me play.

He'd sometimes peer through my pretend lens and smile.

He never asked me to explain.
But as I grew older and I got my own cameras, I started to recall the times when he'd use a light meter, stare at the sky and the light...then fumble and talk out loud about his settings.
He talked a lot.  I listened a lot.  I think I must have studied composition through him.

Really.

Because today I rarely think about things like rules of thirds, composition, or other things.
The scene will strike me and I will take the shot.

How in the world does that happen?

Really?  How can I not think about taking a shot?  But bring it into focus and go from there.

NO, not every shot is a success.
And yes, I am studying methods to get much better.

But do some people just acquire a natural talent?

Not saying I am that talented person.

Maybe just lucky.

I took this shot last week on a whim.

The photo went positively viral on Flickr.
But it was an 'in the moment' shot.  No extra special thought went into it.

 Yesterday I pulled the car over to the side of the road to get this.

From what I am learning, there are a lot of technical 'good' things about this shot.

Leading lines.
Shadows, subject matter, ...taking the viewer's eye through the photo.

In my opnion.
It is just a shot.

Of the Bad Axe River Valley.
I wanted to have the trees lead the viewer to the bridge.
I thought the bridge was interesting in this rather sparse valley where cattle roam in the summer.

But, it is a bridge for snowmobiles in the winter and for stock in the summer.

Nothing special really.

And that is how I view photography.
It is just my way of seeing the world around me.

RAW and JPEG

For many years I resisted shooting in RAW format.  I argued that it took too much time, too much space, and too much energy.
Anyone could shoot .jpeg and make it look good.

Then I ran into an issue with the color of snow during the winter.  And believe me, winter is my favorite time to be out with any camera.

I added Topaz Plug-ins to my Adobe Elements 5 and Photoshop 7.0 [very old versions].

I was able to transform this .jpeg blue cast snowy scene from this:

To this:

I thought it was good, but unless I went to black and white I had a hard time of getting rid of the blue tinge.
I used to argue that it just made the scene colder looking.  But the snow and sunlight was fooling my camera.

I knew that from somewhere back ages ago when my dad was helping me with photography.  He didn't have the benefit of digital and the aid of a 'digital darkroom'.  
After reading this  article by PCWorld regarding 5 tips for shooting in the Winter, I decided to switch my cameras over to RAW+JPEG mode.  This way I could compare shots.

Now don't get me wrong.  I also love my little point and shoot cameras.  They are easy to carry around and sometimes you can be extremely surprised by getting it right with one of those.  Here is a shot from my cheapo Sanyo Pink Fugly camera.

Anyway I'm going to use the very same shot and show samples of different processing.  I used the Fuji Film Fine Pix HS 30 EXR for this shot.  I shot it in RAW+JPEG.  I 'developed' the RAW shot in software that came with the camera.

There are may arguments for buying and using Adobe Light Room, but I haven't tried it yet.  I've been told once I try the trial version ... I'll just have to have it.

Here is the .jpeg shot:

Pretty, but the color is quite blue-grey.  The only way to fix this would be to convert to black and white.

Here is the .RAW shot converted to a .TIFF, then saved to a .jpeg for this post:

Pretty nice right?  But the snow looks flat to me.  And I'm not known for leaving things just as is so I monkeyed with it the Topaz Plug in called Adjust 5.


Here is the shot after Adjust 5:

Nice, but let's try something else.  Lets use a 'fake' HDR process and run it through a program called
Dynamic Photo HDR.

Here is is with Dynamic Photo HDR single image processing:

I think the shot shot and processed in the RAW format made my life a lot easier.  I didn't have to work so hard on the shot to remove the blue cast and bring the brightness to the correct level.

I could have worked hard in Elements to achieve what I did in minutes to get that first shot.

I also like what was done with it in Topaz and in DP HDR.  But that is just my personal opinion.  The shot I developed from RAW was correct, but I like a bit more 'oomph' to my snow scene and reflections.

I did some test shots using the Nikon D3100 and the jpeg's nearly turned out as correct as the RAW shots.  The Nikon D40 gets a nod from using RAW and after going out for a bit today, we'll see if I can get rid of that 'fantasy' blue with the Olympus E-420.  [That is the first shot that is shown on this post.]