I was killing time waiting for Betsy to finish a meeting at the Great Meadows NWR headquarters in Sudbury, and brought my camera along. I thought it would be fun to mix long exposures with indirect light from the parking lot. Not much more to say other than the results were curious.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk at Baypath College on the issue of authenticity and conservation photography. The first part of my presentation was a short tour of the human visual system — providing a bit of context about the challenges of photography vs. human perception, plus some of the intrinsic limitations of how our eyes (and brains) see the world around us. My aim was to show that a photograph could be modified in certain ways that preserves the essential content of the image (thereby retaining a fair degree of authenticity) while allowing the photography the ability to express emotion or other intent.
A recent TED talk by Beau Lotto delves into the topic of color perception and uses a number of wonderful illusions to demonstrate how the brain can be fooled — and how it varies across a wide audience. If you have the time (the video is about 18 minutes long) it is worth the time. Just watching the first few minutes is pretty educational.
[flv]http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BeauLotto_2009G-medium.flv[/flv]
If your not already addicted to TED talks, consider visiting their site or, better yet, subscribe to their podcast series. I heard someone say that watching TED presentations should be required for all high school sophomores… I’d go along with that thought.
[video filename=http://dmg-photography.com/video/bsd2-24fps.mp4 title=Autumn-Mist-Timelapse /]
I’m in the process of putting together a short video highlighting some of the fall foliage and other seasonal changes happening here in central Massachusetts. I hope to have it ready for viewing next week. I wanted to include a couple of time-lapse sequences in it. On Sunday I shot a test sequence on the Assabet River just upstream of the Ben Smith Dam. Happy with the results, I headed out this morning hoping to catch the sunrise on the water along with the mist.
I happened to be using the Canon 5D Mark 2 because it was handy. Normally I use either my old 10D or the 40D for timelapse captures. I set the 5D to “SRAW2″ because I only need HD resolution. SRAW2 exceeds that and leaves plenty of breathing room on the flash card. The camera was attached to the 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, with polarizing filter, set at 34mm. I set the exposure at 1/60 second, f/8.0, ISO 200. I could have, and you might argue, should have, slowed the shutter down a bit more — but motion blur with slow-moving mist and clouds isn’t that noticeable.
The interval timer was set for 2 seconds. I captured 450 frames. That’s just 18 seconds at 24fps and 14 seconds at 30fps. (Remember it is just a clip for a larger work.) I could have captured longer but, quite frankly, the “show” was mostly over. (I need to see if the 5D can sustain out 1 frame/second of SRAW2 files.)
The choice of a polarizing filter was problematic. It provided me with the saturated colors I wanted in the foliage, but the wide angle of the shot means that the polarizing effect would drop off across the image … and this happened. Here’s a sample source frame:
Because of the combination of both the polarizer and the sheer brightness of the sun, the right side of the frame got “hot” as the sequence went along. Not overexposed or anything, but definitely much brighter. I used Lightroom to create a 1/2 stop graduated filter across the right 1/3rd of the image – providing a bit more room for details in the clouds. The color still changes (adding blue to the filter is an option, but it colors the mist as well so I kept it neutral). This change, coupled with some other minor exposure and contrast tweaks, coupled with a 16×9 crop, was then synched across all 450 frames.
I have to admit that this is probably just my first attempt at editing this sequence. I may well try other edit configurations. The ability to try them out with Lightroom and then easily apply the changes to hundreds of images is really a joy.
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This post is actually two tests in one. I’m also trying out a WordPress plugin that uses the JW video player to directly play H.264 files and I want to see if it is worth purchasing a license for. Drop me a line (or comment) if you like or dislike it (vs. YouTube HD or Vimeo hosted files).
