Photographing shows at the Harmony stables in Littleton is always a mixed blessing. It’s always fun to photograph the riders and horses but the lighting there makes it a real challenge to get good images.

Two sets from the day are on my events page. (Not all of the photographs are top-notch — some are there just so riders can do a little self-evaluation if they wish.)

Here are a few more favorites from the day…

Technical details:

As you might notice I spent the day in portrait mode.  The subjects pretty much dictated the vertical composition.

All images shot with a Canon 1D Mark II, 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, on a monopod.   ISO 1250 most of the day.  Exposure varied greatly depending on about a dozen factors (barn lighting, constantly changing outside light, numerous backlight situations, subject distance, time-of-day).  Like I said, this place keeps you on your toes.

Lightroom processing is pretty heavy to mitigate lens flare from backlighting — consequently most of the images have a different look than what you might normally associate with my photographs.   I covered this processing in an earlier blog article.

Related posts:

1. Harmony Halloween Horse Show – A Different View
2. 2009 Harmony Horse Stables Halloween Show
3. Harmony Spring Horse Show

Sunday was a beautiful Spring day here in Massachusetts.  I spent a good chunk of the day at Harmony Horse Stables in Littleton, where my daughter teaches horseback riding and was running the show for the day.

There are a lot of classes and I covered all of them.  Visit my Events gallery to see the highlights…

[url] http://events.dmg-photography.com[/url]

Here are a few highlights from the day:

One of the classes featured participants in Harmony’s “Life in the Barn” program, which introduces young children to farm life.  One of the kids was a bit reluctant to get on her horse.  My daughter (along with the girl’s mom) coaxed her up…

… while this young rider pretty much grinned the entire time …

“Spot” made his ride exhilarating…

… and his canter is a bit over the top too  (note the airborne feet):

And the show wraps up…

Technical stuff:

Canon 1D Mark II, 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS. Indoors shot at ISO 1600, usually wide-open, shutter speeds varied greatly depending on where the subject was in the arena (the lighting conditions there are pretty awful, um, “varied”).   Outside shot at ISO 200, f/4, with shutter speeds around 1/2500 (varies slightly with lighting conditions).    I normally shoot in manual mode, but that’s annoying in the arena, so I tried using spot metering with aperture priority.   That didn’t work well at all, probably because of the lens flare  – so I got the hint pretty quickly and shot the rest of the day with a memorized set of shutter speeds.

Lightroom:  All photos white-balanced for indoor and outdoor conditions, clarity +25, vibrance +25 by default.  Indoor photos are rather heavily processed relative to the outdoor shots, which occasionally have a bit of fill.   Indoor shots are often backlit and have significant lens flare, greatly reducing contrast.   (I wrote about this in an article probably a year ago.)   I refined the “Haze Cutter” preset a bit this time around to make the resulting photograph maintain the exposure while handling moderate haze  (Recovery 22, Fill 24, Blacks 23, Brightness +28, Clarity +44, Vibrance +15).    This worked pretty well for a majority of the back-lit images.

I shot over 1600 images.  There are a lot of bursts, so the numbers add up quickly. A quick review on the laptop to get rid of the obvious junk brought that down to 1525 pretty quickly. Another 35 would bite the dust in subsequent reviews.  So I have a total of 1495 reasonably well-exposed and not blurry images to work with.  I worked through those getting the images reasonably well-tuned.  I selected 500 or so as good candidates and tweaked them a bit further.   I was happy enough with my framing that I think I only cropped 2 images.

Related posts:

1. Harmony Halloween Horse Show – A Different View
2. 2009 Harmony Horse Stables Halloween Show
3. Harmony Halloween Horse Show

When I do an event shoot I take a LOT of pictures – (often) hundreds to (occasionally) thousands of them.  When I post galleries I edit them down to to a small fraction of the day’s captures and then I whittle it down to a handful of personal favorites for a blog posting.  My editing process involves several passes of the photographs: the first pass involves deleting bad frames (badly blown or out-of-focus exposures, test shots of the ground) — you know, utter garbage.  And I really delete them.   The subsequent phases involve various forms of rating and have a lot to do with the particular event and why I was there and what kind of story I’m trying to tell with the images.

The bottom line is that a LOT of photos end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.   Wouldn’t it be nice if I could use them all without inducing eye-clawing boredom on the viewer’s part?   Well, here’s my quick attempt at such a thing — let me know what you think.   758 images in 100 seconds…

(Also available on YouTube HD)

Technical stuff:

I originally approached this using a new feature of Lightroom 3 (Beta) that allows exporting of slideshows in H.264 video.   This is a really cool feature and I will certainly make use of it for certain projects.  (It is also a slick way to easily produce more traditional time-lapse videos directly from Lightroom.)   As with most things there are tradeoffs and the drawback of this direct-from-Lightroom technique is one of performance and flexibility.  It takes a LONG time for Lightroom to generate the video and when you are done you may find that you wanted a different pacing — and then you’ll end up generating it again.

The bulk of the time was spent tuning the images in Lightroom.  In a normal edit I only spend time fine-tuning the looks of the selected images, but in this case all of them needed some level of processing.   Fortunately I shoot in manual mode so the input exposures are pretty consistent.  This means that I can apply the same corrections to large sets of images at a time using the Synchronize tools in Lightroom.  I even created a few Develop Presets along the way to make this even easier for the shoot.  The emphasis was on creating groups of similarly exposed images so that the video levels wouldn’t be jumping too far out of whack. There are a couple of ways of approaching this, but in my case I created a separate Lightroom catalog with just this shoot in it — so the edits of my selects didn’t affect the edits for the video.   I could have also achieved the same result with a collection of virtual copies and may well do this in the future because it allows me to keep both end-products in the same catalog.

I used the same Slideshow capability in Lightroom, but opted to generate JPEG images instead.   (This output option is plain to see Lightroom 2, but you have to press the Option (Alt on PC’s) key in the new Lightroom 3 interface.)  For this video I selected the output size 1280×720 to match the 720p HD frame size.  Lightroom took almost an hour to generate the 758 frames on my 4-processor MacPro.  From there I open the images as an Image Sequence in Quicktime Pro and  select a frame rate.  10 frames per second happens to be close to the burst rate of my Canon 1DMk2 camera so the jump sequences almost play in “real time” and the pacing for the rest of the images is pleasingly frenetic.   The important part here is that if I didn’t like the frame rate choosing a different one and previewing it takes a few seconds rather than hours.

It is important to note that the use of Lightroom’s Slideshow feature is important to the success of this workflow.  If you chose to simply export the images they would end up being different sizes (unless you used identical cropping on every single one of them) and they also would not be sized for a video frame.   If the generated images are not identical in terms of aspect and resolution they will not be included in the Quicktime image sequence.  Using the Slideshow option allows you to generate consistently sized image frames with whatever background you want to use.

After generating the frames in Lightroom and rendering them as an image sequence with Quicktime Pro, I imported the video file as a clip into Final Cut Pro where I added the titles and credits and then added the soundtrack (thank you Duke!).  Once I had the music there I realized it might be fun to break up the video a bit to correspond to the music.   This is a creative process where you can absolutely go overboard.  Since this video was meant to be just a fun use of “excess” images I tried to keep it simple.  I then added the titles and credits and then uploaded it to the YouTubes…

I did some basic color grading in Final Cut, keeping the images coming out of Lightroom pretty basic.  I edit video in a different gamma than photographs (1.8 versus 2.2) so it is better to send Final Cut “flat” images and work the final result from within the video editing suite.

I thought the result was pretty cool and tells the story of the event in a unique and entertaining way.  I’ll likely alter my shooting slightly to enhance the results of future videos.  What I would normally consider gratuitous shots can now form the basis of short stop-action sequences.  Yet another tool in the story-telling kit.

—–

My thanks to Duke Levine for his permission to use his music in my blog videos.  If you like what you hear, visit Duke Levine’s MySpace page and pick up one of his albums.

Photos from the Harmony Halloween Horse Show can be found at: events.dmg-photography.com

Related posts:

1. 2009 Harmony Horse Stables Halloween Show
2. Harmony Halloween Horse Show
3. Harmony Spring Horse Show

That’s Glenda the Good Witch (Cathy Cosgrove) enjoying the events at the annual Halloween Horse Show at Harmony Horse Stables in Littleton, MA.  The show is a mix of skill and downright silliness/fun including a equitation challenge that requires you to hold an apple under your chin while the riding tasks get more and more complex, and, of course, there are the costume competitions (everybody is a winner…)

Highlights from the show are on the events page and images are available for sale (download or prints).  Visit events.dmg-photography.com

Technical stuff after some of my favorites from the day:

Technical stuff: Shooting without flash in this environment is extremely challenging (I wrote about this last year.) The backlighting, dust, variable light temperatures, and fast motion make for some interesting technical tradeoffs.   I shot mostly with the 1D Mark 2 coupled with the 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO 1600.    I also had the 5D Mark 2 with the 24-70 f/2.8L for wider candids and a bit of jumping.

Exposure management in these conditions is just plain tough. Next year I think I may try using spot exposure for a bit to see what happens – evaluative doesn’t know what the heck is going on.  The widely ranging lighting coupled with the need to freeze action causes me to pick a manual setting (around 1/300) and vary only occasionally.  Later in the afternoon the sun moves around to the end of the barn and I can shoot from there at 1/500 without too much problem, but even that has limitations.

Many of the images require shooting into the light coming from windows along the side of the barn.  This washes all contrast out of the image and makes teasing out a photo rather difficult.  I pushed the Lightroom processing even harder than last year (see aforementioned article) and the result was an interesting stylized look to many of the images (see the girl with the butterfly wings as an example).  After a few tries I found a generally good starting point and created a development preset for it.  I would fine-tune the exposure and black point as needed for the individual image if the preset was off the mark.  Below are two sample “out of the camera” images to compare with the processed/stylized versions above:

As you can see it is possible to create two very different looks from some low-contrast initial images by attacking the exposure and clarity rather aggressively.

In the jumper image the starting point was very washed out and the result was fairly “natural”.  LR changes were: exposure 0, recovery 23, black point 73(!), clarity +83, and vibrance was +20 (pretty standard there).

For the butterfly rider I went with a more stylized look.  LR changes were: exposure +2/3 stop, black point 27, clarity +65, and vibrance +40.

My thanks to Harmony Horse Stables letting me get in the center of the ring for a little while and try out that vantage point.  It’s a great place to be, but you have to pay attention for the safety of the riders and yourself.  I look forward to returning next year with a few more technique twists to try to capture even more of this holiday event.

Related posts:

1. Harmony Halloween Horse Show – A Different View
2. Harmony Halloween Horse Show
3. Harmony Spring Horse Show

This is a short (4 minute) video from our even shorter visit to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge as part of our east coast road trip in mid-March 2009.  The refuge is located on Assateague Island right off the coast of Virginia.

It was a pretty bland day, light-wise.  When we have cloudy weather like this we almost prefer that it rains a bit to saturate the colors.  No such luck that day however.

Chincoteague is on the eastern seaboard migration flyway and can have plenty of birds on it at various times of the year.  November is a particularly good time to visit.  (Several photographers I know spend Thanksgiving there.)    There were some snow geese when we arrived and we had expected more to congregate as evening approached, but alas just the opposite happened and when we checked the ponds they were pretty much empty.

When nature hands you lemons…

Chincoteague is also fairly well known for the feral horses (ponies) that call the island their home.  They were making themselves pretty scarce as well, but we did find one… then 15… then another 20.  For us, 35 ponies in one day is lemonade!

The music track was kindly provided by Duke Levine.  If you like what you hear, please visit Duke’s page and buy an album or two.

———————————–

Technical drivel follows…

This video was shot using the Canon 5D Mk2 camera.  Most of the shots are with a 500mm f/4.0L telephoto lens. A 70-200mm lens was used for the wider angles. For those of you paying attention, this video has something that most “traditional” video doesn’t have: a dust spot on the sensor.  Yes, we have all sorts of tools for making our still images spot-free, but now we need a tool for our video editors too.

The raccoon clips were taken with the 500mm telephoto and a 1.4x teleconverter for an effective focal length of 700mm.  I don’t have my video head rigged for the 5D (yet) so this was done with a ballhead.  I was a bit shocked and very much pleased at how the image stabilizer in the 500 make the ad hoc panning work pretty well.  I’ve found that stabilizer can work against you taking video at high magnification — the shots tend to drift slightly.

If nothing else I was pleased by the ability to frame up some video shots and then quickly recompose for stills without having to haul two tripods around and/or constantly switch setups.  So my original goals for the 5D continue.   I’m still rather annoyed at the need to ballpark the exposure though.  This is turning out to be rather difficult to do in the field with any sort of consistancy.  Practice, practice, practice…

I’m still playing around with the delivery of the video.  I’m converting to Flash via VisualHub (I’m going to take Video Monkey for a spin in a couple of hours) which does an OK job, although the gamma differences from the source Quicktime file are really bothering me.  There are plenty of chroma compression artifacts in the Flash version as well.

The point of this blog layout was to provide room for big images and I want to do the same for the video, if at all possible.  Not sure how well that’s working but it sure makes an interesting testbed.

Finally, extra points to those of you who noticed that I repeated the theme of the lighthouse flash in a water reflection by the horses.  When I saw how that lined up while composing the shot I had a big smile.  It’s the little things sometimes…

Related posts:

1. Savannah National Wildlife Refuge
2. Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge
3. Chincoteague NWR Gallery is available

Halloween is right around the corner and each year Harmony Horse Stables in Littleton has their annual Halloween horse show which combines an intermural equestrian event with a dash of costumed fun.  This year the theme was local sports teams and the gates were painted in colors representing the Boston Bruins, Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, and the Boston Celtics.  My daughter is a riding instructor there and went as Tom Brady – complete with crutches.

The full set of images is available at: http://harmony.dmg-photography.com (see Halloween Show 2008).

It was a long shoot, over six hours non-stop, and suffice it to say that I worked it pretty hard and took a lot of photos – a quarter of which were quickly discarded in the initial edit.  I’m not paid to do this, so while I try to document the event I also use it to find some difficult or creative lighting situations and make the best of them.  Consequently the “flavor” of the images varies from straight photojournalism to “atmospheric”.

Shooting in the barn is a challenge to start with, but it gets harder as the day progresses.  The light is 70% natural, streaming in from all sides and some large doors at both ends.  There is no “good place” to stand.  As afternoon approaches the light at the far end of the barn forced me switch ends and shoot from a doorway.  Note that my first goal is to not get good pictures, it is to make sure that my presence and actions don’t disturb the horses and riders.  Many of them are very young kids and novice riders and their safety and enjoyment of participating in the show is my #1 concern.

Most beginner photographers don’t understand the value of a lens hood.  Shading the front of the lens reduces the amount of glare on and internal reflections within the lens.  When light that is incidental (i.e., not part of your image) hits the lens you get flare and loss of contrast.

But what happens when lighting conditions are not under your control and you have to shoot “into the light”?  Well, that’s where watching your exposure plus some post-processing can help make lousy images look pretty good (if stylized just a bit).

The jumps in the Harmony barn go length-wise and you want to be facing the horses for the jumps.  There’s light at both ends, so either way you’re screwed — shoot into the light, grin, and bear it – knowing that you’ll be able to (somewhat) compensate for the glare later.   The result is something like this:

Ramping up the black point, bumping the exposure (to somewhat compensate for the black point change), adding a bit of brightness, and increasing the clarity more than you would for a properly exposed image yielded this:

Now I could spent 10 minutes tweaking each image so that it ends up looking even better — but I had 50 to 60 of similarly challenged images.  Lightroom has (at least) two ways of helping.  I can synchronize the changes across multiple images (Aperture calls this Lift&Stamp) or I can create a “develop preset” that captures the tweaks and allows me to apply them anytime.

What I ended up doing was creating two presets that had different levels of compensation, and I could use the preset visualization window to double-check which one might be best if I wasn’t sure.    Bang, bang, bang – and everything is reasonably well fixed up.

It is important to note that I had another thing that helped with this process — I shoot with manual exposure 90% of the time.  The benefit here is that the adjustments I came up with for one image worked pretty well for a lot of others, because they were all exposed identically.  If I had been shooting in automatic mode, the scene differences would have varied the exposures slightly — making it harder to have batch/codified corrections later on.  And that’s a pretty big deal when shooting hundreds of images.

Manual Exposure + Lightroom Develop Presets = Fast turnaround of difficult images

Related posts:

1. 2009 Harmony Horse Stables Halloween Show
2. Harmony Halloween Horse Show – A Different View
3. Harmony Halloween Horse Show

More photos from this shoot and others at: http://chf.dmg-photography.com

Foals, Colts, and Fillys…

Related posts:

1. New foals at Chinquapin
2. Pittsfield Balloon Festival

Related posts:

1. Mustangs!
2. Horsing around in New Hampshire
3. Flying Horses

The next best thing to photographing wild horses is an outdoor horse show. Unfortunately most of them are late morning/early afternoon events and the lighting is, um, really really bad.

My daughter is a riding instructor at Harmony Horse Stables in Littleton and we occasionally go to shows to watch her ride (as an instructor she doesn’t usually do that much competitive riding) along with others from the barn. She had asked me a few weeks ago to do a little video of her and Duke doing some jumps. Sure.

So two weeks ago Betsy informs me that Cathy has some jumping events at a show in Millis that they go to each Wednesday afternoon in July and August. They’ve been going there the past few years… (long pause) Let me get this straight. There’s an outdoor horse show that takes place in the late afternoon summer light…. Each week… And nobody thought to mention this to me?

So I booked out of work on Wednesday afternoon and headed down to Apple Knoll Farm in Millis. It wasn’t everything I had hoped for (a hill to the west of the farm kills the sweetest light), but these are by far the nicest horse show photographs I’ve ever taken. I can’t make it each week, but we went for a few weeks this year and this is something that will definitely be on the list for next year photographing “Team Harmony”.

See my “Harmony on the Rails” series at http://harmony.dmg-photography.com

Related posts:

1. Harmony Spring Horse Show
2. Halloween Horse Show: countering some horror lighting conditions with Lightroom
3. 2009 Harmony Horse Stables Halloween Show

Well, we’re back from our trip out west to photograph Wild Mustangs in Colorado and Wyoming. The trip was lead by Charles Glatzer and it was both exhilarating and exhausting. Fortunately the weather was warm and the light was kind. Unfortunately, the horses were wary and they were very challenging to get good photographs of. (We’ll do better NEXT time!)

The mustangs are sequestered in a few areas across the west. In this case the horses share the high desert with some pronghorn antelope, elk, rabbits, eagles, and a few hundred natural gas wells. It was thrilling just to watch their behaviors, the young foals less than a few weeks old running with the groups, the challenges by the stallions, the fighting and the horseplay.

I’ll have more to write about these magnificent animals in the coming weeks, but since so many people have been asking about them, we thought it would be good to share a handful of the better images we took home from this trip.

Please visit the Wild Mustangs Photo Album for a taste of the real wild west.

Related posts:

1. Flying Horses
2. Chincoteague NWR Gallery is available
3. Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge