It’s that time of year when color is pretty much a bonus, especially at the beach. It’s usually so muted that it’s a distraction, not an addition, to a photograph. I had that in mind when I headed out.
The afternoon wasn’t colorless. The palette was just muted.
It wasn’t until will after the actual sunset that I was packing up the car for the drive home. That’s when I glanced westward again to find a shocking degree of afterglow.
I could spend a lot of words on explaining this journey. It would be colorful, to say the least. Bad words directed at Adobe, references to feeling like an ignored stepchild because I shoot Sony and not Canikon, etc.
Never mind all of that. The new camera pretty much forced me into upgrading Adobe’s Lightroom on my computer… up from version 2 to 3.
And suddenly all of the woes that made me stop using it two years ago were forgotten. It works as it’s supposed to, and it never did before.
And, it allows… no, it encourages me… to go back and review hundreds (probably thousands, though I haven’t gone that far yet) of frames shot in the last couple of years with new eyes.
All of the images below were made while skirting a May storm in Wasco County, Oregon.
New Wheat
Storm Boiling
Howling Power Lines
Sculpted
Rain on the Horizon
While some of these have been uploaded to Facebook before, previous versions were processed in Photoshop CS4 and required substantial effort to get the RAW file to look the way I had “seen” the frame. All of these were revisited in Lightroom 3, using PS only for final web optimization.
All were shot with the A100. It’s outdated, but it’s fully capable of capturing good images!
Saturday was too nice to stay inside and do the chores that I knew I needed to do.
I set out in search of reflections and calm and found myself in the shadow of a Chinook on approach to Astoria Regional.
OK, I’ll follow that!
Having spent a few years in aviation maintenance, I respected the flightline and shot from near the FBO until the aircraft commander walked up and said “Get as close as you like!”
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
That was cool but the crew was off to socialize with the Coasties, and there was a Jayhawk preparing for launch, so my attention was divided.
The differences between the two aircraft types is almost startling. The Coast Guard helos are newer, of course, but even if they weren’t, there’s always been a difference in the way that the Army treats the exterior of its birds. The Jayhawks look like hot rods, the Chinook looks like a farm truck.
You decide… I know it’s one of the best stouts that I’ve ever consumed. Previously only available on tap, Fort George added it to its canning line in the last couple of weeks.
Five spiders are listed around the can. Unfortunately and inexplicably, Charlotte A. Cavatica escapes mention. Probably a copyright thing.
The image is a result of the (new) A77’s “sweep panorama” mode, Adobe’s Lightroom 3 post-processing and minor work in Photoshop CS4.
Yeah, I’m still having fun with the new gear.
Shot at 16mm and 1/200 second, but past that, I can’t tell you a lot… the camera’s mode took over. I think there were between 15 and 20 frames involved in the stitching, but I didn’t really try to count. I was too busy panning with my finger on the shutter button.
The hard part (the panorama stitching) was accomplished in-camera in less than a second after the series was shot (on a Class-10 card… be prepared to wait with something slower), and the balance of the post-work was done in a couple of minutes in LR3 and CS4.
Sometimes, all the pieces fall into place.
I was on vacation two years ago and had an opportunity to ride the Sumpter Valley Railway in eastern Oregon. It was a cycling vacation, and while I had my DSLR in my luggage, I only had my point and shoot with me when it was time for the train to pull out.
It had been overcast and sloppy wet for nearly the entire riding day, but by the time camp was set, the rain had stopped and the terrain had dried. But the light was still quite flat.
The files have been languishing on my hard drive almost since they were taken. The first one showed some promise early on, so I did some preliminary work earlier. The second was a more recent rediscovery.
The smaller sensor in the point & shoot allows nearly everything to be in focus at a relatively wide aperture and low ISO (about 4.0 and 125, in these cases). Selective focus (the kind you get with DSLRs at wide apertures) is great, even impossible to live without in some cases, but now and then foreground to background focus is exactly what’s needed.
Both images are crops from the Panasonic ZS-1. Photoshop was used for tone control and B/W conversion, but the alterations are to the original files.
Larger versions are a click away.
I got an extremely good ride in yesterday, so I didn’t feel ashamed to just spend a lazy morning on foot near home.
Something to contemplate over your coffee at Coffee Girl.
Ugly ship, but nice colors!
A Jayhawk passed on cue. No crop or adjustment here… the sucker was just posing.
Yeah, more of the same for me, but the light was just so nice!
The Elliott Hotel has excellent beds! (The big graphic says so!) And, it’s pretty much the anchor for Astoria’s Sunday Market.
The poor trolls and clown need a day out, too!
Inside the old Astor Hotel. This portion is now an antique shop/builder’s recycling center. Worth checking out regardless of your interests.
Another view of the interior.
It might not show up well even if magnified, but these were sold by a rink in Aberdeen, WA.
Detail of the exterior of the Astor Hotel.
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The only thing that was different from your average Astoria Sunday was the utter lack of clouds for the majority of the day. The subject matter is entirely typical… it’s only the quality of light that differs.
