The Backdoorhippie Six Sets of Sixty-One for '16

BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
January 8

Today's lesson, take the road you haven't taken before. Drove to meet my brother for lunch today and decided to go the back way into Flemington, NJ. Haven't driven that route in at least half a decade, so as I came into town I was stunned to see this on the side of an old abandoned building. Part 2 of the lesson is to make sure you leave early enough to have time to stop along the way.

20160108.jpg
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
January 9

"Little Christmas" was Thursday. Guess what we're doing?

20160109.jpg



And for poops and giggles I decided to see what this would twirl like...

20160109-twirl.jpg
 
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D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
BackdoorHippie said:
January 8

Today's lesson, take the road you haven't taken before. Drove to meet my brother for lunch today and decided to go the back way into Flemington, NJ. Haven't driven that route in at least half a decade, so as I came into town I was stunned to see this on the side of an old abandoned building. Part 2 of the lesson is to make sure you leave early enough to have time to stop along the way.

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This is a fantastic shot. The colors just pop but the contrast between the stormy skies and the mural is what really is fantastic. Great job on shooting that to bring out all that detail and color.
My wife and I travel a lot more now that we are both retired and will go somewhere one route and come back another just so we see things that would normally be missed. We also never plan to be anywhere at a specific time so we can stop when and where we want.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Don Kuykendall said:
This is a fantastic shot. The colors just pop but the contrast between the stormy skies and the mural is what really is fantastic. Great job on shooting that to bring out all that detail and color.
My wife and I travel a lot more now that we are both retired and will go somewhere one route and come back another just so we see things that would normally be missed. We also never plan to be anywhere at a specific time so we can stop when and where we want.
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Thanks, Don. A lot of work to pull the sky out on this one. If I use it elsewhere I'm going to need to spend some time fixing the border along the building, but suffice it to say there was a lot of masking going on here. Sky was pulled out and treated as a separate layer entirely if only so I could minimize any line between the top and bottom. Right side of the building is the clearest example of what needs to be fixed.

I'm looking forward to the day that I can simply be a retired shooter.
 
D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
BackdoorHippie said:
Thanks, Don. A lot of work to pull the sky out on this one. If I use it elsewhere I'm going to need to spend some time fixing the border along the building, but suffice it to say there was a lot of masking going on here. Sky was pulled out and treated as a separate layer entirely if only so I could minimize any line between the top and bottom. Right side of the building is the clearest example of what needs to be fixed.

I'm looking forward to the day that I can simply be a retired shooter.
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Then I am glad I noticed it then. Good work always shows if you look hard enough for it. I have been trying to pay attention to the details of photos more lately and pick them apart to separate what I like and what I don't like about a photo. For the items I don't like I do a mental exercise on what I might have done different to "Fix" it and on the items I like I try to figure out how it was done and how I can use it in my photography. This has many more likes than dislikes. There is only one thing I might have done different but I bet you already know what that was and there is probably a great reason it was not done.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
January 12

I saw a video on Phlearn about how to add snow to a photograph, and while I don't necessarily like the idea of faking reality in photography knowing how to do manipulations like this can come in handy when you need something there and can't wait on the weatherman.

We got just a dusting of snow on Tuesday, so I took this shot during the 10 minutes I had where sunlight and time with the camera actually met.

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I thought it would be more dynamic in B&W (meh), and after I saw it was just so-so I remembered about the tutorial and thought I'd try and make it look like it was taken while the snow was falling.

20160112.jpg


It came out OK. If I'd spent more time with it and played a little more with how I blurred each snow layer (there were 4) it may have been more realistic. But hey, at least I'm still in it after 2 weeks. LOL
 
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BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
January 13

OK, this image sucks unless you realize that it was shot with a D7100 in a way that rendered it nearly 60K pixels wide. It's a close-up pano process that I'm practicing and I promise to post better stuff with it eventually, but since this is a long-ass year and this is all I had time to shoot today you get amplifier logo. ;)

20160113.jpg
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
hark said:
Will be interested in learning about this process! :)
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I don't know how "interesting" it really is. The challenge I'm shooting for seems to have confused the concept of GigaPixel panoramic photography (shooting hundreds of photos with a long lens and stitching them into a single, gigapixel panorama that can be drilled into in incredible detail) with the into the idea of "Closeup Panoramas" which is described as shoot a panorama either as a macro or in close proximity to your subject. The idea of GigaPixel panoramas is very interesting and they even make automated tripod heads to facilitate it. This thing? Not so much. Regardless, unless the actual full resolution photo is available to view you really can't tell the difference when displayed at 1000px.
 
B

Blacktop

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
I don't know how "interesting" it really is. The challenge I'm shooting for seems to have confused the concept of GigaPixel panoramic photography (shooting hundreds of photos with a long lens and stitching them into a single, gigapixel panorama that can be drilled into in incredible detail) with the into the idea of "Closeup Panoramas" which is described as shoot a panorama either as a macro or in close proximity to your subject. The idea of GigaPixel panoramas is very interesting and they even make automated tripod heads to facilitate it. This thing? Not so much. Regardless, unless the actual full resolution photo is available to view you really can't tell the difference when displayed at 1000px.
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I don't know how much processing power you have in that Mac, but when I'm stitching a 9 shot pano together my machines takes for ever, even with every other program closed.
It would probably blow up trying to stitch hundreds of shots together.
 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
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Contributor
BackdoorHippie said:
I don't know how "interesting" it really is. The challenge I'm shooting for seems to have confused the concept of GigaPixel panoramic photography (shooting hundreds of photos with a long lens and stitching them into a single, gigapixel panorama that can be drilled into in incredible detail) with the into the idea of "Closeup Panoramas" which is described as shoot a panorama either as a macro or in close proximity to your subject. The idea of GigaPixel panoramas is very interesting and they even make automated tripod heads to facilitate it. This thing? Not so much. Regardless, unless the actual full resolution photo is available to view you really can't tell the difference when displayed at 1000px.
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I just had my dose of fun for the day! I went to the link you provided, and when I went to scroll down the page, I accidentally clicked on the photo. So...I took it for a spin...literally! Whee!!!!!!!!!! I was on top of the world going 'round and 'round! ;)

So you are saying it is a method of taking a macro photo that will allow it to be blown up into a huge photo? If so, that might be cool! Hmm...imagine...a HUGE bug on the wall staring me in the face....:surprise: That just might make for some interesting conversations!
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Blacktop said:
I don't know how much processing power you have in that Mac, but when I'm stitching a 9 shot pano together my machines takes for ever, even with every other program closed.
It would probably blow up trying to stitch hundreds of shots together.
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I remember trying to stitch a 17 image pano I did at a lake last year and I ran out of physical space on my Mac trying it (I needed to offload some photos from my catalog at the time). The one above was 13 shots and took about 4 minutes to stitch in Lr, which actually does a pretty good job. I suspect that these Gigapixel shots are stitched on large SSD drives with plenty of scratch space. The GigaPan site has links to a different stitching program which may manage scratch space better than the Adobe products when doing panos?
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
January 14

Playing with the bokeh on my Sony 50mm f1.8 while I still have daylight

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And yes, it's been that kinda day.

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Yes, I know it's not shot with a Nikon, but the combination of the a6000 and this 50mm is a really nice, fun combo.
 
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