MaineSight » Photograph

Focus Stacking

Paul — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:26:06 +0000

On a Thanksgiving Day family hike in Brooksville I came upon this bend in the trail and realized while photographing that even at 24mm, I am not not going to get a sharp focus across the image (at least not without a tilt shift lens), so I set up my tripod and cable release and made two exposures; one with focus in the foreground, and the other with focus farther back in the frame.

Once home, I opened the two raw images using PhotoAcute and combined them using the focus stacking feature. This is the first time I’ve used this feature, and it worked remarkably well.

Happy Accidents

Paul — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:17:55 +0000

I was just working on some images making print ready files for sending to my printer (White House Custom Color). I’ve made a template in Lightroom’s Print Module that (when a properly cropped) makes a jpeg file ready to upload and print. However, the below portrait format print image was accidentally used with a landscape template for a 5×7 greeting card, and them I was left with the bottom image, which, after realizing what had happened, I instantly liked. This led to a good 20 minutes or so of making different versions and playing around with the crop. Freeman Patterson has a great exercise where he has you place your tripod in one spot and make a 10-20 images. Its a fantastic exercise in seeing, and not altogether different than my little cropping exercise.

Next time I am at Schoodic Point (the location of these photos) I will return with fresh eyes, inspired by a happy accident.

Rowing, Camden, Maine

Paul — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:30:45 +0000

I’m getting ready to sell prints and greeting cards for the indoor Brunswick Market at the old Fort Andross Mill. This is one of the images I hope will sell; it was made this summer at Camden harbor while waiting to depart to Mantinicus Island. Handheld, with the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS at 200mm.

Tamaracks

Paul — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:55:55 +0000

Tamaracks, Durham, Maine. Processed with Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta.

Brooksville, ME

Paul — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:59:20 +0000

This was taken on a wonderful overcast day in Brooksville, Maine on some land recently donated to the Blue Hill Heritage Trust.

Unfortunately, I mistakingly left my tripod at home, and this image was handheld ISO 800 for 1/30 second at f/10.

Super Wedding

Paul — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:43:00 +0000

A former physics student of mine (Tony Lucchese) and his fiance (Sarah LaFore) hired me to photograph their wedding. They met on the theatrical stage and staged a superhero themed wedding in which Tony was Superman, and Sarah was Wonder Woman. The wedding party consisted of various super heroes and amazons. This photo is from the rehearsal the day before the actual wedding, but I liked the dramatic lighting. You can read more about the wedding at Tony and Sarah’s wedding blog at http://super-wedding.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Sunset Paddle

Paul — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:00:29 +0000

I took a short sunset paddle tonight in Frenchman Bay. I’ve never photographed while paddling, but I decided to try to get over my inhibition about mixing salt water with photography. I’m still nervous while attempting to photograph while paddling—even though it was calm when I went out. I’m constantly paranoid I am going to drop the camera or capsize as compose a photo.

Little Cranberry Island

Paul — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:52:30 +0000

Here are a few photos from a day trip to Little Cranberry Island, Maine. On the south shore of the island, there is an amazing 2 km long beach littered with small smoothed stones polished from many tidal cycles.

The Bubbles

Paul — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:26:55 +0000

The view of the bubbles from the south end of Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park. A great place to end a hike—they have fantastic tea and popovers, and kids can run around on the lawn and rumpus. This photo was taken with a Canon G10 on a tripod while I stood in the middle of the pond to get this perspective.

Starfish

Paul — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:13:32 +0000

At low tide, there are hundreds of these starfish on the barnacle encrusted rocks in Hancock, Maine. I’ve read (in a book by Thorton W. Burgess) that a single arm of a starfish can re-grow an entire new starfish. How does that happen? Wouldn’t that mean that the starfish’s arm has to first grow a new stomach so that it can gather food for what must be a pretty seriously energy intensive re-building process?