A Pond in the Shade

Omaha - Henry Doorly Zoo

A shaft of light pierces the trees and illuminates a small spot near a pond at the zoo.

This is a photo I took several years ago with an early digital camera. The difference between the bright and shaded areas is quite large. The camera did a pretty good job of recording everything given the limited capabilities of cameras from that time period.

I recently reprocessed the image with Lightroom 5. It did a better job of teasing out more detail than previous versions of software. Only the brightest highlights of the sun shining on the birds have lost detail and the remainder of the photo looks much better than the original conversion. The detail in the shadows is significantly improved.

If you have older raw files you may want to pick a few of the special photos and try reprocessing them in more recent software. You may find the camera captured more information than you thought.

gs

Sunrise

View from the Breakfast Table

For many years I enjoyed watching the sun rise as I drove to the office. Now that I work from home I enjoy watching sunrise even more.

I don't miss the morning rush to get out the door in time to beat the traffic. Mornings now progress at a slower, more natural pace with time to enjoy breakfast and plan the day.

Yesterday was the first day of Autumn. The leaves will soon start to change color and drop from the branches. The days are growing shorter. As we move towards Winter the sun will rise later and, for a while, breakfast will take place under artificial light.

gs

The Last Drop...

December, 2001

The container was almost empty so I gave it to my granddaughter. I guess it was similar to getting to lick the spoon after it's used to mix cake batter. At any rate, she was enthusiastic about finishing the last few drops of ice cream that were clinging to the sides of the container.

Technically, there are a lot of things wrong with this photo. It's a little overexposed. The bright towels in the upper left draw your eye away from the main subject. The zoom lens was set too wide, making her hand look almost as big as her head. The big cup in the foreground is distracting.

In this case the overexposure was fixed after the fact and the distracting bright background and cup were slightly minimized with a vignette. Not much can be done about the perspective. That's the type of thing you need to think about before taking the photo.

Sometimes you just grab the camera and shoot. I think that may be real meaning of "snapshot."

gs

What's Your Next Move?

Learning the rules of chess. November, 2001

Here's my grandson learning how to play chess from his Uncle. It looks, to me, like he's really paying attention.

This is just a snapshot, certainly not anything that would be mistaken for art. Casual snapshots can benefit from a little Lightroom help, too.

The background of this photo was pretty distracting. There were a couple of books with very busy cover patterns. They were magnets for your eyes, drawing your attention away from the great expression on the budding chess master's face. After a few strokes of Lightroom's adjustment brush it's a lot easier to concentrate on the actual subject of the photo.

-gs-



​

Football in the Front Yard

Front Yard Football, October 2001

College Football started this weekend and the Pros will transition from preseason games to the real thing any day now. Kids have been getting into the swing of things in neighborhoods all over  the country. 

The Front Yard Football rules aren't very specific, but little girls don't need a lot of rules. They are born with the knowledge that they need to steal their big brother's football. 

October, 2013

In the lead photo the leaves on the ground and the warm colors give the feel of Autumn. This photo was scanned from a negative that was shot back in 2001.

The Kids are a little older now. I got them together again last weekend for a group photo with their little brother. He wasn't born until a few years after that Front Yard football game.

I love the expressions on the kids faces in both of the photos.

-gs-

Signs of Fall

Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park and Wildlife Safari, 2001

Baseball is wrapping up the last couple of dozen games before the playoffs. The first college football game is Saturday. Temperatures are in the 90's, but after this little heat wave I think Summer is on the way out.

Here are a few of the residents of the nearby drive-through safari park. They look pretty spectacular toward the end of the season. The park closes to the public in October and they won't have to put up with traffic until Spring.

gs

Stars of the Pond

Late in October of 2001 I took a small, point-and-shoot film camera to the duck pond for a few test shots. Back then, there were a lot of ducks and geese that were always willing to hang around and pose for just a few slices of bread. The picturesque little pond has been expanded and surrounded with a wide concrete sidewalk. It's a much more functional place for people to walk and jog, but nowhere near as photogenic. Most of the waterfowl have moved away to more natural habitat.
This photo has become one of my favorites. It's actually an accident. I can take credit for the composition, but the stars and dark contrast of the white feathers against the water are accidental side effect of the camera design.

The bright white birds and reflection on the water tricked the camera's automatic exposure system into thinking the scene was very bright. In these situations most cameras will underexpose, making the photo dark. The stars result from the camera s​electing a very small aperture. I was surprised when I picked up the film from the lab, but I liked it.

Until now, I haven't done much with the photo because the original negative is rather noisy. Lightroom 5 cleaned it up fairly well. It will never be good enough for extreme enlargement, but it will make a nice medium size print.

-gs-