Spring Flowers

Walker Farm, Dummerston Vermont

 It's a Little More Colorful Than the Noble Lichen



There are times when life gets in the way of blogging. I remain committed to getting an article out every week (usually Sundays), but this has been one of those weeks when other responsibilities have made it difficult for me to generate my usual fresh, incite-full and voluminous content. The good news is that there is a very good reason for my time pressure. Our daughter Abigail is moving from DC to North Cambridge to be with her

The Depth, Spofford NH

boyfriend, and, needless to say, Susan and I are thrilled to have our daughter moving closer to home. Now if we could only get Jeremy to evacuate dreaded NYC for friendlier digs. Anyway we are getting ready to head down to Washington by the end of the week to help Abby with the move and that has become a significant but happy distraction. As a result I will focus this week's photographic musings on something quick and easily at hand, spring flowers.


Don't Ask Me the Name!
  
Flowers are easy to discuss because they are bursting forth everywhere and because I can summarize my entire understanding of the topic in three words. "Flowers are pretty". That's it, don't ask me to identify everything, all I can say is that flowers are natural miracles of structure, color and texture, and that they are a joy to photograph. The blooms are especially wonderful subjects for Macro Photography and I have been out with my 100mm Macro capturing all I can.


Walking Nellie

Day lilies Keene River Park

Whether cultivated or wild, flowers are everywhere this time of year, and I have been shooting along forest trails as well as at local gardens and parks, and my daily walks with Nelly through Spofford Village routinely yield colorful subjects. The trick is to wait for the wind to drop and to balance f-stop, shutter speed and ISO to achieve adequate depth of field. It is seldom possible to get everything in focus, but, if the stamen is sharp, the rest can fall out of focus without loosing impact. Interestingly I have captured some of my best floral macros with my compact Canon SX-50. The SX-50's small sensor

Lady Slippers - I Know These!

has a substantially larger Depth of Field than does my lovely full-frame monster and at times the sharpness seems to wrap around the petals. Flowers captured in natural settings are spectacular, but controlling the environmental conditions can be a frustrating struggle. It can help to shoot early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the light is soft and the wind light, but after spending hours waiting for the wind to calm, I begin to think about ways to cheat Mother Nature.

Rhododendron with Canon SX50

Flowers Served on a Platter
 On occasion a local whole-sale florist in Marlborough, New Hampshire lays large pallets of flowers on their parking lot and last week I dropped by in the evening to shoot the display in the soft light. With careful adjustment of angle the flowers can appear as if they were growing in an open field. The trick is to approach from low enough to avoid revealing the trays, baskets and pavement underneath. Of course shooting across the tops of the flowers makes capturing sufficient depth of field a challenge. This week there was a mild breeze and to avoid turning everything into a pastel blur I had to use faster shutter speeds and wider apertures than would have been best for maximum depth of field. Thank goodness for focus stacking. I used 7 stacked images to capture the field of blue image, which meant that, during the early editing, I had 14 image layers including the blended layers and non-blended correction layers. It can all be a strain on my computer's RAM, but fortunately, after the blending and clean-up, I could flatten everything to a single layer. My Marlborough florist doesn't bring out the pallets every year, but, when they do, it is an opportunity that I try never to miss. It may be considered cheating, but I have captured some of my best "flower field" images from this location, and, after all, the flowers don't know that they are in pallets.





The Big Greenhouse Cheat
 

As in previous seasons, I have been liberally cheating with photography of the flora in the protected environs of local greenhouses. Greenhouse photography tends to be screened from the wind and the soft diffused light eliminates reflection and glare. Once again the key is to avoid artificial distractions in the background








Walker Farm
 

 
Every spring I await Susan's announcement that it is time to get our spring plants at Walker Farm. Walkers is across the Connecticut River in Dummerston Vermont and is a wonderful place which, throughout the summer, has some of the best produce in the region. In the spring it also stocks trees, shrubs and flowering plants of all varieties.

Grand Finale, Dummerston, Vt

While Susan is loading up, I run to the green house to grab shots of the beautifully cultivated flowers and ground cover. This year I was a bit self-conscious about lugging my tripod around the flower beds and I paid the price. It was difficult to steady the camera at the slow shutter speeds that would have permitted the high f stops required for optimal DOF. I tried to find flowers that I could keep on one focal plane and focused on the center of the blooms.







Don't Try This at Home
 I also tried some hand-held focus stacking. Everyone, including me, will tell you that focus stacking requires a tripod to keep the view consistent. Having no tripod, I lined up my composition, broadened my stands and ran through the series of variably focused exposures. I did the best I could keeping the frame steady by fixing my center focus square on one spot in the scene. Photoshop, being the miracle that it is, did the job of aligning and blending remarkably well and I had very little clean-up to perform after the process. The picture of the mixed flowers was assembled from 5 hand-held, focus stacked images, but "DON'T try this at home". Focus stacking still requires a tripod!

Mountain Laurel, Ann Stokes Trail, Chesterfield NH

With what little time I've had this week, I have been trying to process a few of my flower images. I love working with the colors and textures to create macro floral "landscapes". When we get back from DC, I will return to these, but before that I have to get my daughter safely back close to home. Yea!

Jeff Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com

The Underappreciated Lichen

I have been working on an article for this week's blog discussing the file types commonly used in our digital cameras. That article will be part of my "Basics of Digital Photography Series", but as often happens, I have become distracted by a different and more colorful project. So this week let's talk about Lichen.

I Love Projects

I have been working with a client who is looking for images to decorate a new ward in a nearby community hospital. I've collected a range of images focusing on our region, with the goal of presenting a calm and relaxed atmosphere. A number of the images have been accepted, but I was told that the architects are also looking for images of "Wheat and Lichen". The easy part was the Wheat - I have no Wheat!  But Lichen is a different matter. New England is full of Lichen, its just that we tend to ignore this surprisingly resilient organism(s). I love a project, so let the Lichen hunt begin.

Cemetery Wall, Putney Vermont

I started with a search for Lichen in my Lightroom image catalog and found only about five images. Five out of over 350,000, I clearly have to start paying more attention. After all Lichen is not difficult to find. In fact the 13,000 and 17,000 currently identified species of Lichen are estimated to cover about 6% of the earth's entire land mass. While most of our wimpy plants are just beginning to venture out of their winter hibernation, the Lichens are thriving and thriving everywhere. All we need to do is look. When we talk about the beauty of our rugged New England stone walls we are largely referring to the color and texture of the Lichens which cling to the native boulders. Lichens not only populate the rocks, but they also frequently paint our trees, barns, fences and tomb stones with patterns of lush pastels

Luna's Blanket, Chesterfield, New Hampshire, 1875

What is (are) Lichen
Consider for a moment the lowly Lichen. Lichen is not a plant or even a single organism. It is a symbiotic composite organism combining a fungus superstructure in which lives a photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria. The fungus feeds on the sugars produced by the algae or bacteria, while providing a protective and anchoring structure. The fungal filaments also provide a conduit for moisture and nutrients to supply the photosynthetic process. The relationship works well. Lichen are resistant to cold and drought. They are often the first organisms to attach to freshly exposed rocks and they are believed to be among the oldest organisms on the planet. When looking at a small unassuming colony of Lichen, their antiquity may be hard to appreciate, but their size is deceiving.  They are extremely slow growing, some species expanding at a rate of only 0.5 to 1.0 mm/year. A hundred year old Lichen could be less than four inches in diameter. Tread carefully!


Finding Lichen So, although they don't make great pets, Lichens are ubiquitous, amazing, and deserving of our attention. With my assignment in hand I went off to pad my Lichen collection. Happily Lichen are everywhere and they don't tend to run away when approached by an intruding camera lens. The obvious place to start is stone walls and I went to one of my favorite in Marlborough, New Hampshire. The wall boasts a great view of Mt Monadnock and both the wall and the border trees were encrusted with Lichen. The challenge comes from trying to find ways to capture these unassuming patches of color and texture in interesting ways




Photographing Lichen
 Although they are present throughout the year Lichens become especially attractive during the spring stick season as we await the coming explosion of green. When examined closely Lichens have interesting variations of soft pastel hues, but they don't boast the vibrant colors of a New England autumn or soulful eyes of a baby deer. Their attraction comes from texture and pattern, I was looking for interesting "Lichen landscapes" as the fungus interacted with the trees, rocks and other detritus of the forest. Strolling along-side the wall I found plenty to keep me busy. I started with close-ups of the Lichen's structure and then pulled back to include its immediate and more distant environment. Once my eyes snapped onto the subject, it was amazing how distractions fell away and I could give the remarkable organism its deserved attention. 

 

Lichen Often Shares the Natural Substrates with Moss

Homestead Stone, Chesterfield, NH

I used both my workhorse 24-105mm and my 100mm Macro lens. Happily the sky was mostly overcast providing a soft even light and with the camera latched firmly to my tripod, I was able to get exposures that were long enough to allow me to stop down for reasonable depth of field. Even with small apertures, I often needed to use focus stacking to capture the lichen in sharp focus.  On sunny days, I used my large reflector disc to block the bright light from the close-up images.  At others times the direct sunlight served to bring the rugged textures into high relief, while my polarizer filter helped to cut reflections allowing the subtle colors to shine through.




 


I have enjoyed the opportunity to focus on the under-appreciated Lichens.  I will never again disrespect these sturdy and resourceful natural survivors and I believe they would make beautiful and highly appropriate decorations for a hospital ward.  They are  another example of the endless variety of life which makes New England such a special place to live, photograph and heal.


More Images in my Web Site
Lichen Gallery



Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com

Zooming in on Spring Leafscapes

Using a Telephoto Lens to Focus on the Spring Color

 

Having survived stick and waterfall seasons we are now firmly in leaf season. Mid to late spring is a time of infinitely varied curtains of green and it is one of my favorite times of the year.  Not only can we say goodbye to the last remnants of winter (I hope), but the colors in the trees rival the autumn for warmth and brilliance.  Too soon the leaves will settle into their deeper and more monotonous summer greens, but while it lasts I feel like a kid in a candy shop trying to capture the unique beauty of new beginnings.

Not the Grand View
So far this spring I have been concentrating on macro images of the early buds and flowers, but the colors of the spring leaves lend themselves to a broader canvas.   In the Spring and Autumn, when the emphasis is on the color of the foliage, photographers often capture expansive images of hillsides with vast splashes of color.  It is tempting to focus on the grand panoramas, but for me, these images are generally monotonously busy and without direction.  I prefer to move in on the detail, arranging leaves, trunks and sky into more intimate compositions.  I had great fun this early spring limiting myself to the world seen through my 100mm Macro lens, but for the spring foliage I decided to switch to my telephoto zoom generally restricting my view to the 300 - 400 mm range.

 


The Telephoto View

Long lens' change photographic vision in a number of ways.   I found that the massive hunk of glass hanging from my shoulder quickly altered the focus of my attention as I scanned for more distant subjects that I could pull into the viewfinder.  The long telephoto restricts the angle of view making it easier to isolate arrangements of leaves, tree trunks, branches and fauna into simple but powerful compositions.  It compresses distant layers of foliage creating interesting and complex combinations of differing flora.  At the same time, depending on aperture, the telephoto creates a narrow range of sharp focus allowing soft bokeh to simplify the image and draw attention to the main subject(s).


 


 
 I started by scanning across pastures to the distant forest edge looking for patterns. The variously colored leaves created lovely montages while in other areas the dark branches provided interesting contrast with the soft foliage. Once I started looking, the compositions were everywhere. Foreground elements also helped to provide interest and context to the images. Through the perspective flattening effect of the long lens fences, sheep, and horses were compressed into the scene linking the background with the foreground interest. The effect can be subtle but still provides an almost unstated sense of connection which is very calming.




A couple of days ago I awoke to find a gentle mist hanging on the trees.   I rushed out  to shoot before the fog melted away. The depth enhancing effect of the mist combined with the compression of the telephoto produced lovely contrasts.

Spring Mist

 



 The leaves are beginning to settle into their summer hues. Sadly, the soft spring colors seem as fleeting as autumn's garish display, while it lasts it is well worth zooming in on the show.
Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com

Hand-Held Focus Stacking

Snow Peak, Mount Monadnock, Marlborough, NH

Using Auto-Focus Points to Hold the Frame

This week I wanted to share a simple technique to obtain multiple (or at least two) images for focus stacking while hand-holding the camera.


Focus Stacking
I have previously discuss in considerable detail the technique of focus stacking to achieve deep depth of field.  This approach
requires multiple images focused at different planes of the scene which are then combined in post processing to achieve sharpness throughout.  A key requirement of the technique is that the images all be framed to match when aligned in the computer.  With sophisticated software, such as Photoshop, the match does not have to be perfect, but typically this is best achieved with the camera locked down on a tripod.  It can be quite challenging to manually vary focus while trying to hand-hold the framing perfectly constant.  This is where my camera's auto focus points can come to the rescue.

I have never been a big fan of auto-focus for my landscape

Hibernation, Pomfret, Vt.  Two focus planes.

photography.  Even as the technology has improved, I tend to prefer to assure sharpness by manually focusing, often on a tripod and, in poor light frequently, using the Live View Screen.  But when I am faced with a scene which contains a discrete foreground and distant background,  I can often get good results with a two image stack, one focused on the foreground detail and the other on the background.  This is the situation where auto-focus can save me the chore of getting out my tripod, if I have it on hand.


Mount Monadnock
Most photographers are familiar with the technique of holding the shutter down half-way to lock focus on a part of the scene and then recomposing for the final shot.  This is most frequently used when focusing a subject that is off center, but the same technique can be used to grab a couple of images for a simple focus stack.  In the example of Mount Monadnock shot from Marlborough, New Hampshire, I locked focus on the detail of the fence and then re framed to include the distant mountain.  The first image caught the fence in clear focus and then without moving the camera I locked focus on mighty Monadnock and shot again.  As I shot the first image I carefully noted the position of the central focus point square to assist in close alignment of the second image.  In more complicated situations, fully sharp focus stacking can require more than two images, but in bright light, when I can stop down, two are often enough to get good results, especially when there are just two discrete planes of interest. 

Canon 5D Mark II Focus points

Mill Ice, Harrisville, New Hampshire
My Canon 5D Mark II has 9 focus points displayed on the screen, but only the central square is a cross sensor, vertical and horizontal, and therefore the most accurate.  When possible I try to use the central point for focus stacking but there are many times when the central point aligns with neither the foreground or background in my desired composition.  Faced with this situation I can usually find one of the other focus points that will provide the coverage I need.  In my image of the frozen mill pond in Harrisville, New Hampshire, I angled the camera down to using the top focus point to lock in the sharpness of the foreground ice and then recomposed.  In my second image, the focus point was in perfect position to catch the iconic Harrisville Public Library. 

Mill Freeze

Using one of the 8 peripheral focus points can reduce the reliability of the auto-focus, especially in dim light or low contrast. To help, I have switched my focus lock from the shutter to a button on the back of the camera that doesn't require continuous pressure to maintain the focus.  In the mill pond image, I could lock the foreground focus with the central point and then switch to the upper point ready for when I refocused on the background.  Not all cameras can switch the focus button. The directions for mine were buried in an obscure corner of my manual, but, with practice, the ability to lock focus without having to hold the shutter down, works well for me in most situations.

Focus Button on Back of the Camera

Ashuelot River, Keene, NH,
Multiple Focus Planes

The trick with this technique is to hold the camera steady as you re-press the shutter and to learn how to move the focus point around the screen.  I have gotten good enough that I will occasionally try to move the focus point within the screen to catch more than just two images for stacking.  The more manipulations I try, the harder it is to maintain the frame, but Photoshop can do some amazing things with auto-alignment.  Still it is about at this time that I grab for the tripod.




The speed and accuracy of auto-focus in modern cameras is amazing and improving all the time.  I still like to use manual focus in many landscape situation but it is important to understand your camera's focusing capabilities and to use them when the time is right.

Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com

Everyday Photoshop Magic : Layers

 Nellie Beyond the Wall, Sort of

Layers and Masks
I have said many times before, I live and die by Photoshop.  This remarkable program rescued me from the my dank, fume infested wet darkroom and opened a new world of possibilities to bring my images to their best.  There are many great books and tutorials about Photoshop but I want to talk briefly about a few of the essential elements of the program which make it such a revolutionary and essential part of my creative work.  I have kept up with the latest versions of Photoshop including the cloud based Photoshop CC.  The newest flashy features are always fun to play with, but the continuing strength of the program has much more to do with the long established tools that have been refined over the years, but in their simplest form remain the core of this magical window on photography.  My goal is not to provide detailed tutorials, but to help those unfamiliar with the program to develop an appreciation of its power and to understand why it is worth the effort to incorporate it into their creative process.  Full versions of Photoshop come with a substantial sticker shock, but most of what I will be discussing can be done in Photoshop Elements and a variety of other editing programs for a substantially reduced cost.   So I must start this discussion with Layers.




Layers
 Off all the tools in Photoshop, Layers is the most essential to my work and it was one of the most difficult to fully understand.  The learning curve for Photoshop can be quite steep.  It took me three passes at the program before it finally clicked.  I started with a tutorial book and then a coarse at my local college - nothing!  Finally I found a book by Ben Willmore that got me going and I haven't stopped learning since.  This program is so broad and deep, that I am convince that no one can ever truly understand it all, but you don't need to be a master to reap much of Photoshop's amazing power. Layers is a key part of that power.

Layers are used in the editing process to add picture components or processing to the original background image.  They are most often compared to placing a transparent sheet over a picture on which an images may be place to overlie a portion our a substantial amount of the original picture,  or on which processing can be applied to affect the underlying image.  These are referred respectively as Image Layers and Adjustment Layers.

Layer Stack.  Adjustments only where they are needed

Image Layers
An Image Layer contains image material, actual pixels, which are laid down above the original image.  Top layers are always seen as overlying and obscuring those below, and in regions where the image layer is blank, the underlying picture will show through. 

Adjustment Layers
Adjustment layers work in the same way as Image Layers but they contain processing instructions rather than pixels. An Adjustment

Adjustment Layers

layer may be used to modify the appearance of the underlying image layer(s) in a broad range of ways.  Brightness and contrast can be adjusted using tools including Levels, Curves, Brightness and Contrast.  Color quality and balance can be controlled by Vibrance, Hue & Saturation,  Photo Filter, Black & White and Color Balance tools. The major advantage of making these changes on an Adjustment layer is that the underlying image remains untouched and modifications can be added, removed, or modified at any point during processing.  The real power of adjustment layers is the ability to control them, to apply just the amount of affect you want just where you want it, and that is the magic of Layer Masks.

Layer Masks
Layer Masks are not actual independent layers but are best thought of as a window placed over an Image or Adjustment Layer to control how it is seen.  The basic rule is, "White reveals, Black conceals".  When an Adjustment Layer is created you will see a

Windows on the Layers

white box just to the right of the layer's icon.  This is the layer mask.  It starts all white, like a clear window, meaning that the full effect of the layer is being applied to the entire image.  The mask can be painted with black which, like blackening a window, will block the Adjustment Layer from affecting the underlying parts of the image.  If it is entirely black the adjustment will have no effect anywhere.  The masking does not have to be "all or none".  Painting with shades of gray will partially reveal the effect and the masks overall impact can be also be varied using the Opacity slider. 

Enough! I promised that this would not be a detailed tutorial.  Lets look at a quick example of the power of layers.  I have concluded that my images have too few pictures of our dog Nellie, so why not add her in.

Background Layer : Marlborough, NH

Nellie, Source Image

Nellie Beyond the Wall, Compositing the Pooch.

Image Layer of Nellie

I decided to add an image of Nellie behind the wall in an early autumn picture from Marlborough, New Hampshire.  Of course, I
would never do this in my work, but anything for my readers. I found a picture of her from a maple sugaring shoot I did a couple of years ago that I thought would work for this exercise. I adjusted the size and then moved a cropped version over to my background image.  This automatically created an Image Layer overlying the background.  Unlike Adjustment Layers, Image Layers do not have layer masks when they are created, but a mask is just one click away.  I then removed all the extraneous parts of the image layer by painting the mask with black over everything that wasn't Nellie, and over the parts of  her that belonged behind the wall.  

Curves Adjustment Layer with Mask

Shezam!, she was, magically transported in time and space, but she didn't look quite right.  She was too bright for the shadowy area under the tree.  The color balance was a bit off, especially in her excessively red whiskers. The scene was illuminated from the left, but Nellie's face was brighter on the right. I corrected all of these problems, then subtly brightened her eyes and added a bit of spotlighting with separate adjustment layers, each masked to apply the changes just to where they were needed.





 



The Stack

Full Layer Stack

The result is a stack of layers which selectively fine tune the composite to help Nellie slip into the scene.  It's not perfect, but I hope it demonstrates just a few of the advantages of layers and layer masks.  A full discussion of the how layers are created and manipulated would require a substantial book and I am still trying to grasp all of it's subtleties.  It is just one of the reasons that I find Photoshop endlessly fascinating and powerful, and why, if you haven't already, you should explore all the power of this amazing tool.


This week I have been experimenting with video screen capture to augment some of my articles.  Check out my first attempt which is a short video successively revealing the effect of the layers in my example.  I've got a lot to learn with this, so let me know what you think.    




 Video Screen Capture also on YouTube
Anybody know how to make the thumbnails for other video disappear from the end of the my video?


Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com