Indy 'n HDR

Before they came down, I got a chance at the beginning of January to get some pictures of the holiday lights strung from the top of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the circle. I shot it once before, but wasn't happy with the results. Much too flat. Of course now that I'm using HDR.....

 Some Colts pride in the lower right corner.

Didn't help them much, as that was the night

they lost to the Jets in the playoffs.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Having the fisheye definitely helped in some of the tight angles and to capture much of the circle in one image.

I probably took this one too far in HDR but it's fun to experiment.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

 I also turned around for a shot of the capitol down Market St.

 

 Something about this conjures up the phrase

'The road to hell is paved with gold and good intentions."

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not 

necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

University of Chicago

While in Chicago over the holidays, I also spent a few hours at the University of Chicago. It's gotten to be a bit of a cliche I think to take photos there. There are photos of the campus all over Flickr, lots of blogs. Yet, it was still a place on my list to check out as I had never been there before.

A walkway outside Bond Chapel.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

   

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Since it was over the holidays there weren't many people on campus, which meant I had it mostly to myself. Also meant a lot of the buildings were closed. Will have to go back as there were a few other places that looked interesting which I couldn't go into.

 A bulletin board on campus with scraps

of notices and staples left over.

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Bond Chapel.

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Was an okay day to shoot, not the best but not the worst. It's December in Chicago so gray skies are the norm. Also why I played around with the HDR, the un-doctored images are not all that interesting. Some snow falling would have been something to play around with, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating.

 

I think this would be a cherub,

kinda hard to tell with the vines.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Morton Arboretum

Been a while since my last post, hasn't been anything too exciting of late. Spent the week between Christmas and New Year's in Chicago. Christmas day spent some time visiting family in the western suburbs. Was right near Morton Arboretum in Lisle, some place I've always wanted to visit but never had the opportunity to. It happened that the grounds were free for the holiday.


Shot a ton of pictures in 90 minutes, had a couple keepers of snow covered trees that were interesting. But for an arboretum it was very random. A lot of the arboretums I've been to have very planned out, orderly designs, this seemed more natural. I was looking for those tree lined roads, trees standing alone in empty fields. Maybe it was something about the winter weather that encouraged me to look for that stuff, don't know; the first few things I shot didn't overwhelm me.

That's why I was happy when I found this stand of spruce trees. Something about spruce trees, standing very straight and tall; I find them really interesting to shoot. There are so many ways to approach them.

One day I took a little side trip to Lake Catherine, which is in Palos Heights, IL. It's a man made nature preserve and education center. A man made waterfall that feeds into a small lake. It's a nice area to take a short walk, see some ducks and geese.

 

Nothing too out of the box, just a nice way to spend the holidays taking pictures and being creative. 

Back in a few days with more from Chicago.

All Images copyrighted by Erik Markov

Wild Blue Yonder

I was able to have a very cool experience Friday. I went for a flight in a World War II T-6 Texan warplane.

There is a small grass trip airport in Kokomo, Glenndale Airport. For the past 10 years they have held Glenndale Days which is a fundraiser for an organization that helps families with children suffereing from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). The two day event features a bunch of Piper Cubs and Cessnas, along with military aircraft such as a T-6, P-51 and Stearman Biplane. Kids and adults can get rides in some of the planes and others are there for show or to put on aerobatic displays.

I've shot the event the past couple years, such as the Soundslide I did in 2007. It's a pretty fun time, see all the different aircraft. And I'm a big airplane fan, particularly the older stuff they have on display there. It's kind of like going to the Smithsonian Air Museum or EAA in Oshkosh, albeit on a smaller scale.

I had an email waiting for me, along with a phone message at the office when I started Friday afternoon. Steve Stants and his wife Laura run a flight school from the airport and I've talked to them several times over the years, taking their photo etc. Steve called to let me know that they were taking the T-6 up for a PR flight for a reporter from the weekly news ragsheet in town and was curious if I would be interested. Well sure.

 Pre-flight cockpit portrait, in my flight suit and strapped in.

Image by Erik Markov

 

I got to go up for a 20 minute flight in the second seat of the T-6, piloted by Laura Stants. Great day to fly with clear blue skies, do some barrel rolls. It was pretty damn cool. I've been up in Pipers, Cessnas, various helicopters, experimental garage built aircraft, hot air balloons, Stearman Biplane, a World War II B-17 bomber and an Air Force KC-135 refueler. But I think the T-6 takes the cake. You won't be doing barrel rolls or any real aerobatics in those other aircraft. It's the closest I'll come to knowing what a fighter pilot of any era feels. And it's nice when someone recognizes your interest in something and thanks you with such a nice gesture.

I'll let the images do the talking now.

Looking out over northeast Kokomo,

Kokomo Airport can be seen at the top left.

Image by Erik Markov

Looking towards the tail of the plane.

Image by Erik Markov

Halfway through a barrel roll,

looking out the top of the canopy

down at the ground.

Image by Erik Markov

After my flight.

Image by Erik Markov

Light painting

I spent the past weekend geeking out on light painting. There's maybe six days during a month where there is no moon, or at least not enough to mess up the exposure. But between having to work, crappy days of weather, whatever else; that shrinks to two or three days. It ends up being a couple late nights and sleeping in some the next morning.

Saturday I tried a new location. I know a gentleman in Kokomo who has a nice collection of restored cars. I've even gotten a chance to drive one or two of them. The one I was interested in was not so restored. At all.

This is a car built by Elwood Haynes, an inventor, car builder, all-around smart guy who lived in Kokomo around the 1890's.

Short history lesson: He is considered having built the first American automobile, even before Henry Ford. Haynes built his first car in 1894, and Ford built his first car in 1896. You can even look it up on Wikipedia.

Anyway, this guy I know has this Haynes sitting out in the field next to the road leading up to his house. When he bought it, the car wasn't really in shape to be restored, but over the years he's stripped parts off it for other Haynes cars he has restored. It sits, it rusts, it looks like part of the landscape.

This was a light painting I knew I would get around to eventually. Indiana doesn't have much going for it. But the one thing it has, particularly for a photographer/light painting is classic midwestern scenes.

After playing around with a straight on image of the car, I lowered the tripod. Working the camera up underneath the front bumper, I tried this angle. I liked all the weeds obscuring the grill just a bit.

Like I said, I geeked out on light painting. Sunday I went out to a barn I've been to before..... and I whiffed. Shot for a couple hours, came home. Looked at the images the next day, nothing. I just had nothing that I thought worked. It happens sometimes.

Monday, I re-visited a location I've already been. Back in October I checked out this gas station. For that image I had composited the final picture using Photomatix HDR software to take separate portions of the overall scene I had light painted and using the software I combined all those portions into one image. It worked ok, but for that particular scene, I just felt like it didn't work as well as I wanted. Someone who looked at an 8x10 print of it would probably think it looked ok. Except I could look at the original image on screen, zoom in, see all the imperfections caused by the software.

Those imperfections are what drove me to go back and re-shoot the scene. And I am happier with this result.

 

 The original image from October.

The new image.

The angle between the two images is a bit different. But I felt like the new image is blended together better.

Starting out tho, I couldn't find an image. I was trying a different angle when I first got there, and it wasn't working. The image looked like I was hitting the scene with a lighthouse, not light painting technique. After the previous night at the barn, I thought maybe I was losing my mojo. I couldn't find the light I was looking for.

I moved to this angle, slowed down, started switching up my light between my spotlight and my Maglite. And it started coming together. Looking at the two images side-by-side, the one thing I like about the original is the yellow light of it. It looks old, sort of antique. The light in the new image is more white. That's a result of the tungsten white balance I was using. Although I was shooting raw files, I went with tungsten because it seemed to help the sky color. That bit of brightness behind the station is the light of the town a mile away and Kokomo beyond that. Using daylight or AWB turned that sky pretty cruddy.

That's a problem in Indiana, among many problems. Don't get me started. Light pollution is really bad in most places, which of course doesn't help in light painting. Most people don't see it or don't think about it. But in a five or ten minute exposure, it really shows up. I can control moon light by only shooting during a new moon. I wish I could force a town to shut their lights off. Not to get all "green" but I wish there would be more those worldwide blackout nights.

One other image I shot and played around with a bit in Photoshop. Looking for that antique look. Not sure it completely works, but it's interesting to look at.

I've got some other images from these two scenes uploaded to my Sportsshooter.com page. 

All images are copyright of Erik Markov.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Do easter eggs glow in the dark?

I had the first easter egg hunt of the year to shoot Saturday. This one was an adult easter egg hunt. Haven't heard of that too often. To make it a little more difficult, it was held just after the sun set.

I got to the park and was a little dismayed at what I saw. I saw a lot of eggs spread out over the large field. It reminded of this easter egg hunt from last year. Except that was a hunt for kids, not adults. From the map they had showing the "hunting grounds," it looked as tho all the eggs were out on the field, not in the woods as I thought they would be. How hard is that? I was pretty sure this was going to be a stinker of an assignment.






Once all the eggs in the field had been found people walked into the woods to look for eggs. I don't know how many eggs were there, if any, but it certainly made for more interesting images. I love being proved wrong about an assignment, it just happens so rarely that I've gotten used to that sinking feeling seeing a possible great assignment go bad. Glad that this turned out to interesting.

Holy lights are closer to God?

The big story in town right now is the fact that the holiday lights that are around the Howard County Courthouse, which is in downtown Kokomo, are of a decidedly non-religious nature. Someone with the county made the decision that the lights on the lawn of the courthouse would not reflect Christian religion. (Separation of Church and State, it's only the first amendment) Apparently this decision and its ramifications have now gone national, particularly on cable tv. I wouldn't now, I don't have cable (maybe its for reasons like this).

I shot this Saturday night, but it's identical to the shot I did on Friday night.
I like it because I imagine the dinosaur is trying to eat all the lights.
And failing miserably.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I really couldn't care one way or another what lights they put up, and most of this controversy sounds as tho it's being stirred up by people out of town. Someone in town (no one knows who supposedly) contacted Liberty Counsel, a "public interest" law firm affiliated with Liberty University of Jerry Falwell fame. Editors wanted a photo of the holiday lights, so Friday night after I shot my basketball game I stopped by the courthouse square to grab a picture.

Some creative zooming. Looking at this image makes me think
the dinosaur should be called Waldo because if you didn't know
what you were looking for, it could be tough to find the dinosaur.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

A few years ago, I had shot holiday lights for a lifestyle page a couple years in a row. It was fun to play around with something creative like that, but I didn't do it last year or this year because I had kind of exhausted all the nice images in the area.

I'm not sure why, but something about O.O.F.
Christmas lights is just pleasing to look at.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

After shooting that image at the courthouse, I was feeling creative so after my basketball game Saturday night, I went back over to the courthouse and played around a bit.

More zooming. Lights strung from the top of the
of the flag pole to form a tree and the courthouse
behind which has lights around the windows.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Something I haven't really talked about before is the fact that I am a camera system bastard. Yes, it's true, I admit it. I've used Nikon gear for 20 years and for the past eight years I've shot Canon gear for the Tribune. Not something I dwell on, or really think about much. Just the way it is. Not relevant to this post, but my portrait lighting gear is Nikon-based, around SB-28 strobes. What I'm saying is, my photography equipment life is pretty convoluted.

Looking at the courthouse from an alley.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

It doesn't bother me much, I feel like I can get nice images which ever system I am using. But, I do feel like I am a bit more creative with my Nikon gear. Don't know why that is, maybe it's just because I've used it longer. Some of it may be that I specifically chose my Nikon gear knowing what I like to shoot, where as my Canon gear was given to me and chosen by someone else.

Point is, when I went over to the courthouse Saturday night, I shot the images with my Nikon gear since I was shooting it for myself. Anyway, it was nice to be creative for myself, knowing no one would complain I "zoomed" an image.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Auto Yard

I spent the afternoon with a fellow Kokomo photographer, Roger Davis, at the local auto yard. I always thought it looked like it had potential for interesting images, but it was actually Roger who went there first about a month ago. We both have an interest in HDR images, so we spent the afternoon hanging out amongst car parts and old buildings. I was pleased with how they turned out.

Warren's Auto Parts building
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I've got a couple more images at my website.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Time is Up

Time has lapsed since I shot my first time lapse. (Get it? Ha... Ok, so it's not that funny.) Shot my first time lapse back in May, when I shot my first HDR images. Shooting it was the easy part. Made a few mistakes, but it went fine. That was nearly 6 months ago. Actually making it into a video was an arduous, painful task.

The only thing I really had to put it together was Adobe Premiere Elements. I wasn't really sure that was the right program, but seeing as how I was just starting out with time lapses I didn't want to spend more money on programs that I weren't sure would be any better. I got some help from other photogs at Sportsshooter, and thru a lot of trial and error in the program figured out what I was doing.

I think the main problem with Premiere Elements, and the Elements series of programs in general is they kind of dumb things down seeing as how they aren't meant for professionals. The learning curve on a professional quality program is usually longer but there are more options, allowing a producer to get a good quality result. Premiere Elements is prob fine for basic video use and still photos of several seconds each. Try and have a still photo shown for a millisecond, that's where the problem arises. I finally achieved the result I was looking for tho.

After finishing it I realized we have Imovie on one of the laptops at the Tribune, which is what I've seen a lot of time lapses produced with. Thru the process of using Premiere tho I realized it does appear to have some advantages over Imovie. Premiere has three tracks for video/stills and three tracks for audio, where as Imovie only has one track for each. I didn't get into Imovie enough to confirm this, but blending and transitions for the audio and video seems difficult. With Premiere it's just a matter of overlapping the sequences which makes the video flow better I think as opposed to hard transitions between sequences. It's all just really a matter of opinion and taste, to each his own.

Here's the link for Vimeo. Please check it out, if you're a member of Vimeo please leave some comments on the page. Otherwise feel free to leave a comment here.

Painting with strokes of light

Dove into the deep end of light painting the other day. I've talked about the technique before. Except for the cemetery, that was all relatively small stuff. And even the cemetery was only composed of three main images, and didn't have a huge amount of lightpainted items composing it.

I've got all sorts of memos for myself typed into my Blackberry. I've got a phone that's a couple years old, but I bought it new from Ebay last year, so it doesn't have internet access etc. But the one thing it's really useful for is making notes to myself about interesting places I'd like to get a photograph and people I've met that might be able to help me etc.

Notes for projects, techniques I want to try. I've got four or five places noted that I thought would make for interesting light painting projects. One of them was a place I went to last year for an assignment. The assignment was about a small gathering of antique Dodge owners from around the country. Where they met was at a house near Kokomo. The gentleman (who I won't name because I don't want people mobbing him) has a really cool antique gas station. He collects antique gas pumps, vending machines etc. He has over the years collected a good amount of items and now has a gas station in his backyard that looks straight out of the 30's.

First attempt of light painting the gas station.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I finally decided to give him a call and see if I could get a picture of the station. I explained what I wanted to do, which admittedly sounds pretty crazy. "Sir, I'd like to stand in your backyard for two or three hours - in the dark - and take pictures. Oh, by the way, I'll be running around with flashlights, just generally looking a little bit crazy." That's not the way I sold it, but it might was well have been.

And he still said yes. I think he understood I just wanted to do something different and creative. Not many people get that anymore.

The above image is composed of seven separate images. I shouldn't admit this, light painting "purists" probably see it as an abomination. Doing this on film meant you light painted the whole scene in one long exposure. I decided to use technology to my advantage.

Doing this on film back in the day had its positives and negatives. Film was more forgiving of mistakes, yet you couldn't see what you had until it was developed. You probably could combine shots form different negatives into one image in the darkroom but boy does that sound like a pain in the ass.

What the station might look like for a decent exposure, without light painting.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Using digital means you can see immediately what you have, but digital is also less forgiving than film I think. It used to be shooting digital was like shooting slide film, every exposure had to be perfect. Digital has gotten away from that quite a bit, but I still think you have to be pretty precise. The good with the bad.

In doing all the HDR I've kept myself occupied with this year, a technique I came across was using HDR software as a part of processing a light painting image. The basic idea is you light paint each item or person or place in a different exposure, then with the HDR software, you combine all the exposures. Similar to what I did with the cemetery, except I cut out the specific items in Photoshop and then pasted them into a final image.

It's much easier to let the software do it, than spend the time to do it myself. As I said, "purists" probably consider this an abomination. I see it as working smarter. Painting the individual objects in the scene is still work, there are still choices to be made about what kind of light to use, how long to make the exposure etc. The difference between doing this on film or digital is that with film, one mistake can screw up an image that was a 30 minute exposure. And you might not realize the mistake until you got the negatives back.

With digital that mistake can be seen immediately and corrected. Yet doing this scene in one 30 minute exposure can still mean you might make one small mistake at the end of the exposure, wasting that 30 minutes. I think it makes more sense to make one exposure painting a small portion of the scene, and see how that turns out. If it's good, then move onto the next item in the scene. If it's bad, make another exposure until it's right.

Second attempt of light painting the station.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I started about 8pm setting up for the first attempt of the station. I played around with that angle for 30 minutes maybe before deciding the second angle had more potential. I felt like being able to see into the building more along with the door, read the station sign to the right and several other factors made for a more complete image. More of a storytelling image. In processing both attempts, I realized both had things to like about them.

I'm sure I'll forget something important to mention here should someone want to try it themselves. One thing is, it's not always as dark out in b.f.e. as one might think. There were some clouds in the sky, but I wouldn't call it completely overcast.

Depending on the night tho, the glow from the light in Kokomo can be seen for 10 or 20 miles. I was only 10 miles from Kokomo here, so in some of the longer exposures the light reflecting off the clouds affects the image a little. My exposures were from 20 seconds to a minute usually, since I didn't need the time to light the whole scene. That's something to think about in a longer exposure, say 5 minutes or more.

I adjusted the sky in each of the images in PS before I combined all the exposures, to correct for some of the weird color casts I had.

Another thing I learned in combining the exposures in Photomatix was not to combine all the exposures at once. The first attempt was 7 separate images, the second attempt was 18 images. The final image worked better from Photomatix if I combined two or three of the exposures at a time. Once I had 7 images that each had two or three images making it up, I started combining two of those images. Basically just a process of stacking the exposures.

There are ways to do all of this exposure stacking in PS, for myself I just find it easier to do in Photomatix. I think the same results, just different wys of going about it.

After doing this one, it's got me excited thinking about the potential of the other places I'd like to try light painting. It also has me thinking about a quote I just came across from comedian Stephen Wright.

"I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it."

He was joking, but thinking about how to excute the light painted scene is probably more important than actually creating the image. Doing the later without engaging in the former probably is going to result in a quite spect-crap-ular image.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Vision & Discipline over Chaos

Two interesting quotes I've just recently come across.....

Has me feeling very cerebral about photography.

"Gear is good. Vision is better." - photojournalist David duChemin


"From discipline and repetition comes the ability to improvise and
be creative, If you try to be creative and improvise without discipline
you have chaos. But once you have the discipline, once you take care of all the details, you can play with it. You gain the ability to add accent, to improvise with trust and confidence."
-USC football coach Pete Carroll

Two very different men, speaking about virtually the same thing.

Shameless

If the post is going to skirt the bounds of internet good taste,
the photo might as well follow. Really, it's a shot from a
traveling freak show circus I saw in Indy. Sword swallowers,
feats of strength etc.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

This is shameless self-promotion, sorry. I've got a new website, my first actually. Over at Sportsshooter, someone in a recent article about blogging was quoted as saying a blog is nothing more than "mental masturbation." If that's the case, then this post is just me being a whore, trying to get my site out there. I apologize, but as they say in fourth grade, "Everbody else is doing it!" That's a good enough reason for me.

Fotospire.com

Turbines seem to be the next big thing in central Indiana. I first noticed some turbines already erected along I-65 north of Lafayette in July, with more structures being worked on. Every time I would drive back and forth to Chicago I would watch the progress as another few turbines were set up. And the scale of these are amazing.

It's a little too far out of the Kokomo Tribune's coverage area for a local story so I knew I wouldn't be going over to shoot them, but whenever I'd look at them while on the interstate I would think how I might shoot the assignment if I had it.

I think all photographers are like that to some extent. Whether it's watching a football game on television or being at some event in your off time, those creative thoughts are always flowing. Would I choose this angle or that, how I would light that subject etc.

One of the turbines emerges from the fog above

an Indiana cornfield.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Something about the turbines just fascinates me. I don't know if it's the size, the complexity or it's just something new and unique.

I had to go up to NW Indiana for the day recently. It's an errand I could have and should have taken care of when I was there several weeks ago but I ended up putting it off. Maybe it's fortuitous that I procrastinated. I left Kokomo about 6 am and as it turns out it was extremely foggy that morning. It can get pretty foggy in central Indiana occasionally, but it usually burns off fairly early. That morning was a little different, as the fog was still hanging around at 7 am when I got to Lafayette where I was getting on the interstate.

At some point I figured I would go over to the area where the turbines are to get some photos, mainly just because of how unique they seem, particularly for Indiana. I just didn't plan for it to be that morning.

The fog was sticking around as I got to the area where the turbines are located near I-65, so of course I stopped to take a look. The sun was just coming up, making some cool colors as it reflected off the fog. One of the unusual things I had never seen was that there seemed to be almost two layers of fog. There was a layer closer to the ground, then a break, then more fog. As in the photo above, it almost made it appear as though the turbines were just magically appearing in the area.

A turbine rising above grain silos.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

One of the things I found interesting is the old and new competing, like in the photo above of silos being dwarfed by a turbine.

After I did my errands up north, I headed back to Kokomo. As I got farther south, some nice puffy cumulus clouds started to dot the sky, making for interesting background scenery.

Classic Indiana scene: Cornfields on either side of
a gravel road that disappears in the distance.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Turbines sprouting up from cornfields. Who woulda thunk?

A turbine far in the distance framed by an old

barn in the middle of a soybean field.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

From what I've found on the internet, there are supposedly hundreds of more turbines that will be sprouting around central Indiana. It should be interesting to see what that means for Indiana's future development.


The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Comments containing off-color or hurtful language may be removed.

Humpty Dumpty

My Lens. What happens when my lens hits a hard wooden object.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I did something stupid the other day..... I listened to a reporter. There was a story about some cement dams in a local creek that are being taken out. To get a picture of one of the dams it was necessary to go across a very old, very rickety train trestle and down the wooded bank of the creek.

I had a bad feeling about this whole thing, I expressed my uneasiness about it, but the reporter is a %^&$% and rather than listening to my gut, I followed him.

After getting the photo, I climbed back up the bank and start back across the trestle. And my foot missed a railroad tie, falling thru a hole up to my hip. I guess it was then that the filter broke. Isn't that why company equipment was invented?

Of course I used this as an excuse to practice some lighting.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily

reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.