Spikes in the Rain

Spikes in the Rain
Originally uploaded by jezza323

Here is a slightly abstract shot of a plant I spotted at the Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens on Sunday. It was raining a little at the time, and you can make out the rain drops on the leaves.

I took this very quickly (it was raining on my remember) using the K200D and Jupiter-9 85mm f2.0 which was already mounted on the camera.

Almost no editing done here at all, just a slight crop

Project 52 - #8 - Japanese Garden, Mt Cootha

Japanese Garden, Mt Cootha
Originally uploaded by jezza323

I am a little behind, but I hope to catch up this week. We have had rainy weather non stop for a couple weeks now. Yesterday I got out amongst the showers in the Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens, and in particular wanted to visit the Japanese Garden. You can read about the garden here.

Over the last week or so I've been discussing shooting in various different aspect ratios with a friend at work. He had the idea to shoot only in a particular aspect ratio for a bit. After this discussion I decided to copy his idea a little, and try shooting some stuff in the movie aspect ratio of 2.39:1 (my friend has decided on 16:9 btw). This is from my first shoot where I specifically considered shooting in this aspect. I dont plan on taking lots of shots in this aspect ratio, but it is fun to consider.

This is a Brenizer Panorama, taken with my Pentax K200D and Jupiter-9 85mm lens at f2.8. I stitched the shots using Autopano, then did some editing in Lightroom 2.5 to get the final result (crop, contrast, exposure, blacks)

More Digital Infrared (IR) Photography

Mt Cootha Sunrise in IR
Originally uploaded by jezza323

Here is another shot I took recently with my R72 type filter. In this case I used a Hoya R72 filter mounted to my Pentax K200D & Pentax SMC DA 18-55 AL II combo.

This shot was processed entirely in Lightroom 2.5 (no photoshop trickery going on here!). You can see here the effect quite well, the sky is nice and dark, while the trees are a bit brighter than they would otherwise be. If you compare closely to the image below you can see the difference quite well. The general contrast is also much stronger.

This is the same shot, but taken without an IR filter, just converted to greyscale in Lightroom.

And here is the IR shot in colour (with corrected White Balance and Exposure in Lightroom 2.5). This is what was coverted to greyscale to get the IR image above.

Project 52 - #4 - Mt Cootha Lookout

Australia Day Sunrise - Mt Cootha, Brisbane
Originally uploaded by jezza323

This is a 5 shot HDR of the sunrise from Mt Cootha Lookout, which overlooks Brisbane's CBD and surrounding suburbs. This is landmark #4 in my Project 52 Brisbane Landmarks for 2010.

I have already posted this shot on the blog as a general shot with full processing info, so check that out if you are interested

Australia Day Sunrise

Australia Day Sunrise - Mt Cootha, Brisbane
Originally uploaded by jezza323

Happy Australia Day to all the Australians :)

This shot is from a few moments before sunrise yesterday morning (Australia Day, 26th Jan 2010) from the Mt Cootha Lookout in Brisbane. The Brisbane CBD and surrounding suburbs are visible in the shot.

The shot was taken using my Pentax K200D, Pentax DA 18-55 AL II, Slik 500DX Pro tripod and Kenko CPL filter. It is a HDR shot blended from 5 images, taken at -4, -2, 0, +2, +4 EV steps using Photomatix 3.1 and Tone Mapped using the Details Enhancer. I outline how I did this below.

Shots used were all at 18mm, ISO 100 and f13. Shutter speeds were 1/20sec, 1/80sec, 1/5sec, 0.8sec, 3.0sec

Shooting and Processing as follows:

1. Shot in Pentax RAW (PEF)
2. Set Exposure Compensation to -2.0 EV
3. Shot 3 bracketed shots at +/- 2.0 EV (giving -4, -2 and 0 EV shots)
4. Set Exposure Compensation to +2.0 EV
5. Shot 3 bracketed shots at +/- 2.0 EV (giving +4, +2 and 0 EV shots)
6. Imported into Lightroom 2.5
7. Applied the settings shown below to all 6 images (the first image)
8. Exported all 6 images to full quality JPG
9. Deleted the worst of the 2 0 EV shots (this is only 5 images remember!)
10. Blended the remaining 5 images in Photomatix
11. Tone Mapped in Details Enhancer using the settings show below
12. Saved as JPG
13. Imported HDR JPG into Lightroom 2.5
14. Applied the settings shown below in Lightroom (last image)
15. Exported to JPG for Web

Picnic By the Lake, Under the Tree

Picnic By the Lake, Under the Tree
Originally uploaded by jezza323

This is another Brenizer Panorama I took yesterday at the Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens. Shot with the Pentax K200D and Tair-11a 135mm f2.8 lens, at 2.8.

Shooting and Processing as Follows

• Shot in Pentax RAW (PEF) - 94 shots
• Import into Lightroom 2.5
• Export to 16 bit TIFF with ZIP compression
• Stitched using Autopano Giga 2
• Rendered to 16 bit TIFF
• Imported into Lightroom 2.5
• Heavy crop (94 images was for a much bigger scene, but I only liked this part of it)
• Edited as shown below (Basic tab only) 
• Export to JPG for Web