This was also a good chance to try out some HDRs, as it’s hard to capture the entire sky in one image, without blowing out parts of the image.

I waited for Photoshop CS5 to come out before creating the HDRs (hence the delay in posting these), as the tools for combining images into an HDR were significantly improved over the ones in CS4. You can now import you images directly from Lightroom (I’m using version 3 beta 2) into Photoshop CS5 with the “Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop” option, very convenient!

This image combined from five exposures shows how much dynamic range can be obtained from shooting multiple exposures. The single images were either blown out (i.e. completely white) in the sky, or were exposed properly for the sky, but were underexposed for the grass. On a side note: I like how CS5 produces natural looking HDRs, not over-processed as many HDRs tend to look.

This photo was shot in a single exposure, and as you can see, the bottom third contains no information (i.e. it’s completely black).

Here you see the same electricity masts, but shot and processed to an HDR. The foreground still contains detail (although I darkened it a bit to get a more natural looking image), in contrast to the previous one, where it was all black.. Which version you prefer is personal preference

Now time for some sunset All of the photos below where shot at multiple exposures and merged to HDR using Photoshop CS5.

And finally, a shot taken from the roof of the building where I live. I really like the red glow illuminating the bottom of the clouds.

I might do a video tutorial on how to shoot and process photos to HDR images, but that’s something for another post.. Until next time!

Close-up after the break..

The ‘normal’ kind, with a yellow beak, is very common around here, so I don’t know what’s up with this one. Is it a different species? Or is it a mutant freak?

About a week ago, while walking to the supermarket, I noticed the nest of a Moorhen in a small pond near the building where I live. I made a mental note to go back the next week with my camera, when hopefully the eggs would’ve hatched. So, today was that day I went out with my girlfriend to feed the birds, but after locating the spot where the Moorhen made it’s nest, we only found a lonely egg…

Turns out the little guys (obviously) had hatched and were out getting fed by their mother!

And if that wasn’t enough, we also stumbled upon a duck keeping her chicks warm (note the two small fluffy blobs under her ).

When I noticed her getting up to let her young out from under her, I quickly snapped a couple of shots of the chicks heading for the water.

After a while a male duck showed up and the chicks scrambled to get back to the safety of their mother. I’m guessing this wasn’t the dad, as the mother seemed to be defending her young from him..

It’s really amazing to see nature at work, something I’ve come to appreciate a lot more since moving to Wageningen. Probably to do with a certain nature/bird-loving housemate of mine Anyway, that’s all for today. Stay tuned for more updates in the near future!

]]> http://www.fanchiphotography.com/blog/2010/04/28/spring-has-arrived/feed/ 3 http://www.fanchiphotography.com/blog/2009/12/23/wintertime-in-wageningen/ http://www.fanchiphotography.com/blog/2009/12/23/wintertime-in-wageningen/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:28:44 +0000 Lorenzo http://www.fanchiphotography.com/blog/?p=257 A long overdue update! I underestimated how much time my MSc thesis would be consuming when I stated the blog would be updated every other week. I still have lots of photos I took during the days (months) between the last update and now, e.g. during my summer holidays, but those will have to wait..

Last week I took a break from my thesis and returned to my university city, Wageningen, to study for some repeat exams. For those of you who aren’t living in the Netherlands: it snowed! a LOT! So while maybe I should’ve been studying, I took one afternoon off together with two friends and we had some fun in the snow (and took pictures of course).

The white snowy background created opportunities for some nice portrait shots. Luckily I also had a pretty model to work with
The constrast created by the snow is even more pronounced in back & white, like in this shot below..

Hey! A fellow photographer! (note camera in boxers )

Some strangers who also ventured out in the snowy weather made for some great black & whites.

I’m really liking the black & white pictures. Lightroom 3 (I’m currently using the public beta) gives some excellent out-of-the-box results on the B&W conversions and it’s really easy to fine tune to your liking. So I’ll leave you with one more photo of my lovely girl:

As always, I’m interested in what you liked, or disliked for that matter. For example, does the watermark bother you? Let me know in the comments..

Unfortunately, for some reason, this post wasn’t published when it was supposed to. I’ve been away on vacation the last 2 weeks and this post was sheduled to be published last week. Damn WordPress..

Something I forgot to mention in the video: make sure you put the watermark image that is going to be placed onto your photo in a safe spot before you create the action. Every time you run it, the action will look for the image in that same spot, so if you move it, the action won’t work anymore!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment!

Around two years ago I got into (macro) nature photography and I’ve been really enjoying it. I started out using a Nikon D80 with a Sigma 105mm macro lens, but last year I upgraded to the Nikon D300. When I was still using the D80, I used to handhold the camera, using my body and objects in the vicinity (trees or the ground, whatever’s there really..) to stabilize myself and the camera. After upgrading to the D300, I also purchased a Manfrotto tripod, which I used in combination with a (crappy) Phottix remote. The build of the remote is cheap as hell, but hey.. it works and that’s what counts. Using the mirror-up mode on the D300 and the remote trigger, I was astounded by the detail the camera was able to pick up! If you haven’t tried it yet, go do it now, you’ll be blown away! I’ll see if I can dig up a photo of the whole construction in action. I’ll probably dedicate a future post to that setup and the results from the trip.

But as I said, that was last year, and for this trip I decided to try something different. Running around in the woods and fields, chasing dragon- and butterflies with a 2 kg tripod, camera & lens, other additional lenses etc. was getting old really fast, so I figured: why not leave the tripod at home, and try to use the flash to freeze my subjects…

I thought the technique worked remarkably well! I was expecting the flash to give an unnatural look to the photos, but to my eye the lighting looks very natural. As an added bonus, at the end of the day my back wasn’t broken from carrying the tripod around

Most of the photos were taken on the Hoge Veluwe (near Arnhem, link to Google Maps), only the butterfly and the damselfly with lunch (scroll down to see) were taken in Nijnsel and Oisterwijk, Noord-Brabant respectively.

I really like how the colors of the damselfly and the leaf match in the next picture.

Damselfly just caught a spider for lunch.

At the end of the day the damselflies were nowhere to be found and just before we left a blade of grass caught my eye:

Unfortunately the sun was gone and I had to crank up the ISO quite a bit to get a decent exposure, resulting in some noise.

Hope you liked a different aspect of my photography, one I’ll be dedicating more posts to in the future. As always, I’m very interested to know what you think about the photos and your own experiences with macro photography!

Note for users of color calibration devices:
I’ve recently discovered that Firefox 3.5 has changed its color management system. This new system doesn’t support ICC v4 color profiles, so if you’re using a color calibration device (e.g. Datacolor Spyder or X-Rite Eye-One Display) and Firefox 3.5, you will see my photos with different colors than intended (if your ICC profile is v4, ICC v2 profiles are still supported). Firefox 3.0 and Safari are unaffected, so until Mozilla fixes this problem, using one of those browsers is recommended for color accuracy. Also, if you don’t use any hardware calibrators and read this anyway: you just wasted 2 minutes

The railway is called the Randstadrail: it’s a project that was created to improve the public transport connections between the city centers of several large cities in the Netherlands. The last time I’d been there I was still in high school and the whole thing was yet to be built, so I was curious as to what it would look like now.

Last Friday we waited for it to get dark and set off towards the center..

I have to say, although it’s not really a bad neighborhood, I didn’t feel very comfortable walking around with all my photography gear, especially in the next pic.

Getting ourselves in the shot would mean we would have to leave the camera by itself while the exposure was being taken. So with the camera on the tripod, shutterspeed at 30 seconds I pressed the shutter and we ran to the spot under the bridge. And stood there posing for 15 seconds, all the while looking for possible robbers.. ;P We tried to get a ghost trail leading up to the spot where we were standing, but there just wasn’t enough light. Dragging the shutter even longer would’ve been possible, but it was getting late

This is the picture that’s going to be printed and will hang in his new office building:

One more:

There! First real post done! I hope you enjoyed the photos (let me know in the comments!) and look forward to the next update!

After two years of silence on FanchiPhotography.com, the site has been turned into this blog!

The reason I chose to use a blog structure, is because I wanted an easy way to share some of my non-concert photography.
I hope to bring weekly updates on my photo-ops and maybe some random thoughts..

Second post in the course of next week!