Sky – Page 54 – In Photos dot Org

Family at the beach

Dad carries the forgotten kite, daughter walks through the water and mom basks in the sun of a glorious September afternoon at Inch Strand, Co. Kerry.

Tonight is theme night at the camera club. My theme is “The sea” so I went through my archives yesterday choosing suitable photos. This will be one, which is possibly stretching the definition a little but it does have breaking waves on a beach.

Vignetting was done using an overlay layer and a separate overlay was used to make the shadows of the clouds deeper. I could have burned them in as well but I like the way it turned out.

Aperture	ƒ/10
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	18mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	1/250s

Cupid’s Arrow and the birds

Cupid’s Arrow and the birds

Cupid’s Arrow in San Francisco provides an interesting silhouette against the evening sky. If you’ve payed close attention to my photos in the past you might think this is a duplicate of another shot but it’s from a slightly different angle and wider, and I feel stronger because of the pattern the birds make in the sky. What do you think?

Aperture	ƒ/11
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	11mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/200s

The Cork County Hall and the web

The Cork County Hall and the web

Early one morning I visited the County Hall in Cork and took a few photos. In fact, this one is from the same shoot.

Webs covered a tree behind the building, and the early morning dew sparkled in the sun. I was hoping for an ominous feel to the photo but I failed, and instead I have something that mixes nature with our man made presence on this world.

I quite like the way the strands of the web stand out too!

Aperture	ƒ/13
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/400s

The red and white man

The red and white man

A street entertainer on stilts entertained the crowd at the Midleton Food and Drink Festival last September. I took photos of him in Cork too and I think he recognised me and my wife as he made a beeline for us and stopped to chat.

This was shot from below as he was towering over us, but I cropped a much larger shot. I used flash to illuminate his face against the bright sky.

Aperture	ƒ/9
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	18mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/250s

Caution Children

Caution Children

A sign at the entrance to my estate warns motorists to watch out for children playing on the street.

Just to prove that you don’t need a big digital SLR to take interesting photos, this was taken with my Panasonic FZ5. I saw the great cloudscape in the sky and illuminated the sign with the onboard flash.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	DMC-FZ5
Focal length	6mm
ISO	80
Shutter speed	1/1600s

Cobh at sunset

Cobh at sunset

The tide is out in Cobh, Co. Cork while the sun sets in the west casting an orange glow over the water and boats in the harbour.

Method
This required some work to expose properly. The sky is bright while the harbour, houses and landscape are in shadow. Out with the layers, top layer for the sky was darkened and the opposite was done for the ground.
Then it’s the simple task of adding a layer mask to the top layer and rubbing out the dark bits to expose the brightened landscape.
When using a layer mask, never paint with an opacity of 100%, try 30% or even 5%. Don’t be afraid to do a rough job of exposing the bottom layer because with a layer mask you can always reverse the procedure by swapping the colour of your brush with an opposite colour!

Thank you all for the comments on yesterday’s post, The Lonely Swan, it’s great to get feedback and I’m glad when people get something out of my methods when I describe them. See what you’ve done? I did it again!

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/20s

The lonely swan

The lonely swan

A solitary swan swims on the calm waters of The Lough as the sun disappears at the end of the day.

Believe it or not, this is a 10 second exposure that turned out much better than I could have hoped! I balanced my camera on the edge of the Lough, set it to Aperture priority mode at f/11, dialed the exposure down two stops, flipped up the camera flash and took the shot.

How does this work?

By setting the aperture to a fairly high value little light is let into the camera sensor.
By setting the exposure down two stops the whole scene will be underexposed but bright areas will be exposed mostly correctly.
Given the above settings, any dark moving objects will be completely invisible so when the flash fired it picked out the swan swimming past and even created a nice reflection in the water.

Hope that helps!

Aperture	ƒ/11
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	10s

The gull and the flag

The gull and the flag

Two teenagers watch a seagull on the way back from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. The US flag flutters in the same breeze that keeps the gull aloft, who no doubt is hoping for food from the boat full of tourists.

I’m going to be shooting at a fund raising night for Cope Foundation tonight. It’s an Eighties Night in the Ambassador Hotel here in Cork. It starts at 9:30pm, tickets are €12.50 on the door, and there’ll be spot prizes throughout the night! All are welcome, especially if you can get out your 80’s gear again. Time for big hair, leg warmers and shoulder pads?
If you’re there, watch out for me and say hi!

Aperture	ƒ/16
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	20mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/320s

Bay Bridge Reflections

Bay Bridge Reflections

Light from the Bay Bridge in San Francsico shimmers in the waters of the harbour. To the left one of the fire fighting boats of the SF Fire Department can be seen.

Posting this landmark of San Francisco today as most of the rest of Automattic make their way to Mexico. Here’s another shot from another night near the bridge.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	2s

SF Weekly

SF Weekly

San Francisco Weekly is only one of a number of free publications available in that city. Not sure what day it’s out though. Doh!

My photos went down reasonably well at Photography Ireland yesterday. There’s a good street photography forum there. It’s worth a visit if you’re looking for inspiration or critiques or simply want to talk to like-minded people!

4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop! has a few techniques I’ve used myself in the past. I meant to blog about those techniques, but hey, they’ve done the hard work now, including screenshots and everything. Good post!

Aperture	ƒ/11
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/250s

Looking out from Homely House

Looking out from Homely House

Last September we stayed in Dingle for a weekend and had lunch in Homely House, a restaurant in the town. Check out the previous link for a picture of Brian Lapen and EagleSpirit who ran the cafe.

Unfortunately for Dingle they’re now in Hawaii, and the building was destined for demolition last I heard so it’s quite likely this view is gone now!

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/500s

The Moonlit Shipyards

The Moonlit Shipyards

The shipyards in Rushbrooke, just outside Cobh are still active although much quieter now than during their heyday. The cranes make for great photography against the moonlit sky.

This was shot from across the River Lee in Passage last November.

FRLinux asked about settings so here they are, including post-processing:

Flickr’s exif data for this is a bit wrong – gthumb says the exposure was for 5 seconds, aperture was wide open at f4.5, and lens set at 28mm, which you can probably multiply by 1.6 for the crop factor. ISO was 100.

Post Processing was done in the GIMP using 3 layers:
1. Top layer is transparent with a black gradient at the bottom. Layer mode is Overlay.
2. Middle layer is black and white, and blurred and with added noise. It’s set to screen mode, and opacity of 51%.
3. Bottom layer is the colour image, slightly saturated and darker.

Hope that helps!

Aperture	ƒ/4.5
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	28mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	5s