sineout.com: Gallery

Given that I live in a sea-side city, it was almost inevitable that something with boats in it would appear in my gallery at one time or another.
This will, no doubt, be the first of many.

Not much to say really. Just a little tweaking in photoshop - altering the levels and increasing the saturation, as well as the obligatory unsharp mask is all the treatment this image was given.

I'd say this is my first successful HDR image that I have made that doesn't look completely crap.Three images spaced apart by two stops.

Taken on a recent photoshoot with =keekoo, with my new 50mm F/1.8.

So, having read this I decided to go out and experiment.
This is one of the images that I came up with, originally shot at ISO 1600 and then 'pushed' 3 EV, I think (this is based on ACR, where I have the exposure set to +3.00), which, if my Maths is correct, is the same as ISO 12,500. Of course, I'm probably completely wrong, since I don't have a handheld light meter to actually tell me the actual exposure settings.

Anyway, aside from that, the only other alteration was to reduce the colour noise (while the image is black and white, reducing the colour noise helps to reduce the resulting black and white noise when converted), then channel mix to monochrome, a smidge of unsharp mask and, finally, resize.

Meet Dave.
He was discovered in my bathroom. Unlike Hector, Dave measures about 50mm long. Probably one of the largest spiders I have seen in England 'in the Wild' (as it were).

Not much done to this one. Just desaturated, altered the levels, applied an unsharp mask, cropped a little, and that's about it.

Taken on a recent photoshoot with =keekoo.

Would you believe me if I told you that I hardly even touched any colour adjustment when working on this image?
All I did with this was to increase the contrast and the blacks and upped the exposure by a tenth of an EV.

Other than that, aside from the usual sharpening routine, this image is in it's true colour (barring the obvious colour changes that would occur with changes in contrast and black level, of course).

Initially intended for this.
I have been wanting to make a halfway decent self portrait for a very long time.

The thing is, I'm naturally camera shy and I'm none too photogenic (which is one of the reasons for my camera shyness).

That's not to say there aren't a few pictures of me in my gallery or scraps, but all those images here, at the very least have next to no artistic value at all. They just exist so you fine people know what I look like, if you're so inclined for that sort of masochism.

The aforementioned journal gave me the motivation I needed to actually do it.

In line with the artistic value of this image, it does, actually, represent a number of things.
First, are the three most important things in my Life, my brain (obviously), my sight, and my hands. All of which I need to do the things I most love doing.
Personally, I'd still be a happy chap even if I were a deaf paraplegic. Just as long as I have those three things, I'm golden.

The other things I'll let you figure out on your own, I mean, it's no fun if I just give you all the answers myself.

The image itself required very little work (all things considered) to get what you see now. Each side does consist of a separate image (it's not just two different photographs from one side of my face, of which one has been flipped, they are two separate image of both sides of my face), with the following settings each.

Shutter: 1/10th
Aperture: F/8
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 55mm
The light source was of overcast sky coming through my window.

Most of the post work consisted of arranging the images, then changing the levels (since both images were quite underexposed). After that, I resized, applied an unsharp mask (300%, 0.3, 0), converted to sRGB and 8bit and saved the image you see now.

I've been waiting a long time for this.
This church is one of the most prominent buildings in Brighton. I had decided (or realised) about two months ago that it would make for a really good image. However, for that to happen, I needed a few things to go my way.
First, there had to be few clouds in the sky, second, I had to actually be there to be able to take the photo (latter because I don't often travel past this church).

But, finally, yesterday, I had both the opportunity, and the weather to do it.

Anyway, this image was created using eight images, which were stitched together into a vertical panorama.
After that, I used the 'shadow/highlight' tool to bring out the detail in the stone work (as well as bring out some of the detail in the shadows and making the door more redder in the process), then I cloned out a few stray clouds, then tweaked with the levels, curves and saturation tools, finally resizing then sharpening (using unsharp mask, of course) to get to the image you see here.

So, this came into being after having 'discovered' the Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop.
Basically, the Polar Coordinates filter stretches the image by the top left corner and bends it around 360°, this has the effect of making the image spherical.

To make this image, I made a 360° panorama (the ideal sort of image to apply the filter to), which I then made into a 6000x6000 square image (basically I reduced the width of the image and increased its height). After that, I rotated the image 180° (if I didn't, the grass would be on the outside), then applied the filter.
Pretty simple stuff really. In fact, the most difficult part of it, was actually taking the pictures.

All the pictures were taken at 18mm, F/8.0, ISO 1600 (I forgot to change the setting back to ISO 200 on my camera, luckily the pictures looked okay), all with varying shutter speeds.

This image represents approximately two dozen images composited together (manually in photoshop)
Officially, this image is my largest to date, growing to just over 10,000x4,000 and about 4Gb scratch usage before cropping.

"Red Sky at Night - Sailors Delight;
Red Sky in the Morning - Sailors Warning"

You got to love it when someone in a little dinghy (for lack of a better term) goes out when the clouds don't look like fluffy cotton wool balls.

Today was such a day.

This image is a manual stitch (yes, even I sometimes do them), because I don't have any software that can stitch the images I had at the colour depth I needed) of eight images, if I recall correctly.
The only other editing was to make the image black and white (via the channel mixer), adjust the levels and curves to make the clouds particularly dark (yes, they weren't actually that dark, sorry), then a light sprinkling of the unsharp mask (300,0.2,0), convert to sRGB, convert to 8bit, resize and post.

The name should be self evident, I took a collection of pictures of a cloud formation that looked good, with the intent to just stitch them together.
However, upon viewing the images, I noticed that, when stitched together, the cloud formation looked vaguely like a dragon or serpent with wings.

<update> 21/01/07
Updated as a result of new methods to make this image (in my opinion) better.
A number of changes have been made.

The most obvious visual change is that there is now a lot more detail visible in the image.

This is the result of the fact that this image has been reworked in 16bit colour, allowing me to get the most out of the photos that made this image, and, as such, allowing me to keep more detail than there was previously.

The other main change is the colour of this image. Previously, the sky was very dark, however, in this take, I wanted the sky to be more, well, sky coloured, so I manipulated the image to follow suit.

Other minor changes have been a reduction in image noise as well as slightly different cropping that effects the composition.
</update>

Taken on a recent photoshoot with =keekoo.

Would have preferred to get closer to this, so I had to make do with using my 70-300mm to get this shot.

Most of the post work was done in the RAW editor, basically increasing the contrast, blocking up the blacks and tweaking the white balance.

Taken on a recent photoshoot with =keekoo.

Can't go without the obligatory cloud centric photo :B.

Post processing to block up shadows.

Would you believe that this image is a failure?
I had intended to go out an take some pictures of the perseids (meteor shower that occurs every July/August which in the Constellation Perseus).

However I went out too early to really catch them at their peak so, while there were a few early comers that managed to break through the light pollution where I was (which, in retrospect isn't that great where I was, but still high enough to hide a lot of what was there), I wasn't able to take an image of a single one.

What I did do instead was to take some pictures anyway, since I have wanted to do some long exposure star trail photos for a very long time and this was the best result I got.

The exposure was for three minutes 19 seconds at 18mm, which resulted in very short star trails. If I had used a longer focal length, or a longer exposure the star trails would be significantly longer, which is something I intend to do while the British night sky is being so cooperative.

Not got a whole lot to say about this one.
Basically, when taking this shot I was looking for 'stuff' to which I could exploit a few 'rules' of photography on. This one exploits at least one of those, so here it is.

Editing of this was pretty light. Most of what I did went into recovering a little of the highlights (midtones, technically, since this image doesn't have much in the way of highlights), then converting to Black and White via the Channel Mixer, and finally, the obligatory unsharp mask (300, 0.3, 0) to finish off.

A composite of four images, one for the sea, and three to make the sun and sky, to increase the dynamic range.
Outside of that, some fairly standard alterations, like desaturation and applying an unsharp mask.

It's in the photomanipulation category mainly because of the amount of changes I had to make to get this to work. Even so, it's still not quite right, so, expect this to change soon.

About the only reason why I took this photo was because these trees formed an almost straight line, which I thought was weird, given that nature doesn't tend to like straight lines that much.

Processed from RAW, increased saturation, levels, channel mixer to b/w, unsharp mask, resize and post.

Finally sorted through all the images that I took of last nights Lunar Eclipse.
Not too much interesting to say about this, I mean, I could spout on about eclipses I suppose, but it's very likely that most of you know the basics by now.

The 'sequence' shots were all taken with the following settings
Shutter: 1/500th sec
ISO: 200
Aperture: F/8
Focal Length: 300mm (450mm Equiv)

All the images were batch processed from RAW with the same settings of
WB Temperature: 4550 Kelvin
WB Tint: -3
Exposure: 0.00
Shadows: 2
Brightness: 100
Contrast: +25
Saturation: 0
Sharpness: 25
Lum Smoothing: 0
Colour Noise Reduction: 100
Tone Curve: Custom (set to basically further increase brightness)

the centre photo was taken with the following settings
Shutter: 2 sec
ISO: 200
Aperture: F/8
Focal Length: 300mm (450mm Equiv)

The RAW settings were largely the same with the exception to the following

WB Temperature: 4700 Kelvin
WB Tint: -19
Shadows: 10
Tone Curve: Linear

Apart from that, there was very little else Photoshop work. All I did from there is arrange the images, do a little bit of sharpening, resize and then save the image you see now.

Meet yet another HDR picture, and yet another of the sky.
This is a fairly typical HDR sky picture. It could be better, however, it could be far worse. I like it anyway, at least for nothing else apart from the texture that I think is in the image.

Anyway, this was three shots all taken about two stops apart with the following settings
Aperture - F/8.0
Focal Length - 31mm
Shutter Speeds - 1/1600th, 1/4000th and 1/800th
ISO - 200
Processed in Photoshop with the 'Merge to HDR' function, then jigged and poked using a combination of increasing the saturation, using 'Shadow/Highlight', using the levels and, of course, the obligatory unsharp mask.