Downtown Where All the Lights are Bright

Today, I am not offering a lesson but rather a look at what different methods I used to "process" my digital photos did to achieve different results.  I am always after the perfect shot of the Fort Worth skyline and it seems that it remains elusive.  But, I continue to try.  My favorite vantage point is right at Northside Drive west of I35W where the Trinity Trail runs by the Water Authority building.  Hubby and I set off to see what I could do after dinner tonight.  I made it too late to get the pink glow on the buildings that the evening sun was casting...so I figured a new look would be fun to try.   BUT, there is always some detail you did not count on unless you prepare for these outings instead embarking on them on a whim as I did tonight.  What I was not counting on was the Fort Worth Cats (Fort Worth's minor league baseball team) having a home game.  The lights of the stadium were spoiling my view and casting light blobs on the buildings.  Rather than throw up my hands and retreat, I decided to get a little bit of practice.  The results were not spectacular, but I played around with software to see how many different looks I could get.  I am sure I can get more, but I have to stop staying up till the wee hours editing pictures!  


So, I ask you my friends to tell me which version of my photos you like best and why.  Some are a result of using a different cropping tool and some are playing around with saturation and vibrancy.  The one black and white is not very good, but I included it to show you another example of how the sky can just be totally blah and ruin your otherwise good shot.  

Just pretty much what I saw tonight.  See the blob of light near the bottom of the tallest building on the left hand side?  The crop is unusual here.  In my software (Aperture 3 for MAC) there is an HD crop which I assume mimics the HD television format.  Not sure how you would get an image this shape printed, but I bet there is a way.

This is a standard 8X10 crop, which as you can see shows much more of the foreground and as you can see I am also not zoomed in quite as much.  What I did in this shot was to darken the trees and grass and I turned up the green in the picture to give it a different feel or mood.  

Another HD crop, but this time I darkened the exposure and saturated the green at the same time.  Looks kind of like a storm might be brewing with the sky being that kind of color to me.  I was hoping you would be able to see the lights that outline the buildings.  I could see them but the camera can't because of the interference from the ball field lights tonight.

This one is pretty much cropped like the first picture, but I just turned up the color saturation on everything to maximum.  To me it seems there is bright light from the sunset illuminating the buildings while the foreground remains in shadow and is therefore cool in color.  

This is the same shot with a square crop which is different from standard and from HD.

This is the black and white and although I don't care much for it because of the totally blank sky, it does have kind of an industrial feel to it and I might like it better in an HD crop.  Seems wintry even though it is June and everything is very green from two days of really good rain that we had earlier in the week.  

In this shot, I just zoomed in more tightly, trying in vain to keep those pesky ball field lights out of my pictures.  I think what I need to do instead is to get myself informed of the home game schedule of the Fort Worth Cats and avoid those nights.  Or I could go very early and get a sunrise shot to see how that changes things up.  Don't hold your breath waiting for me to do that.  I am more of a night owl!

Same HD cropped and up close and personal like the one above but without the color saturation.   In the last two there is no water in the foreground.  I happen to prefer the ones with the water as it serves as a leading line into the photo for the eye to follow.  

Perhaps what I also need to do is to explore different venues for taking shots of downtown like high on a parking garage somewhere.  You used to be able to get a really pretty shot from the lawn or the steps of the Amon Carter museum, but the Kimble is adding on and there is a big crane blocking the view, plus the trees have matured to the point where they obscure the view as well.  If only I could get on the roof of the Montgomery Plaza building.  They have a killer view up there I understand but no water in the foreground of course.  Stay tuned to later in the summer for more versions of my quest to get a good skyline picture.  In the meantime, I would appreciate your opinions on which is your favorite and why.

Blue Sky By Morning

Blue Sky by Morning

Well, it really goes.....Red Sky by morning...Sailor's Warning or something like that.  But today's lesson has to do with the sky in your photos and why as a rule you should leave it out of the picture!


Now, the first thing you need to know is that light has a color or color temperature (you know this from science, right?).  For simplicity purposes I will just say that the color of light in the first hour of the day is cool or blueish and the last hour of the day it is warm or orangeish.  So, in the middle of the day, especially here in Texas when the sun is scorching everything, light doesn't have much color in terms of photographs.  You have heard of WHITE HOT, right?  Well, think of it in that way in order to remember this rule.  There will be more later on why you really want to avoid photos in the middle of the day for a variety of reasons. However as my recent vacation photos will prove, I will snap pictures around the clock inside, outside, wherever I may be, when I have a camera handy.

Castle with the sky in the upper right hand corner-very distracting isn't it? And it was impossible to crop out of the shot after the fact without cropping out part of the castle as well,

By and large the sky will just distract from what you are actually taking a picture of unless it happens to be the sunset or sunrise or it is one of those days when the sky is clear and blue and has beautiful puffy white clouds or huge dark thunderclouds.  Most of the time it will be gray and uninteresting or it will show up in your pictures as a colorless blob or distracting background that will actually detract from your subject.  Now, why is that?  Because your eye naturally travels to the lightest part of the photograph when you look at it.  Hopefully that is the shining face of your child or a color so rich that it draws your eye like a magnet in the case of a pretty flower.


What to do?  Zoom in is usually the thing to do.  You want to show the details of your subject anyway, so get in close so the viewer can easily tell that is what your focal point and the reason you are taking the picture anyway.  

I waited until we got closer to the castle so I could zoom in and leave out the sky.  Better?

If you can't avoid the sky by zooming in, then do what I suggested in a previous post.  Get to a higher vantage point than your subject, therefore filling your viewfinder with things below the horizon.  It seems easy in these castle photos because they sit on the side of a mountain, but you can usually move your position and make certain that your subject has something else behind them instead of the sky.  And while avoiding the sky, remember that goes for anything bright or white that is in high contrast to your subject.  Remember the other lesson where we talked about black and white and the range of "stops" of light between them?  Well the less contrast you have in terms of brightest white, (or grey, or other light shades) the more the other items in your picture will have the correct exposure.  Is contrast a bad thing.   No, but in extremes, it is hard to get right, especially with a point and shoot camera or when you really don't want to have to spend a lot of time working with your images in software after the facts.

If I stood a little more to the right, there would have been a lot more sky in this shot, but I moved left so I could fill the sky with the tree.  Almost got it all out!

So, take your best shot folks....the sky is the limit...or limit the sky....oh, you know what I mean!

Sometimes you are there just at the right time and the sky is such a lovely color that it actually enhances the photo!

May Madness

March Madness?  Not so much in Fort Worth.....We have

  May Madness.

  We are in the middle of the

 66th Crowne Plaza Invitational

Colonial Country Club · Fort Worth, TX

I will probably never call it anything but the Colonial or the Colonial N.I.T. (National Invitational Tournament).  It is the place to see and be seen in Fort Worth.  The course is beautiful and so are the people who attend!

Years ago when I was in sales and working for AT&T we had a tent set up inside the pool area behind the diving board.  You could stand on a long wooden bench and see over a brick wall and watch the golfers tee off from just a few feet away. I took pictures of the clients and our employees that visited the tent and always had a great time. Our guests did as well and in no small part because the food was plentiful and the booze, well let's just say it was freely consumed, freely being the operative word.

Fast forward to today and I couldn't drag myself there for the day, much less for 5 days all day long liked I used to. It is just toooo hot and crowded.  I guess that means I am getting old.  So, the closest I come each year now is to shuttle my daughter and her friends there so they don't have to find (or pay for) a place to park. 

The closer you get to the course, the more majestic the homes are, with beautiful sweeping lawns and gorgeous landscaping.

These homes sell for well past a million dollars.  So, I have to chuckle each year when I see people making extra money by letting people park all over their lawns!

Yes, they do!  And they charge handsomely for it.

I am sure they make enough money to re-sod their yard, but WHY?  I guess the entreprunerial spirit is alive and well in Fort Worth and these people likely didn't get where they are with a place like this to live by passing up opportunities to make money!


But if you ask me, this man is the smart one.   He may not be lining his pockets, but his yard is still going to look great next Monday morning and he has a great place to sit and people watch.

Oh, did I mention the traffic is BAD?  I wonder which of the golfers is from Michigan?

These kids are really working hard to raise money for someone named JJ.  I think from the looks of things, you may be able to hear the story on the local news stations tonight.  Stay tuned.......

Craftsman Style Homes

On Mother's Day my daughter took me on a home tour in a nearby neighborhood that has many Craftsman style homes.  I would like to share some pictures with you that I took that day, not of homes we toured, but homes that caught my eye.  I particularly like the really colorful ones.  Do you know what typifies a Craftsman home?

Wikipedia says a Craftsman Home is typically a house that has these:

Common architectural design features

The Hyland Hotel, designed by Joseph Henry Wood in 1916, located in Monticello,Utah.

• Low-pitched roof lines, gabled or hipped roof
• Deeply overhanging eaves,
• Exposed rafters or decorative brackets under eaves
• Front porch beneath extension of main roof
• Tapered, square columns supporting roof
• 4-over-1 or 6-over-1 double-hung windows
• Frank Lloyd Wright design motifs
• Hand-crafted stone or woodwork
• Mixed materials throughout structure

So, which house is your favorite?  If you want to see these homes and other Craftsman Style homes come to Fort Worth and drive through the Fairmount neighborhood or Mistletoe Heights.  They both have numerous examples.  The house plans for these homes were published in a magazine and included more than 200 plans.  The houses could be built from kits of material shipped to your building site.

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Color Me Undecided!

Years ago when you took classes in photography, 9 times out of 10 they involved not only learning to take photographs but developing them as well.  You went into dark rooms and swirled film in baths of chemicals and then took them into another room with contraptions that looked a little like overgrown microscopes, but were actually the device necessary to print your photos.  I have to admit that I never liked doing that part of it, which will seem strange to most people who took those classes just so they could learn to do that.  I can't explain it, but it seemed tedious and a little lonely to me.  I am a people person and like, as I have said before, taking people pictures.  I think that is mostly because of the interaction.  Not that I don't appreciate good scenic or architectural photos.

I won't get in too deep here, but you've heard about f-stops, right?  Well the f-stop among other attributes mainly controls how much light gets to the "film" and whether or not the details are properly exposed.  That means the right f-stop will get the maximum variations of light in the picture properly exposed, from the brightest white to the blackest black.  The human eye can detect 24 distinct stops/variations of light in a typical daylight scene.  Now when film was in use, color film could only capture about nine (9) of those variations, so that explains why you might get frustrated trying to capture a beautiful scene.   Black and white film however got around fifteen (15) so people used it for presenting beautiful detail in a scene.  Now, if I haven't lost you, I will tell you that essentially there is no difference any more in digital.  You take the picture in a digital format and the quality of the camera is what determines what you capture rather than the variations in light you can accomplish.

So, it comes down to mood, really.  Black and white can seem more dramatic in some instances, more elegant in others, but in low contrast lighting (think cloudy day) it can just seem moody and that may not be what you want exactly.  But aren't we lucky that now instead of shooting two types of film, you can now take one picture and with software can change the color to black and white or make one image of each.

Okay, so I am person who LOVES color.  My daughter says our house makes her a little nervous with its bright colors and my ex-husband used to say I dressed like a pro-golfer if you remember how they used to wear yellow pants and the like.  I love neutral rooms when I see them in a magazine, they look so restful and peaceful, but when I turn the page and see bright color washed over every surface, I can't help but ooh and ahh.

But, bottom line is I can't decide even after I make a copy of a picture in both color and black and white, which one I like best.  I can understand there is a different mood about them, but I can't put my finger on it or express the difference I see in words.

How about you?  What do you like the best or are you like me and like both?  Here are two sets of pictures to look at and see if you can decide!

So, if you DO have a preference, please tell me what it is and tell me why that is.  It may not help me make up my mind, but will certainly give me some more factors to ponder.  I promise if you stuck with me to the end of today's post that I will try not to write so much, and give you more pictures.  But, as with all things that take up way too much space in my brain, I had to talk about it!  

Seeing in a new way

You can have a lot of fun with the free editing software that is out there on the internet.  Be careful, of course, what you download.  Picasa at www.picasa.com is one I have used for years and it has many new features.  You can play with the colors and change multiple things to make the pictures you take look like something totally different that what you started out with.  Why would you want to do this?  Well, you might accidentally come up with what you may consider an "art piece". Besides it is fun.  Take your camera, hold it high, hold it low, lay on the ground, or stand on something and get different perspectives on what you are looking at.  Look for patterns in things or the way things are arranged to make interesting shapes.  Then saturate the color, put filters over it, play around to your hearts content and you might actually get something you want to mat, frame, and hang on the walls of your home.  I am just now starting to experiment with this. I can see lots of possibilities.

This was about 15 minutes of shooting time tonight and maybe an hour of playing around with the images, but there were many more than what you see here.  Some proved too large to upload once I made so many changes to them.   I wanted to show you some that you might not be able to tell what I took the picture of, but we will save those for another day.

NOW dear followers and sneak a peekers!  I need your feedback.  Which picture (if any) look artistic to you and do you think you could see them matted and framed and on the walls?  Please leave your comments to tell me your thoughts.

AND I challenge you to take some pictures from a different perspective and then turn them into something new and unique.  Take your efforts and put them in pretty frames and make a wall arrangement and replace them with new ones from time to time!  I also would LOVE to see your work posted on Facebook or you can email it to me.

One last thing....did any of you notice the self portrait in one of these shots?

Help from above

Here is your photo tip #2 for taking better pictures of people.  First a disclaimer: I don't profess to being a professional photographer, just a pretty decent amateur and only a decent amateur when it comes to pictures of people.  Maybe that is because I get the most pleasure out of taking those kinds of pictures.  So, what I hope to tell you about are the things I have learned that helped me even though they are by no means rocket science!

We all have family get togethers or go to parties where everyone wants their pictures taken together and everyone lines up in front of you and hands you their camera.   Well, if you are vertically challenged like me, you are almost certainly shorter than the people you are photographing unless they are children.  I am 5'5" but wear pretty flat shoes. So, even women my height, if they have on heels tower above me.  The thing is that people just look better if you take their picture from even slightly above their eye level.  So, when I had my husband take this picture of my daughter and me on Mother's Day, I opted for making us look better for the impromptu picture rather than having a more interesting background.  He stood on the porch which is a couple of steps up from us.  Even though it is not completely obvious to the viewer of the picture that is the angle from which it was taken, you can notice the slight differences.  Since you are looking up, your eyes open a little bit more and you stretch out your neck slightly (my neck could have used more help-but he wasn't willing to get on the roof!) and well, lets face it, you can't see the bottom of our nostrils, which would improve just about anyone's portrait!

Aha!  You thought maybe I would show you a picture to compare this one to where we looked awful?  Sorry, I am way too vain for that and my only daughter would not be happy about that at all!  I will show you an example that is not that dramatic from some people who are much less vain than us (and less likely to read this blog).  Even though it is not dramatic, I think you will be able to tell the difference in one picture being more flattering than another.  See the comparison of the two photos below.  I invite your comments about whether or not you agree with me.  

Do you see how their eyes look larger and there is a sweet innocence about the 2nd picture?  The first picture is good and it is playful because their affection for one another just jumps out at you, but I believe the 2nd picture captures their youth and sweet spirits more than the one at the top.  Tell me what you think.  As I said, I could have used more dramatic examples, but I am not going to post an unattractive picture of anyone and I hope everyone returns the favor!  Happy picture taking folks!  It is the time for graduations, weddings, summer holidays, family reunions, and vacations.  If you can, STAND UP on something to take the pictures of the people you love, but if you can't do that, try having them sit down.  I promise you will be happier with the results.