Steve Stuff, etc.

Miscellaneous X100 Photos

2012-01-24T20:52:00.002-05:00

Back in early December I bought a Fujifilm X100. I wrote a short weblog post about it and included a few of my first photos. Since then I've had the opportunity to use it almost every day. I still love it for its relatively small size, its good looks, and especially its quiet operation. I also still find it to be a bit quirky and slow to focus, most of the time, but I've learned to work around those issues and am getting a much better ratio of keepers to throwaways.

Here's a gallery of some of my more recent X100 photos.

Guitarist: 1/60 sec @f/2, ISO 2500

Urban Wetland: 1/8 sec @ f/16, ISO 200

Glacier Ridge Moonrise: 1/125 sec @ f/8, ISO 640

Portrait of a Birder: 1/100 sec @ f/11, ISO 3200

Winter at Whetstone 1: 4 sec @ f/16, ISO 2000

Winter at Whetstone 2: 4 sec @ f/16, ISO 640

Winter at Whetstone 3: 1 sec @ f/16, ISO 2000

Mac Light: 1/4 sec @ f/2.0, ISO 3200

Bleached Hydrant: 3 sec @ f/16, ISO 800

Winter Shadow: 1/100 sec @ f/16, ISO 1600

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Return to Maine Once Again

2012-01-23T20:43:00.001-05:00

Well I promised several weblog postings tonight, and I'm already regretting my promise. I have finished one post, but now I'm getting tired of writing. I'm a photographer, not a writer. A writer is someone who writes informative and interesting captions for a photographer's photographs, and I don't do that, not even for my own photographs (especially not that interesting part). For me making photographs is fun, writing is not. Some of the time anyway. So I think what I'm going to do is put a bunch of photos, all from my excursion to Maine, into a post. It will be so long that everyone will think I wrote several posts tonight. So here goes something (I hope)...

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/640 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Pemaquid Point 1: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/800 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Pemaquid Point 2: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/500 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Dreamboat: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/80 sec @ f/16, ISO 1400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Owl's Head Lighthouse: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/640 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Rockland Harbor Lighthouse: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D; exposure 1/100 sec @ f/22, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4 Beta and Photoshop CS5 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Lincolnville Sunrise: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/80 sec @ f/16, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Catching Up

2012-01-23T19:49:00.000-05:00

Wow! I am really behind on updating this goofy weblog. I'm so far behind that I'm going to try to do several boring posts tonight. This should be welcome news to any insomniacs amongst my readers. So here's the first one...

I updated one of my e-books, Seattle Underground, and posted it on my Dropbox site for your downloading amusement. Maybe I should say half e-book because when I created the original I didn't have enough photos nor pithy filler prose to create an entire e-book from my walk through the Seattle Underground. So I combined the half e-book with another half e-book, Fort Knox, to create an entire e-book. What I mean by entire is the minimum number of pages required by Aperture's e-book function. The minimum number of pages is 20, and I only had about 16 usable photos from the shoot. By usable I mean photos that I'm willing to let others see. The same was true for my Fort Knox (Maine) shoot, except I think the number of usable photos is closer to ten in that case.

Now it may seem that if I could come up with more pithy filler prose, maybe just a little bit about each photo, I could easily expand both of these half e-books into entire e-books. Alas, I am a lazy writer, as evidenced by how far I'm behind on updating my weblog. Usually all I can get myself to write about each photo is the exposure information... shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO. Sure, sometimes I come up with a one to four word title as well, but that's about it. I suppose I need to work on that.

I will tell you, though, about combining my two half e-books into an entire e-book. I had an idea about how to do so from looking at user manuals printed in two languages. I'm finding it difficult to describe the idea, so I'll just say that you hold the book one way and look at the right hand pages front to back, and then you flip the book and do the same thing again. Maybe you'll understand and maybe not, but that's all I'm going to say about it. If you're interested in seeing this in practice, the original book is also available as a free download on my Dropbox site.

One last thing before moving on (although I could go on and on about this topic, but...), I still don't have enough material for my new Seattle Underground book, so there are several blank pages at the end. Oh well. My usual baboon photo is on the back cover, so if you want to see it, you'll just have to page through the blanks to get there. I guess I could have put "This page intentionally left blank" on those pages, but then they wouldn't be blank anymore, so that just doesn't seem right to me. I think it has something to Kurt Goedel's incompleteness theorem.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Hello 2012

2012-01-01T09:31:00.000-05:00

I finished 2011 with a photo of a salt pond in Maine, so I think I'll start 2012 with another photo of the salt pond.

Salt Pond 2

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/125 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Goodbye 2011

2011-12-31T17:53:00.005-05:00

I had a lot of fun times in 2011. One of my favorites was our vacation to the coast of Maine, so I thought I'd share a photo from that trip as my last weblog post of the year.

Salt Pond: This is a more or less permanent tide pool near New Harbor, Maine. It is one of the locations Rachel Carson visited to observe marine life on the Maine Coast.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/400 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-24T08:26:00.002-05:00

The QR Code says it all...

Fujifilm X100; exposure: 1/18 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS 5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Some Recent Portraits

2011-12-21T21:08:00.001-05:00

I really like taking and processing portraits. I've decided that portraiture, especially informal, and especially black and white, is my favorite area of photography. I also enjoy looking at well done portraits and do a lot of looking for new sources in books and on the web. Most of the photos that I post on my Flickr and 500px accounts are portraits, and I've recently posted quite a few that haven't yet made it here. So here are some of my favorites.

All photos: Nikon D700; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3, Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2, and Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Help-Portrait

2011-12-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I participated in the Columbus, Ohio version of the annual Help-Portrait event. I ended up in a group of twelve photographers at one of the local YMCA branches. We didn't have much business, only about half a dozen families, but we did have a great time, and I hope we provided a nice time and a good photo for each of the families. With so many photographers and not much to do, I ended up being the self-appointed "behind the scenes" photographer and shot many meta-photos (photos of photographers shooting photos). Here are a few of my favorite images from the day. I'm really looking forward to doing this again next year.

Ryan

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 120mm; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/16, ISO 2800; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Michelle

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 90mm; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/8, ISO 3600; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Lecia

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 116mm; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/7.1, ISO 2000; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Fujifilm X100

2011-12-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

I recently bought a Fujifilm X100 digital camera (or as I call it, my "poor man's Leica") to replace my Canon S90, which took a bath in Alum Creek and hasn't been the same since. I haven't had a chance to spend a lot of time using it yet, but so far I love it. It certainly has some limitations and quirks, but it has the features for which I was looking... quiet operation, good picture quality in low-light situations, and it's much smaller and lighter than my Nikon D700. I'm looking forward to trying it out for its main purpose in my life, photography of chamber music concerts. I probably won't be able to do that until sometime in January, but for now I thought I'd share a few of my X100 photos.

X100 Self Portrait

Exposure: 1/28 sec @f/5.6, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

In the Field 1

Exposure: 1/13 sec @ f/11, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

In the Field 2

Exposure: 1/105 sec @ f/8, ISO 800; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

In the Field 3

Exposure: 1/56 sec @ f/16, ISO 3200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Granville Revisited

2011-11-20T13:56:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago I wrote about an early morning photo walk in Granville, Ohio. After the walk Andi and I drove back into the main part of Granville to get some breakfast and to go the farmers' market. The market wasn't very big, maybe a block long, but we had a good time looking at and photographing the goods for sale and an even better time talking with and photographing some of the interesting people. Here are a few of my photos from the morning... one more from the photo walk and a couple from the market.

Foggy Sunrise

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 190mm; exposure: 1/1000 sec @ f/4, ISO 200; post-processed with Apple Aperture3 and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Color Efex Pro 3, and Color Efex Pro 4.

Manuel: A visitor from Spain

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/125 sec @ f/11, ISO 500; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Street Portrait: A teacher who was working for one of the farmers

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/640 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

And Speaking of Non-existent Royalties...

2011-11-15T21:00:00.001-05:00

Look! Another awesome and epic Steve Stuff weblog posting just a few minutes after the last one. Oh! Whatever could be going on for such a thing to happen? Just listen (or read), and I'll tell you...

Yesterday one of my photos was used for a story on the AOL Real Estate web site. "Woo," you might or might not say. For me, though, it was a pretty big deal. I average about 100 or so views each day on my Flickr account. Yesterday I had more than 4000 views! Wowzers!!!

In case you don't want to go look at the AOL page (which you really should do because I work for AOL, and AOL makes money every time someone looks at their web pages (especially if you click on the advertisements), and the more money AOL makes, the better chance I have keeping my job...), I'll include the photo here. If you click on the photo, your web browser will show you the photo on my Flickr site, and I'll get another view. So please click away!

Downtown Columbus at sunset, as seen from Genoa Park, near COSI.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My New Book

2011-11-15T20:38:00.001-05:00

Today I received a hardcopy of my new self-published book of photos, Penstemaniacs. It looks pretty good to me. If you're interested, and you just might be if you're a penstemaniac, there's a free (Woo!!! Good price!) PDF download available. Let the non-existent royalties begin!

Here's a copy of the front cover:

The Redwoods

2011-11-13T08:25:00.001-05:00

After the Penstemaniac conference Andi, Aaron, and I visited Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park in Northern California. It had been thirty years since Andi and I had been there and was Aaron's first visit. It was a truly awesome experience for all of us, and we were able to get some good photos as well. If you ever go there be sure to find the Stout Grove.

Redwood Grove Quadtone (1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 6400)

Andi Photographs a Tree (1/60 sec @ f/8, ISO 6400)

Redwood Abstract (1/100 sec @ f/16, ISO 6400)

All photos: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; post-processed with Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2. Redwood Grove Quadtone and Andi Photographs a Tree were toned using Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Back to the Siskiyous

2011-11-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about my visit to the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon. Since then I've processed several more photos that I shot from Mt. Ashland. The sky that day was a deep, dark blue, and when I did the black and white conversion and added a digital red filter, it (the sky) became very dramatic (in my opinion). If I may say so, the photos remind me of some I've seen by Ansel Adams, only less so (because he is the master). If I may not say so, then you may decide for yourself. Either way, I like them, and I hope you do too.

Mt. Shasta as Seen From Mt. Ashland

Mt. Ashland 2

Mt. Ashland 3

All photos: Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3, Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2, and Adobe Photoshop CS5.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Post #700! Important!

2011-11-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

I listened to This Week in Photo #223 while working out at the gym earlier this week. One of the stories, about Amit Gupta being diagnosed with leukemia and needing a bone marrow transplant, really caught my attention. I had the misconception, apparently a common one, that bone marrow donation is complicated and painful, which apparently is no longer the case. You can read more about what's going on with Amit here. You can join the bone marrow registry and request a compatibility test kit here. I just did.

50mm: 100 on 500px

2011-11-06T10:12:00.000-05:00

I just posted my 100th photo on 500px, my favorite photo sharing site. Why is 500px my favorite? Because I think my photos look best there. I also like the default page layout, the portfolio view, the multiple tiers of "liking" a photo (voting and marking as favorites), and the commercial policy.

I still post photos on flickr. I like flickr's groups, collections, and export functionality. I just don't think my photos look as good there. They always seem a bit too dark to me. It could just be my eyes.

I have many friends on both 500px and Flickr and don't want to lose contact with them, so for now I'll continue to post my photos to both.

Penstemaniac 20

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/4, ISO 500; post processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Time for a New Look

2011-11-03T08:39:00.000-04:00

Blogger just came out some new templates, so I thought I'd try one and see how I like it. In honor of the occasion I even changed the title (again). Most of my rants for the last couple of years have been about photography, so I changed the description to better reflect that. So far I like the new look, and since I don't feel like messing with it much more, I'll probably leave it this way for a while.

Since the new template seems to encourage the use of photos, I'll add one that I've been saving for a special post. You may think of it as a sneak preview. By the way, this was my third photo to make it into Flickr's Explore and my first non-Andi photo to make it.

Penstemaniac 16

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm @ 200mm; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 640; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Granville Photo Walk

2011-10-29T10:32:00.000-04:00

Last weekend Andi and I went on a chilly, early morning photo walk in Granville, Ohio. Our daughter, Meghan, was scheduled to take the ACT that morning, so we dropped her off at the school and went out in search of a place to shoot sunrise photos. It was wonderfully foggy, and we had a great time shooting silhouettes through the fog. Just before we left, we found this corn field and had fun shooting some more photos. I took this one of Andi as we were heading back to the car to search for warm beverages and breakfast.

Andi in the Corn

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/250 sec @ f/16, ISO 2200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

The Siskiyou Mountains

2011-10-27T13:34:00.000-04:00

When I was five my family moved from my native Oregon to San Diego, California. Since we still had many relatives and friends in Oregon, we used to go back to visit quite often. We'd drive up Interstate 5 through the hot, flat, and boring central valley of California. I would always anticipate getting my first view of Mt. Shasta in the distance. I remember wondering if some day I might be able to climb it. I remember either camping at Castle Crags or staying in a motel in Yreka (a motel with a swimming pool!). And I remember that as we left California behind and entered Oregon, we were in beautiful, rugged, and seemingly inaccessible mountains... the Siskiyous.

It's been forty years or more since the days of those family vacations, and finally, this past summer, I had an opportunity to explore the Siskiyous when Andi, Aaron (one of Andi's graduate students) and I attended the annual meeting of the American Penstemon Society. The major activities of the meetings were field trips into the mountains to see the area's Penstemons. While the Penstemaniacs (as I call them and as, I believe, they call themselves) looked at and photographed flowers, I photographed the landscapes and the Penstemaniacs. I had a great time!

So were the mountains as I remember them? While they seemed maybe a bit less rugged and a bit more accessible, they were just as beautiful. The photo below, taken from somewhere along Mt. Ashland road, provides a small glimpse of their beauty. I hope to return someday to do more exploring.

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8VR @ 70mm; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/16, ISO 1400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Highbanks Color

2011-10-25T17:28:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while one of my photos just seems better if left in color rather than converting it to monochrome. When I processed the photo below, I didn't even consider monochrome (although I'll bet it would look good) because I like it the way it is. I shot this photo while out on a walk with my family at Highbanks Metropark, my favorite park in the Columbus, Ohio area.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 105mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/16, ISO 500; post-processed with Apple Aperture3 and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Quadtone Fungus

2011-10-24T07:47:00.001-04:00

I originally shot this in portrait format. Then I noticed that by rotating it, it kind of looks like a fish. I'm not sure which way I like better, but this will do for now. No, wait! I just changed it back to the original orientation. For now I like it better this way.

I tend to shoot most of my photos in portrait orientation. For some reason I like portrait better than landscape, at least for my own photos. I don't know why. Maybe because my favorite photos are actual portraits of people.

I even like to shoot actual landscapes in portrait format. At first this may seem a bit strange, and maybe it is, but I like landscape shots that have a large depth-of-field, with definite foreground, mid-ground, and background areas. Portrait format gives more vertical room to each of the areas; they don't seem so scrunched up.

Because of this tendency, I have trouble coming up with good shots for my web page, which has a layout that works better with photos in landscape format. Oh well... I have to shoot what seems right.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 105mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/16, ISO 4000; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Cape Perpetua, Oregon (Take 2)

2011-10-22T12:19:00.003-04:00

This is a continuation of a post I wrote a couple weeks ago showing some of my photos from Cape Perpetua, Oregon. Here are the rest. That's all I have to say.

Cape Perpetua Lookout

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/80 sec @ f/16, ISO 900; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Cape Perpetua Forest

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D; exposure: 1/80 sec @ f/16, ISO 6400; post processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Sofware Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Cape Perpetua, Oregon

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/100 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Meghan's Apple

2011-10-06T16:56:00.002-04:00

Meghan found "a perfect apple" while in an orchard last weekend, so we decided I should photograph it. I set up our dining room studio and took several shots. I used a variety of things I found around the house as additional elements in the photos. I liked the color contrast between the apple and the wooden form in the first photo. I liked the size and shape of the gourd in the second photo.

To light the shots I used two strobes. The key was into an umbrella on the left and slightly higher than the subject. The fill was bounced off the ceiling on the right. I set everything to manual except white balance, and I should have set that too. It's easy enough to correct in Aperture, but why not get it right in the first place? You can see a slight color difference in the backgrounds of the two photos, but the color of the apple looks fine to me in both, so I called it "close enough."

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/200 sec at f/6.3, ISO 200; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Viveza 2.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/200 sec at f/11, ISO 200; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Viveza 2.

One more thing... I posted the first of these on Flickr on the morning of 5 Oct 2011, the day Steve Jobs passed away. Interesting timing for posting a photo of an apple. I posted the second the next day (today). In some small way I think of these as a tribute to his memory.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Cape Perpetua, Oregon (Take 1)

2011-10-02T10:52:00.007-04:00

As I promised (well, at least mentioned) in my preceeding post, I spent quite a bit of time yesterday processing photos I shot at Cape Perpetua, Oregon. I processed so many, in fact, that I'm going to split up my coverage into multiple rambles. This one includes all the photos that I've already posted to Flickr, and I'll do another with the remaining photos in the near. I usually only post one photo each day, so it will probably be next weekend before I add them here (that seems pretty near).

This first photo is an almost aerial view of the beach from the top of the cape. The view point is quite a ways up, but the road is very good. There's a stone lookout structure here that was built in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. I have a photo that I'll include in the next post.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Here's a metaphoto (a photo of a photograph being taken... at least that's my definition) of Andi near the visitor center. Andi said she would post her concurrent meta-photo at some point. I'll try to remember to return here and add a link.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/80 sec @ f/16, ISO 1250; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This is called Devil's Churn. I would not want to be here during a storm. I think I could get quite a photo, though, if the rescue team ever found my camera (not to mention my drenched, smashed, rotting carcass... oops! I guess I just did... sorry about that).

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/100 sec @ f/11, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro

© Copyright 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Back to the Oregon Coast

2011-10-01T10:15:00.001-04:00

After a few side journeys to Maine, my backyard and studio, and (not seen here) the Dublin Irish Festival (Dublin, Ohio, not Ireland... too bad), I'm back to sharing photos from my most recent trip to the Oregon coast (one of my favorite places in the world). I've already mentioned and shared photos from this trip a couple times (here and here), but there's more!

Today's photos were both taken along what I think of as the main harbor road in Newport, Oregon. Even though they seem to be in completely different locales, I think they were shot within a couple hundred yards of each other.

Newport Harbor

Street Dog

While looking through my Flickr Photostream, I saw a couple photos from Cape Perpetua, Oregon. I know I haven't yet posted one of them here. I'll have to dig back through my earlier ramblings and see if I've already posted the other. I've been thinking about revisiting my Cape Perpetua photos, so maybe I can find one or two more to add to Flickr and then yack about here. So stay tuned! Both of you! I mean it!

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Color Efex Pro 4

2011-09-30T08:02:00.000-04:00

Nik Software recently released Color Efex Pro 4 (CEP4), their set of a wide variety of post-processing filters, and I bought a license a few days ago. I've been using Nik products for a couple of years now and like them all. I like to mostly create monochromatic images using Nik's Silver Efex Pro 2, but even on those I'll often run a photo through CEP4 before converting it. I had heard about CEP4's new capability to stack multiple filters during a single run and was looking forward to trying it.

So here are a couple photos on which I've applied some CEP4 filters. Before doing so I ran the photos through Nik's Dfine 2.0 (another great plugin) to reduce sensor noise. The first photo uses a combination of the Classic Soft Focus and Glamour Glow filters. The second uses Glamour Glow and Tonal Contrast.

The stacking capability works well. It saves time and round-trip conversions. It also lets me see any the total effect of any combination of filters. When using earlier versions I'd have to apply and adjust a single filter. Then I would save and exit (a single operation). Next I'd run CEP again, apply and adjust a second filter, save and exit, etc. If at some point I decided I didn't like something about one of the filters, I'd have to start again with the original image and go through the entire process. Now I can apply all of the filters, adjust each as many times as I like, and turn them off and on until everything looks just right. Only then do I commit by saving and exiting. Very, very cool.

Studio Rose

Nikon D700; AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D; exposure: 1/60 sec @ f/32, ISO 6400; post-processed with Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Viveza 2, and Color Efex Pro 4.

Quadtone Rose

Nikon D700; AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/32, ISO 1250; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Dfine 2.0, Color Efex Pro 4, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Fort Knox One More Time

2011-09-11T11:54:00.002-04:00

Andi at Fort Knox

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/60 sec @ f/4, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro 2.

Here's one last photo from Fort Knox. I didn't include it in my series because the processing is a bit different, so the resulting "look and feel" is a bit different. Instead of using Photoshop to duotone this photo, I used the toning built into Silver Efex Pro (SEP).

I used a variation of one of SEP's sepia presets for this photo. When I use SEP toning presets, I always change the Paper slider to zero percent so that the pure whites in the photo, if any, remain pure white. I think this helps keep the contrast in the photo; a lot of toned photos look a bit flat to me. After setting the paper tone, I adjust the Silver slider to where the photo has the best overall look to my eye. I then exit SEP and make my final refinements to the brightness and contrast in Aperture.

For some reason I especially like toned black and white photos ("monochrome" is probably a better word since they aren't really black and white after they've been toned). I use different tones to try to create different moods or sometimes just because I think a particular tone looks good on a particular photo. For instance, I really like variations of sepia for portraits. I think sepia makes people look good. I try to keep my toning subtle but noticeable.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Fort Knox, Maine

2011-09-10T12:19:00.000-04:00

There's a Fort Knox in Maine? I thought Fort Knox was in Kentucky. And where's all of the gold? I don't see any gold.

I just finished posting the last of my Fort Knox series of photographs to my Flickr and 500px accounts, nine photos in total. Andi and I visited there a couple weeks ago while on a short vacation in Maine. From the point-of-view of a dark, damp, and dusty venue (some of my favorite qualities), it's a great place for photography. The other thing about Fort Knox that makes it great for photography is access. Except for a couple exhibits (see my Fort Knox 6 and Fort Knox 7 photos), visitors are allowed to go everywhere, even places that seem potentially hazardous, at least if you don't have a flashlight or a helmet (or both).

All of these photos were shot with my Nikon D700 (Handheld! The D700's sensor is amazing!) and a 50mm f/1.4 lens. All were post-processed with Apple Aperture 3. Most then had some tonal contrast added using Nik Software's Color Efex Pro. I converted them to black and white using the fantastic Silver Efex Pro, also from Nik. And finally I added a quadtone using Adobe Photoshop CS5.

The renderings here are from Flickr, but you might want to check out the 500px versions as well (see link above). I prefer 500px's renderings, but Flickr gives me a better variety of sizes from which to choose for my weblog.

Fort Knox 1

A gun slit. This is where some of the light in Fort Knox 5 comes from.

Fort Knox 2

Exterior view of the fort, with a cannon peeking out. This may be my favorite photo of the series. I really like the texture in the walls.

Fort Knox 3

The entrance. I think this photo has kind of a funny composition, which I like.

Fort Knox 4

This is where the cannons were placed. The semicircles on the ground are tracks on which the cannons are turned for aiming.

Fort Knox 5

The gun slit hallway, a very dark, damp, and dusty place. I love the lighting in this shot. This may be my favorite in the series, too.

Fort Knox 6

Part of an exhibit in the officers' quarters. This is one of the very few places that had any barriers to entry. The lighting made the exhibit a great place to shoot still life photos like this one and Fort Knox 7.

Fort Knox 7

Another part of the officer's quarters exhibit. I love the lighting on the pitcher (ewer?) and basin. The boot puller and rifle box are interesting, too. So are the broom and the wicker-wrapped bottle on the left. Hmmm... this may be my favorite shot.

Fort Knox 8

One of the food storage bins. These, too, are dark, damp, and dusty. I can see how rats may have been a problem. The ceilings are pretty low, and I had to do some crawling around in the dirt to get where I wanted to be. Personally I like this photo better in color, but then it wouldn't fit in with the rest of the series. Andi also shot in here, so I'm hoping she will post a color version somewhere.

Fort Knox 9

An oven in the kitchen.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: South Beach, Newport, Oregon

2011-09-06T19:35:00.000-04:00

While on a vacation trip to Washington and Oregon, a couple months ago now (and I still haven't finished processing the photo), Andi and I stayed for a couple days at a very nice B&B south of Newport, Oregon. We've vacationed at the beach in Newport several times, and it's one of our favorite places. As usual we took an early morning walk along the beach, and it was nice and foggy... perfect for minimalist photography. I shot many, many photos and ended processing five of them. One, South Beach 5 (the first photo shown below), has become, by far, my most popular photo on Flickr, with more than 1300 views and 100 favorites so far. To help put these numbers in perspective, most of my photos seem to get about 50 views and maybe 1 or 2 favorites, if I'm lucky.

I took all of these photos with my Nikon D700 and AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens. I processed them with Adobe Camera Raw (to create a DNG file), Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

South Beach 5

South Beach 4

South Beach 3

South Beach 2

South Beach 1

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

2011-08-26T09:18:00.000-04:00

After visiting parents and in-laws, we decided to spend some time at the Oregon coast, one of my favorite places. We left Eugene and drove toward Mapleton. We made our usual stop at the Gingerbread Restaurant for a snack and to buy a couple dozen gingerbread cookies. After that we headed into Florence, Oregon, and the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. It was sunny in Florence, but as soon as we entered the dunes, it became very foggy. We drove in almost as far as possible and then stopped to shoot photos. It was very windy, and I hoped to capture the look of blowing sand by using my ND 3.0 filter. It didn't really work as well as I had hoped, but I was still able to get some shots that I like. The first shot included here is from this location, and the other shot is from the highway in Florence looking towards the dunes.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 5 sec @ f/16, ISO 200, 3.0 neutral density filter; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/250 sec @ f/16, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Father and Daughter

2011-08-24T07:21:00.000-04:00

Today I'm continuing my Washington/Oregon vacation coverage with a couple of informal portrait I shot in Eugene, Oregon restaurants. One of my favorite niches in photography is natural light portraits. I almost always do monochrome conversions of these photos and usually include some degree of sepia toning. I just like that particular look and think it tends to flatter. These photos are of my father-in-law, hamming for the camera, and Andi.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/200 sec @ f/8, ISO 6400; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/4, ISO 5000; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Train Ride

2011-08-20T11:34:00.001-04:00

It's been a long while since I've updated this goofy weblog, and I think it's about time I did so. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel room in Portland, Maine (the other Portland) and am using my iPad to write this post. Andi and I are here to attend the wedding of one of her students. The wedding venue is on a nearby island. I'm hoping it will make for some interesting photography after the wedding.

So on to today's topic... A train ride from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR (the real Portland).

You might recall, especially if you skim down this page to my last post, that Andi and I went on a vacation and visited Seattle. The next stop was Eugene, OR via Portland. Rather than rent a car in Seattle and drive the whole way, we decided to ride the train to Portland and pick up a car there. It turned out to be a great idea, and I hope to never drive between those two cities again.

The trip was scenic, comfortable, and fairly quick. In fact it was much quicker than many of the drives we've made there. The trip was also quite affordable... Another plus. I had a good time wandering around, having some snacks, watching the world go by, and shooting photos.

I've included several of my photos here. One the photos, the one of Andi, made it onto Flickr's Explore page and ended up being a bit popular. That was pretty cool. Which reminds me, I never did write about my first photo to make it into Explore. I think that I will do so soon.

Amtrak station in Seattle, WA

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/100 sec @ f/8, ISO 1800; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

The back end of our train

Andi in the dining car

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/25 sec @ f/8, ISO 6400; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

A stop in Centralia, WA

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400; post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

Copyright © 2011 Stephen A. Wolfe

Seattle Underground

2011-08-02T17:09:00.003-04:00

While visiting Seattle in July, Andi and I went on the Seattle Underground tour (highly recommended). I had a fun time shooting photos of junk! The lighting was mostly pretty cool (a lot of bare bulbs casting interesting shadows) but not very bright. My Nikon D700 did pretty well, generally setting the auto-ISO to 6400, but I still ended up with some pretty slow shutter speeds. I didn't have a tripod with me, so I used whatever was at hand to brace the camera as well as possible. I shot a couple hundred photos and ended up processing the following fifteen.

By the way, instead of linking to the photos in my Flickr account, I'm trying something new and linking to my 500px account, which I just opened a few weeks ago. I like the look of the 500px site. There are a lot of great photos there (even outside my account) so you should check it out. While you're there, please feel free to click on the "Like" button for any of my photos (or other people's photos too).

I shot all of these using my AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens and post-processed them with Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

Update (4 Nov 2011): For some reason my links to 500px broke, so I replaced all my photos with the versions on Flickr. The links on the file names still work to take you to the photo on 500px, so if you're interested in seeing one there, just click.

Seattle Underground 01

Seattle Underground 02

Seattle Underground 03

Seattle Underground 04

Seattle Underground 05

Seattle Underground 06

Seattle Underground 07

Seattle Underground 08

Seattle Underground 09

Seattle Underground 10

Seattle Underground 11

Seattle Underground 12

Seattle Underground 13

These last two are linked from Flickr because I never posted them on 500px. Maybe, though, this will provide a good comparison between the two sites (and maybe it won't).

Seattle Underground 14

Seattle Underground 15

And here's a special bonus photo for those of you who made it this far. I shot this one above ground while on the tour. You actually go down and back up again several times throughout the tour.

Standing or Parking

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Vacation to the Pacific Northwest

2011-07-25T16:24:00.001-04:00

Andi and I recently returned from a great vacation in Washington and Oregon. We spent about half of the time visiting relatives. After our visits we hung out and explored the central coast of Oregon and then went to a science conference in Medford. I shot many photos throughout our vacation and will be posting quite a few of them here as I find the time to do so.

My first photos to share are from near the end of our visit. As part of the science conference, we went on a couple field trips in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. I took these photos near the top of Mt. Ashland. I thought the flowering plants in the foreground of each photo were Penstemons, the subject of the conference, but Andi corrected me. Oh well... I'm not a botanist.

Non-Penstemon on Mt. Ashland

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/16, ISO 2000, polarizing filter; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine.

Non-Penstemon Metaphoto

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 sec @ f/16, ISO 2500, polarizing filter; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Color Efex Pro.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

New Photography Portfolio

2011-07-25T16:07:00.001-04:00

I've added yet another photography website account to my online presense. This one is on 500px.com, which I really like so far. Besides being a place to store and share photographs, 500px also provides a nice looking and customizable portfolio page. All of my 500px photos (which are, by the way, all gray-scale photos taken using a 50mm lens) can be seen here and my portfolio page can be seen here.

South Africa Photos: Final Installment

2011-06-28T20:05:00.000-04:00

These are the last of my photos from South Africa, at least the ones I plan to post. It's kind of a mishmash from several days, both cameras (Nikon D90 and F100), and various lenses, so I think I'll just post them with short notes about where they were taken and who is in them, if anybody.

Seascape at Arniston

Crowned Plover at Cape Agulhas

Sunset at Gansbaai

Dennis on Table Mountain

My good friend Dennis Laidler looking out over the Capetown suburbs and Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden from atop Table Mountain

50mm: Self Portrait

2011-06-24T21:24:00.001-04:00

This photo took some work. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't. I had been seeing some cool pages on about.me and decided that I needed a new photo on my page. I wanted a portrait (I've had a seascape shot there ever since I created my account), but I also wanted a photo that I had taken. So I thought about using a mirror to shoot a self portrait, and then I thought it would be interesting to include my camera in the photo... a small attempt at telling a story.

So I set up the tripod, attached the camera, and thought "how am I going to get the focus spot on?" I knew I wanted to use a large aperture so that the background would be well out of focus. I decided on f/2, one stop down from maximum. I probably could have gone to f/2.8 and still had pretty much the same effect, but f/2 it was.

I turned on the self timer and pressed the focus button. The camera hunted for focus, which didn't make me feel like there would be much of a chance of it getting it right. The room was pretty dark with some diffuse afternoon light coming in through the front windows.

I turned on a lamp that was near the windows and would provide more light from approximately the same direction. I didn't worry about having two colors of light since I knew I would be doing a black & white conversion. I tried the auto focus again, and it seemed better, so I made an exposure. No luck. The camera had focused on the background.

I went upstairs and found a flashlight. First I shined it through the camera and moved my head around to find the angle where the light was brightest. I reasoned that by putting my eye left eye along that line, it would be in line with the camera's center focus point. More auto focus hunting.

OK... what now? I got back into position, aimed the flashlight at my face to provide more light in the right place and tried again. Success!

Now I had to figure out how to angle my head and aim my eyes to get the look I wanted. I tried looking directly at the reflection of the camera. I didn't like that. I tried looking directly at my reflection, but that wasn't right either. I finally chose a spot between those two extremes, but a bit closer to the camera, and that seemed about right. I shot several more exposures until I had a couple that looked pretty good and decided that was enough. Total time was about 20 minutes. Whew!

There must be an easier way. I thought about using a tape measure and setting the focus manually, but my laziness nixed that idea. There are probably other, better ways that didn't come to mind, but my way eventually worked, and I'm happy with my new about.me page. The customer is happy, and that's what counts.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/13 second @ f/2, ISO 400; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Dfine, Color-Efex-Pro, Viveza, and Software Silver Efex Pro.

Copyright ©2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Back to South Africa

2011-06-23T17:24:00.000-04:00

I'm finally back to processing photos from my trip to South Africa. In fact, as of last evening, I'm finished! Yea! I'm planning to post another set or two here, but for now, here are a final couple of photos shot on real film.

Clouds, somewhere in the Western Cape province

Nikon F100; AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8; Kodak Tri-X developed with TMax; scanned with a CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Apple Aperture 3.

Seascape at Arniston

Nikon F100; AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8; Kodak Tri-X developed with TMax; scanned with a CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Grunge Photo

2011-06-18T21:26:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted a grunge photo, so I thought it was about time to do so again. I had a good time playing with this photo. The jeep was already pretty grungy, but the combination of adding a lot of structure in Silver Efex Pro and a texture of broken concrete in Photoshop made it much more so.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/160 second @ f/4.5, ISO 2200; post-processing: Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

Cellist

2011-06-13T17:30:00.001-04:00

Nikon D700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR; exposure: 1/160 second @ f/2.8, ISO 6400; post-processing: Adobe Photoshop, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine and Color Efex Pro.

This is my favorite recent photo. It may end up being one of my favorite photos of all time, but I'll have to wait a while before deciding for sure. I might also need to get a print made in order to make a final decision.

I shot this at a (high school) senior recital this past week. I was lucky it came out well because I had been messing with the metering mode on my camera. I had set it to spot and forgotten to put it back on matrix. I can't remember why I changed it in the first place, but while I was shooting and chimping I noticed that my exposures seemed to be all over the place. I wondered whether I had forgotten to turn off exposure bracketing, but it didn't seem regular enough for that.

When I looked at the photos later at home, I saw that most were underexposed by an f-stop or so. They were still usable but they weren't very good. When I first saw this one, I dismissed it as way overexposed. After struggling with the processing of the underexposed images, I came back to this one. On second look it seemed to me that even though the background was way overexposed, the main subject, the cellist, was nicely exposed.

One other point of interest is that the lighting situation was a bit difficult, and only because of that did I end up with this photo. The recital was in an art gallery. The lights in the room were all incandescent spots on tracks near the ceiling and were positioned to light the artwork on the walls. This made the walls very bright and the musicians not nearly so. This didn't seem like a problem until someone opened the blinds of the window seen here. This did two things. It added another color of light, and it lit the musicians directly from the side, which wasn't very flattering.

I wanted to get a good photo of the cellist, so I moved to a position where the light from the window was hidden behind her. Doing so eliminated both issues. I wouldn't have thought of moving if the lighting situation hadn't changed. So what seemed like a problem became an opportunity, and I was lucky enough that it worked out.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Another Recent Photo

2011-06-13T16:59:00.000-04:00

Once again I'm behind in adding things to my weblog. It seems to me that if I want people to occasionally read my weblog, then I should occasionally (or, better yet, more than occasionally) post something, preferably something interesting. If I don't have anything interesting to say, and I probably don't, I should at least post a recent photo and provide some background information. So that's what I'm going to do now.

Andi has been busily working on one of her sphere projects, and I have been trying to document her progress. I enjoy shooting and processing these photos. As you may have noticed, most of my photos of Andi working on her projects are monochrome... sometimes straight black and white and sometimes toned. I mostly use monochrome for a couple reasons: (1) there are multiple colors of lights in Andi's shop (a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs), which makes white-balancing a problem, and (2) I like monochrome.

So here is yet another monochrome image. This time I toned the photo with a pretty heavy sepia because I think sepia looks good on people and on wood.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/100 second @ f/8, ISO 720; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: A Couple Recent Photos

2011-05-30T14:46:00.000-04:00

Here are some more recent photos of Andi working in her woodshop:

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/100 second @ f/11, ISO 2800; post-processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza, and Silver Efex Pro.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/100 second @ f/11, ISO 1100; post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Rehearsal

2011-05-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

A triptych of candid shots from the Chamber Music Connection's 2011 Spring Festival...

Nikon D-700; AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Spring Festival

2011-05-26T07:38:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I pretended to be an event photographer at the Chamber Music Connection's Spring Festival in Delaware, Ohio. I've done this for the past several years and have always had a great time. Here are a couple of my photos from that event. Both were converted to Black & White and selenium toned using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro 2.

Nikon D700; AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm; exposure: 1/100 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 900; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Backyard Bird

2011-05-22T15:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've put color photos in my weblog, so for those of you who prefer that sort of thing, these are for you.

Nikon D90; AF-Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR + TC-14E II; exposure: 1/160 sec @ f/9, ISO 400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3.

Nikon D90; AF-Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR + TC-14E II; exposure: 1/200 sec @ f/9, ISO 400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Some New Quadtones

2011-05-14T17:58:00.001-04:00

I enjoy converting a lot of my digital photos to black and white. I just like the look of black and white. I always use Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro, and now, version 2. Version 2 seems to work much better for me than did version 1, but I can't really seem to get better looking photos out of it, at least not that I can tell. I sometimes enjoy toning my converted photos. Again I just like the look. Sometimes I use Silver Efex Pro's built in toning, which is very easy to use and works well. And other times I like to use Adobe Photoshop to make duo, tri, or quadtones. It's not quite as convenient as using Silver Efex Pro, but it does produce a slightly different look, and (yet again) I like the look.

So now that I've rambled on a bit, here are a couple new quadtones. I shot these at Magee Marsh, which is on the south shore of Lake Erie.

Both photos shot with a Nikon D700 and AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Cherry Blossoms

2011-05-04T21:22:00.004-04:00

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/25 sec @ f/16, ISO 6400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Woody the Titan Arum

2011-04-29T17:24:00.003-04:00

I spent most of last weekend with a plant, a Titan Arum to be more precise, named Woody. The Titan Arum is a rare plant that is native to Sumatra. Last weekend one bloomed at Ohio State. A blooming Titan Arum is even more rare.

The blooming process took most of a day. Andi and I had visited in the morning because the greenhouse director, Joan Leonard, thought that blooming was eminent (as evidenced by the interest being shown by houseflies, one of the plant's pollinators). Joan was correct, and Woody started opening shortly after our visit.

We returned that afternoon, and I brought along the equipment I needed to shoot a set of time-lapse images... my D700 with a 50mm lens and a tripod. I set up the camera to shoot up to 999 photos at 30 second intervals.

Initially I configured my camera to shoot high-resolution JPEG files, but I later changed this to medium-resolution in order to save processing time. While doing the processing I didn't notice any difference in image quality, but I only needed relatively small images. I also initially set the camera to f/16 to make sure I had enough depth-of-field, but I later changed this to f/8 to cut down exposure times as the sun set and it became much darker in the greenhouse. I set my exposure to use auto-ISO up to 6400, which still provides for good images on the D700.

I let the sequence run for a little more than six hours and generated about 750 images. I ended up leaving out about 100 of these due to people being between Woody and my camera. I kept photos where people were beside or behind Woody. It's fun to watch them pop in and out of the final video. There was a lot of interest in Woody's blooming, and quite a few people came by that evening even though official visiting hours didn't start until the next day.

We finally made it home at about 11 PM, and I loaded my photos into Aperture. I went through them and marked all that I wanted in the video and then exported them to get a consistent and appropriate size. Next I imported the photos into iMovie. I configured iMovie to display each image for 0.1 seconds. The resulting video runs in just under a minute and a half. I posted this version of the video in a few places but didn't really advertise it much. Instead I gave Andi a copy so that she could add titles, still photos, and music.

The next day Andi finished her amazing version of the video and posted it to YouTube and CNN. Here's a link to the YouTube version. Several other sites have linked to the video, including the Columbus Dispatch and NPR. The last I heard the video had been viewed more than 5000 times.

If you'd like to find out more about Woody, it has it's own Facebook Fan Page.

In addition to the video, I shot and processed some stills. Here's one of my favorites.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/640 sec @ f/16, ISO 6400; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Viveza 2 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Animated GIF Test

2011-04-27T10:03:00.002-04:00

"Woody"
Ohio State's Titan Arum

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; 12 images

50mm: Weeping Cherry

2011-04-24T19:31:00.001-04:00

We've decided (and have already bought) a weeping cherry tree to plant in our backyard. I didn't even know what it was, but I had seen and admired many of these trees in our neighborhood. The other evening, while out on a walk, I saw one that's planted fairly near the street in someone's yard. The owner was out working on his lawn, so I asked permission to photograph his tree, and he said that was fine. I asked if I could step on his lawn, and he said that was going too far, but he shortly thereafter acquiesced. Here's my favorite of the photos.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure 1/1000 second @ f/4, ISO 200; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Bradford Pear Tree

2011-04-23T13:20:00.001-04:00

Last week as I was walking out of my daughter's bass teacher's house I saw this Bradford pear tree, with it's white flowers, in front of some dark storm clouds. The contrast between the bright foreground and dark background really caught my eye. I had my D700 and 50mm lens with me, so I stopped to take a quick shot. A bit of work with Aperture and Nik Software plugins yielded this image.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/200 sec @ f/13, ISO 800; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Violinist on Film

2011-04-22T21:09:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted a photo shot on film, so it's time to do so again. Since I bought my Nikon D700, I've only shot a few photos on film, and I did so just to finish off the roll. I have a film project in mind that I'm hoping to start soon, but I'm waiting to receive a very special roll of film. I'll provide more details on that once the film arrives. For now, though, here's an image from my latest roll.

Nikon F100; Ilford Delta 400 stand developed with Kodak HC110 63:1 for 25 minutes at 65F; scanned with CanoScan FS2710 and VueScan software; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Trees in the Wind

2011-04-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

It's been rather windy here of late. A few days ago I was thinking it might be cool to shoot photos of trees blowing in wind. I thought I'd use my 1.8 Neutral Density filter to get a long exposure that would make some sort of ghost-like images. I also thought I might be able to blur the clouds in the background.

Unfortunately, even using my camera's lowest sensitivity setting and my lens's smallest aperture, I wasn't able to use a long enough exposure to get the cloud effect I wanted. I was able, though, to get something like the effect I wanted in the trees.

The resulting images are somewhat abstract and in a way, at least in my mind, minimalist. The patterns are complex when looked at as a whole, but the overall effect seems to be much more simple. Here are three of the images that I like best.

All photos taken with a Nikon D700, a AF Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens at 200mm, and a B&W 1.8 ND filter. Exposures varied from 0.8 to 1.6 seconds, all at f/22 and ISO 100. Post-processing was done using Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Indian Ocean

2011-04-10T15:22:00.001-04:00

While in South Africa last October, Andi and I visited some friends who live within sight of the Indian Ocean, near the town of Wilderness. We stayed for two nights and had a fun time looking for Hyobanche, photographing birds, and enjoying the view of the Southern Hemisphere sky at night. I think I've previously posted some of my astrophotos from those nights, but I've just gotten around to processing the some of the daylight photos. Here are a few of my favorites so far. I'll probably be posting some more as I get to them.

The Indian Ocean near Wilderness, South Africa

Prinia

Sedgefield, South Africa

The Indian Ocean

Sunset on the Indian Ocean

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My Cooper's Hawks

2011-04-09T17:12:00.002-04:00

A pair of Cooper's hawks have been building a nest in a honey locust tree right across the street. It's about 50 feet away directly out my front door and then straight up 35 feet. I've been watching and photographing the pair for a couple weeks, and I think it's about time to post something about them here, on my goofy weblog. So here are a few of my favorite photos so far. I plan on posting many more on my Facebook page, my Flickr feed, and here.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Perigee Full Moon

2011-03-20T09:51:00.004-04:00

Last evening Andi and I walked down to the Ohio State University farm to shoot photos of the full moon as it rose. We had heard that the moon was near perigee, and that this would be the largest it would look (or had looked, not sure which) for almost 20 years. Of course the difference in size was not noticeable, but all of the hype certainly seemed to get a lot of people out looking at the moon.

Andi and I arrived at the farm about half an hour or so before moonrise. We weren't sure exactly when that would be, but I knew it had to be near sunset if the moon was going to be full. After we had set up, someone drove by and told us moonrise was at 8:05 PM. That was helpful... at least we knew when. I used my cell phone to call Richard and asked him to look up the moon's azimuth at moonrise. He was able to do so, and now we were armed with all of the information to catch the moon as low as possible.

As the time drew near several more people arrive... some with cameras, others with small telescope, and others with just their eyes and curiosity. We wondered whether our hanging around with cameras, telephoto lenses, and tripods had influenced, or at least reminded, people as they drove by.

Right on schedule, and in the predicted place, there it was! Big and dark red! I wasn't expecting it to so red. I had my camera set up to do multiple exposures with differing shutter speeds, in case I later decided to put together an HDR image. I used manual focus so that I wouldn't get frustrated by the camera trying to figure out where to focus. I knew how far away the moon would be.

My photos came out pretty well. I did try some HDR, but I didn't like the result. So I just did a bit of processing with Aperture to increase the fine contrast and slightly adjust the exposure, and with Dfine to reduce the digital noise.

Here are a couple shots. The first shows the moon just as the lower limb was over our horizon, which consisted of some of the building on the OSU campus. The second is a few minutes later. I had found a position where the moon would come up from behind the silos at Waterman Farm. At the time, it seemed like an interesting juxtaposition.

It was a fun evening. It's also been fun looking at everybody's photos of the perigee full moon.

Nikon D90; AF Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G VR, TC-14E II 1.4x tele-extender; Exposure: 1/3 sec @ f/8, ISO 800; Post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine.

Nikon D90; AF Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G VR, TC-14E II 1.4x tele-extender; Exposure: 1.3 sec @ f/8, ISO 800; Post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Guess Who's Coming For Dinner

2011-03-16T17:03:00.000-04:00

It looks like a pair of Cooper's hawks may be nesting in a tree directly across the street from our house. If so, I'm wondering if their choice of location has anything to do with the four goldfinch feeders we have. I enjoy seeing the hawks, but I hope our American goldfinch population isn't about to start a sharp decline.

Cooper's Hawk

Nikon D700; AF Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G VR @ 200mm + TC-14E II; exposure: 1/640 second @ f/5.6, ISO 200; post-processed with Apple Aperture3 and Nik Software Dfine and Viveza2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Winter Abstracts

2011-03-12T08:48:00.004-05:00

We had another March snow a couple nights ago. We seem to get at least some snow every March. Winter doesn't want to give way to Spring, but in the end, Spring will win out. Until it does, though, I look at the snow as a photographic opportunity. It's always amazing to me how much more interesting things you see every day can look with a bit of snow on them.

Abstract I

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 second @ f/2, ISO 450; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Abstract II

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 second @ f/2, ISO 900; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2

Abstract III

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/320 second @ f/4, ISO 4500; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Basses

2011-03-11T16:40:00.000-05:00

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/160 second @ f/2.8, ISO 1600; post-processed with Apple Aperture3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: SuprSetr for Flickr

2011-03-10T17:08:00.007-05:00

SuprSetr is Jeremy Brooks's free utility program for creating and maintaining Flickr sets. I downloaded and installed a copy on my Mac a couple months ago based on a recommendation by Thomas Hawk. At the time I played with it for a few minutes, thought it was pretty cool, and then forgot about it.

Today while looking through my Twitter feed, I saw a tweet from @7x5photo about using SuprSetr to create a Flickr set of (up to) 50 photos that were shot with a 50mm lens. I love using a "fast 50," so I thought I'd take up the challenge.

For the last year or so I've been pretty good about tagging my Flickr photos, so that part was already done. To create my Flickr set all I had to do was run SuprSetr, tell it to create a new set, give the set a name (50 for 50), type in "50mm" as the tag, click on the Advanced tab, and limit the set to 50 photos there. This may seem like quite a few steps, but it only took a minute or two to figure out how to do it and get it done. Very, very cool! Check out SuprSetr!

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm, Minimalism, and South Africa

2011-03-08T17:14:00.001-05:00

I suppose I should make this into multiple postings, but I feel like being lazy right now, so here are a couple mostly unrelated photos. For the first I used my 50mm f/1.4 lens (one of my favorite lenses, by the way) on my D700, so it's part of my 50mm series. It also seems rather minimal to me, and I think I have another series for that. I don't know which lens I used for the second photo. I shot it with my F100 (a film camera), so there wasn't any EXIF data recorded at the time, by either the camera or by me. I'm guessing I was using my 50mm f/1.8 lens, and, if so, I had medium yellow filter on it at the time. So (maybe I should call this posting "So") what ties these photos together? Hmmm... well they're both black and white, although one of them started out in life as a color photo, which means the answer is nothing really. They're just in the same posting, and that's good enough with me.

March Snow

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/250 second @ f/11, ISO 720; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Western Cape, South Africa

Nikon F100; Kodak Tri-X developed in TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Viveza 2 and Silver Efex Pro 2.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Back to Basics

2011-03-06T14:27:00.000-05:00

So after a diversion to see how much I could punish pixels (see the photos in my previous post), I'm back to basics, my basics... simple (but, I hope, powerful, or at least interesting) black and white images. The making of informal portraits is my favorite subject in photography, and I'm glad to have recently had some opportunities to do so.

These photos are from a trip over to Granville, OH, for a concert at Denison University. I shot the first photo at the final rehearsal before the concert. I was waiting for this one as I had previously seen and heard the piece being conducted. I saw this particular moment at the earlier rehearsal but didn't have my camera ready. I had been hoping for another opportunity to get the shot, and my hope was not in vain. I don't think it's exactly as I had it planned in my mind, but it's close enough.

The second photo is just a lucky grab shot I made while Meghan and I were looking for a restaurant on Granville's main street. I don't think the girl's mother, who is just out of the shot to the right, was very happy about her daughter running off, but the girl herself seems to be having a good time enjoying the warmer weather. At the time I didn't notice the paper she's carrying, but it seems very appropriate for the moment.

Conductor

Nikon D700; AF Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR @ 105mm; exposure: 1/100 second @ f/4, ISO 2200; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

Run Ohio

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/2500 second @ f/2.8, ISO 400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

50mm: Messing Around

2011-03-02T16:55:00.001-05:00

I've recently been enjoying "messing around" with Nik Software plugins, making photographs that seem a bit different than what I usually make. I think I like the results even though they seem to be at least a bit "over the top." I'm hoping to become more traditional soon, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens. For now I hope you enjoy these.

Stage Up

What is it? This is a view, looking straight up, backstage at the Capitol Theater in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I thought it looked like something from Star Wars, so I processed it using Nik Software's Color Efex Pro (tonal contrast) and HDR Efex Pro to try to make it look even more so. By the way, I was later told that it looks like something from Star Trek, not Star Wars. Oops!

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/5 second @ f/4, ISO 6400, hand held while lying on the floor; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Color Efex Pro, and HDR Efex Pro.

Bassist

Meghan rehearsing at the Capitol Theater in Columbus, Ohio.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure: 1/160 second @ f/1.4, ISO 200; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Color Efex Pro.

On the Bus I

A photo I shot while riding the bus from Columbus to Cincinnati. This really is a single exposure, but there are some reflections involved.

Nikon D90; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; exposure 1/200 second @ f/5.6, ISO 400; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Color Efex Pro and HDR Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Meta-portraits

2011-02-21T09:32:00.000-05:00

Climbing Table Mountain (Tafelberg)

2011-02-17T21:35:00.002-05:00

While in South Africa last October, we did quite a bit of mountain climbing, including Table Mountain in Cape Town. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great time climbing the India-Venster route on the front face of the mountain. I ended up processing 110 photos from the climb, but I've only included my favorite here. If you'd like to see the rest of them, they're on my Facebook account.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

First Light (Almost)

2011-02-16T21:13:00.001-05:00

Here are a couple photos I shot with my new Nikon D700 DSLR... a very cool camera. I took these photos on a Columbus Audubon field trip last weekend to Killdeer Plains, near Marion, Ohio. We saw a lot of very interesting birds, but I spent most of my time shooting landscapes and candid portraits.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; 1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 1250; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Color Efex Pro.

Nikon D700; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D; 1/60 sec @ f/16, ISO 1100; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Color Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Violinist Series

2011-02-16T20:57:00.001-05:00

I'm back to photographing musicians playing chamber music and thought I'd share a few recent images. With these photos I was trying for a variety of poses and a consistency of feel... composition, light, focus, etc. I shot quite a few photos in the series and chose these four as the best with sufficient variety. All photos were taken with a Nikon D90 and a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens; exposure 1/60 second @ f/2.8, ISO 1600; and post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Color Efex Pro.

Copyright © 2011 by Stephen A. Wolfe

Stand Developing: Tufted Titmouse

2011-02-08T07:43:00.000-05:00

Tufted Titmouse at Blendon Woods Metro Park, Columbus, OH.

Nikon F100; Ilford Delta-400; stand developed in Kodak HC 110, diluted 63 to 1, for 20 minutes at 68F with a gentle swirling every 5 minutes; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Viveza2 and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Stand Developing

2011-02-06T21:20:00.002-05:00

A while ago I read about a new (to me) way to develop black & white film. If I remember correctly, I first heard about it from my friend Chris Marquardt. It's called "stand development." Instead of agitating the film in the developer every thirty seconds or so, you just let the film stand. In other words, you don't mess with it. The details are easy to find elsewhere on the web by searching.

Ever since reading about it, I'd been wanting to try it. So when I ran out of TMax, and had to buy more developer anyway, I bought Kodak HC-110 with the idea that I'd dilute way down as I needed it, use each batch once, and do stand developing.

The developer is so dilute (I'm using Dilution H, 63 parts water to 1 part HC-110), it seems like magic, but it works. I'm pleased with the results and plan to do my developing this way from now on. I also plan to post many more of my stand developed photos here, so stay tuned.

Shadows and Glitter

One of my minimalist photos. I seem to always shoot these in winter when there's snow.

Nikon F100; Ilford Delta-400 film; stand developed in Kodak HC 110, diluted 63 to 1, for 20 minutes at 68F with a gentle swirling every 5 minutes; converted to digital with a CanoScan FS2710 film scanner; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Real Estate Photography

2011-02-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed (probably not, but it is possible) that I haven't posted anything here for a while. I haven't posted anything on my Facebook or Flickr accounts either. And I've only posted a couple items on Twitter during the past couple of weeks.

The reason? Real estate photography. A friend is moving and a couple weeks ago asked me if I would shoot photos of the interior her house. My being such a nice person (no snide remarks required), I said that I would do so. I spent an hour or so shooting wide angle, large depth-of-field, multiple exposure (six each at one f-stop increments) images of every room, most from at least three or four angles. I then went into photo processing mode and have been in it ever since. I ended up having to re-shoot about six of the photos because of dust spots. I didn't realize that extreme wide angle + large depth-of-field + bright windows + dust = annoying dust spots, but it seems that it does. The good news is that I delivered the photos, and I'm finally finished (Oh please! Oh please! Oh please!).

So now I'm hoping to get back to photographing, processing, and posting fun stuff to all of my accounts. I'm going to start by developing a couple rolls of film that have been sitting in the tank for several days. Yea!

Back to the Falls

2011-01-21T17:17:00.002-05:00

My friend, Mike, and I went to Hayden Falls Park last weekend to shoot some photos. I had been there a few weeks ago with Andi, but Mike hadn't yet seen the falls this winter. The temperatures have been up and down a few times since my last visit, but the ice is thick and protected from the sun enough that it has held up pretty well. Fortunately the pond at the base of the falls hasn't completely frozen over, so it's pretty well protected from people too. This time I brought along more equipment and shot from very wide through very narrow, both digital and film. Here's the first photo I've processed from that day.

Nikon D90; AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED @ 200mm; AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II. Post-processed with Apple Aperture3 and Nik Software Dfine, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Trying Out My Christmas Present

2011-01-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

Andi bought me a Nikon 1.4x teleconverter for Christmas, an AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II to be precise. For it's first real exercise I put it on my D90, attached my 70-200mm zoom lens, and took it out in the backyard. I had to wait a while but eventually the birds and the sun started cooperating. Here's my favorite shot from my present's first light.

Nikon D90; AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED @ 200mm; AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E II. Exposure: 1/800 second @ f/5.6, ISO 400. Post-processed with Apple Aperture3.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Modern Music?

2011-01-13T12:13:00.001-05:00

Cape Agulhas Lighthouse

2011-01-13T12:08:00.003-05:00

The lighthouse at Cape Agulhas, Western Cape, South Africa: the southern tip of Africa.

Nikon D90; Nikkor 70-200mm @ 98mm; 1/125 second @ f/22, ISO 200. Post processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: Workout

2011-01-13T11:58:00.004-05:00

Nikon F100; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; Ilford Delta 400 developed with Kodak TMax; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture3, and Nik Software Viveza2 and Silver Efex Pro.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Quadtone Portraits

2011-01-10T21:37:00.000-05:00

I'm still experimenting (maybe that isn't the right word any more, but it'll do for now) with quadtones in Photoshop. I've found that I really like the look of one particular set of colors and curves, at least for portraits. Here are three recent portraits I processed using this quadtone.

Nikon F100; Kodak Tri-X developed with TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Elements 9 and Apple Aperture 3.

Nikon D90; AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D; 1/500 second @ f/4, ISO 1600. Post-processed with Adobe Camera Raw 6.3; Apple Aperture 3; Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Silver Efex Pro; and Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Nikon F100; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; Ilford Delta 400 developed with TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Apple Aperture 3, and Nik Software Viveza2 and Silver Efex Pro.

Copyright © 2011 Stephen A. Wolfe

Duotones, Tritones, and Quadtones

2011-01-07T06:44:00.006-05:00

I recently added Adobe Photoshop to the arsenal of software I use for processing my photos. Ever since I scanned through a book that used tritones for the photo reproductions (at a Christmas party in early December), I'd been wanting to experiment with them myself. I did some research on the web, and from what I could find out, Photoshop is the only available software that support tritones (and duotones and quadtones... I'll use "tritone" here to refer to all three). Not Aperture. Not Silver Efex Pro. Not Gimp. Not even Photoshop Elements.

At first I was surprised by this, given that the tritones in the book looked very cool, but it appears that Adobe has a patent on some of the algorithms used for generating tritones. Since I didn't own a license to Photoshop and didn't really expect to do so, I just resigned myself to my fate of not getting to play.

And then Andi came home with a copy of Photoshop that she had bought at school! Yea! I installed it, and immediately did another web search to find out how to use the tritone function (actually called Duotone in Photoshop). It's very easy to use, and there are quite a few presets installed. I've found a few more presets that are downloadable from various sources. Deciding which one works well with a particular photo is more challenging, as is tweaking the associated color curves to bring out the effect you want.

So here are the results of my first few experiments. The first is a a quadtone, and the other two are tritones. I'm very pleased with these results and plan to at least look at tritones for most or all of my future monochrome images.

Nikon F100; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; Ilford Delta 400 developed with Kodak TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3, Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Elements 9, and Nik Software Viveza 2.

Nikon F100; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4; Ilford Delta 400 developed with Kodak TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Elements 9.

Nikon F100; Kodak Tri-X developed with TMax; CanoScan FS2710; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Copyright © 2011 Stephen A. Wolfe

Housekeeping

2011-01-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

I've been doing some housekeeping on this weblog. I changed some fonts, removed some sidebar gadgets, deleted draft postings that I'd never published, modified labels to be more consistent, and just tried to make everything look a bit simpler and cleaner. Now I'd like to figure out how I can better integrate my weblog into my personal website, http://ni8w.net. I'm not sure when I'll have time to do that or if it's even possible with my weblog hosted on blogger. Any ideas?

New Year's Day Hike

2011-01-01T20:33:00.004-05:00

Today I went on the annual New Year's Day outing with Columbus Aududon. Five of us (Cathy, Kay, Kevin, Mike, and myself) braved the rainy weather for a nice hike at Clear Creek Metro Park. We saw and/or heard quite a few bird species. My favorite sighting was a flock of about a dozen Eastern bluebirds. The golden-crowned kinglets seemed to have especially golden crowns today. We also found five species of woodpeckers: Downy, Hairy, Red-bellied, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Northern Flicker. It was a nice way to start the new year.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Last Post of the Decade

2010-12-31T13:03:00.004-05:00

For my last post for the decade I looked through my recent photos on Flickr and found the one shown below. I think it was taken during the decade, but I'm not completely sure. It shows my son, Richard, and our dog, Darwin. Darwin went to that big fire hydrant in the sky on January 1st of this year, so as of tomorrow he's been gone for a year, and we still miss him. I don't know much about the photo except that I shot it with an Olympus OM-1 using Kodak Plus-X film. I probably developed it in D-76. I sent the negative to ScanCafe to have it digitized and post-processed it with Aperture 3. Today seems like a good day to share it on my weblog.

Copyright © 2010 Stephen A. Wolfe

Woodturner

2010-12-29T14:28:00.005-05:00

Nikon D90; Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 15mm; 1/60 sec @ f/11, ISO 1600; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, and Silver Efex Pro.

Andi working on her new woodturning/woodcarving project. In this photo she is working on hollowing out the form.

Copyright © 2010 Stephen A. Wolfe

50mm: Rainbow Dog

2010-12-28T22:05:00.004-05:00

Nikon D90; AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D; 1/200 sec @f/2, ISO 1600; post-processed with Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza, and Sharpener Pro.

During the late afternoon on sunny winter days, we sometimes get rainbows on our couch. Today our miniature dachshund Topper happened to lie down in the right place at the right time.

Copyright © 2010 Stephen A. Wolfe

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-26T10:27:00.001-05:00

I should have posted this yesterday...

Camera: Nikon F100 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens
Film: Ilford Delta 400
Processing: Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Apple Aperture 3

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Betty's Bay and Hermanus, South Africa

2010-12-14T16:51:00.002-05:00

Continuing on with my South Africa travelogue...

My last installment about South Africa left us being tourists at Stony Point. From there we drove to Betty's Bay where we went back to work collecting Hyobanche. The wind, if anything, was worse there, and we (and our camera gear) were sandblasted relentlessly. I shot a lot of photos there, mostly of the collecting process. I ended up only posting one photo on Flickr, but if you'd like to see more, take a look on my Facebook account.

Date: 7 Oct 2010
Camera: Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D lens
Exposure: 1/640 sec at f/11.0, ISO 400, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro

After collecting and having a nice tea with the owners of the property, we went back into tourist mode and drove to Hermanus to shoot more photos and to look for whales from high on the cliffs. The light was great for photography, but we didn't end up seeing any whales.

Here are a couple of my favorite photos from Hermanus and, most likely, the entire trip.

Date: 7 Oct 2010
Camera: Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D lens
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f/11.0, ISO 400, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro

Date: 7 Oct 2010
Camera: Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D lens
Exposure: 1/640 sec at f/11.0, ISO 400, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3, Kekus LensFix-CI, and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza2, Color Efex Pro, and Silver Efex Pro

Stony Point, South Africa

2010-12-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

After Pringle Bay, our next stop during our recent South Africa adventure was Stony Point, which is on the western end of Betty's Bay. The weather had cleared up a bit, but it was still very windy. It was so windy, in fact, that the ocean waves seemed to be moving away from shore. I'd never seen that before. Stony Point is home to a colony of Jackass Penguins, which were pretty cooperative as far as taking photos was concerned. They seemed to think of humans as a nuisance... seems quite perceptive to me :).

Date: 7 Oct 2010
Location: Stony Point, Betty's Bay, South Africa
Camera: Nikon D90 with Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D lens

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Pringle Bay, South Africa

2010-11-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Pringle Bay, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape province, was one of my favorite locations for photography during our recent trip. I loved the rusty rocks and the beautiful views. It was a bit cold and windy, but that added to the look of my photos. Here I've collected my color shots taken at Pringle Bay and posted on Flickr. I have a couple black and white film photos that I previously posted. You can find them by clicking here.

Date: 7 Oct 2010
Location: Pringle Bay, Western Cape, South Africa
Camera: Nikon D90 with a 24mm f/2.8 lens
Exposure: 1/160 sec at f/16.0, ISO 200, -1 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3

Camera: Nikon D90 with a 24mm f/2.8 lens
Exposure: 1/320 sec at f/16.0, ISO 200, -1 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Color Efex Pro

Camera: Nikon D90 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm
Exposure: 1/160 sec at f/16.0, ISO 200, -1 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Color Efex Pro

Camera: Nikon D90 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm
Exposure: 1/1600 sec at f/4.0, ISO 200, -1/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Color Efex Pro

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Recent Portraits

2010-11-24T18:47:00.000-05:00

My favorite photographic subject area is people portraits. I especially enjoy doing black and white portraits. Recently I've been shooting a lot of black and white film, but I also do digital conversions using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro plugin software. Here are some of my recent portraits taken in South Africa and Jasper-Pulaski, Indiana.

An Englishman in South Africa (Nikon F100, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, Tri-X)

Grounds Keepers at Kirstenbosch (Nikon F100, Nikkor 50mm F/1.8, Tri-X)

A Birder at Jasper-Pulaski (Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at 155mm)

Another Birder at Jasper-Pulaski (Nikon F100, Nikkor 50mm F/1.8, Delta 400)

©2010 Stephen A. Wolfe

Fixing a Scratch

2010-11-23T07:51:00.000-05:00

I took my Nikon F-100 camera to South Africa in October, and shot several rolls of black and white film. When I returned and processed the film, some of the later rolls had long scratches, parallel to the edge of the film. I'm guessing that some grit must have found its way into the camera during one of the wind storms we experienced. I tried to be careful when changing film, but apparently I wasn't careful enough.

I'm not completely convinced that grit in the camera is causing the scratches because they seem to come and go. One of the two latest rolls that I developed had a scratch from the first frame through number 31. Frames 32 through 36 weren't scratched. The other roll didn't have any. Of course I've cleaned the camera several times... blowing it out with a bulb blower and wiping the film carriage components with a soft cloth... but I'm still getting scratches.

So I've been trying various ways of dealing with the scratches in post-production. I've been able to crop out the scratch in a few photos, but I like to compose in the camera and usually don't leave much cropping room, certainly not enough for a scratch that is 1/4 of the way into the frame (note to self: check the scratch location for consistency in placement). I've also tried the retouching brush in Apple Aperture 3. It works pretty well, but the retouched areas are blurred a bit, enough to lose the sharpness of the grain, and grain is one of the reasons I shoot black and white film. The grain adds a certain quality, which I like, to the look of the images.

Last night I finally tried the "content aware fill" retouching tool in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. It worked very well. It was also much quicker to use than Aperture's retouching tool. In Aperture I have to retouch very small sections lest the blurring and smearing become even more objectionable. It was doable but very time consuming.

I still have to be a bit careful when using Elements, but I'm able to retouch fairly long sections of the scratch without much blurring or smearing. To prevent smearing I retouch sections where the tonal values either don't vary much at all or they vary gradually. Crossing a high-contrast boundary seems to cause some smearing, so I stop and restart the retouch at these edges. I found that even if there is some blurring at the edge, I can increase the size of my retouch brush and put a retouch circle right on top of the edge, and Elements will detect and clean up the edge. Very cool.

Here's an example showing a completely unprocessed image (other than converting from TIFF to JPEG format) and an image processed first with Elements, to remove the scratch (and a few other scanning artifacts, such as dust spots) and then with Aperture, to crop off the scanned edges of the film and a few other minor adjustments. I could have done all of this in Elements, but I'm much more comfortable using Aperture. I also greatly prefer the organizational capabilities of Aperture. I think the result speaks for itself, and I will be using Elements much more in the future.

Scratched Original

Final Image

Camera: Nikon F100 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
Film: Ilford HP5, ASA 400
Processing: Kodak TMax developer, Canoscan FS2710 scanner, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Apple Aperture 3

More Ilford Delta 400 Photos

2010-11-16T20:27:00.001-05:00

I've had a couple people comment, and I'm tending to agree, that my photos shot with Ilford Delta 400 black & white film have something about their look that makes them a bit special. I'm still planning to shoot the rest of the Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X I have in my refrigerator, and I'm not yet ready to make a decision, but so far I think Delta 400 is looking pretty good in my comparison. Here are a couple more photos that I post-processed and posted on my Flickr account today.

Date: 14 Nov 2010
Location: Union County, Ohio
Camera: Nikon F100 with a 50mm lens
Film: Ilford Delta 400
Processing: Kodak TMax developer, CanoScan FS2710 scanner, and Apple Aperture 3

Film Comparisons

2010-11-15T20:46:00.002-05:00

I've been recently playing with a few different ASA 400 black & white films to see if I have a preference. The three factors I've thought to look at are the overall look of the final photos, ease or difficulty of developing, and handling while scanning the negatives. The three films I've been playing with are Ilford Delta 400, Ilford HP5, and Kodak Tri-X. All three are available at a couple of my local photography stores.

Of my three factors, the only one with a difference that I've noticed is the handling. The Ilford films don't seem to curl as much as the Tri-X and are easier to load into my scanner's carriage. I haven't really noticed much, if anything, about the look of the images. I like the look of all three. Likewise I haven't noticed any differences in the development process. I haven't had any problems developing any of these films.

I have several rolls of each in my refrigerator, so I plan to keep on testing to see if my other factors, or other factors I haven't yet considered, make themselves obvious. I'm not really being scientific about any of this. I'm just having a good time and seeing what happens.

Ilford Delta 400

Ilford HP5

Kodak Tri-X

Ilford Delta 400

Ilford HP5

Kodak Tri-X

Camera: Nikon F100
Processing: Kodak TMax developer, CanoScan FS2710, Apple Aperture 3

Chamber Music Attitude

2010-11-07T12:29:00.002-05:00

Last night I attended the Chamber Music Connection's Fall term ensemble concert, which was great, by the way. Afterward the members of one of the groups asked me to shoot some photos of them. This particular photo is one of my favorites, and I think it would make a great cover for their first album. I had asked them to "give me some attitude," and they were happy to comply. If you'd like to see more of the photos (insert goofiness warning here), they're all on Facebook. I have one minor regret... I would have liked to have had at least one violin in the picture.

Date: 6 Nov 2010
Location: Worthington, OH
Camera: Nikon D90 with a Nikkor 24mm lens
Exposure: 1/100 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine, Viveza 2, and Silver Efex Pro

Published!

2010-11-05T23:43:00.000-04:00

This photo that I shot at the 2009 Olde Worthington Holiday Musical Tour of Homes was just published in the 11/2010 issue of Columbus Monthly magazine! Very cool!

Date: 6 Dec 2009
Camera: Nikon D90 using a 18-200mm lens at 18mm
Exposure: 1/60 sec at f/8.0, ISO 800, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3

Street Photography

2010-11-02T21:30:00.003-04:00

While in South Africa, in between mountain climbing, plant collecting, and sightseeing, I squeezed in a bit of street photography. I'm still just starting to process my photos, but I found this one early on and like it a lot.

Date: 6 Oct 2010
Location: St. James, Western Cape, South Africa
Camera: Nikon D90 with 70-200mm lens at 200mm
Exposure: 1/2000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 400
Processing: Apple Aperture 3; Nik Software Viveza 2

50mm: Astrophotos

2010-10-29T17:05:00.000-04:00

While visiting friends on the southern coast of South Africa, Andi woke me at 3 AM and told me I needed to look at the night sky. After a bit of grumbling, I got up and went outside. Wow!!! I really did need to look! I immediately ran back in and grabbed my DSLR and tripod. At the time I had a 24mm f/2.8 lens on it, and I didn't even think about changing to a different lens. I just wanted to get back out and start shooting.

If I remember correctly, I set the camera's mode to manual, the aperture wide open, the exposure time to 30 seconds, the focus to infinity and started shooting. After the first shot I looked at the LCD. Wow!!! I don't think I changed a thing after that. I just kept shooting until clouds started rolling in.

I loaded the photos into Aperture the next morning and did a bit of processing to see what I could get. The results looked pretty good... the best night sky photos I had ever shot. After showing my photos around, someone asked if I was going to get up and try again that evening. At the time I didn't think so because I was so pleased with my first effort, but then I thought, when am I going to be under such pristine skies again? Not anytime soon. So I decided that I would try again, but with my 50mm f/1.8 lens.

So 3 AM came around again, and I got up and went out. The sky was even better. There had been some scattered clouds the first night, but this time there wasn't a cloud to be seen, as far as I could tell. I shot quite a few photos at f/2.0 for 10-15 seconds each.

In keeping with my 50mm theme, here are a couple of the resulting images.

The Clouds of Magellan

Date: 12 Oct 2010
Location: Wildernis, South Africa
Camera: Nikon D90 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
Exposure: 10 sec at f/2.0, ISO 1600, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3, Nik Software Dfine and Viveza 2

The Southern Milky Way

Exposure: 15 sec at f/2.0, ISO 800, -2/3 ev

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

50mm: South Africa (Updated 4 Nov 2010)

2010-10-20T09:16:00.002-04:00

Here are some of my black & white film photos from South Africa. I plan to add more as I get them developed, scanned, and post-processed.

Fernwood Buttress on Table Mountain as seen from our apartment at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden.

Seascape at St. James.

Simon's Town Harbor

Cape Point (Cape of Good Hope)

Seascape at Pringle Bay

Another Seascape at Pringle Bay

Location: Western Cape Province, South Africa
Camera: Nikon F100 with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
Film: Kodak Tri-X Professional
Processing: Developed in Kodak TMax. Scanned with a CanoScan 2710. Post-processed using Aperture 3.

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Back from Africa

2010-10-16T20:22:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a short vacation in South Africa. I had a great time and shot quite a few photos, both digitally and on film (35mm Tri-X). I plan on posting many of them... most on Facebook, many on Flickr (there are a few there already), and some here. Stand by!

Foul Ball

2010-09-30T20:57:00.000-04:00

Nik Software just released the 64-bit version of their Silver Efex Pro plugin. I just downloaded it from https://www.niksoftware.com/support/usa/entry.php?view=updates, installed it in Aperture, and used it to do a black-and-white conversion. It worked like a charm and seemed quite a bit more responsive than the 32-bit version. The Film Type previews worked very well. I hadn't ever actually seen this function work. I'm not sure if I just wasn't patient enough or if there was something preventing it from working in the previous version. Now that I see it, I like it... very cool. I'm looking forward to Nik releasing the 64-bit version of Dfine. When that happens I should be able to keep Aperture in 64-bit mode full time.

Date: 19 Sep 2010
Location: Columbus, OH
Camera: Nikon D90 with 70-200mm lens at 200mm
Exposure: 1/1000 sec at f/6.3, ISO 400, -2/3 ev
Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Silver Efex Pro (64-bit version!

50mm: A Few Recent Photos

2010-09-23T17:17:00.005-04:00

"You're in trouble, buddy."

9/11 Flag Memorial IV

Street Photography: Gentleman

Ohio Barn

Camera: Nikon F100 with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
Film: Kodak Tri-X 400; developed with TMax
Processing: Apple Aperture 3

Three Eyes

2010-09-17T16:43:00.003-04:00

Date: 9 Sep 2010

Location: Columbus, Ohio

Camera: Nikon D90 with 70-200mm lens at 150mm

Exposure: 1/100 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600, -2/3 ev

Processing: Apple Aperture 3 and Nik Software Dfine

This work by Stephen A. Wolfe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Memorial II

2010-09-10T22:30:00.001-04:00