Picture of the Week 17 – Squirrel With Big Ears

Posted on May 1, 2012 by wolfgangbluhmphotography

Have you ever seen a squirrel with such big ears? 🙂

Of course, if you look closely, you see what’s going on. The two pieces of ice plant behind the squirrel’s head just happened to line up perfectly with the ears, making them look like their extensions.

This photo is a perfect examples of how it pays off to take a little care in finding just the right camera angle. I see so many snapshot photographers who pay no attention to how a shot is framed or composed, who never try moving a little this way or that way to see if it would improve the photo. The next time you see a potentially good picture, before you click the shutter, move around a bit on your feet, to the left and right, a little forward or backward, try a higher or lower vantage point, and see what makes for the best composition.

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Picture of the Week 16 – The Velveteen Rabbit

Posted on April 23, 2012 by wolfgangbluhmphotography

Canon EOS 5D ,Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
1/320s f/4.0 at 24.0mm iso3200

The Velveteen Rabbit

The last play of the Village Church Community Theater’s 2011/2012 season is The Velveteen Rabbit. Michele plays the lead role of Rabbit Spirit and she is fantastic in her part. Performances are May 4-6. Don’t miss it!

This past Saturday was a must meet deadline for getting some photos for newspaper releases. I knew most costumes, especially the animal costumes, wouldn’t be available yet, so I had to focus on something different. Perhaps the most action packed scene is one in which Andrea (or Andrew in the script, if played by a boy) throws a fit since she can’t find her favorite china dog. Toys are coming flying out of the toy closet, and nurse Nana tries her best to contain the chaos.

I positioned myself down low inside the toy cabinet, pre-focused, and just waited for the right moment. I then had about 10 seconds to get the perfect shot. As it turns out, I got a few good ones, but not the perfect one. Either nurse’s face was behind the door post, Andrea’s hair was in her face, flying toys weren’t in the right place, and so forth.

So, I resorted to a little help from Photoshop, and composited a few elements from multiple photos to get what I wanted. If you feel in the mood for some detective work, see if you can identify which elements belong to which original photo.

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A Little Piece of Heaven

Posted on April 20, 2012 by wolfgangbluhmphotography

At the last show of the Village Church Community Theater, I took a lot of video footage. In fact, we had permission from the publisher to record video at the performances, but unfortunately it doesn’t include any rights to share it online. I spent several weeks editing a 20 minute condensed version of the play that I’ll distribute to cast members on DVD at a cast party this Sunday, but I’m not allowed to show it here. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I learned a lot about editing video. I must say I’m very pleased indeed with the final product.

Nonetheless, I did take lots of stills, too, and since they were taken at rehearsals, not public performances, I can share them. So, here you go.

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Picture of the Week 15 – Brown Pelican

Posted on April 19, 2012 by wolfgangbluhmphotography

Canon EOS 60D ,Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
1/400s f/11.0 at 200.0mm iso400

Brown Pelican

There are more and more pelicans at La Jolla Cove, so they are resting higher up the cliffs and closer to the sidewalk than ever. This one was only about 15 feet away. I had never seen one sit in the bushes before rather than on the rocks.

Let’s use this photo to talk about dynamic range. Dynamic range is the range of brightness levels between the lightest and darkest parts of an image. Here, there is a huge difference in brightness between the white part of the pelican’s head (which is facing the sun) and the dark neck (which is facing away from it).

A jpeg image (such as you see on this website) only has 256 different values for each of the three basic colors (red, green, blue), or 8 bits of color depth. This turns out to be not nearly enough for the dynamic range in this photo. Yet, you can still see details in both the white highlights and the dark shadows. So, how did I do it?

The answer lies in shooting raw images and in post-processing techniques. When you shoot in raw format, you usually get 12 or 14 bits of color depth depending on your camera. That translates to over 4,000 or over 16,000 color values for each of the three colors. There are lots of different programs you can use to convert raw images to jpegs, and they have various tools to help recover highlight or shadow details that would have been lost had you shot jpeg straight out of the camera. I happen to use Adobe Camera Raw, which comes as part of Adobe Photoshop.

By the way, this is a great time to try out Photoshop for free for possibly a few months, since there is a free download of the beta version of Photoshop CS6, the next major version that will come out later this year.

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Picture of the Week 14 – Soccer in a Lifeguard Boat

Posted on April 8, 2012 by wolfgangbluhmphotography

Canon EOS 60D ,Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
1/1600s f/8.0 at 200.0mm iso400

Soccer in a Lifeguard Boat

During our Easter walk at La Jolla Cove today I saw this lifeguard playing soccer in his boat, repeatedly bouncing the ball of his knee.

I want to use this photo to talk about two concepts: telling a story, and catching the right moment.

Powerful photos usually tell a story, perhaps with the exception of abstract pictures. Even though this was just a millisecond snapshot in time, it nonetheless tells the story of what happened for at least a few seconds. The sea was calm, the lifeguard was bored, and he was passing the time by bouncing a soccer ball. There are even secondary story lines, the boat captain looking over at me snapping pictures, and a woman on a stand-up paddle board going the other way, lining up with the lifeguard boat at this moment in time.

So, while I give myself high mark for telling the story, I didn’t quite catch the moment I wanted to catch. I had intended to get a frame with the ball coming just off the lifeguard’s knee. However, even with a 6 frame-per-second burst I didn’t get it. I could have just kept snapping more frames, but once the paddle boarder has passed, which happened within just a few seconds, the picture became less interesting. So, while I didn’t get quite the perfect moment, it was still good enough to tell the story.

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