Zombie Mob, Fremont, Seattle, Washington
This one is a little difficult to explain, as it's clearly a departure from the landscape sort of shots that I really enjoy taking and sharing. But last night in my Seattle neighborhood there was a Guinness Record attempt to establish the largest ever Zombie mob, and at first pass it looks like the record was broken with a remarkable 3848 Zombies registered in attendance. Once congregated the Zombies roam around the neighborhood for a bit. Eventually the zombies and spectators alike (a crowd of over 5000) were taught the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and performed it together. And finally we settled into two simultaneous outdoor showings of the movie "Shaun of the Dead".
All in all, it was a very strange evening, but a lot of fun too. I hope they managed to actually break the record. Happy 4th of July to all my American friends.
You can see several additional photos on my personal website here:
www.tylerwestcott.com/2009Jul04/
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Uploaded on Jul 4, 2009
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El Capitan Cloud Cap, Yosemite National Park
Of the several times I've had the fortune to stop at the Wowona Tunnel view of Yosemite Valley, this particular spring afternoon was one of the most pleasant I've encountered. I've posted a wider color photo from the same occasion here. This valley view can be very dramatic as weather changes, but there was something very pleasing about seeing it on a sunny blue-sky afternoon as well.
I seem to be developing more and more interest in digital black and white work as I see it being one of the areas where digital affords some new opportunities never available for working with film. For this conversion I tried a conversion approach that I've never used before, but had in the back of my mind for some time. For a one-line summary of how filters work for B&W photography... if you were to place a red filter of the lens deep blue areas like the sky will appear near black because they contain no red light, whereas the near-white face of granite like El Capitan will appear white because there's lots of red light reflecting back. With digital conversion you can actually apply different kinds of filtration to the color image rather than one filter throughout.
So for this image I applied two different conversion in one image. Most of the top half of the image in this case was almost a straight color desaturation to black and white - essentially with no color filtration applied. The sky was already very dark and I did not want it to appear any darker than the trees atop El Capitan. I was looking for the best balance of contrast between the clouds and the horizon throughout the sky. In the lower half of the image, particularly back towards Half Dome, the distances (miles) end up introducing lots of scattered blue light, which translates into detail-robbing haze. A red or orange filter is an effective way of filtering out that blue light and preserving detail and that is what I applied to the lower half of the image.
Having babbled about all of that, I'll just throw another idea out there for anyone continuing to read. While I'm pretty intrigued by all the possibilities in doing black and white conversion digitally, it then comes back to the issue of how to produce prints from them, as it's pretty difficult to improve upon traditional silver gelatin prints produced in a darkroom. I'm typically a bit disappointed with the look of B&W on color paper, though some images look quite nice on Kodak's metallic-finish paper. MPIX uses Ilford silver-gelatin paper designed for digital printers which generally speaking I have liked, but I don't have a lot of experience with just yet. Most intriguing to me is an inkjet technique employed by the Ansel Adams gallery to produce Archival Reproductions (you can learn more about them here, which utilize a specialized ink set of multiple grays levels and even a faint bit of pigment to recreate the look of selenium toning. I had to fortune to get a very close look at one of these and I thought it was beautifully done. The problem is that it's not an option available to the public, at least as far as I know. If anyone has any opinions or tips on digital black and white prints I'd love to hear it.
And finally, as always I must say... Go to Yosemite! If you're close, just go. If you're not, plan a trip. It's spectacular.
Nikon D40 | Nikon 18-200VR@32mm | f/9 | 1/160s | ISO200 | Handheld
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Uploaded on Jun 23, 2009
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Gasworks at Night, Seattle
This is another photo from Friday evening shooting out at Seattle's Gasworks Park and Aurora Bridge. Gasworks Park was once a facility that converted coal into gas for the city of Seattle and over the years has become a great park oasis in the middle of the city. I've seen a few photographs before and figured that this would be a great place to do a night shoot, particularly under a full (or nearly full) moon as it was this last weekend.
I did a full 360 degree walk around the main facility and settled on this view as one of my favorites, with Lake Union and the Seattle downtown skyline behind me. I shot fairly close to the old plant and didn't worry about the vertical convergence as I thought it helped give it a slihgtly exaggerated sense of scale.
Digitally I've done more manipulation to this photo than I typically do, mostly in the realm of curves and levels. The end result isn't dramatically different than the straight photo but altered in some important ways. First and foremost when shooting at night the white balance is always a bit of a wild card. Shooting as if it was lit by sunlight (what I would consider neutral and most representative of reality) the clouds and everything lit by the tungsten and sodium lights that are still so prominent give the clouds a significant orange cast. When the white balance is set to reduce that orange cast the sky becomes a deep deep blue color. Part of the reason I settled on the black and white conversion is that no matter what I found the color palette unattractive and 'unrealistic' and ultimately distracted from the shot. I settled on a white balance that was quite unnatural but that would provide the most detail and contrast for the black and white conversion, particularly in the upper right cloud which was nearly blown out to full white.
This scene was actually very brightly lit by 3 bright lamps just to the right of the camera, and consequently the foreground was actually the brightest part of the scene. I ended up adding a full black fill layer over the original image and used a gradient mask to apply it only to the bottom of the image, not unlike burning in part of the0 photo in the dark room. I next applied a curves adjustment to the clouds to pull out the bit of contrast that was there (not too much to work with) but not so much as to lose the tallest tower against a black sky. Next, I applied a levels adjustment that was masked to the center of the image to lighten the gasworks plant a little and help it stand out from the surroundings. Finally, I decided to clone out a construction crane (I think that's what it was) poking up above a hill at the bottom left.
If you've bothered to read this far, thanks! I hope you like it.
Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@18mm | f/8 | 30s | ISO200 | Tripod
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Uploaded on Jun 9, 2009
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Aurora Bridge, Seattle, Washington
I can't remember the last time I shot a photograph and put it up online so quickly, but I thought I'd go ahead with this. I had nothing particular planned for this evening and after stepping outside briefly I noticed the sky was the perfect combination of patches of open sky and of cloud lit by city lights. It's also nearly a full moon and this really is the perfect formula for night shooting. I've been in and out of a photographic slump recently and kicking myself for not getting up the motivation to go out shooting, so I decided to make tonight an exception and get out there to shoot.
After shooting at Seattle's Gasworks Park for a little over an hour I started the short drive home, which brought me under the Aurora Bridge - a bridge that I pass either over or under each and every day, but had yet to photograph. Seattle, being a city surrounded and filled with water, is home to many bridges, particularly across the canal that bisects the city. This bridge is a pretty drab bit of architecture (perhaps I'm just biased by my San Francisco history), but at night I think it's steel frame looks pretty cool. I parked my car nearby and wandered a bit until I found a perspective I liked.
It was just nice to get out on a comfortable early summer night and do some shooting. I hope you like it, and I hope it might mark the beginning of the end of my shooting slump.
Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@18mm | f/8 | 30s | ISO250 | Tripod
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Uploaded on Jun 5, 2009
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Brief Light on the Second Wave, Arizona
As I've mentioned before back in February when I had my great trip around the southwest, we were fortunate enough to have access to the Coyote Buttes Wilderness area. We also had the unfortunate curse of lackluster weather, and consequently shot under overcast skies most of the day. While setting up to shoot the Second Wave, located a couple hundred yards beyond the better-recognized wave, the sun made one of it's brief appearances and lit the sandstone nicely, particularly in contrast the the dark skies behind it. The change in light was dramatic enough to cause me to overexpose the sandstone towards the center of the frame. I had wanted to preserve the image as well as work on a black and white conversion and found that this shot was a good candidate.
I filtered (digitally) as though a yellow filter was applied, which caused the more brightly lit sandstone to remain bright relative to its surroundings but without blowing out and losing detail. Beyond that I made a levels and gamma adjustment to lighten the image a little and gave it a modest boost in contrast, particularly in the bottom left which was otherwise a little flat.
I really wanted to get a new photo up online and was thinking either something from Oregon or Yosemite, but with the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest right now it's too hot to sit inside at my computer. I only have a few of my photos on my laptop, but that doeds include photos from the southwest, so I can sit outside, enjoy a beer and cooler weather while working on this photo instead.
Nikon D90 | Sigma 10-20@20mm | f/8 | 1/500s | ISO200 | Handheld
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Uploaded on Jun 3, 2009
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