Color or B&W?

I have spent some time lately thinking some more about whether I prefer to make Black & White (B&W) or color pictures.  This is also related to some of my previous thoughts about which format I prefer and in both cases I have shown some B&W pictures and I have used square, 4×3, and 16×9 formats at various times.  While there will always be special cases that require a different format or color or B&W or some two-tone processing, I am trying to establish a style for the bulk of my pictures.  I have already decided that for my travel pictures, which are used primarily in slide/video shows, that I prefer color pictures displayed in the 16×9 format; but what about for my other pictures?

Today, I decided to take a simple shot that could easily go either way … color or B&W.  It is a simple picture of the sky as seen through a tree out in the front of my house.  The following is the color version with minimal processing in LR4.

I next wanted to see what it looked like in B&W so I used LR4 to convert it, again with minimal processing.

What do you think?  I can see myself using either picture depending on the mood, etc. that I’m trying to display.

In addition to using LR4 to convert to B&W, I also have Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 software for creating B&W pictures.  Lately I have tried to create a B&W picture using only LR4 to see if I could match the effects that I had previously generated with Silver Efex Pro 2 and so far I haven’t been able to do it.  That might be the subject of another article.  That software can create some wondrous effects either by using the presets alone, or by modifying the presets, or by just using the sliders to tune the picture anyway you like.  So far, I’m of the belief that its adjustments go way beyond what can be accomplished with only LR4. 

Based on the above, I wanted to try a different version of the above picture that had been processed with Silver Efex Pro 2.  The following is just one of many styles that can be created.  As you will note, I tried to pull out the finer wisps of cloud in this version to create more details … very easily done with this software.

Setting aside the issue of modifying a picture to establish a specific mood, which of these do you find more pleasing?  I’m still seeking an answer to whether there is a style that I prefer.  I’m leaning towards using square formats and B&W for more of my pictures but I haven’t yet found a style of B&W that I prefer.

When I search the web to see what others are doing, I still find lots of B&W pictures.  Mostly I find them used for fine art photography and for street photography.  Many of the old masters in this art displayed all of their work in B&W.  One of the better web sites in which I like the use of B&W can be found here.  Unfortunately, it is a Leica site and the particular style of B&W pictures might be, probably is, a function of the camera  & lens and the use of the Leica B&W jpeg rendering.  Hmmm, many of the old masters also used Leica cameras … is the answer the camera?  I hope the answer isn’t totally the camera.  I still have other techniques to pursue while I seek my answer.

 

Culture Shock

(A picture of the adjoining property which has been digitally aged using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.)

I haven’t written much, if any, about living here at Homewood of Plum Creek since moving here six months ago.  I wanted to give myself six months to get acclimated and settle in.  In the last six months I have devoted myself entirely to adjusting to living in a Continuous Care Retirement Community (CCRC).  I haven’t traveled or even been back to my previous home town in those six months.  Basically I like living here, but it has been a culture shock.  In many ways it has been like turning the clock back in time.

There have been three major changes that have taken some getting used to.  These three cultural shocks have been associated with major differences in race, age, and activities.  When we lived in the MD suburbs of Washington D.C. it was like living in a United Nations community.  We were surrounded by people of all races and ethnic backgrounds.  The White non-Hispanics were only around 18% of the population and I’m now living in a town where they are over 86% of the population and mostly of Germanic descent.

In the neighborhood where I previously lived, I was older than my neighbors.  Here I am one of the youngest in the community.  Where I lived before, I had to do all the maintenance or find and hire someone to do it.  Here everything is taken care of for me.

While I wouldn’t classify any of the changes as being good or bad, they are certainly different, interesting, and require different responses and adjustments.  My biggest adjustment has been one of filling my time.  Since all maintenance is done for me, I have excess time on my hands. Even minor things like going to the store to purchase something takes a lot less time since everything is within about a 3 mile radius.  Since we moved away from our daughter, her husband, and our two granddaughters, it also meant that we no longer benefited from close, almost daily, contact with them and are no longer occupied with family activities.

I have tried to spend a lot more time pursuing my hobby of photography but I am quickly running out of new and interesting things to photograph; therefore, I have spent a lot more time reading articles about photography on the computer. So far, I have done a lot more reading and napping.  I even have two Kindles … one of the originals for reading text in the presence of bright light and a Kindle Fire so that I can read photography books with color prints.  In addition to reading a lot, I have been doing more eating and drinking (coffee) and that is something I need to do less of.

They have lots of activities here but they are more suited to an older generation and I have only taken advantage of a few of them.  Even the music played in the hallways of the main buildings and on the closed circuit TV is of an older generation and reminds me more of my parent’s time, but that is because many of the residents are the age of my parents if they were still living.  Basically, I think that I need to look outside the community if I wish to become engaged in doing something different.  I think that is what most living here who are closer to my age are doing.  It is easier for them since they are mostly from around this area, have family and friends around, etc.

I really need to find something more meaningful to do and try to get out more … well at least as much as I can.  I think I have walked and looked for pictures on most of this approximately 86 acres … probably time to expand my range.  I’m hoping that will be the case this summer.

 

Times A-Changing

Those of you who have followed my blogging for a long time remember that I use to write some about climate change and the expected results because of it.  I slowly stopped writing about it as more and more people finally accepted the facts about global warming.

The half of my readers who do not live in the U.S. might not realize the differences between their weather and that of the U.S.  While the climate has changed and the globe has been slowly warming, many of you experienced unusually cold and snowy weather while those of us in the U.S. had the opposite.

For much of the U.S., 2012 was the year without a winter. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that not only was March the warmest on record in the U.S. (lower 48 states), but so too was the entire January-February-March period.

The average temperature across the U.S. was an incredible 8.6 degrees F above the 20th century average (half a degree warmer than the previous record from 1910). Aside from January, 2006, no month on record has surpassed its average by such a large margin.  It makes me wonder what it will be like in the future.

The following is a Summary of the Climate Highlights for March as reported by NOAA:

• Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the nation and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. The average temperature of 51.1 degrees F was 8.6 degrees F above the 20th century average for March and 0.5 degrees F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910. Of the more than 1,400 months that have passed since the U.S. record began, only one month, January 2006, has seen a larger departure from its average temperature than March 2012.
• A persistent weather pattern during the month led to 25 states east of the Rockies having their warmest March on record. An additional 15 states had monthly temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. That same pattern brought cooler-than-average conditions to the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California.
• Every state in the nation experienced a record warm daily temperature during March. According to preliminary data, there were 15,272 warm temperature records broken (7,755 daytime records, 7,517 nighttime records). Hundreds of locations across the country broke their all-time March records. There were 21 instances of the nighttime temperatures being as warm, or warmer, than the existing record daytime temperature for a given date.
• The nationally-averaged precipitation total was 2.73 inches, which is 0.33 inch above average. The Pacific Northwest and the Southern Plains were much wetter than average during March while drier-than-average conditions were observed in the interior West, Northeast, and Florida. Colorado had its driest March on record.
• According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as of April 3rd, 36.8 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, a decrease from 38.7 percent at the end of February. Above-average precipitation across the Southern Plains improved long-term drought conditions across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
• The warmer-than-average conditions across the eastern U.S. also created an environment favorable for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, there were 223 preliminary tornado reports during March, a month that averages 80 tornadoes. The majority of the tornadoes occurred during the March 2-3 outbreak across the Ohio Valley and Southeast, which caused 40 fatalities and damages exceeding 1.5 billion U.S. dollars.
• The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (USCEI), an index that tracks the highest and lowest 10 percent of extremes in temperature, precipitation, drought and tropical cyclones across the contiguous U.S., was a record 41 percent during March.  The extent of extremes in warm maximum (71 percent) and warm minimum (70 percent) temperatures was at or near record levels across the nation.  A record extent of extremes in both maximum and minimum temperatures covered all of the Northeast, Upper Midwest, Ohio Valley and Southeast regions during the month.
• On March 9th, a cut-off low pressure system impacted the Hawaiian Islands, bringing heavy rainfall and severe thunderstorms. A rare EF-0 tornado hit the towns of Lanikai and Kailua on Oahu, causing minor damage. A separate storm dropped a hailstone measuring 4.25 inches long, 2.25 inches tall, and 2 inches wide, the largest hailstone on record for the state.

 

Evening Colors with a 300 mm Lens

300 mm, ISO 1250, f/5.6, 1/400 sec.

300 mm, ISO 1250, f/9.0, 1/500 sec. … and cropped!

I acquired a new lens … a Panasonic Lumix G Vario 100-300 mm F/4.0-5.6 OIS Lens.  I decided to get it after finding that most of my opportunities for taking pictures while out walking around the neighborhood required a long lens.  With this lens on my Panasonic G3 I have an effective, in 35 mm terms, 600 mm lens.  It will take me some time to master it since it is a challenge to balance the shutter, aperture, depth-of-field (DoF), ISO, and focusing when zoomed all the way out to 300 mm (effective 600 mm).  You should note in the picture of the bird that I focused on the bird house and that an effective 600 mm focal length was still not enough and I still had to crop the image significantly.

I have learned in the short time I have had it that if I shoot in aperture mode that the camera will keep the shutter speed at 1/500 sec or faster.  With that fast a speed in addition to the image stabilization system I have not experienced any major problems with motion blur caused by me while hand holding.  If I shoot with ISO set to auto with a maximum ISO of 3200 I have found that I can generally shoot hand-held at an aperture of f/9 in bright light without the need to worry about settings.  It is only in lower light that I start to have problems and have to open the aperture with concerns about DoF and noise from higher ISOs.

Focus is a different issue.  The lens focuses quite fast and well on the G3 but it takes a lot of careful holding without a tripod to keep the small focus point where I want it.  This is especially a problem in low light when the DoF is quite small.  The lens will focus on objects as close as 5 ft., but at that distance the DoF is only about +/- 0.01 ft. and often at even greater distances and smaller apertures it is still only about +/- 4 or 5 ft.

Another adjustment that I find to be helpful is changing the way I carry the camera and lens.  I find it easier to hold the lens-camera combination by the lens in my left hand.  This enables me to bring it up to my eye quickly as well as rotating the lens to zoom quickly after I have grabbed the camera with my right hand and initially focused.  In addition, while the lens has no creep now … it is stiff, I expect that it will eventually tend to creep and carrying it by the lens prevents that from happening.

 

One 30 Minute Walk at Homewood

 

Flowers with a Telephoto Lens

The above pictures of some flowers aren’t spectacular but I’m showing them for another reason.

I have been using my 45 – 175 mm lens on the Panasonic G3 a lot lately …. especially at the 175 mm focal length.  That represents an effective 350 mm in 35 mm equivalents.  The above shots were taken at the 175 mm focal length in order to get a feel for using the lens up close.  It works better at these ranges than at infinity since the pictures aren’t quite as soft as the long range ones; but only for those areas that are in focus. 

Look closely.  At these ranges and settings the depth-of-field (DoF) is only on the order of +/- a few tenths of an inch, but the bokeh is fair … just something else to consider when using a telephoto lens under these conditions.

 

Additional Covered Patio

I hadn’t planned on putting any of these pictures on the web until after our new covered patio was completed, but since several have asked how it’s coming, I will put up several sets of pictures showing the progress.

We are having a new patio laid on the other side of our sunroom.  The existing patio and door outside faces the southwest and our neighbors close by on the top of a small rise.  In order to get a little more privacy and shade we are adding (at our expense) another patio on the northwest side of the sunroom.  This required us to put in another door (a sliding door to let in more light) as well as the new patio.  The new patio will have pavers for a surface at ground level and will be covered with a shed roof to provide a little more shade and shelter from the rain.

The first pictures show the removal of an existing window and the installation of a sliding door.

The following pictures show the digging of the 3 ft. deep hole and its filling with cement for the post support.  It only takes one post since the other sides of the roof are attached to the house.

 After the cement cured for a few days, they started putting up the framing for the roof

 

  

They will come back Monday to continue building the roof structure.  After they are through with the roof, we will have the pavers laid for the floor and a walkway connecting this patio and the original patio on the other side of the sunroom, and then they will do the landscaping.

I’ll show more of the construction as it progresses and a final post when it is all completed.

 

Opportunities & Choices

Life is about opportunities, but they are bounded by changing realities and still take some effort if you are going to take advantage of them. Living here at Homewood at Plum Creek I have plenty of opportunities, even though I don’t always take advantage of them. Lately I have gone to some of the musical events and have enjoyed them, for several reasons. First they are enjoyable, very close by (I don’t have to drive), and they are included benefits of living here. Second, they provide me opportunities to hone and test different skills with my cameras.

The above picture was taken with my Olympus E-P3 with a 20 mm lens … no flash, no zoom … while listening to the Irish Road band.  The lighting is never ideal for photography and thus is a challenge in the Omni Auditorium.  The following picture was taken through the window of the Homewood bus when I took it to the Winters Mill High School to hear the Carroll Concert Band.  You can see some of the window reflections in the sky.

The following picture is a shot of the band.

As I first mentioned, opportunities still have imposed restrictions. In my case it is one of not being able to carry a heavy camera around with me everywhere I go. In addition, I like to not impose on others around me as I take pictures. In my view, this means having a camera that is small enough to fit into a pocket, not having a big long lens thrust out in someone’s face, and never using a flash. I suppose that I could carry a little point & shoot camera, but it will not suffice.

I choose to use a camera with a larger sensor and one that I can shoot in raw format rather than jpegs. So far, I have found the micro 4/3 compact system cameras to be the best affordable choice for me. All of the above pictures were taken with the Olympus E-P3 and the fast Panasonic prime 20 mm f/1.7 lens, and I never used the flash. It isn’t the lightest or smallest camera but it still can fit into a coat or vest pocket and the handling ergonomics are pretty good. I only shoot in the raw format and then use Adobe Lightroom to develop the picture. In the above circumstances it is almost a necessity to utilize software to extract views of this quality with such a camera. In addition, it gives me as much, or more, enjoyment developing the pictures as it does taking them.

 

Cobwebs

The picture is a cobweb that was on the fence the other morning.  We had a lot of fog overnight and as soon as it lifted I noticed that the cobwebs were weighted down with water drops.

Different forms of cobwebs have plagued me lately.  I had loaded software updates for my photography software … Lightroom 4 and ProShow Producer 5 … and my computer was really dragging and was having trouble performing various functions.  It seemed that the only solution was to get a new computer.  I had replaced a laptop with a tower desk-top system many years ago when I had similar performance problems, and now I had to upgrade again; but this time I went back to a laptop.  Some of the new laptops are quite powerful and I took advantage of the need to upgrade, to also reduce the amount of my “stuff”.

I bought a new HP laptop and am in the process of getting rid of my old tower, keypad, monitor, and speakers … all replaced with one device with a smaller footprint.  My only concession to the old computer was to continue using the wireless mouse, but in conjunction with the laptop touchpad.  By the way, all the upgraded software runs nicely on my new machine.

The reduction in computer stuff is also going to enable me to replace my home-built 7 ft. computer table with a full 7 ft. long shelf along the back, with a mobile 3 ft., adjustable height table.  I have learned that having lots of flat table space just means that it gets junked up.

My mind has also seemed to be clogged with cobwebs relative to my Panasonic G3 camera.  Occasionally I have inadvertently made changes to the camera settings without being aware that I did it.  The above cobweb picture is a good example.  I grabbed my camera and quickly ran across the street to take some cobweb pictures, and when I later loaded them on my new computer, I discovered that I had taken them all at an ISO of 6400.  I don’t know how or when that setting was made.  My suspicion is that I had accidentally touched the LCD and made the changes.  I have since disabled the touch screen.  At first I didn’t expect to be able to recover the pictures since I expected them to be noisy … and they were.  In addition they were all taken at extremely small apertures and high shutter speeds since it was pretty bright out.  I therefore expected the background to be in focus and distract from what I was trying to achieve.  All I can say is that Lightroom 4 is a marvelous program as it enabled me to clean up these cobwebs.

After I get my new computer table, I’m looking forward to cleaning out more stuff that has probably been collecting cobwebs lately.

 

Hanover Market

The Hanover Market in Hanover, PA has existed since 1815, and has been in the current location since 1933.  “The aroma of fresh baked goods and glowing vitality of quality meats, vegetables, fish and fruits remains the staple crop for Market Day. Amidst the fine edibles is an incredibly clever array of local crafts and unique merchandise displayed with the character and enchantment of Hanover’s Germanic heritage.”

Pictures were taken with the Panasonic G3 and the 20 mm pancake lens at low ISO and an aperture of f/1.7 with center spot focus, but the DoF was still reasonable.