I don’t always travel with a full complement of photo gear. Sometimes I carry just my Canon G9, which you read about yesterday.

On this day, as we walked out of the house, I grabbed a Nikon D300 with the 14-24mm f2.8 lens.I love the wide-angle perspective both for its ability to emphasize foreground objects and the requirement that I get close to a subject to make it larger in the frame. Getting closer means I have to make contact with people, ask them questions, inquire about them and convince them I’m harmless and not intruding on their lives.

I love the 14-24.

The trip was to be a short one, just long enough to drop off a granddaughter at a friend’s house and return home before dark.

Our return trip, was detoured because my wife had never been on the new birdwatching boardwalk at the northern end of the reservoir at Hoover Dam. Walking the 1,000 foot wooden walkway at sunset in spring before mosquitoes appear from the nearby wetlands is a pleasant stroll.

We arrived just as the sun dipped below the tree line on the opposite shore. I shot a few wide-angle panorama style images of the lake horizon with boats and a few small islands. Several frames included the moon, only a few days before its full moon night although they weren’t especially interesting. The moon in a 14-24mm wide angle image is very small. It was also high enough in the sky to only be a point of light reflected in the lake. It would have been different, perhaps, if a just risen moon was reflected across the broad expanse of lake to the horizon.

My wife had her rosary in her purse and I remembered the glass bead being transparent red that would make great color contrast against the blue lake and sky as the sun made a narrow strip of red and orange as it disappeared into night.

After arranging her hands and the rosary into a composition that silhouetted them against the lake and sky, I checked my ISO to make sure it was at 400 to keep noise low. Exposure was determined by aperture priority with 1/2-3rd stop underexposure prevent the sunset highlights from being blown out. I wanted tonal detail and the only way to get it was to underexpose the frame.

I held still through a large number of frames as the shutter speed hovered around 1/4th of a second at the f5 setting I wanted for just a little more than the minimum depth-of-field the f2.8 offered.

A quick check of the histogram and the LCD screen made me confident that I had a workable frame.

The image was processed through Adobe Camera Raw into Photoshop as a RAW Smart Object. The background layer, opened with little ACR processing, was duplicated as a new Smart Object and reprocessed to darken the right side of the frame so the tone matched the darker left section. The new layer was then masked and painted in with a large brush only enough to give me even tones across the width of the frame.

A third duplicated background Smart Object was processed to brighten the glass beads on the rosary. Again, the layer was masked and only the beads brushed in.

The next set of steps can be done by hand or by using actions or plug-ins such as Topaz and OnOne plug-ins that make creating manipulated layers much easier and faster than manual or a series of actions.

This photo was run through a Topaz portrait filter than softened and blurred the complete frame as if it was a studio portrait that required softening for an enhancement. I masked it and only brushed in on everything but the rosary. The darker edge came from an OnOne action.

The completed image was merged into a single layer, duplicated, run through the PS High-Pass filter and masked. Only the red beads were brushed into the frame to make them more crisp and to give the color contrast more emphasis.

Full processing time was about 10 minutes from the original opening of the RAW image in ACR to saving this low-res for uploading to the Web.

The key to the work-flow was to know as I was shooting the photo what processes I was going to use to get the finished image. When I sat down at the computer there was little question what the processing steps would be.

That wasn’t part of the planning process for my brief trip. I let serendipity take me to a different place. The photo I discovered while there was measured until it was completed. A great balance of flow and work-flow.

Although it isn’t my favorite camera, my Canon G9 is my preferred carry camera. It’s almost always at my side, even when I’m lugging two D300s and a full complement of lenses and strobes with a tripod strapped over my right shoulder.

The compact camera has high resolution, relatively low noise at lower ISO settings, shoots RAW, and has complete manual control, if needed.

I almost always shoot aperture priority, auto-exposure, auto focus. That doesn’t mean that I always let the automatic setting stand without modification. This fisherman along the banks of the inlet at Red Banks on Hoover Reservoir posed an automatic exposure problem.

The composition included the two trees as framing devices for the horizontal edges. Back-lit early growth leaves framed the upper edge with the grassy area balancing at the bottom. The sunlight just cleared the stand of trees across the inlet throwing its shadow across the water throwing into into just enough darkness that the fisherman, also back-lit, would stand out from the shadows.

The EXIF data for this photo, shot at a short telephone length to shorten the perspective, says the exposure is manual. It’s accurate because I first shot the photo with auto-exposure to see what the camera would do with the extreme highlights of the leaves. Experience told me the result and all I needed to do was confirm my observations.

The camera, attempting to balance the wide exposure range of the photo, found a happy medium where the midtowns settled into approximately the middle of the histogram with the highlights of the sun striking the leaves set to spectral white and the shadows holding slight detail.

My preference was for the shadows to go darker and for the highlights to have detail. I dialed in a one stop underexposure and checked the histogram for the highlight and shadow limits. The underexposed frame was now a more perfect exposure with details in the highlights and still held some details in the shadows.

The auto-exposure setting would have produced a technically correct exposure. It wouldn’t have produced an image that accurately recorded the emotional impact of a fisherman sitting on a darkened stream on a cool spring day.

It’s not necessary to rely on automatic. It is necessary know how automatic works so you can alter it. Understanding how to modify automatic settings to create your mind’s eye images is an important step in becoming a better photographer.

Auto-exposure can be perfect but it isn’t always the best choice for shooting some subject. Knowing when to say no to yes is just as important.

First, the client bought me dinner so we could talk about our relationship and discuss his needs for the photo shoot to follow. It was my second free meal of the day with the first being fried catfish and green beans with sweet tea. The evening meal was chicken parmigiana with cheese ravioli and red sauce.

The assignment to follow the last meal was to shoot a set of photos of mixed martial artists for banners to be displayed at the entrance to the event venue and some advertising information before the event in several weeks.

The shoot was set for one of the fighter’s local training gyms where I’d planned to build a small studio with strong rim lighting, a softbox fill light above the camera and a directional light across the background and a spotted hair light to create depth.

The background would be a found location in the gym perhaps lockers, chain fencing for the ring or a wall with graffiti or rough paint.

My plans fell apart within several minutes after my arrival. The gym was packed with fighters training, sparring and occupying almost every square foot of the training space. There was little, if any space to build even a studio, even with my SB800s and lightweight stands.

Another problem I encountered, and somewhat anticipated, the fighters were there to train and wanted little to do with sitting for a protracted shooting session as I worked them into position and attitude for good photography. Most had been photographed before but not by a pro shooter who wanted more of their time than quickly standing with a fighting pose for a quick frame or two of on-camera flash.

As luck would have it, two of the walls in the front training room were lined with red cushioning pads similar to the pads beneath the basket of a middle school gym where I’d photographed a team. I’d used the slightly reflective background before and knew what results I’d get by throwing a strobe on it.

I wasn’t going to be able to set up light stands on the padded floor. I didn’t have a lot of time and the space was occupied with about 12 fighters running through exercises and practicing submission techniques. Their motions took them through the spaces where light stand would have stood. I had to change my plans from four or five lights to one.

Although I’d planned to use a small softbox for the front light in my previous lighting plan, I’d brought along a Lumodi Beauty Dish to substitute if my internal muse disliked the softer light.

The softbox light would have been good for front lighting with strong rim light striking the sides of the fighter’s heads defining their shape and separating them from the background. Using a softbox as a single light source might have worked on some models but not fighters with a days growth of beard, sweat, and attitude.

The Lumodi Beauty Dish, a recent purchase and used just enough to be comfortable with its use, was the perfect choice.

Its light was stronger than the softbox but not as contrasty as a bare strobe. I wanted to create contrast on facial features with a directional light. the beauty dish was a good choice I also had access to a small ring light but sometime think it is overused. The beauty dish was a good choice for this situation.

I used a human light stand to position the beauty dish directly over my head almost as if it was a tall strobe attached to the camera. The fighter’s were places as close to the background as possible so light falloff from the strobe would be minimum.

I used Nikon Creative Lighting System to determine the exposure because I was constantly changing my position to the subject for to shoot a full length to a tighter head shot. The light, attached to a HLS, was always being moved closer or further from the subject. Shooting ion manual with a single f-stop and constant strobe output would have slowed the process. I would have to stop between each setup and adjust either my f-stop or the output of the strobe to compensate for its changed position.

The beauty dish created just enough directional lighting to highlight each fighter’s facial features and a shadow that was soft enough to keep some detail to help create depth.

The camera was set to manual exposure, 1/320th, f5.6, RAW.

I worked through 7 fighters in 14 minutes with individual poses and several poses facing another fighter.

Post processing included multiple layers of RAW image smart object processing and masking, increased clarity with the Topaz 4 Photoshop plug-in, and High Pass filter for sharpening with masking so it only applied to certain portions of the fighter’s face.

The day was cloudy, cold and windy. My spirits suffered under the poor conditions and I knew shooting track, even middle school age kids, was going to be difficult.

I’d already decided to shoot at f4, the widest opening on my Nikon 300mm lens. I wanted to maintain emphasis on the runners without a distracting background. I knew that would make focus more critical, especially when using single-point focusing. There would be not time during focus tracking to adjust the focus point in the viewfinder.

I settled on top center focus for horizontal images and near top center for vertical shots.

Knowing that I’d need a fast shutter speed to stop the action and that I was staying with f4, I chose to use aperture priority auto exposure with exposure compensation depending upon the subjects.

The clouds weren’t consistently the same density so exposure would changed as thicker clouds with sprinkles of rain passed over the field. Thinner clouds brought just a little more light, sometimes in the middle of a race. I could have shot manual exposure setting both f-stop and shutter speed but the varying light levels would have made it more difficult to adjust during a race. Letting the camera determine the shutter speed was my best plan.

That meant that I’d have to increase my ISO higher than normal to at least ISO 800. Most newer digital cameras have much less noise at the higher ISO settings. I could have easily increase the ISO past 1600 without any significant increase in noise. The light was flat enough that the shadows didn’t get too noisy and the highlights weren’t blown out.

Shooting at a shutter speed of 1/1000th or higher will stop most track action depending upon the runner’s movement in relationship the the shutter plane. Running at me, this runner and his two followers were easily stopped with 1/1250th setting.

Auto-focus followed him nearly perfect as he hit the finish line. The narrow depth of field from the f4 setting kept him in the place of focus and blurred the trailing runners enough to remove them as sharp distractions.

My settings, both shutter speed and f-stop, might have been different if I’d been shooting on a normal sunlit day.

My ISO would have been lower. It was raised to 800 because it was cloudy and I needed a high shutter speed.

The f-stop might have been f5.6 to allow a greater plane of focus on the main subject.

The shutter speed, being the most significant of my setting choices, would have remained at or greater than 1/1000th. Stopping the action was the greatest objective for this photo. All the other choices were determined by the shutter speed.

One of the photos hanging at Java Central tonight is this frame of one of the few barns remaining in Westerville. The road past the barn is well traveled and the small area of farm land around continues to be used for farming with corn and soybeans the two crops harvested in alternate years. The plots of land across the street are cut several times each year for hay.

The barn is weathered but sturdy owing to its solid construction. The house at the front of the property has fallen into disrepair.

I’ve photographed it many times, in all types of weather, using it as foreground and background and main subject.

This photo is from a single frame HDR image process through PhotoMatixPro 3.0, an image processing program that turns RAW images into HDR images ready for tonal processing. I’ve used the software for several years with some success depending upon the original image and the processing method.

The software is simple to use but exceptionally complex in its functions. Don’t expect to begin your HDR travels with an expectation of quick success. It won’t happen. Unless you’re lucky.

The true method for shooting HDR images is to shoot a series of images with varying exposures that collect a full set of details from highlights to shadows. PhotoMatix then processes this set of photos into a single frame that gathers data from every tonal range in the frame. The combined data is then placed into a 32-bit file that can be processed with tonal mapping selections into a photo like you see above.

I don’t always take the time to collect a set of images for processing. PhotoMatix also has a single image processor for RAW images that comes really close to the quality of more than one frame processing.

The photo at right is the original frame as it came from my camera. Cloudy day with very flat lighting and little color saturation. the contrast is low and the tones are within a narrow range.

This style of lighting lends itself well to single frame HDR. The compressed tonal range means there is little loss of detail in the image. A more contrast image might not have highlight or shadow detail. If you’re shooting strongly or brightly lit images it is best to shoot a set of images for processing instead of just one.

The resulting PhotoMatix HDR image, at right, is exceptionally flat and dark, for a reason. The software has pulled all the information possible from the RAW image and forced it into a 32-bit image that is very complex in its tonal range. The lack of contrast is purposeful. Only after having gathered the data into a 32-bit image can processing begin.

PhotoMatix can now load the image into its tone mapping image for final processing. The choices for modifying the HDR for output are so complex and subjective that I won’t begin an explanation here. What’s important about the result is what you want to see from the original frame.

The photo at the top of this post is the direct output of PhotoMatix with only a little darkening gradation at the lower left to slightly darken the pathway.

I often talk about knowing as you press the shutter what the final result of the process will be.

PhotoMatix is but one of the ways for you to get to the expected result.

Last week’s Westerville Meetup centered on shooting two models wearing vintage clothing on the streets and sidewalk in the Uptown business district.

The clothes were furnished by Cinda Lou’s as were the two women who modeled for our group of about 25 photographers for a little more than an hour as the sun dipped below the western treeline.

More than 50 photos from the event are displayed on the groups Meetup photo album. I am exceptionally pleased at the results and how each photographer saw something a little different about the situation. The variety of moments, techniques and post processing techniques result in a set of extraordinary photos.

One of the group’s photographers wondered in an e-mail message how best to figure out how some of the best photos were shot. That is, what ISO, shutter speed, f-stop, focal length and processing methods were used?

The answer is simple with a few complexities thrown in.

This set of answers applies only to Meetup photo albums but may be applicable to other photo hosting sites depending upon how the site manages photo uploads.

I’ve chosen several photos for you to use in this exploration of hidden data in online photos. Follow both links for each photo. Open in separate windows or tabs.

1)  I shot this photo at the beginning of the Meetup as a setup for the other shooters and to begin to work with Annie L. who’d never modeled for me before or before such a crazy crowd of photographers.

After setting up this shot I rarely pulled out the camera other than to shoot each setup so I’d have record of what happened.

The http://goo.gl/Fdmv link runs the photo through Jeffrey’s EXIF Viewer, an online script that pulls EXIF and IPTC data from the image.

Looking through the result you can see the details for the image including the date and time it was taken. Off an hour because I keep forgetting to reset the Daylight Savings Time function. It also includes all the particulars about the ISO, camera, lens, f-stop, shutter speed, exposure compensation, caption, and some post-processing data.

Photo by Dennis Oder

2)  Photo by Dennis Oder. Contains significant EXIF and IPTC information. (http://goo.gl/iqLG)

Photo by Scott Lewis

3) This photo was shot by group member Scott Lewis. The goo.gl link for Scott’s photo contains some EXIF information but nothing about shooting data or provides any IPTC information. It also lacks any copyright or usage information. It also doesn’t have a watermark. (http://goo.gl/5aRJ)

Photo by Mark ODonnell

4) Photo by Mark ODonnell from Gahanna. Marc’s photo has no relevant information. No EXIF camera data. No IPTC caption data. No copyright or usage information. No watermark.  (http://goo.gl/L0v5)

The information for the goo.gl links run through Jeffrey’s EXIF viewer is pulled from the original files uploaded to the Meetup photo album. After processing by Meetup, all this information is removed. All the EXIF, IPTC, copyright, usage and photographer information is gone, deleted, removed.

The original photo on Meetup can be found with the ALL SIZES link just above any photo in the album. Clicking that link opens an AJAX window that shows direct links to all versions of the photo with the original’s url in the bottom box. A text link just above each box opens that photo in a new tab.

Copy the url for the original image and paste into the Image URL: box at Jeffrey’s EXIF Viewer to see the underlying information.

There is important information listed in the data pulled from your online photos.

If you’re looking to see the camera, lens, exposure, and processing data, the original may contain that information. It depends on the original having it included at upload and that the upload site’s image processor retains it in the original Meetup does.

If the original doesn’t include it, the upload site is not going to be able to extract it for you to study.

More importantly is the lack of IPTC information. What’s in the caption information data block inside your uploaded photo? Does it have a caption that explains the content? Is the photographer’s name and location included? Is copyright and usage instructions listed so people who want to use the photo can contact the photographer to purchase the apapropriate rights?

The first  photo include all this information as does Dennis Oder’s photo. Stacey Stowers photo contains some EXIF information but not IPTC. Marc ODonnell’s photo is void of all but the rudimentary information for any Web photo.

Some of the photos uploaded to the site have a visible watermark noting the photographer’s name and copyright. Many don’t.

Sometime in the next week we’ll look at visible watermarks, IPTC and EXIF information in uploaded photos, and how to protect your images from being copied.

Choosing when to use a slow shutter speed to blur an image doesn’t always have to match the subject matter.

On the fourth Friday of the month during the summer streets are closed in Uptown Westerville for vendors, groups and associations, performers, and politicians to set up spaces to display their wares and attitudes. At all bu tone of the evening events is a dance group performing in the street in front of their studio.

The performers are all young, mostly girls and usually performing in front of their families and friends. I always make a pass around the dance perimeter to see what new images I can find.

This particular night I decided to shoot the crowd instead of the dancers. I had plenty of dancer photos and other than isolating on a particular dancer or individual performer, the dance photos weren’t very dynamic. It wasn’t that the performers aren’t talented. They are, for youngsters, but I generally don’t shoot the event for a particular person.

The camera was placed at street level balanced on the top of my boot. I wasn’t carrying my table top tripod this night as I hadn’t planned to stay late enough to need it.

ISO was set to 100 with aperture priority configured to work with f22. The auto exposure set the shutter speed to 1/20th of a second, long enough to create a blur in the dancers but short enough that their figures would be recognizable. I did shoot some frames at a slower shutter speed but the figures were so blurred they lost the shapes of the bodies and costumes.

Shooting with the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens, the focus was set on the people across the street. My timing was nothing more than a guessing game as I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder and it was not possible to use the Live View function at the low angle.

Shot about 30 frames with this technique of which there were about five that made the first edit before choosing this as the final select.

Using a slow shutter speed made it possible to isolate the viewer’s attention on the crowd in the background instead of confusing the scene with sharp images of the dancers in the foreground. It would have been possible with a higher ISO and a different f-stop to have stopped the motion of the dancers. It would not have been as effective. Their sharp lines and shapes are not the main subject. They are framing devices to pull your attention to the crowd.

The technique is no different than shooting telephoto with a longer lens with a narrow depth of field so foreground and background objects around the subject are out of focus. Out of focus objects that move your attention to the primary subject is a old technique. Using a slow shutter speed to blur framing objects is a good technique to push attention to what you think is important.

We’ll stay with the bicycle subject matter for at least one more day. At least long enough to add a little more knowledge to shooting blurred images with wide angle lenses.

Yesterday’s photo discussed subject mater moving laterally to the shutter plane. The result can be quite striking with the pincushion effect created by rotating the camera around a central vertical axis as the subject travels past.

It’s difficult to keep much in focus shooting with a wide-angle lens on laterally moving subjects.

Shooting a subject moving toward you or away from you requires a different set of skills and a much different result.

Today’s photo was shot with one hand on my bicycle handlebars and the other grasping a Nikon D330 while trying to balance and compose with a narrowed view through the camera viewfinder.

Shot at 1/20th of a second at f16, the blurring is sufficient to show motion of the young rider. It is not so slow that it blurs all his surroundings.

The heaviest blurring happens in the foreground with what appears to little, if any, in the distance. In reality, the blurring is exactly the same degree of movement for both distances. The camera traveled the same distance for the same period of time for both foreground and background. Yet the foreground is more blurred.

The difference in what we see is related to the Doppler Effect, more generally applied to sounds and radio waves than to photographic subjects. Yet it is the same principle, where the camera records the change in frequency of light waves, not sound waves.

Check the Wikipedia reference for Doppler Effect for an understanding of how the frequency of sound waves are modified by movement of the emitter and the receiver.

In our case, the frequency of objects in the foreground are stretched, elongated filling a lower frequency during exposure. Objects in the distance stay closer to their original frequency so they aren’t as blurred.

Foreground objects travel a further distance over the same period of time as the background objects. Their frequency, the number of times the light rays they reflect is greater so they are stretched, appearing in a longer path.

The distance objects travel the same distance but their wave relationship to the shutter plane is not changed. They appear to not move because their light rays are almost always reflected from the same spot.

Referencing the Doppler Effect is a useful tool as you consider how best to use blurring to communicate the story of your photo. Consider the physics of light waves as just another tool in the camera bag.

Did you ever think you’d need to understand wave dynamics to be a better photographer?

Yesterday’s Shutter Speed #2 not only dealt with stopping action, it also concerned keeping backgrounds in focus to help explain context and location.

It was important in yesterday’s photo to keep the background sharp to place the racers in a small town business district setting. Part of the charm of the photo was the building facades. Using a narrow depth of field or blurred action would have removed that element but changed the message of the photo.

Sometimes creating a motion blur is a better way to tell the story.

Today’s photo has several elements that make it interesting.

The shutter speed is set to 1/40th of a second. That is a low setting for blurred action because , depending upon movement and travel direction of the subject, the blur may be too great to have a point of focus in the frame.

While shooting a Walking Westerville piece I saw this bicyclist traveling at a moderate speed down the shallow incline of the recently reworked brick street.

I had only a few seconds to set the exposure and select a shutter speed that would blur the background sufficiently to remove the distraction of details. All I wanted were shapes that would help define location and not be sharp enough to distract from the rider’s movement.

I set the f-stop to f22 using Aperture Priority. The shutter speed indicator showed 1/40th of a second. I had run out of time to change to Shutter Priority, manual or adjust the exposure compensation to bring the shutter speed closer to 1/125th of a second.

The three frames I fired of his travels show him coming, going and the one you see here at f22, 1/40th of a second.

The background has lateral motion blur although he is not as sharp as I would have liked. Some of the comes from the fact  this with the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 lens set at 14mm. Notice how the foreground bricks have an arc to them. That’s because their location in the frame changed as their distance from the shutter plane didn’t.

The bricks at the far left remained the same distance from my camera. Their location in the frame changed. The circular motion of the camera created a similar arc within their movement during the exposure.

A close look at the tires on the bike show a similar stretching although not as exaggerated.

The siding on the houses in the background are also arced but the opposite direction from the bricks because they are at the top of the frame.

The effect resembles lens pincushion distortion that would be normally be removed in Photoshop. In this case it’s kept for effect. The arcing lines draw interest to the center of the frame and the primary subject.

Finding the spot was easy. I knew that when I laid down on the wet sidewalk I’d have a great low angle to frame a bike racer against the skyline as he made a turn into Uptown Westerville. The low view would place the rider in an exaggerated angle with the city’s small town building facades helping define the location and nature of the event.

The camera was positioned on a table top tripod where I adjusted the angle from the sidewalk. Placing the camera on a tripod allowed me to watch the riders approaching on the side street and return to the camera as they rounded the corner.

My timing had to be precise. Even with a motor drive at six frames a second, making sure the rider was in the open space at the right time was difficult.

A counselor once told me I should change my life by trying to stop anticipating everything. I need to go with the flow more often. She obviously didn’t understand that anticipation is primary to my work as a photographer. I told her to think of something else to change my life. She suggested modifying how I reacted to failed expectations. She didn’t understand photographers. I gave up on counselors and bought a new camera.

I upped my ISO to 800 knowing I’d need a high shutter speed to stop the lateral movement of the rider. Stopping lateral movement is difficult as the direction of travel for the subject is more easily blurred and a perpendicular movement.

I also had to watch the depth of field to make sure the rider was in the primary plane of focus with enough depth to keep the background sharp. Shooting with the wide angle Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 gave me enough depth for the ISO 800 to work.

Shooting on Aperture Exposure I shot a few test frames to make sure the shutter speed was high enough to stop the racers. It dialed itself in at 1/1600th of a second, more than enough to stop the motion, especially when other objects in the frame are already sharp and contributing to the composition and content.

After looking at the test frames and checking their histograms on the D300 LCD screen I didn’t dial in any exposure compensation. The cloudy sky and wet street made a great gray card.

Stopping the action wasn’t difficult at 1/1600th of a second.

I’ll write later about stopping lateral movement with adequate shutter speed settings.