Featured Landscape Photographer on PhotoShelter!

With all the amazing landscape photographers (as well as photographers of other genres) who have portfolios on PhotoShelter (www.photoshelter.com) I am honored to be their featured landscape photographer on the buyer page! Thanks PhotoShelter!

See my photo of Shiprock Pinnacle in New Mexico and link to my website on the PhotoShelter buyer page at www.photoshelter.com/buyer.

Video/Film With Canon 60D

The word “film” in the title of the post needs some explaining. One of the reasons I was excited about the prospect of being able to record video with a Canon 60D (or T3i or 5D Mark II) was that the “look” of video from these cameras is capable of resembling the look of film movies. With the larger than typical sensors and the ability to use high quality, wide aperture lenses these cameras can achieve the kind of look you might normally see in a film shot with much more expensive cameras. I have begun exploring the possibilities for video with this camera and I’ve only scratched the surface; however, that’s not going to keep me from posting some examples of my work so far.

Both of my efforts so far can be seen on Vimeo.com.  The first video “Flow” was a good way to tie together some of the test video I had been shooting which involved motion – from flowing water to flowing traffic.

Flow

Or go here to view it on Vimeo.com.

And my latest film, Rush:

Or go here to view it on Vimeo.com.

As always I love to hear your comments!
Ken

"Three Happy Puppies" by Ken Hurst | RedBubble

“Three Happy Puppies” by Ken Hurst | RedBubble:  Featured photo in “The World of Maltese & Shih Tzu” group on Redbubble.

"The Traveling Man" by Ken Hurst | RedBubble

“The Traveling Man” by Ken Hurst | RedBubble: My first featured photo on Redbubble.com. Selected to featured work in the Downtown! group!

Lightroom Lens Profile Correction

It’s possible that I’M the LAST person to discover this but in case you haven’t AND you’re a Lightroom user and a Tokina 12-24mm user: the profile correction for the Pentax 12-24mm (because there isn’t one for Tokina lenses) does a wonderful job of correcting the chromatic aberration in that lens. It seems like I heard somewhere that they’re the same lens so that would account for the profile working. I’ve added two samples below to demonstrate but I’m noticing after uploading the two images that the purple fringing in the “without correction” photo isn’t as obvious as when I view it in Lightroom. Maybe I’ll use a better example of before and after in a later post or an edit to this post.

Without Pentax 12-24mm profile correction (some purple fringing on edge of plate)

Using Pentax 12-24mm profile correction (for Tokina 12-24mm lens) in Lightroom

Oh, and before anyone says anything: the edge of the plate was NOT supposed to be in focus. It was at the edge of the frame and in the foreground. I was shooting up close with this lens at f8 with the center of focus further away from the edge, so this is more of a depth-of-field kind of thing rather than edge sharpness. I’ve been very pleased with this lens and I’ve heard the latest updated version is even better (and more expensive).

Two New Sailing Articles And Photos Published!

A major project for me recently has been to start adding photos of sailboats, sailing, and sailing regattas to my photo archive. This has seemed like a logical idea since my wife and I are considering a nomadic life on the water in the relatively near future and those two activities seem like a match for each other. I wrote two articles to go along with my photos and submitted them to two different sailing publications: Sailing World and Sailing magazine. Both accepted my articles and published them along with some of my photos in their July 2011 issues. With those who are the closest to the sailing world there is a consistent thread: things need to change to either bring people that have left back into sailing or get new people involved in sailing or both. Thanks Sailing World and Sailing magazine for publishing my words and pictures!

Here’s the July/August 2011 Sailing World article (click on it to see the more readable, full-sized version) – and there’s also a photo gallery of images from the event on the Sailing World website:

And this article is in the July 2011 issue of Sailing magazine (click on it to see a more readable, full-sized version):

How To Customize Photos In Your Google+ Profile

There’s already a good article by Nancy Messieh about turning Google+ into an online photography portfolio but I thought I could provide some specifics on how to customize that group of five photos on your Google+ profile page. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here is a screen capture of my Google+ profile (or you can go here to see it live): 

As Nancy mentions in her article, when you edit your profile you can upload five different photos in each of those spaces to feature your work on your page or, as you can see by my example, cut one photo into five discreet photos to appear as one panoramic image. 

First of all you will need to select an image that will work in this size format. I measured the pixels (a very handy way to do this on a Mac is to press the command (apple) key, shift, and number 4 key together to get a screen selection box that shows pixels dimensions as you drag it around – then press escape after you’ve finished measuring) and found that the overall dimensions of the composite photos including the space between each element is 810 pixels X 150 pixels. Each individual photo is 150X150 pixels and the space between them is 15 pixels.

So in Photoshop I selected a suitable image to crop to 810X150 pixels:

Then cropped it to 810X150 pixels:

Using this image in Photoshop (yes, I’m using a primitive version 4 of Photoshop Elements) I created 5 new layers by using the rectangular marquee tool to select a 150X150 pixel region of the image starting from one end of the photo. Be sure to have the info window showing so you can see the pixel dimensions of your selection.

Once you have selected your first 150X150 pixel segment of the main photo using the marquee tool, create a new layer “via cut”.

After this step, select the background layer and click on the layer visibility icon so that the new layer you’ve created is not visible. Use the marquee tool again and move over 15 pixels from the end of the previous selection (should be starting this second 150X150 pixel cut at 165 on the X axis. Repeat this process for each of the five new photos you’re creating. You will end up with a background layer plus 5 new layers.

Then select each layer one at a time, create a new 150X150 pixel blank file, select copy, then paste into the new file, name it, save it, and you’re done! You should end up with five new segments of your photo that you can upload to your profile page. You’ll also notice that these files also end up in your “scrapbook” folder on Google+.

I would love to know how you’ve been able to customize your Google+ page too! Please leave comments if this has been useful to you or if you have some other new Google+ tricks and tweaks. And I hope you’ll add me to your circles on Google+ and follow me (@kenhurstphoto) on Twitter!

Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro Lens Test

I decided to stage my own lens test of my new/refurbished Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro lens to make sure it was focusing as it should and to rule out user error (my inability to focus accurately and the stability of the camera and object) although the latter is what I have considered the most likely factor in focus or image sharpness problems.

The subject for these photos is a foot long triangular shaped drafting type ruler that I used in some of my early stock photos (which rarely sell, for good reason). It was setup so that “0″ point on the ruler was at the lens’ minimum focusing distance with the rest of the ruler angled away from the camera. The idea was that if the camera/lens wasn’t focusing where I intended it to focus, I could find out where it was focusing or if it was ever in sharp focus at all. In these photos the focus on the lens was adjusted (very, very slightly) so that the 1/2″ mark was a perfect in focus as I could get it. I used a Canon 40D in aperture priority metering mode with the ISO set a 800 so that the longer exposures at smaller apertures wouldn’t become too much of a factor in evaluation sharpness. Without changing focus I took 8 photos at f32, 1/13 sec; f22, 1/20 sec; f16, 1/50 sec; f11, 1/100 sec; f8, 1/200 sec; f5.6, 1/400 sec; f4, 1/800 sec; and f2.8, 1/1600 sec. On the 40D the focus was adjusted manually by using the live view mode set at 10X magnification for as much precision as possible. On a side note, I’ve found that using the live view at 10X also helps you to make sure there is absolutely no movement of the camera equipment and/or subject. The images were taken in RAW format, then converted to PSD in Lightroom 3. I didn’t perform any changes or add noise reduction in Lightroom with my default sharpening set at amount: 25, radius: 1.0, detail: 25, and masking: 0. (On another side note, if you have any good suggestions about a better starting place for a “generic” sharpening amount in Lightroom, please let me know.)

In Photoshop I stacked all the images together into layers in one image so that I could do one crop at 100% magnification and they would all be cropped the same (just figured out how to do this myself today). Then I copied each layer into a new image file and saved it as a separate image.

My observations (besides noticiing the incredible amount of dust and goop that’s obviously on my sensor at f16 and smaller) are that the lens seems to be doing its job very well and that even the slightest movement of the focusing ring can change the focus by 1/16th inch at these close focusing distances.

If you have this lens or any other macro and, like me, you’ve been wondering if the lens is as sharp as you’ve heard it was or thought there might be something wrong with it or suspected that your macro technique isn’t as  precise as it should be, you might want to duplicate these tests yourself with your equipment. One other note concerning macro technique: I started out in my “studio” area using a very flimsy music stand as a support for ruler. I usually like this stand because it will raise stuff up high enough that I don’t have to torture my back with low camera placement. That combined with living in a pier and beam (or actually just beam – but that’s another story) house that easily transmits vibrations throughout caused me to rethink that approach and settle on the kitchen counter which is a lot more stable. If you haven’t tried viewing with live view magnified to 10X you probably have no idea how much vibration there is even with a pretty good tripod and tripod head.

One other thing I learned is that if I going to shoot a lot of really close 1:1 macro images I’m going to need to get a good macro focusing rack. There’s always something.

So, check out these test photos! Click on an image to see the 100% crop of the original  photo.

Photographer/Writer? Writer/Photographer? What Happened?

Just in case potential client editors are looking at my blog to see if I can write, I suppose I should write a really, really interesting and very carefully crafted blog article. It’s doubtful anyone is going to see that here so I guess they’re just going to have to go on blind faith that I can string a few words together to complement (notice I didn’t say “compliment”) my photos. For some reason I felt compelled to write this article to announce to the world that I’m not only photographing the things I enjoy but I’m also writing about them. Actually I do like to write. It’s just that I’m not very fast and I agonize over every sentence, which doesn’t mean that I put together great sentences or articles – it’s just that I agonize over them. There was the perfect quote that I saw somewhere (on Twitter I think) but I can’t remember who said it or exactly how it’s worded but it goes something like this: “I don’t really like writing but I like how I feel when I have finished”. I sort of feel that way about writing too. Fortunately with photography I enjoy every step of the process – well, except maybe keywording and captioning.

So for the obligatory photo to accompany the article and make it all easier to understand, I’ve included this staged photo taken with my cell phone of me editing and correcting a rough draft.. After all, a picture is worth a 1000 words. Sorry, just had to say that.

Lakefest Regatta 2011

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my four day marathon on April 14-17, 2011 photographing the Lakefest Regatta! Lakefest is hosted by the wonderful people of Texoma Sailing Club and the proceeds go to their charity, the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In fact, Lakefest is the biggest and oldest inland charity regatta in the country and they’ve been able to raise over $2 million since the beginning of this regatta. I was there to photograph the event and provide images for sale as prints and to write an article about the Collegiate Challenge program that race captain Dave Long started with the 2010 Lakefest regatta. Dave’s idea was to invite college students from the sailing teams at Texas and Oklahoma universities to crew on “host” member’s boats with the hope that this program will instill greater interest and enthusiasm in young people in sailing. The sailing world nationwide is very interested in reversing a decline in recent years in participation in sailing, especially with post-college graduate age people.

Keep checking this blog for more updates about this event. There was a lot going on and it’s going to take me awhile to relate my experiences in words and pictures. In the meantime you can go to the Texoma Sailing Club website for more information about the club and to their Lakefest Regatta page for more detail, including results, of the regatta.