A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (7 of 7)

This photo should -- should -- have made the top 20. However, the lower left corner (this is hard to see at this resolution) from the driveway with the car vertically down the dark grass to the images bottom and all the way left exhibits what's called the 'jelly' effect. This is an example of digital cameras thinking and their thinking causing problems. The car is itself in perfect focus. My K-7 saw that car moving and decided that was what I wanted in focus, not the rest of the image. So it moved the sensor to track the car and the rest of the image looks a bit like jelly.

Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with this image. The sky exhibits some vertical gradation darkening indicative of too few sky images being taken. Vertical darker gradient lines in images stitched together from multiple shots indicate insufficient overlap between images. This manifests as dark lines because of color drop-off at the edge of images. All lenses vignette to some extent. In stitching an image together, great care should be exercised to avoid these darkened areas.

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (6 of 7)

So far the previous five photos were pretty much random selections. These last two were almost in the top 20. This one I like as a marketing photo, but not as a creative photo. A dramatic sky, ample open space for copy, and nice clarity make this a reasonable image for a brochure. The same is true of tomorrow's photo, too. This didn't make the top 20 because in the lower right the horizon distorts and sweeps upward. But, most people aren't likely to notice that, especially if there's some text in the sky.

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (5 of 7)

I admit this is a photo I like. It's not framed perfectly, with a partial backhoe in the background and a partial connex box on the right. Also, there's a glaring technical flaw in the middle where part of the building behind the backhoe's arms is blurry. But, it's dramatic and uses tones decently.

As some of my early November posts discuss, photo stitching is no easy business and one mistake in one photo can ruin all the time and effort spent merging multiple photos into one image. In this case, it was the blurry building in one image that really ruins this whole photo. It's still good, but not great for that reason.

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (4 of 7)

I got this photo on an aluminum print and it's hanging on my office wall. I dig it. A Blue Angels FA-18 Hornet banking with sonic condensate building up on the top. This is the type of photo telephoto lenses were created for. This and bird photography. 

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (3 of 7)

Typically, I avoid high-ISO photos like I avoid the bad parts of town. I don't like digital noise. It lacks the character and aesthetic appeal that high-ISO film yields. Yet this image, taken at ISO 1,600, had a pleasing result with rich colors and a softness that suits the subject.

And one of the things I learned this year is that high-ISO digital photos can be aesthetically pleasing given the right subject. To understand this, we should understand a bit about how digital ISO works. A digital sensor can ONLY see light in one way -- the manner in which its physical and software parameters dictate. So with high-ISO images captured on a digital camera, the photographer is basically hyper-underexposing the image.

So, using complex algorithms I won't pretend to understand, the camera's computer uses what little light was captured by the digital sensor and extrapolates what the image might have looked like. And it gets this correct, but with substantial loss of sharpness and acutance. Now, for some subjects such as this mirror hallway with painted amorphous shapes or some portraits, this can yield a nice effect. For most uses, though, using high ISO settings should be an option of last resort.

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (2 of 7)

Coffee. Back when I was a kid, every year in grade-school chorus we had to sing this song. "C-o-f-f-e-e, coffee, that's the drink for me." And it went on from there, though I don't recall the rest. Coffee. Either this photo says that coffee is love, or that coffee is a radish. I'm not sure which.

A Year in Photos -- Annual Wrap-up (1 of 7)

Well, this was a mixed year. I managed to maintain the daily roll of film goal for about seven or eight months (ending at the same time as my taking a job in the suburbs, where there is less interesting stuff to photograph.) But I did manage to take a good number of photos with which I am happy or very happy. Since I'm in a cast and immobile until sometime in January, I'll use this month to summarize this past year, meaning all the best photos are coming every day from now until the end of the month.

Starting on the 12th, I'll begin a countdown of my 20 best photos from 2012. Next year, we'll pick back up again in late January, once I'm back on my feet. Until the 12th, I'll share a mix of good photos and some of the YouTube videos I've made throughout the year.


Blackbeard here is from Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. He's outside one of the shops along the wharf, and the link in the previous sentence takes you to that exact shop on Google Maps.

Black and white photography captures many subjects well -- those with texture, contrast, and that certain quality which transcends description benefit greatly from black and white. Certain subject simply lend themselves better to rendition in silver. Black and white film, and black and white in digital, still sees color, though. And using light and color to your benefit when shooting in black and white can help enhance, moodify, or ruin an image. Here's a video I did earlier this year on using colored filters to enhance black and white imagery. This video explains -- and shows -- how colored filters change the way a medium sees tones as colored filters manipulate light wavelengths that reach the photographic medium.