Adding value - looking for balance in photography

Here is an example of added value... done after giving the family all of the raw photos from the Baptism. It took a few train trips worth of effort to get these three panoramas stitched, and did require some manual editing.







The reason I gave them the raw photos was one of simple expediency, and to hedge against the possibility of the task of delivering them falling off my to-do list. I'm not as happy with this as I thought I would be.

The first reason is that I take a LOT of photos... 1202 at a baby shower on Saturday, and 900 at the Baptism and other associated events on Sunday. This means that I've given the task of reviewing that many essentially random photos to families that have other things to do.

The second reason I've come to realize lately is that I don't get feedback... I really need to find out what people like, so I can give them more of that, and less stuff they don't care about. It's impossible to learn without feedback.

The last reason is one of adding value which is kind of a merge of the others... I want to make the photographs a gift of value... not just a pile of snaps. I want to help people make memories they will cherish through their years, and be able to share with others. I can't do that alone.

The old neighborhood

We got a chance to visit the old neighborhood where I lived before we got married. I took the opportunity to do some street photography. Here's a fairly nice panorama of Broadway just south of Belmont in Chicago.



I really like the color of the sky in this one. I hope someday I can get a panorama of the skyline with that color.

Trump Tower

Here's a rectilinear vertical panorama of the Trump Tower under construction in Chicago, Illinois. This is a set of 4 frames that I took on the 7th of this month. I hope to re-shoot this under better lighting conditions before construction is completed.

Marina City

Here's a view of Marina City in Chicago... 9 frames stitched with Hugin.

Yet another Chicago River Panorama

I think I'm getting better at these... but you should be the judge.



I stopped on the way home, with the right ISO and White Balance this time. This is one of a few series I did. I missed part of the bridge, I'll plan it better next time.

Michigan Avenue Panorama

Here's another of the panorama scenes I shot Friday night after our Holiday party. I've learned a few things in the process.

• Try to plan out the entire frame before starting to shoot
• Always be patient, and let the camera stop vibrating before shooting
• Make sure to turn off Auto-ISO if you have a Nikon D40
• Always take more than exposure of each frame (came in handy!)
• Consider locking the exposure (another one didn't work because if this)
• The fieldwork can be pretty quickly done, if you get a system going.

So, here's the output after stitching with Hugin and cropping a bit:





As you can see, I left the "unexposed" area white. It's an artistic decision that I'm happy with at the moment. I always delete the merged TIFF file because they tend to be disk hogs, and I'm already cramped on my laptop as it is. Re-rendering isn't hard because I keep all of the .PTO files from Hugin (they are tiny - 42k in this case)

Panoramas are fun, and I'm starting to get a feel for how to do them right. Hope you enjoy them as well.

Michigan Avenue Bridge

Here's a picture I finished stitching together this morning, before my day went to hell in a handbasket.






It's composed of 10 frames, stitched together with Hugin, an free software package. It's a lot of fun doing them. This one worked out pretty well, except I didn't realize I had a bit of a gap on the right side.

It snowed here... and I went to find a snowthrower... the one I purchase lasted long enough to clear 30 feet of sidewalk before smoke started spewing forth. It's nice that Home Depot is good with returns. 8)

So.. now it's off to shovel snow.. and take some photos. 8)

Sun rise in Port Washington, Wisconsin

I'm turning into a panorama junkie. Thanks to the latest beta of Hugin (thanks John Navas!) and a habit of keeping all of my photos... I'm finding tons of gold on my laptop. Here's the latest




This is a stitch of 10 frames using Hugin with manual control points. I added a lot of horizon lines to make up for the almost non-existent control points. The exposure straight out of the camera was almost perfect for this one. The only touch-up is a small gap that I had to fill in the upper left sky (about 200x30 pixels).

I hope everyone likes it.

Why keep them all?

CSX 2550 Panorama

I've got at least 160 Gigabytes of photos and video... so many that I don't have them all in one place. (They don't fit on my laptop) To save space in the past, I resized and compressed all of the photos prior to 2006.

Now that I've gotten used to Hugin, I'm going through those photos that are on my laptop, and digging out the panoramas that I haven't been quite able to deal with before. Here is one of them.

The photos are lower quality that originally came from the camera.. and yet they still have sufficient quality to make this nice panorama.

It's fun making discoveries like this... I imagine I'll be doing this for as long as I live, finding new joys in the archive.

Isn't technology great when it works right?

War is a racket

War is a racket.

It's important to remember this, as we reach the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month... central time

11/11 11:11

Remember that they gave their lives to protect each other, and us from oppression.

Planet Bean

Planet Bean
Originally uploaded by --Mike--

Worth1000 has a photo contest going... this may be the start of an entry

Big Crane

Big Crane
Originally uploaded by --Mike--

This is a big HydroCrane which was unloading the counterweights from a tower crane at Randolph and State streets in Chicago, Illinois this morning.

I used HUGIN and Emblend to create a TIF, then Paint Shop Pro 10 to help tweak for a bit better contrast ratio.

Comments welcome.
--Mike--

NKP624

NKP624
Originally uploaded by --Mike--.

Autostitch couldn't quite handle it, so I used Hugin to generate this panorama. It's almost perfectly aligned.