The Carnival Came to Town…

I was on my way home from running some errands today, and as I drove through the intersection of Roswell Road and US 41, I noticed an old-time carnival that had just been set up in the old Kmart parking lot across from the Big Chicken.  As usual, I drove past, and then started thinking.  To keep from dwelling on a missed photo opportunity, I went around the block and circled back to the parking lot where the carnival was.

I immediately wished I had a film camera with me, but the only camera I had on hand was my point-and-shoot digital Fujifilm F50fd.  I had an immediate vision of the photos that I wanted to get, and I had a clear idea of how to use Photoshop to easily convert the straight color images to get the film-look I wanted.

The following images were taken within a one minute period.  Click, click, click.  Done.  (There were also three throwaway images not shown here.)

Here are the three unedited color images straight from the camera:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

All photos by Phillip Morrissey on this blog are protected by a Creative Commons License.  All rights reserved.

This work by Phillip E. Morrissey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Psycho-Cross Cyclocross…

These are some photos that I took at the cyclocross race at the Dick Lane Velodrome in Atlanta, Georgia on Halloween, 2009.

Photo of a racer making a textbook dismount half way up a hill so he can run the rest of the way.

When I was a teenager reading VeloNews in the mid 1970’s, Cyclocross racing was a mysterious sport that took place on a far away planet called Belgium or it’s nearby moon, Holland.

A historic cyclocross photo from http://www.3peakscyclocross.org.uk/history/1961.htm

Cyclocross was born out of necessity about a hundred years ago in Europe when racers had to navigate old farm roads or jump over trees or other obstacles that would occasionally block the roads.  It is also said that racers in Europe in the early 1900’s could take shortcuts through the countryside since the races were often point-to-point and not over a prescribed route.  Cyclocross also pre-dated what we know as modern mountain bikes by about 80 years.

Cyclocross requires a strength and determination to git-er-done. [That’s one of the race organizers, Jeff Hopkins, in the background in the beer bottle costume.  He’s from the land of OZ.]

Three major elements that always make up a cyclocross race are on-road riding, off-road riding, and jumping of obstacles.  These challenges dictate that the bike used needs to be in between a road bike and a mountain bike.  A road bike would not be adequate for the off road portions, and a mountain bike would not work well on the tarmac sections.

Emile Abraham of Trinadad-Tobago.

So, with that said, what made this cyclocross race unusual is that it was held at a velodrome, [The paradox being that velodrome racing is considered to be the cleanest form of bicycle racing, and cyclocross is the messiest.] and it was held on Halloween.  Thus the name “Psycho Cross.” 

Being the inaugural event for cyclocross at our velodrome, I was amazed at how well it was organized.  The course was set up to please the spectators, and it was very challenging and safe for the racers.  Since it was Halloween, some of the racers took the opportunity to celebrate the holiday.

This guy took the opportunity to celebrate Halloween.  I guess he went as a guy who was “over trained.”

 A modern gladiator.

Oscar Clark of Jittery Joe’s:  Winner of the men’s pro race.  I guess coffee makes a good sports drink.

Speaking of sports drinks, some took the opportunity to snatch a beer from the spectators.  This racer made it to the top of this obstacle without spilling, and then shootered the beer.  He was also riding a single-speed bike for this event.

  An example of the tarmac section.

The infield section.

Joe Eldridge in the holiday spirit.  On a track bike, he’s much faster than you are.

Yes, the hill really was that steep.

 ----Finis----

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All photos on this blog are protected by a Creative Commons License.  All rights reserved.

This work by Phillip E. Morrissey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Two Russian Cameras…Two Rolls of Film…

I recently loaded two rolls of cheapo (and expired by over three years) Fuji 100 film into two of my Russian cameras.  One roll went into the Horizon 202 (the Widelux clone) and one went into the Zenit 122.  

The old train car behind the Square.  Shot with the Zenit and the Helios 44-2.

Helios and Industar:

On the Zenit, I used the legendary Helios 44-2 lens for some of the images and the diminutive Industar 50-2 lens for the rest.  Both have rare earth glass and are mildly radioactive.  (The Russians had a strange numbering system for their lenses since the Helios was not a 44mm f/2 and the Industar was not a 50mm f/2.)

The Photos:

The photos here were shot over a period of about two weeks, and the film was developed in my kitchen on 10-27-09.  I scanned the film on an Epson 4490 film scanner.  These were all shot on film!

Antique shop on the Square.  Lots of “guy” stuff in there.

The statue of Alexander Clay is always a willing and unwavering model for my camera and film testing.

Expired Film…Expired Chemistry…

In keeping with the Russian theme of git-er-done with watcha got, my C41 color film developing chemicals reached two years old this month.  According to the documentation, the chemistry should have been good for about three months or six rolls of film:  whichever came first.  At $14 for the entire kit of chemicals, it was a bargain since Wolf Camera was charging $4 per roll to develop just  negatives.   Now, two years later and about twenty-four rolls of film successfully developed, I have really gotten my money’s worth!  And the chemistry doesn’t seem to be diminishing that much.

Cool Beans. 

Eddie’s Trick Shop.

In an alley by the Square.  This is a straight wall, but it is distorted by the swing-lens of the Horizon 202.

A seafood restaurant on Canton Road.  Looks like the Dolphins are jumping into the wires that look like nets.

An early autumn afternoon at Dick Lane Velodrome, East Point, Atlanta, Georgia.

One speed.  No brakes.  A workout at the velodrome with my friends.

My friend, Todd Kaminski, shot this photo of me at the velodrome using my Horizon 202 camera.  Of course, we all agreed not to run over him while he sat in the middle of the track on the back straight.

 

You can see that even the straightaways are angled at 10 degrees.  The curves are banked at about 40 degrees.

The Zenit 122 Russian Plastic SLR: 

My church, Eastminster Presbyterian, shot on film with the Zenit 122.  Last Sunday, I shot some digital images for the church’s website.  It was Reformation Sunday, and it was celebrated by the Kirkin’ O’the Tartans.  I wish I had shot film of that instead of digital.

http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t96/pmorrissey1/Kirkin%20O%20the%20Tartans/

My Gios Torino Super Record.  Shot with the Zenit and the Industar 50-2.

Shot with the Zenit and the Helios.  I used an old Vivitar flash pointed at the ceiling.

Shot with the Zenit and the Helios lens with an old  Vivitar flash pointed at the ceiling.  My uncle Harold gave me this old Kodak folding camera.

Thoughts…

In many ways, film is superior to digital.  I seem to have adopted what they call a “Figital” workflow.  Shooting film and then scanning it into digital.  In many ways, there’s a quality that can’t be achieved in a pure digital workflow.

More to come….

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography

I recently set out on photo safari to experiment with HDR photography.  HDR photography is used to create a higher dynamic range than can be achieved  in a single exposure of film or digital.  With HDR, detail can be seen in areas that are usually too dark or too light to show up in a typical photograph.  The resulting HDR photograph looks more like the way our eyes might see it.

HDR is done by taking at least three images of the exact same scene at different exposures and then overlaying them to create a single image.

The images here were taken between 7:30 pm and 9:00 pm on October 15th, 2009 at the Square in Marietta, Georgia.  The equipment I used was a Nikon D100 with a 30-year old Nikon E-Series 28mm f/2.8 lens.  I used my old Tiltall tripod.

I only used three separate exposures to create each of these HDR images.  One image is shot at the correct exposure, one at two stops under, and one at two stops over.  I used the Essential HDR freeware to process these images.

 

Exposure for the three images above (from left to right) was ISO 200, f/8 at 1/4 second, 1-second, and 4-seconds.

The mistake that most photographers seem to make when using HDR is taking the effect way too far past reality.  As you can see from the HDR Group on Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/, some images can come out very fake looking so they don’t look like real photographs anymore.  The goal of HDR is to create an image that looks more like what you saw instead of the way photographs usually look.

One difficulty (or advantage, depending on how you look at it) of night time HDR photography is that people and moving cars almost disappear.  This scene above had about 20 people walking across the street on the other side from left to right.

During this series of exposures in front of the window at Eddie’s Trick Shop, an entire family including a lady pushing a stroller walked between me and the window.  You can see a faint ghost trail.

The image above is uninteresting, but it shows the power of HDR.  The image in the center of the three images above would be closest to the “correct” exposure for a single image.  You can see that the brick wall to the left is faded into darkness, and the “Cool Beans” sign is very over exposed.  Combining the three images brought out the detail in the dark areas and brought down the overexposed highlights in the sign.

 

Ballet school.  The girls managed to stand still long enough to show up in the photo.  I wanted to get more exposures of this scene, but I was worried that people would think I was a creep taking photos of little ballerinas with a camera on a tripod.

Edgar Allen Scarecrow.

The scene above had a group of about 25 people walking through during the exposures.  Outdoor dining at Hemingway’s pub.

Next Steps

I’m going to try some daylight HDR.   Shorter exposures typically used in daylight will keep people from evaporating.  It might be an interesting effect to see some pedestrians showing up three times in one HDR photo.

Some Really Good HDR Photographers

Some skilled photographers such as Jeffrey Jacobs are using HDR in commercial photography without going over the line into fakey.  Some of his images are actually multiple exposures shot on one frame of film.  Here are links to some professionals using HDR in an effective way.

Here are some links to some realistic HDR images.

Jeffrey Jacobs:  http://www.jeffreyjacobsphoto.com/home.asp

Colby Brown: http://www.colbybrownphotography.com/portfolio/high-dynamic-range-%28hdr%29_9.html

A random good example of HDR technique:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcdead/3713208200/sizes/o/

A random really bad example of HDR technique:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kros/219085067/