What a view!

On Avion Ridge in Waterton Lakes National Park. by Eric Fletcher

While on a horse trek within Waterton Lakes National Park, we had ridden up 720 metres to the highest point along Avion Ridge on a clear and warm day in late July (2014). Even the horses seemed to be interested in the 360° view, so I was inspired to capture the photosphere above.

One side drops off almost vertically to a hanging valley ~300m below; the other is a steep slope of scree that eventually becomes another vertical cliff. Our guide, Josh Watson of Alpine Stables, reassured us by pointing out that his horses had 4 feet and likely were just as eager to avoid slipping as we were. Okay... but there were certainly a number of heart-stopping moments as the trail came to within a metre of the edge as the fairly strong wind blew towards the cliff side!

The photosphere is a composite of ~40 images stitched together by my Nexus 7 tablet. The result is a 3D immersive image that allows you to drag the view around as if you are inside a sphere. You can roll the mouse to zoom in or out.

This image was selected for inclusion in Google Maps, so anyone exploring this part of southern Alberta will see a thumbnail of it and others nearby along the bottom of the screen (click the Explore button in the lower right).

Leonids no-show (but nice stars)

The 2009 Leonids were being touted as the best in years—and the sky was clear—so of course I stayed up to see them. I set the tripod up on the deck and fired up Stellarium to get oriented.

By midnight I hadn’t seen more than one or two small meteorites. I set the alarm for what was supposed to be the peak at our location (05:30!) but only saw a single flash in ten minutes or so.

However, it wasn’t a total loss. Compare the screen capture from Stellarium to my shot from the deck. The stars in the constellation of Orion are right on—and both Sirius and Rigel show very distinctly.

Screen capture from Stellarium for 2009-11-16 23:40:21 looking SE

Photograph taken 2009-11-16 23:40:16 looking SE

The Nikon D300 camera was set at ISO800, f5.6 for a 30 second exposure. The glow on the horizon is light from Ottawa—so this truly is a view from this end of the Escarpment!

Looking into our past

We’ve been trying to sort through stuff we really don’t need any more. One of the disadvantages of having lots of space is that it gets filled up—and too easily falls off the clean up priority because “out of sight is out of mind.”

When I came in with a box labeled “Old Prints” the other day, I should have known it would be a time sink: hours later, Katharine and I were still at the table surrounded by piles of prints, postcards and letters—but also a half-filled garbage can between us.

In the 80s and 90s, a second set of prints cost hardly anything more, so most of the envelopes are thick. We can whittle some of these down: many sets have flawed shots (exposure and focus problems); some are related to projects long completed; a few are just dull…

However, the biggest problem is that almost none are dated! With digital cameras, the date stamp is automatically in the file, so our pictures since 2001 are all very accurately dated. When I scan images—either from slides, negatives or prints—I alter the date to as close as possible to when it would have been taken. This lets me see the older images on a timeline in tools like Picasa or Photoshop Elements.

So whose surprise 40th birthday was that? Everyone hid their cars in the back, so she didn't have a clue until the doors opened with a big crowd in the barn. Scanned from a Polaroid instant print; 5 May 1992.

Sometimes there are clues: an obvious event like a specific birthday party, or a handwritten note on one print in a set. More frequently, we need to deduce the date: a new calico kitten at a Christmas tree indicates it must have been 1996, because we got Tigger when Persia disappeared in December…

The box was significantly reduced though, and we were inspired to go through some more boxes to downsize some more. However, I just know it will mean a big chunk of time with the scanner!

An even earlier print: Eric with the car we bought to tour Australia; on a backroad en route to Canberra in May 1984. Original print ©1984, Katharine Fletcher

Who owns the image?

One of the topics for our regular “techie Tuesday” session today was learning how to prepare a CD of images for a friend. The technical part isn’t too difficult: just select the images and choose the menu selection to write them to a CD. However, that wasn’t what kept us at it for a lot longer than either of us had intended.

We sell some of the pictures we take. If we “give away” a selection of pictures, we may be limited in our ability to sell one or more of them to illustrate an article later on. Why? Editors are—or should be—careful about the images they choose, and online tools make it easy to check images. Imagine if an editor did a search and found one of my images online being used to illustrate our friend’s web site:

• If there was proper attribution, the editor might infer that I had given permission—but then might choose not to use the image because it was already in use.
• If there was no attribution, a more troubling outcome might be that she would question whether the image was in fact mine.

Either way, my image wouldn’t get used and I would be out whatever fee would normally be paid.

What did we do?

We decided to add our copyright information to the files (using Windows), then use Picasa to export the images while reducing the dimensions and adding a watermark. The exported files were smaller—yet still quite suitable for web use—and each had a copyright notice in the lower right corner. The file information also contains the copyright details.

Finally, Katharine prepared a text file identifying her as the owner of the images, and provided her email address as the contact to obtain permissions and the original non-watermarked version if someone wanted to use an image for commercial purposes. The CD was then cut with the images and the text file.

But…

File information can be changed and images can be cropped.

Close-up view of a delphinium floret in our garden (showing a watermarked copyright)

The above image includes my copyright both in the file information and as a watermark. But what if someone were to crop the file and save it without the embedded file information?

A cropped view of the same delphinium floret without any watermarked copyright

They might do this quite innocently—maybe for their web site or for a community brochure—but a dishonest person could do it deliberately to avoid paying for the picture.

Either way, now there isn’t anything to show that I took the shot and own the rights. If the cropped version of my image was used in a publication, I wouldn’t know—and wouldn’t be paid for it.

Bottom line?

Digital images are creative content—no different than an artist’s painting or a musician’s song—and the creator has invested time and money into getting to the point where the images have value.

If you want to use someone else’s creative content for any purpose, ask permission first. You may not be asked to pay for the use, but the creator will want to know where and how their work is being used.

Photographic evening

On one of the few nice evenings of this record wet July, I was at a party where several of us with DSLR cameras ended up trading techniques and talking shop.

I’ve been playing around with high dynamic range (HDR) programs recently, so took some bracketed shots to have some raw material. Everything was glistening from the recent showers and the early evening light and calm water made ideal conditions for what I wanted. Mind you, the setting is always pretty spectacular.

Moffat Lake from the bridge. ©2009, Eric Fletcher

The image above was made from a single RAW file shot at 1/350 at f8.0 with ISO200 from my Nikon D300 camera with the 18-200mm lens set wide at 20mm. I used Nikon ViewNX to save 3 TIF files with different exposures: as shot, –1 and +1. I then used PhotoMatix Pro 3 to create the HDR image.

Bonfire: natural light at ISO3200. ©2009, Eric Fletcher

I’d been reading a lot about noise at high ISO settings, so thought I’d test it out. For the bonfire shot above, the camera was on a tripod, and taken at 1/15 sec at f3.8 with ISO3200. I expected a lot more noise.

Light painting: Wayne with wings. ©2009, Eric Fletcher

The other fun stuff was light painting instigated by Marc Gaudet. I’d been impressed with some of his earlier shots (featured  here on his web site), so was eager to try it with him and learn some more techniques. He set it up so the subject would sit at the picnic table, and Marcio Melo would stand behind to“paint” with a bright white LED light. Marcio would step aside when he had completed what he had in mind, then Marc would fire his flash to illuminate the subject.

Here’s my 30 second exposure of Wayne with wings.

All-in-all a fun and stimulating evening. Of course I later needed to winnow down the several gigabytes of image files to something manageable!