After work contemplation

Staying away from the crowds, just my style too.

While I was photographing an event, I noticed the man pictured above looking out over the Bank of America Tower's expansive lobby.  The work day was finished and a social gathering was just behind him, but he took his drink over to that balcony and chose to stare off into space instead.  I was really interested to know what he was thinking and why he was off by himself.  

The yellow tones are natural as the large windows of the building's lobby were being flooded with late afternoon Florida sunshine.

Which type are you?  The go off by yourself to do a little thinking type, or the type that would be in the middle of all the after work socializing?

Bank of America Tower St. Petersburg Florida

The tallest building in St. Petersburg, Florida - Bank of America TowerI photographed an event in Bank of America Tower in downtown Saint Petersburg last week.  At the time I did not know it was the tallest building around.  Having lived in Tokyo though, it is not exactly a tower to me.  The inside is actually more impressive than the outside.  I really liked the late afternoon light filtering through the glass-walled lobby.  I have a shot of that I will put in a future Photo Story post.

For post processing on this shot I did my most advanced cloning work yet.  There was a street lamp right in the middle of the lower building.  Can you tell where?  I also used one of Aperture 3's new brushes, the dodge brush, to lighten up the building's face.  

I like doing architecture photography, but do not often make the time for it.  

At long last a wood stork at Kapok Park

This wood stork flew conveniently right over to my side of the pond! Thank you Mr. Stork!One bird I have been trying to photograph ever since moving back to Florida one year ago is the wood stork.  I have seen them many times, but have never been in a good position or circumstances to photograph one.  That was until I joined the NPPF meetup group on a Sunday morning photowalk to Kapok Park.  

New photo friend Marc was also there, and he happens to be a Nikon shooter as well.  He had let me borrow his Nikon 2x teleconverter, but it did not work with my somewhat older Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens.  So he very generously offered to let me use his Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f2.8G lens which works perfectly with the 2x teleconverter!  On my Nikon D300, this gave me an effective focal length of 600mm!  However, I can tell you I quickly found 600mm to not even be enough.  So if you do drop $10,000 on Nikon's 600mm lens, you still may not be satisfied.  

Marc's generosity did not end there though.  The wood stork was on the far side of the pond from me when I first spotted it.  It would have taken me a good 10 minutes to walk all the way around the pond over to the sandy bank it was on.  I saw Marc just a few dozen meters from the wood stork and waving at me.  He had spotted it first and was going to have the best chance to shoot it . . . until he startled it over to RIGHT in front of me on the far bank!  What a pal.  

I never had a totally clear shot, as reeds and tall grass were in the way from my position on the boardwalk, but nonetheless I was finally glad to be able to make a shot of a wood stork.  Thanks Marc!

Sitting Pelican at Vinoy Park

One day I will photograph a pelican like this just skimming the water's surface.

I have stated before in another blog post my desire to photograph a pelican just skimming over the water, and how after a few attempts I am yet to be successful.  Well, I was not even close with this shot of course, but I could not pass up a chance to photograph such a friendly and accomodating bird.  Actually, I was not the only one to photograph her/him.  Kelley during our first DSLR Photography Lesson did too.

To me a pelican is a SUV of a bird.  It's a rather large bird, can hold a lot of stuff in its billowing bag of lower jaw skin, can dive and crash into water in a nose dive unscathed, and they are all over the place.  Since they are always around and not really afraid of people, you get the impression you could just go up to one and hug it, though I have never actually tried.  

If you want to find one when you visit Florida, just head to any fishing pier.

Sunny Florida at f/11 project #01 - Kapok Park Pond HDR

I broke my own rule and made this HDR image without a tripod.

I bet when most people imagine Florida in their minds, the image is of a white sandy beach with palm trees.  However, such places make up only a very small part of Florida's land mass.  In fact, most of Florida looks like the above landscape -- flat countryside with a mix of trees scattered about.  Spanish Moss hanging from live oak trees should be as iconic a Florida image as the coconut palm tree.  

I assigned myself a personal photography project for 2010 -- "Sunny Florida at f/11" and the above photograph is my first official shot in that series.  If you have no ongoing, personal photo project yet for yourself, I highly recommend it as both a means of having a photography goal for the year and to make a number of images in the same theme that could potentially be used for a gallery exhibition!  

On this particular day my goal was first to photograph birds, but when I realized my Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens was not going to get me nearly close enough, I thought I would have to change the day's shooting goal to landscapes.  Then a friend let me borrow a Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm VR f/2.8G lens and Nikon 2x Teleconverter for the day so I was able to photograph birds after all.  Still, I could not resist breaking my own rules when I saw this landscape scene and photographed something outside of my theme for the day and even worse handheld an HDR shot!

If you have a personal photography project for 2010 describe and link to it in the comments below. 

Trial-ing out Topaz Adjust

A sample candid portrait I processed in Topaz Adjust which took some fiddling about to produce (original below)

I am a strong supporter of Nik's suite of apps, especially Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro.  However, I have been coming across more and more mentions of Topaz Labs' Topaz Adjust app, which is actually a plug-in for Photoshop.  The before and after photos on the Topaz Adjust product page are impressive.  Several totally blah photographs are miraculously transformed into strikingly colorful portfolio shots.  

The above photograph is my first attempt at adding some of that Topaz style pop to one of my images.  I was teaching a DSLR photography lesson to student Danielle in Sunken Gardens, actually practicing flash outdoor portraits, when this woman (visiting Florida from Michigan) and her friends passed by and said hello.  I already had my Nikon D300 in hand and my SB-600 Speedlight raised as this woman let out a big smile.  I quickly asked her, "may I take your photo," she did not protest so I pushed the shutter.  Personally, this is my favorite kind of photo to make and I do not often get a chance in public to make one of these in Saint Petersburg, as it is sparsely populated.

So using one of the softer presets in Topaz Adjust I added a little bit of skin smoothing and then adjusted the color sliders to make the image more vivid.  There are quite a few presets and they did not immediately produce an image I liked, so it took quite a bit of playing with several of the presets and adjusting them to produce results that I liked for the photo.  Some may find any results with Topaz Adjust look too unreal or too HDR-ish.  However, for adding color pop and pulling details out of shadows, I found Topaz Adjust to be a very useful tool.

I will continue to experiment with Topaz Adjust as there is a learning curve involved.  Topaz Labs offers a free trial of Topaz Adjust.

The original image with only Aperture's basic RAW file processing.

Street Photography - Tokyo Skateboarder

2008, Shinjuku Tokyo Japan - Nikon D80 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens

I did a lot of street photography when I lived in Tokyo.  Since I lived within a short walking distance of Shinjuku station, literally millions of people walked through my neighborhood every day.  On such street photography occasions I would seek out a spot out of the way of the flow of sidewalk traffic, preferably with my back against something (railing, subway entrance wall, etc), but with a clear view of the passing people.  There are other techniques I use to make my street photography images, but I will not reveal all of those here.  

Anyone carrying a skateboard would automatically grab my attention, but throw in a manilla envelope with BUGS in a large font across the front of it, and you have exactly the type of person my eyes comb through the masses for.  The bonus was I had a clear shot of him long enough to also make a detail shot of his skateboard.  

I would like to do a photo series of skateboard deck customizations some day.