Maribor through IR filter

On Wednesday night Gregor contacted me on MSN and he suggested photo trip on the streets of Maribor. I heave been planning to went in Maribor next day, and so I agreed to join group of photographers after my lectures on university. Few minutes after my obligations in school I went to the centre heavily armed with my photo equipment. Unfortunately all other photographers cancelled the trip, so me and Gregor were left alone. Though Gregor is skilled in IR photography, we decided to work in Infra red technique. When we were photographing, I found out the advantages of Nikon D70. It works a lot better with IR then my Canon EOS 350D. Gregor could take photos with 2 or 3 seconds, when my shooter time was 25 seconds or even longer. Beside shorter shooter times, the results of Nikon D70 are far catchier than results given by Canon EOS 350D. For better shots I some times combine HDR (High Dynamic Range) and IR (Infra Red) techniques. That kind of work demands some more time with retouching in Photo Shop, but the results are all worth of extra trouble.
First we stopped at Trg svobode (Square of liberty). In the centre of this square is so called iron ball. We decided to work on some shots of Franciscans cathedral. We also wanted to get some interesting street photos in IR technique. Most of the time, Gregor was more dedicated to photography, while I was playing with his Nikon D200. With battery grip Nikon MB-200 and Sigma 70-200 f/2,8 HSM lens it is quite huge toy. After few shots I found out I'm not capable of such heavy lifting. I like ma tiny EOS 350D better. Meanwhile I managed to take some photos with my camera. I did some HDR - IR combinations with my Canon 28-105 EF lens which is the only one appropriate for IR. All my other lenses provide so called hot spot.

I'm adding a photo taken just with IR technique, so you can compare which one do you like better.

When we had enough photos of red bricked church, we went to City Park. We stopped by first of three fish ponds. Late afternoon sunlight was great for some IR photos. You can look at Gregor's Blog and compare photos made with his Nikon D70 and my photos made with Canon EOS 350D.

Italian photo shooting

5th January 2007

Although this time it is more appropriate for skiing or it should be at least very cold, I decided to do on some portrait fashion photography. My task was make some portraits, but this time I was shooting a male model. To make everything more interesting and fun, model couldn't speak Slovenian. He is an Italian and he lives in Rome. Communication was basicly in English. Fortunately blue-eyed Italian brought his girlfriend which helped us very much.

On first location I found great lack of light and thou I didn't want to use my flash, Canon 430EX for no reason, I only made some face shots. Luckily I worked with quite strong lenses. For face shots I used my bellowed macro lens Sigma 105 f/2,8 EX. Basicly this is not real portrait lens, but it is quote effective. Slow AF (auto focus) is repaid by great sharpness and lovely bokeh as you can see on picture below.

In spite of the fact that I head strong light from front, I managed to save RAW file, which was low contrasted and bad colored. I think produced quite catchy portrait.

Second location there was better lightening. For some ambient shots I used my recently acquired Sigma 28-70 f/2,8 EX. This lens could not compare to Sigma 105 f/2,8 EX, but it is still sharp enough for 20x30 prints and even bigger.

At last but not least, my Canon 50 f/1,8 II provided razor sharp shots. I did some retouching in RawShooter Premium 2006. I added a lot of light and contrast thou I wanted to emphases the eyes.

Tight DOF zone of Canon 50 f/1,8 II @ f/2

At the finish, Riccardo wanted to include his girlfriend Mojca and so we made some »family portraits«. Although Sigma 28-70 f/2,8 EX @ 63mm in f/3,2 has quite shallow DOF (Depth Of Field).

Late afternoon after the sunset it ran short of natural light, so we decided to finish with our photo shooting.

Pleasant 10 degrees drops to 5 and on some final shots it could be seen relief of both models.

At the beginning of this photo shoot I was quite nervous. I never photographed a male model before and my friends told me, it is more difficult as shooting females. But at the end I was pleasantly surprised by professional modeling of Riccardo. And thou this is not happening very often I’m even satisfied with my work. Thou I don't heave a lot of experience I think I did it well. I’ll do better in some warmer places.

HDR - High Dynamic Range Imaging

Searching new photographic techniques I recently ran into technique called HDR. Unfortunately I didn't found much records concerning HDR on internet. That's why I contacted few photographers which already had great HDR photos and it was obvious they knew this technique very well. Soon I get desired answers and find out, that such kind of photography is considerably simple and at the same time quite fascinating.

There is no great wisdom concerning HDR technique. Actually taking photography suitable for HDR is very simple. Processing in computer demands some extra time.

Photo camera can't show extremely contrast pictures. If some parts of the scene contain a lot of light and some almost no light, we can find compromise with HDR technique. On High Dynamic Range images there are no bright and no to dark parts. There is almost impossible to take such picture in one step. Photographic sensors are not so adjustable jet. That’s why we take at least five photos. God tripod is very useful. When appropriate shot is chosen, we set camera's perfect time and aperture. Beside this “perfect” photo, we also make two or three differently under exposed and over exposed photos. I usually make 5-7 photos.
Most times for HDR I use wide angle lenses. With my Canon EOS 350D I've got Canon 18-55 EF-S lens. Probably with better lens, my HDR-s would be catchier. Once I will probably afford Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5,6 EX DC HSM.
When we took 5-7 differently exposed photos, we can continue our work on personal computer. Thou I use Photo Shop CS2, I will describe this procedure. There is several other photo – programs. Sometimes I also use Photomatix Pro.

We open PhotoShop CS2. Click on drop menu: File › Automate › Merge to HDR…
We pick photos we want to merge in HDR, and then click OK. Your probably not so fast computer will take some time to analyze and merge all photos.
Window above it shows merged picture. On the left side, you can see thumbnails of photos used for this HDR. You can select or deselect photos you wish to include in further treatment. I pick them by feeling. Try some combinations, and pick the best one. With slider you can adjust intensity of dynamic range. We save file in 32 bit mode. The file will get extension *.PBM (Portable Bit Map). For better representation on our screen or printer we must convert 32 bit photo to 16 or 8 bit photo. For that, we use Image › Mode › 16 Bits/Channel… It appears window below:

If you press F1 (Help in Photo Shop CS2), you find out, you heave four different choices to convert 32 bit photo in16 bit:

Exposure and Gamma Lets you manually adjust the brightness and contrast of the HDR image.

Highlight Compression Compresses the highlight values in the HDR image so they fall within the luminance values range of the 8- or 16-bits-per-channel image file. No further adjustments are necessary; this method is automatic. Click OK to convert the 32-bits-per-channel image.

Equalize Histogram Compresses the dynamic range of the HDR image while trying to preserve some contrast. No further adjustments are necessary; this method is automatic. Click OK to convert the 32-bits-per-channel image.

Local Adaptation Adjusts the tonality in the HDR image by calculating the amount of correction necessary for local brightness regions throughout the image.

For me, best choice is »Local Adaptation«. With click on Toning Curve and Histogram, you can totally adapt photo by your taste. Mostly we want to rid of to bright or to dark parts on our photo. When we are pleased with our choice, all we heave to do is confirm our settings, and photo is ready.

Some times photo demands some more treatment to become perfect photo. I use some noise reduction. Levels correction. Brightness and contrast. Shadows highlights.

Some final results:
Most of this pictures are taken with Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens.
I also use Canon EF 28-105/3.5-4.5 or Canon EF 50/1.8
I just bought Sigma 28-70 f2.8 EX and I think it will be quite suitable for HDR.

Christmas – New Year's Concert

On Saturday 23 December 2006 I visited Christmas – New Year's concert of Muta's wind band. On such events I Usually don't take my camera with me, but this time it was otherwise. With future mother-in-law, who owns florist's shop in this village, we took care of decoration.
This year’s trend is black-white or black-silver deco combination. Happily I adapted myself to such contrasting trend. That we would emphasis contrasts even more, we added two highly conflicting elements water and fire. How exactly this looked like, you can see on picture below.
Entire decoration got really magnificent, when they put off the lights.
Moderator Jure Brloznik announced main actors of event. With excellent repertoire and numerous guests they entertain visitors for almost two hours.
Guests, who fascinated me the most, were drummers. With their rumble they completely shocked visitor.
Drum majorettes were second delicacy of the night. We could admire their performance three times. Fist they appear in dark with shiny sticks. They blew up all my candles and I had to turn them on again. Second appearance was famous Can-Can…
…third time, they did traditional drum majorettes performance.

At the end of this posting I'm adding a photo of entire wind band. On the right side two members of wind band are singing, while the bandmaster on the left is playing accordion.

Invisible experience (IR-photography)

Unlike many photographers that quickly specialize for one certain kind of photography I'm always testing some new techniques. Recently I tried infrared photography. All I needed was IR filter and few basic advices, which I searched out on internet.
Infrared filter only leaves light in the part of the spectrum which we can't see with the naked eye, but CCD can capture this invisible light. If we look through IR filter we can't see anything.
The most fascinating thing about IR technique is world in colors, we almost don’t recognize. Green leaves turns red, skies turns into the most incredible deep sea blue. Parts which reflects sunlight turns snow-white, etc.
About taking the photographs there is no big science. You simply put your camera on solid tripod, set aperture and suitable time, and shoot. Capturing IR photos usually takes quite few seconds, that's why use of self-timer, wire or remote actuator is recommendable.


When photos are taken, we must do some work in computer. I use Photo Shop CS2, but it is similar in other photo editors.
Fully basic treat to catchy IR-photos would look like this:

Basic photo direct from camera:
With click on Auto Levels I get something like this. Usually Auto Levels is sufficient. If not, I use manual corrections.
Now we must change red and blue channel in Channel Mixer.
For catchier photos we must use some more time playing with various settings. For better results I sometimes use combinations of IR and usual photos. I also tried IR+HDR. On pictures below, you can see how final results should look like.

Close-Up World

On Friday, December 15th 2006, I went to see the photographic exhibition of a macro photographer Danijel Kropivnik, also known as CZY. When I entered, the place was already quite full of people. The exhibition was set in Mezica, in a place called ‘Štiblc’. The location itself with all the lights and brightness was a great place for such photo expo, but the problem was its size since it soon become really crowded. Buying new lens for my Canon 350D that day, I decided to bring it with me and test how my new second hand Sigma 28-70 f/2,8 will do indoor, with lack of natural light. In all this crowd I hardly found enough place to take some photos, but just as I usually do, I succeed this time as well. The exposed photos were all in size of 30x45 cm. In my opinion, the content of photos was great, but the photos kind of got lost in a big glassy frames. I was also a bit sceptical about the quality of prints. Others, who do not see macro photos every day, were absolutely enraptured with extreme close-ups. Author really knows what he is doing. Most of his work I have already admired on photo portals like www.slo-foto.net or www.photo.net. It wouldn’t hurt, if the author provided some names and information about insects beneath the photos. Most visitors did not know what kind of animal they were looking at. Photos were named quite reasonably, sometimes even funny, dependent on a contents.
First they gave us some time to see the photos and then a short art performance began. In a small room it soon became unpleasantly hot. At first, a soprano singer Vesna Pučl, sang a song, then Miss Ida Paradiž read a story, but don’t ask me what was it about. By the third sentence, I was already completely lost. And I wasn’t alone. I was quite relieved, when she finally finished. To sum up, Miss Mateja Kunc read the words Mr. Matjaž Intihar wrote about the author.
I couldn't agree with some of the words he wrote. Quoting Mr. Matjaž Intihar: "In Dani's photos we shouldn't look for a composition and other photographic elements….« Listening to this I wandered why should macro photographers even bother with composition, lightings, fictive stories, etc. Like Mr. Intihar said, knowing the technique it's enough to make great macro photos.
After those words, also the author himself spoke a little bit about his work. He explained the techniques he uses and told us some things about his equipment. He shared with us the backgrounds of some of his photos. Later he devoted some time to anybody who wanted to speak to him.
Besides me, there were few other photographers, and even a guy from a local TV.
After official part, all visitors were feasted with in-country kindnesses. Some of us were eating, others rather dedicated their time to drinking.
I think that this photographic exhibition in without doubt worth visiting. I, having lots of experiences with macro photography, have noticed few things that I would change, but less trained visitors will surely be charmed.