Backyard Winter Nature in New Jersey. Spring is Coming!!!
There is hope for spring. I saw these purple crocuses starting to bloom across the road when I got home tonight. The snow has mostly melted, but the temperature keeps going up and down. This morning it was 17° F when I left for work. Tomorrow if the weather is good I plan to go out with a macro lens. After taking the pictures, I walked the backyard for the first time since last December, and see that I have a lot of work to clean up more trees and branches down. Presumably the damage happened during the ice storm.
Purple crocus blooms peaking above the fall leaves. A sure sign that spring is coming. Image taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 85 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 200, 85 mm, f/2.8, 1/200 sec). (David J Mathre)
Photography Workshop “Yosemite in Winter: A Season of Contrast” with Michael Mariant. Day 2: Yosemite National Park.
The following image is a combination of two NIK tools, HDR Pro and Silver Efex 2. The images were taken with a Nikon D3s camera and 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 200, 16 mm, f/11, various shutter speeds) during a photography workshop one-year ago in Yosemite National Park.
Photography Workshop “Yosemite in Winter: A Season of Contrast” with Michael Mariant. Day 1: Yosemite National Park.
NIK just released version 2 of their Silver Efex Pro plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom. I have been using version 1 of Silver Efex since it was released for converting digital images to monochrome (black & white). The new version has the look and feel of NIK’s HDR plugin. The first image is the original taken a year ago during the “Yosemite in Winter: A Season in Contrast” photography workshop (RAW image processed with Capture One Pro, and sharpened with Focus Magic in Photoshop CS5), the second is the B&W version converted using the new Silver Efex 2.
Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic.Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic, NIK Silver Efex Pro 2.
Backyard Winter Nature in New Jersey: Turkey Vulture and Using Focus Magic to Remove Motion Blur.
I often use Focus Magic to sharpen images. I prefer using this program since it uses a deconvolution algorithm to sharpen the image, rather than unsharp mask (USM). Here is an example where I used Focus Magic to remove motion blur. On the down side, Focus Magic has not been updated for some time and only runs as a 32-bit application. I can only use it as a plugin in Photoshop CS5 when running the 32-bit version of CS5. For this example I am using an image of a Turkey Vulture in flight (from four-years ago). I tried to improve the sharpness of the head, eye, and beak. The 2nd and 3rd image are 1:1 zooms of the head — first without removing the motion blur, and the second with the motion blur removed (350°, 9 pixels). The results are not perfect, but better than the original image. One of the reasons I do not delete images — new software can sometimes be used to recover and image that previously would have been rejected.
Turkey Vulture in Flight. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 80-400 mm Lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Raw image processed using Capture One Pro 6, and Photoshop CS5. Motion blur reduced using Focus Magic. (David J Mathre)Turkey Vulture in Flight. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 80-400 mm Lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Raw image processed using Capture One Pro 6, and Photoshop CS5. (David J Mathre)Turkey Vulture in Flight. Image taken with a Nikon D2xs and 80-400 mm Lens (ISO 100, 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec). Raw image processed using Capture One Pro 6, and Photoshop CS5. Motion blur reduced using Focus Magic. (David J Mathre)
