LAURELHURST THROUGH THE TREES

This week I returned to Laurelhurst Park in Southeast Portland to enjoy a few hours on a nice Spring day and to have fun experimenting with my camera. It's been a while since I went out deliberately to try techniques that went beyond simply trying to make the best images I could in a particular situation. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but trying out new techniques (at least new to me) can stretch your photographic muscles in new ways, even if you find that they really are not your cup of tea.

                INITIAL SNAPSHOT

I also wanted to crack out my tripod, just to see if I or it had lost its way since I had not used it in months. A tripod is the bane of every photographer who has ever used one. It is also the one tool that I guarantee will improve your photography more than any other I can recommend. A tripod will allow you to properly expose a photograph under conditions that will not allow photography at all without it. All of the "rules" we learn about shooting in less than optimum conditions, ie. almost all of the time, are thrown out the window once your recalcitrant servant is holding your camera firmly in place. While there are certainly times where a tripod is not necessary, not allowed, or just a hindrance, I believe that in almost every circumstance your image would have benefited if you had just had the patience to bring that blasted tripod along. I know that my most arresting images, the ones where viewers feel that I must have had access to a camera that I have never used and never could afford, were simply taken on a tripod. It's that important. But you must take it out, and optimally you should do so more often than not, since muscle memory goes a long way in recalling ways of dealing with the blasted thing.

Now of course your tripod doesn't have anything to do with your compositional choices. That is why I recommend that you walk around a bit before you unpack it, so you can explore possibilities before it completely slows you down. This first image is an example of that, whatever you might think of it. I was intrigued by the branches over the water, and the contrast within the pond. It would have taken me ten minutes to unpack the tripod and set it up. This shot, taken at 1/90th of a second, was clearly within my ability to hand-hold the camera, and any exposure problems were inherent in the range of light within the image itself. I feel that the improvements in the processed image are clearly justified - white balance adjustments, lowering overall exposure to bring out the colors, the usual sharpening - and bring out what originally made me pick up the camera. I used a linear gradient to further reduce the brightness of the sky, a frequent problem in woodland scenes, even if you are shooting in the artificial woodland of a park. The result is a much richer scene, from the blacker branches to the vegetation. Notice the dogwood on the right, which you can now actually see. We'll be focusing more on that tree in a moment.

                                      SLOWER THAN NORMAL

While observers might have wondered what the hell I was doing shooting overhanging tree branches, they certainly began to give up on my interest in the water itself. Of course they weren't focusing on the reflections in the water like I was, and didn't realize that I was perfectly willing to crop away most of the scene that I it looked like I was shooting. Now the tripod came to the fore. This image is a small portion of the shot, which was shot at f27 and 1/8th of a second, settings which I would normally avoid like the plague. I wanted to restrict the light coming into the camera so that I could reduce the ripples in the water, leaving me with a slow speed that I could never realistically hand hold. Experiments like this are exercises in improvisation, since you almost can never tell what you are actually getting on site. All you can be assured of is that the scene you are viewing  is divorced in some way from what is appearing on your camera's screen, and that it's probably worth experimenting further.

                                      REALLY SLOWING DOWN

So I slowed down the shutter speed even further, by putting on my polarizer filter that loses 2-3 stops no matter how much I actually "polarize" the scene. Think of it as sunglasses for your camera, and you can see that in addition to cutting down on the glare, it reduces light levels. Now you can see that if you really want to smooth the water, it really helps to shoot a 1 1/2 second exposure, which feels like eternity, and is only possible on a tripod. In order to reduce the possibility of camera shake of any kind, I set my camera for a 2 second delay before it took the shot. Eternity squared. I then took out my electronic shutter release, which I couldn't believe still worked, and took the exposure without touching the camera at all. You still don't have to like the results, but rest assured that without the tripod this image would not exist at all.

                                              WHAT MY CAMERA SAW

Images do not have to look "weird" to benefit from the tripod. My eye was caught by the beautiful contrast of the dogwood and the background greenery across the pond. In order to keep this contrast, I had to shoot this at 1/20th of a second, way slower than n=my dumb camera wanted to, and a lot slower than I could comfortably hold myself. A "correct" exposure would raise the light levels enough to make you wonder why you took the shot in first place.

                                              WHAT I SAW

A little post-processing  helped of course. I lowered the black point to make the darker areas darker, and then raised the shadows to reveal some detail below the tree to give its base some context. I used a linear gradient to darken the sky a little further, and then put a "spotlight" on our tree by using a circular gradient to raise the exposure of the tree without affecting the rest of the image. I believe that my moves improved the image without moving it into "unrealistic" territory. Feel free to disagree.

                TALK ABOUT BORING, NOT TO MENTION OUT OF FOCUS

Now we have moved left and recorded what can only be called a pretty boring image. It's not even in focus, since yours truly forgot to return to auto focus after I created a panorama that you'll see in a moment. It should be immediately deleted, but I took it as an opportunity to experiment. I tried ICM (intentional camera movement) to really put it out of focus. This is another experiment that tries to create an abstract image out of nothing by intentionally moving the camera during the exposure, usually along an axis suggested by the actual scene. It pays to lengthen the shutter speed beyond what you might used normally since you don't really care about sharpness anyway. Of course this is very experimental.

                INTENTIONAL CAMERA MOVEMENT (ICM)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but at least this isn't boring. Does its abstract quality reveal any deeper truth about a stand of Fir trees in Laurelhurst Park? Hell if I know, but you might like the image.

                LAURELHURST PANORAMA

This is another image that didn't require the tripod, but did require a willingness to experiment while shooting without the instant gratification that usually can occur when we use our digital cameras. I am still looking across the pond, but I am shooting multiple shots that I will let the computer combine when I get back home. You must practice this technique in order to have any chance of success. You orient your camera in the opposite direction of the direction you are shooting, since the stitching software will reveal slight deviations from an exactly level movement across the scene, tripod or not. You must also decide on one focus point and then move to manual focus, so that the camera is not trying to refocus as you take multiple shots. Ditto with exposure - look around for the brightest part of the prospective scene, expose for that so you are not blowing out the highlights, and lock in the exposure to let everything else fall where it may. Once again, you must not let your stupid camera try to adjust the exposure as you move across a scene which has multiple different light levels. I have found that modest goal lead to better results. This image is a successful combination of seven different shots across the scene, overlapping by about 1/3 each time I moved the camera. While it is a "panorama" in the sense that it is much wider than what my camera lens is capable of taking, the resultant image is still in a standard 3:2 image ratio. A standard wide angle lens, after setting me back a couple of thousand dollars, would have included way too much sky and pond. I like the results I can achieve using this technique even though I know that I won't know what I have actually achieved until I have a cup of coffee while my computer thinks about what the hell I want it to do. Once again, you either like it or not, but I know that I have expanded what I can do with my camera whether you are aware of it or not. Another benefit is that the seven-shot combination contains so many pixels that more detail is present whether or not I enlarge it beyond what your walls or pocketbook can afford.

                                                                  SPRING BRANCHES AND REFLECTIONS

In the end I tried one last reflection shot. The tripod allowed me to shoot at 1/10th of a second, to reduce but not eliminate the ripples in the water. This contrasted the shaky dark reflections of the leaves with the exacting detail of the branches above. I lowered the saturation of the blues of the lake while subtly increasing the greens to achieve the balance I liked without hopefully exceeding your capacity to believe in the image.

I hope you have enjoyed another foray into Laurelhurst Park. A good travel tripod will set you back 1-200 dollars. You don't want anything bigger in this day and age since you must be able to put it in your luggage in any case. And you can experiment with intentional camera movement or panoramas, even if you only use your iPhone. I wish you luck with any experiments that you might try, even though you might not really be aware of what you have done until you get back home. Just remember that you never knew your results back in the days of film, and adjust your expectations accordingly.