Artsy Fartsy Friends, Practical High Dynamic Range Use

Friends are good. Not only to hang with, etc, but sometimes in other ways you may not expect. Like expanding your horizons.

And in these troubling times sometimes we need our horizons expanded, especially caught up in our 'normal' lives as they were.

I've been taking photos for a long time, but taking pictures and taking great pictures are two different things.

I have a couple friends who are real artists.

One is a photographer who has a great eye for framing a photo, and she also has a knack for catching a shot perfectly in a way pleasing to the eye.

My other friend (coincidentally both of them are Canadians, though one lives close-by while the other one still lives in Canada) is also a true artist. He can paint and draw, and even sculpt, and he also has a good eye for photography. And the interesting thing is that he's also a "computer person".

Such a popular misconception that people who are technically-minded can't be artistic.

I have another acquaintance who's also an artist of sorts. He's been a long-time customer of mine, and though his paintings and drawing and sometimes photography is of a, er, specialized nature - he too is a true artist.

I've never thought of myself as an artistic-sort of person, despite being a person who designs webpages and photography. My first priority is to get the information onto the page in an eye-pleasing way, easily organized and aesthetic - but I don't think of it as particularly artistic. Sometimes anything real inspired comes secondarily. And I find myself always struggling with the artistic part.

Sometimes I have to come back to an idea four or five times to generate something different and interesting, or I may go do something else for a day until I come up with a good design. Sometimes even longer.

But lately I've found, because of the influence of my more artistic friends; I've actually been able to improve my own creative process and look at things with an imaginative and quite different eye.

Instead of taking a photo with the object framed perfectly, light directly on it; now I take a few shots from different angles and maybe with different lighting behind it. And not always the object itself as the sole focus of the photo. Or maybe I take a photo that catches my eye now, when it wouldn't have before.

And I've found that the more I look at things with an artistic (yes, I have to use that word one more time) eye the more and easier I can see things in a new way that I wouldn't have before.

My mother was something of an artistic soul. She'd always been interested in painting and drawing, though her primary interest was sewing.

She could probably have benefited from more painting and drawing lessons but she never had as much time to put into it, having worked all her life as a seamstress.

Her real artistry was in sewing. Anything and everything and in any way a person asked, and she could always suggest a better and maybe more visually appealing way to do something.

That's what artistry is all about, right?



Another of my hobbies has paid off, at least in a small way.

If you're interested in photography you probably know what a High Dynamic Range photo is.

If not, here's my thumbnail explanation from my HDR website - "HDR photography consists of the same scene taken with differing exposures; commonly using the auto-bracketing exposure functions of most good digital cameras. These photos are combined with specialized software to get the best possible results and are then normally processed with exposure blending and tonal (tone) mapping functions."

Some old-time (and new-time) photographers don't like the photos created this way.

There's many different ways to go about it. You'll see a number of different examples on my small website. Some are very, very much processed; some not so much (like the two near the bottom, where it says "more conventional" and the one beside it). These just bring out the landscape under the trees which normally would be very much in shadow with a default or automatic exposure. The rest of the photos are much more and less realistically processed.

Basically you are bringing out the things that a photo taken with a film or digital camera aren't going to show you, due to their inability to do more then one exposure. Say you're standing outside a cave in the bright sunlight and taking a photo pointing toward the mouth of the cave. If you pick an exposure adjusted to the inside of the cave you can see into the interior of the cave in the photo, but everything else is washed out. If your exposure is set for the bright daylight, the mouth of the cave is dark as night.

With a few separate photos taken with various exposures you can use the HDR software to combine these into a photo that will show a pic which would allow you to see the entire scene.

It's an interesting hobby, and has many creative uses as well as more practical ones.

But up until now I hadn't had an opportunity to use one in my work. Recently a local judge running for re-election asked me to do a website for him, and I was able to incorporate one of the heavily processed photos into his website as the top of the banner on each page.

Nothing major, but it looks pretty good, maybe in a stylized way and better then the same photo (of Watertown from Thompson Park) in a more conventional form.

It's something to keep in mind as I continue to create websites and consider various forms of HDR's I can incorporate into them.

My Dad's 90th Birthday, Faststone Maxview, More Stabs at HDR Creation, Fred Langa's Journey

My Dad's 90th Birthday

I was a late child - an 'accident' as my wife likes to tease me about.

While growing up, most of my friends and peers had parents the age that my sister and brother were, with grandparents the age my parents were.

It usually didn't make much of a difference either way to me, for the most part. But let's just say I didn't do things like bring home the eccentric, sometimes strange, sometimes wild girlfriends I preferred at the time.

In later years I found myself doing some extra caring for them as they got older, more and more. They were always self-sufficient but as we all know sometimes we need an extra hand when we get older.

Before my mother passed away I made every day trips to check on them, sometimes more then once a day, and help them out with whatever they needed. I sometimes took them places and made sure things went smoothly, lending a hand as much as needed. In these later years I probably saw them more then I had seen them later when I lived at home and before I moved out.

After my mother passed away I took extra care to continue being there and making sure I was available to help my dad when needed, doing the at-least-once daily visit with him and helping him with what was needed - though he's still very much self-sufficient.

Last week he celebrated his 90th birthday and last weekend we had a little BBQ/birthday party for him, organized by my wife and I and my sister. I think he enjoyed it, and below is a quick pic I took of him with his birthday cake.

As everyone who knows him says - he's in great shape for his age. And especially after working all his life in a fairly dangerous profession - farming.

Faststone Maxview

I'm always on the look-out for the fastest image display program. Something for those times when you just want to take a peek at a bunch of photos or pics, maybe do some simple rotations or contrast changes, or look at the f.stop info for that pic, or something along those lines - faster and better then the built-in XP one (which I haven't used in years) but for those times when you don't need to load a pic into something as heavy-duty as a full-blown image editor, or even a simple one.

For awhile I had switched to the commercial program ACDC, then Irfanview (crappy but fast), then XNview, and a few other minor ones.

Finally I ran across something something called VJPEG - a frameless picture/photo display program. It had some nice features; like frameless photo display and like being able to resize the displayed photo by grabbing it and bumping the edges of the screen.

But it was a bit simplistic and basic, plus if any other windows covered the displayed VJPEG windows it wouldn't show up on the task bar.

Previously I had tried out Faststone Image Viewer - very similar to XNview and earlier versions of ACDC.

It was a toss-up between Faststone and XNview but I finally settled on XNview due to a slight speed advantage.

So after messing with VJPEG I had a taste for something like it, something to replace the very nice but still feature-heavy XNview.

I came back to the Faststone site and found something I hadn't previously tried, even though it was right before my eyes when I tried the Faststone Image Viewer - something called Faststone Maxview.

A quick download and I had it plugged into my system. Very shortly I had changed my associations for graphics to this one.

It was fast, quick to display, and frameless until you bump the top. You could resize it and pick various options for displaying part of all of a pic.

Maxview also showed up in the taskbar, allowed multiple instances and was moveable, and when you bumped the top you got a menu with some more options; like a lossless rotate, brightness control, sharpness, and a bunch of other basic options. Right-clicking brings up more, including the ability to send/edit the photo in any number of external programs. Bumping the bottom of the displayed pic gives you zooming, smoothing, SAVE AS (for converting to other formats), slideshow, next or previous pic, etc as well as an overview window (for when you have it zoomed).

Fullscreen mode works beautifully, with an additionally option of giving your camera/photo properties when you bump the right side of the screen.

The program also lets you open your graphic or pic in the more fully-featured Faststone Image Viewer using the Edit With External Programs Options (which you can also additionally set up to allow a photo to be sent to Adobe Photoshop or any other programs, and any number of them).

Many, many other nice options I haven't mentioned here. A definite must-see if you need something like this.

More Stabs at HDR Creation

If you've read my previous blog entries and/or are into photography you probably have heard of HDR - High Dynamic Range photos. It's a way to fit more picture information into one photo, a way for a photo to display more then a camera will normally capture; by using multiple shots with various contrasts.

Here's my latest creation (see above pic), the best of a few. Not bad, getting there. Click to see a larger version.

I've also been experimenting with the long exposure settings on my Canon Powershot A570 IS. Great camera, see previous blog entries. I'm continually impressed with the many features this camera has, rivaling much more expensive ones yet with automatic modes easy enough for the casual photographer to use.

The below photo was done the same way as the above. It's okay, not great when talking about HDR's. But what's interesting to me and my continually efforts in improving my photography skills is that this was done in near-darkness. The bright spot is the moon, not the sun. Notice the illuminated clouds near the moon. Love the long exposures. Good stuff.

Fred Langa's Journey

If you're a 'computer person' then you probably know Fred's name. He published the Langalist for years until he retired (it's still running, under new management) and has his post-list blog. He sure knew/knows his stuff.

Mr. Langa had decided to take a long motorcycle trip with his wife after he retired, and photo blog (via a motorcycle enthusiast's site) the whole thing as he made the trip.

But circumstances changed and he had to make the journey by himself. His roadtrip went from a simple vacation to an experience of acceptance of his situation.

And, of course, a great number of incredible pictures and personal experiences. Take some time and check it out.

I wish Mr. Langa very well.

New Quote System For My Blog

Nothing major - just tweaked my quote system for the blog. It now isn't graphically-based but inserts the text directly, making it look a bit nicer. I inserted the code reference directly into the HTML code of the template itself, of course; for better integration.

April Fool's Day, Craigslist Missing Son Ad, Best Thing Anyone's Said To Me All Year, High Dynamic Range (HDR), eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver

April Fool's Day

Yea, it's always good to take a break on April 1st if you're blogging or writing any sort of article on the Internet; just to make sure someone doesn't take what you say as an April Fool's Day joke. Believe me, heh heh.

On a webboard I started up and ran for many years (and no longer do) we used to have a heck of a lot of fun on April Fool's Day. We discovered that the 'bad word' filter could also be used to substitute pretty much any word or phrase for any other word or phrase. You can just imagine the chaos that follows something like that, especially with a moderately high-traffic discussion system.

The funniest people were always those who cried that their free speech was being violated, their messages were being edited because someone had something against them, or those who were just too damn 'dumb' to realize what day it was (and there were many, many many many).

I always advocated (tongue-in-cheek of course) kicking the latter people off. Survival of the fittest sort of thing. I've always said that you should never overestimate people nor underestimate them - especially their potential for mind-blowing ditsyness.

We'd also change the graphics, or have the same graphics but with little flashes of amusing things going on in those graphics - just so you saw it out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes change people's handles, etc. What a great time.

Craigslist Missing Son Ad

Did you see the local Craigslist entry where the mother posted a want ad looking for her missing son? It's was an amusingly-worded, cutesy-yet-underlying-seriously-toned message. Well, amazingly it worked. Someone spotted the kid and they found him, except he apparently stole something from his mom and he got popped for that.

Some thought the whole ad things was funny, some not so much. As my wifey said - "She's going to be sorry if they find him dead somewhere." Lots of discussion on the Craigslist site about it.

A couple only-slightly-related thoughts on the above.

Firstly, likely this entry will be gone soon. Some sites have permalinks but most don't so. So it's something to consider whether you are blogging or just referencing something on a website or discussion area, or even mail. Especially when the link is from a news site, classifieds site, or what-have-you. Give it a good description in case the link is gone next year, next month, next week, or tomorrow.

Of course you could just copy the info or text, but most sites have some sort of copyright or implied copyright (unless it has a specific copyright that allows sharing the data from the site with an attribution, like Wikipedia does). So be careful of that of course.

Secondly; Craigslist is a good example of a very simple website design succeeding. And you can't get much simpler then the format of Craigslist.

I always tell my customers - I can build you a graphics-heavy monstrously eye-catching site with all the bells and whistles and video and music and sound and animation; but if it has no substance, or nothing anyone is interested in; then it will die.

Here's a good example of the most basic website; visually and bells-and-whistles-wise, there can be. And it is successful. Of course,

I certainly wouldn't advocate you setting up a website quite as plain but it is a good example.

Best Thing Anyone's Said To Me All Year

If you need a little mood enhancement and motivation in your day check out Mary's Motivational Blog.

One of my good friends lives in Canada. We daily discuss this or that - computers, cameras, video, websites, politics, etc. Great guy, one of those smart, artistic dudes that the world needs lots more of.

I mentioned that I am getting into experimenting with High Dynamic Range photos. It's an incredible new technique in photography (and some cameras are coming out with it built-in). More about this later...

Part of a day went by and then I received a short message from my Canadian bud. A message that not only made my day but also my whole year. Best thing anyone's said to me this year, I'd say (and I hope he doesn't mind me relaying it here):

"I hate you 
You force me to try and think - and learn new stuff."

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

Now, about HDR itself...

Say you are taking a picture with your camera, doesn't matter whether it is a film or digital. Say the scene is an outdoor scene at dusk. You're taking a shot of a an open field, facing away from the sun with a gaping cave mouth off to one side. How do you adjust your exposure or how does your camera's automatic settings interpret the scene?

Some part of the scene is going to be too dark and if you spot-adjust for the dark parts the rest will be over-exposed.

With High Dynamic Range photos you take a number of pictures of the same scene, adjusting your exposure at each one; from under-exposed to over-exposed. The software (in my case the excellent Qtpfsgui, there are also other programs like Photomax Free and Photomax Pro and the newer Adobe Photoshops, which have a simplistic version in them) takes those pictures and adds them all together so that hopefully (and it does require manual tweaking) everything can be seen at a good exposure. I'm simplifying it here for those who aren't into photography.

So EVERYTHING can be seen; the field, the inside of the cave, the hill the cave is on, etc.

But probably the best way to see it's effects is to go to this Flickr group.

Pretty amazing stuff. Some are overdone in my opinion and look more like bad special effects.

But most are very good to mind-blowing. They look almost like computer-rendered, painted, or computer-painted scenes. There are no dark underexposed areas - you can see every nook, cranny, and normally shadowed spot in the photo.

Some the photographer's have used the HDR and tonal software to go beyond the realistic for various special effects.

Here's my first efforts.


Interesting, but I have a long way to go of course. I think one of the major things is; like most photography, finding a suitable scene or subject. These were quick shots without much in the way of contrasting areas.

eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver

I rarely buy casual stuff for myself that doesn't directly involve my computer business or something necessary in general, at least for myself.

But, as you might know from my previous entries, I've enjoyed using my GPS receiver (and even made a few bucks from using it once). But it is an el cheapo one - a Magellan eXplorist 100. Basic but with some good features. The ones it was lacking though were hard to live without once I got into using it more and more.

Like the lack of a computer interface (you can only transfer so many latitudes and longitudes to and from the GPS and computer by hand before it gets real old-hat). A company in another country is selling an interface for it but I felt this was a bit iffy. There seemed to be some dispute among those who bought them as to the use of it, and some people didn't have any luck getting the interface to work in the first place. Plus, you had to take the batteries out to use the interface, necessitating using an external power source. Awkward.

Also, the GPS didn't have any maps nor ability (and not much extra memory) to put them on. No road maps, no terrain maps, nottin'. Apparently, using the computer interface it was possible to put some simplistic ones on, again 'iffy'.

There were a number of other minor things too. But it was a good unit to get my feet wet with, and I got it in exchange from a job I did.

So I set out to buy an upgraded one. At first I wanted to go up to the eXplorist 200 but most of the sites had, well, negligible reviews for this and most of the eXplorist series. I never had any trouble with my 100 and felt that it was built well. But others didn't agree (the 200 is basically the same case and model with the interface and memory added, from the looks of it).

I'd always heard about the eTrex models and saw many of them in local stores. Always seemed strange that there were no eXplorists. After looking at the reviews for the eTrex models it seemed that the reviews were great across the board. Also, lots of good reviews from Geocachers themselves. They may be geeky but they know what they're talking about.

Now, I don't necessarily go with other's opinions, but this seemed pretty overwhelming.

I found that the Garmin Trex Venture HC was the best fit for me. A good price yet a heck of a lot of features. I think it is lacking the electronic compass (there are a few different models of the HC, which is conusing), not to be confused with a magnetic compass. My eXplorist had the electronic compass based on the GPS reception - which was nearly useless. I relied on the magnetic compass on my survival watch instead.

Anyway, this has lots of extra memory, comes with an interface cord and map software (which is almost as exciting for me to get my hands onto as the device itself), and has it's own basemaps and can have more uploaded to it. It also can calculate square area, has special Geocacher's (Geocaching is got to be the most geeky sport ever, it's fun but only in small doses, for me at least) and fisherman's and hunter's functions (the latter two I won't be using), color screen, GPS games, a 1000 waypoints and lots of highway/route/track functions, WAAS for more accurate location, and a crapload of other stuff. Can't wait to get it (already downloaded the manual and read through it a few times!).

So if you're in the market for a Magellan eXplorist 100 let me know, I'll give you a good price and show you my new eTrex Venture (when it gets here).