Colorful Clouds from Black and White Photographs

B&W Cloud Photo with Color

One of my favorite things to photograph is clouds.  I have an ongoing series of mostly black and white photographs of clouds called Terra Nebulae, which (in my best Latin) means Earth Clouds.  I call it that because part of the inspiration for the photographs are NASA's amazing images of space clouds, which are called nebulae (nebula=singular).  Up until today I've been trying to reference these space photographs by turning my skies black and leaving out any Earthly objects like trees and airplanes.  I hadn't aded color, until TODAY!

This is the first real developmental shift in this series since I started three years ago, so that is really a big deal for me.  Where did the idea come from and how did I do it?  To explain that let me talk a little about how NASA takes those wonderful Hubble photographs.

When the Hubble Space Telescope takes its wonderful photos of nebulae it is actually taking black and white images.  It takes a series of exposures, each one sensitive to only a limited part of the light spectrum.  This allows them to look at infrared features which the human eye can't perceive, and to look at the different features that show up in the different spectra.  In order to give these photos the colors we all love, a computer program is used to layer and combine the photos.  The colors you see in these photos are usually not the same ones you would see if you were actually looking at it.

I've known about this for some time, but I didn't really know how that could help my work until I attended a NASA conference and saw a demonstration on how to use search, download, and develop your own Landsat data.  The Landsat program started in the 1970's.  It uses satellites to take close up images of the Earth.  Landsat data is the basis for Google Earth.  Well, Landsat satellites do the same thing as the Hubble Space Telescope.  When they photograph a section of the Earth's surface, they take multiple exposures using different wavelengths.  Fortunately, I found directions for how to take all these exposures and combine them to make different colored versions of Central New York.  After I started to get the hang of it, I thought, "Hey, would this work for my cloud photographs?"  It turns out that with a bit of creativity, you can utilize this process to help interesting colorful photos from black and white photos.

So what do you think?  Do you like the black and white photos better, or do you like the new direction?

Another Black & White cloud scene

I was having so much fun that I figured I would try the technique on a black and white photo I took out West.

Christmas Baby and the Miracle of Photoshop

Since I am now a proud uncle, and it is Hudson's first Christmas next month, the job of taking holiday photos fell to me today.  My sister, Lindsay, really wanted studio portraits taken, unfortunately I don't have a studio anymore.  Since I didn't want my sister taking the little guy to another photographer, we decided to just wing it at my parents house.  We cleared off the table, used the natural light from the dining room window, and had my mom hold up a sheet as a backdrop.  These conditions were pretty lousy for a photo shoot, but it was all we had to work with, and I gave it my best shot.  In the end, we got some photos I really like.  I always do some digital editing with my photos, but today's shoot was an extreme case.  I'm including a couple of the original shots, so you can see how different the final photos are.

 This one was underexposed, and needed a bit of work on the background, too.

I couldn't resist putting this sequence up.  After photographing on the kitchen table we dressed him up in a Santa outfit and brought him to the park.  He isn't old enough to sit up by himself yet, so we tried propping him against a fence.  He didn't last more than a second before plopping over.  Don't worry, he was fine.  I can't wait to show them to him when he gets older.

Beaver Dams, Birds, and Wasps oh my!

The weather this November keeps surprising me.  It keeps being so nice.  Lately I've been putting in a lot of extra hours at work, so yesterday I took off and went hiking instead.  If you've never been to Baltimore Woods in Marcellus, NY before, I definitely recommend it.  If you need big attractions like waterfalls or lakes, this isn't that kind of experience.  Instead, it provides a nice hike through fields and woods and offers a nature center with art shows, animal specimens, and a very friendly staff.

Every time I spend a few hours exploring nature I am always surprised by what I find.  The highlights of this trip included a beaver lodge and dam (that totally flooded out one of the trails), a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, a cool beetle, some curious chipmunks, and a wasp's nest.

Washed out trail caused by Beaver Dam

Coming upon a large flock of Red-winged Blackbirds was a real treat.  I love watching and listening to red-winged Blackbirds whenever I'm near a marshy area.  During the Fall and Winter, however, this species changes their habits.  They start to build large flocks, some of which number in the thousands, and move to different types of habitats.  The flock yesterday had a few hundred (by my estimate) birds, and they were all hanging out and flying around in the trees above my head.  They were mostly Blackbirds, but there were Grackles in there, too.  My girlfriend and I thought it was so fantastic that we stopped for 10 minutes or so to photograph and watch and listen to the birds.  I took video showing the birds flying around the trees.  Please check it out if you are interested.

Wasp's nest

I couldn't resist photographing this leaf after I noticed the lighting on it.

I love chipmunks!