The gentle art of leafing

P-Doug and I have gotten together to take a couple of leafing walks in the last few weeks. It's a particular time of year and it's relatively brief, so you make hay (etc., etc.)...

The first trip was to Eldred King Woodlands in York Region. It was kind of a revisit. We'd hiked there in mid-September on a rainy day along a closed section of St. John's Sideroad. The area is very sandy and the province quickly realized that it wasn't suitable to farming. The soil was exhausted quickly and there was a danger of the whole place turning into a badlands. Around a century ago, the province turned it into a wooded area to try to hold onto the soil. The effort was successful. It became a logging area and is crisscrossed with abandoned roads in and out; railroad clearances with the tracks pulled up... all of it turned over to forest trails now. St. John's Sideroad itself is covered with sand for much of its length; so much so that I swore someone must have brought it in. It's literally like walking the beach; it's hard to get traction because your footing offers little to push against. But there were firmer trails through the forest; we got away from the road and wound up a long way from where we thought we were.

The second time we were there, earlier this month, it was comfortable but not quite barefoot hiking weather in my estimation, so I kept to the sandals. The place was crawling with other leafers that time; scores of people. We were rarely out of sight of someone else. But it was a bright, clear day; we took a lot of HDR shots and I worked in infrared as well... stuff I still haven't processed yet; hopefully you'll see it here but as I write this it's not prepared [N.B. Okay, now they are, obviously]. But what I principally remember was spotting a pump on a well. One of the cotter pins was missing, but P-Doug improvised something with a stick and managed to ascertain by the resistance that yes, it was still a functioning well, though he abandoned the effort to bring water to the surface just on principle after a minute or two. Didn't blame him.

This weekend just past I suggested a place we'd been before, almost exactly a year ago: Huntington Road, another abandoned stretch of an otherwise ongoing concern. Southern Ontario seems full of roads that suddenly close for just one concession or range and then resume again on the other side; most of them decades ago. We were on the same path last October and walked as far as the little bridge over the muddy creek, encountered people walking dogs, and so on. I had hoped to get into the glorious stands of golden-leaved trees but P-Doug wasn't feeling well and we simply headed back to the car and spent some good time at a local pub we frequent in the area. It was, as I expected, the last barefoot hike of the year.

As I imagine was this last trip to Huntington Road. Fortunately we've had a nice upswing in the temperature and it's quite comfortable again. This time, we headed into the forest rather than going to the bridge. The views were magnificent. The forest floor was carpeted with leaves two or three inches deep; it was like natural shag carpeting. The day was overcast and intermittently sunny; there was hardly a breath of wind. This year, we didn't see anyone else on the trail; I was surprised. At one point we sat on a promontory over the Humber valley and the silence was profound. We could hear a pile driver working on some farm, miles away. I honestly wouldn't have thought that kind of stillness was possible in the GTA anymore and it was wonderful to experience it, especially at a time when the forest floor was dry, the mosquitoes were gone, and the air was just exactly the right temperature. We both wondered what the place is like in summer. We're talking about going back next year and having a look.

Afterwards we went to Oakville to visit my friend Bolt, whom I have acquainted P-Doug with in recent days. Bolt's dad passed away in September and as P-Doug knows something of the human side of probate, I thought it would good for them to talk. Bolt's been having some trouble with his sister who seems to think that since their mother has Alzheimer's, the money is now effectively theirs since they manage it. He's been trying, without much success, to rein her in. At least we can be there to bolster his courage and offer a sympathetic ear, if little else.

Retroactive geotagging with Picasa and Google Earth

I've discovered... wait, discovered? That makes it sound like it was my idea. Let me rephrase that. I've learned, to my utter delight, how to use Picasa and Google Earth to geotag my older photographs... that is, the vast, vast majority of the ones I took before getting my Phototrakr a few months ago.

It didn't work for me right off the bat. Google Earth didn't like something in my setup and when opening in its default setting, it gave me a blank screen where the map was supposed to be. I did a little reading the other day and realized there are three settings for how it opens by default. One is to open in DirectX mode. I tried that and it worked. When Google Earth opens, you're greeted with a globe of the Earth, as if you are approaching it from space. It rotates beneath you to a default position over North America. When you select a location... Toronto, say... it gracefully zooms you in, and from there you can start navigating.

Picasa is great at cataloguing your images. If any of them have EXIF information, which would be pretty much everything I have since I bought the Kodak DC4800 in early 2001, you can select them and then choose Tools > Geotag > Geotag with Google Earth. The pictures are then transferred to a little slider in Google Earth. You select a photo (or possibly more than one; I haven't actually tried that yet) and, dragging the map (yes, the map, not the photo!) to position the specific location under the crosshairs, you click the Geotag button and the location is recorded. When you're done, the geotag information is appended to each tagged photo's EXIF information. Any program or service that can mine that tag, like Flickr, can use it to represent the location on the map where your photo was taken.

To me, this is an important advance. For several years now, cameras have been able to tell you a lot about the circumstances of a photo's creation... the exact time and date it was taken (regardless of what the file info says of creation or modification date), what make and model of camera took it, the aperture, ISO, exposure duration, EV settings, flash, special settings, on and on and on. But there was no way to communicate (or even remember, necessarily) where in the world, the country, the city the photo was taken. Now there is, even for photos not explicitly married to tracking utilities.

I think in a few years it will be common for cameras to have geotracking facilities built right into them. In a way, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already; cell phones are everywhere, as are GPS systems and devices. But until then, we have some effective work-arounds.

My first photo geotagged this way and placed on Flickr (which picked up the geotag)...

Latitude: N 43° 39' 11.03"
Longitude: W 79° 20' 55.93"

HDR from a single RAW

Just lately I've discovered the joys of working with RAW image format in a big way. Previously, I didn't have much use for it, but Photomatix has come out with a new version that takes a RAW image, processes it itself, and creates what they call a "pseudo" HDR (high dynamic range, if you're new to this) image from the information in the RAW. (Again, if you're new to this, RAW is the generic term for any file generated by a digital camera that simply captures what the sensor received without processing it.)

I got into HDR stuff about two years back. Basically, it requires you take an AEB spread of at least three images; one underexposed, one overexposed, and one balanced. The detail in the highlights is in the underexposed, and the detail in the shadows is in the overexposed shot. Combine the three and you can an image with startling clarity. The trick is making sure the camera doesn't move during the three (or more) exposures.

One way around that is to shoot RAW. A RAW image typically has 12 to 14 bits of information per pixel, rather than just 8 for a single JPG image. There's also the added advantage that, since it's a single exposure, there's no need to worry about anything moving from shot to shot, or the camera tilting slightly (a tripod can address the latter only).

I haven't worked a lot with RAW for two reasons. Mostly, I couldn't think of a good application for it that justified the huge footprint of the file (usually twice or more the size of a JPG). But also because the vast majority of the photographic work I've done in the past two years was using my S80, and for reasons known to them alone, Canon dropped the RAW format from the PowerShot S line with that model (my S70 shoots RAW). For big treks I'd often bring my Rebel XT, and it, of course, shoots RAW (so it was the source of most of the material I've been experimenting with the past few days). But, again, I rarely shot RAW because there was little reason to... it just meant ages of processing just to see the image. But, now I'm carrying around a G9 that does shoot RAW, and Photomatix gives me a reason to, so I'm considering making RAW my default format rather than JPG.

When I started in HDR, the idea seemed to be to make something as garish and eye-catching as possible. But I can see now that the real treasure in the process is actually making something that's hyper-real, rather than something from a acid trip. Carefully done, an HDR image can look like something from real life, but at a glance can show you the details in highlights and shadows that you normally cannot see all at once. Your eyes would have to adjust to view either one, or the other. And so while the scene looks real, there's a slight, exhilarating otherworldliness to them in the, well, range of what you can see all at one time. Now to me, there's a real value in that, which is why I'm thinking of taking all my shots this way and processing the really interesting ones with Photomatix to show people the entirety of what was really there.

A few purists I've read have said you can't get a good HDR image out of a RAW. I beg to differ. I know from my own experience it doesn't work every time, but then again, neither does a three-image AEB spread either. In both cases, you seem to get the best results when there's a lot of light in the scene, or at the very least, a lot of contrast. But you can be the judge for yourself. The following are HDR images I've recently teased out of single RAW exposures.

A little photography on the weekend

On Friday, I bought a Canon Powershot S80... several reasons... it's nearly the P&S equivalent of my Rebel XT (except it literally fits in my pocket), it does AEB spreads, it's 8-megapixal with good macro and unusually wide angle facilities, and I was told it's being discontinued. It's hard to find in Toronto; seems to sell out the minute it hits a store. All good indicators.

And I think it is a heck of a good camera. I've had a lot of fun with it already.

This past weekend the Don Valley Parkway was closed for maintenance. I suggested to P-Doug this was a once-in-dog's-age opportunity to shoot the empty highway, so down we went.


High dynamic range image (created from a three-photo auto-exposure bracketing spread) of the DVP, looking southward in the southbound lanes south of Lawrence Avenue. This was taken using the S80.


High dynamic range, infrared image taken from Lawrence Avenue, looking south (somewhere in this shot is the spot I was standing in the one above). This was taken using my infrared-converted Canon G1.


Climbing up to the onramp/offramp at Lawrence (this shot was taken just before the one above). Again, this is an HDR IR shot taken with my Canon G1.


A crop of a macro shot of a tiny wasp, taken with the S80. The little white dots are salt crystals. This wasp was perhaps 1/16" long, and the lens was about an inch from it when I took the shot.


Another macro shot with the S80.


On Saturday, P-Doug and I took in an art gallery down on King Street. This piece is called "Puppy", and it's by Jeff Koons.