Lassini Light Works

N8USY is back on the air!

Here I am again, posting from a plane on the way west. Work is taking me back to my favorite desert hangout, Ridgecrest, CA. It will be a very busy week, but I did manage to pack my camera in the hope of catching some sunrise landscapes, before the mercury settles around 110 in the shade!
On the way there I’ll stop for lunch in L.A. And meet with my friend Don Wood to catch up and talk photography, computers and printers!

Stefano

Today I had a moment to rework an image that I took in November 2008 during the Printing Summit with Alain Briot, Uwe Steinmueller and Tony Sweet. The image is again an HDR rendering of 3 captures, taken handheld at sunset. The image was captured with my EOS 5D and a 16-35/F2.8L @28mm/f5.6. The capture shows quite a bit of CA in the branches against the sky, which is exacerbated by the HDR processing… I wish I had my 24-70/F2.8L mounted, which would have had much better control of CA, but it was a moment of opportunity while walking back from Fairy Land on the rim trail of Bryce Canyon, and I did not think about swapping lenses.

The initial rendition of this image was done with Photomatix, but I decided to re-process the original captures with HDR Expose, which I just installed as an upgrade of HDR Photostudio 2.

Hanging On - Bryce Canyon 2008 - Patriot Spirit trees series

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Posted from Lowell, Michigan, United States.

Since my early foray in black and white photography in my teens I wanted to experiment with alternative printing materials and chemistries. I had a few semi-successful experiments with gum bichromate emulsion exposed in sunlight from contact negatives when I still lived in Italy, but never managed to get something that looked anywhere decent. Part of the problem was my inexperience, but a lot of it had to do with the lack of information on how to go about alternative photography media. I had heard of other chemistries besides gum bichromate, but all seemed to include very toxic reagents, and nobody wanted to trust a teen-ager with cyanide and such… (probably a good thing).

Now, thanks to the internet, a lot more info is available and thanks to Bostick & Sullivan a multitude of platinum, palladium and other exotic chemistries are easily obtained, so I decided it is time to give it another try!

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Posted from Lowell, Michigan, United States.

Epson 4800 or Canon 6300? decision time…

Processing of the images from the southern Utah workshop is proceeding much more slowly than I would like, but work has been very busy… So while I am figuring out the best workflow for using Raw Developer and HDR Photostudio 2 in the most effective way to develop my ‘Patriot Spirit’ trees images, I decided to post a quick conversion of one of several captures of cactus flowers along Hole in the Rock road. This images was taken handheld with my 24-70/2.8L set at 60 mm, f/4.5, 1/320s.

Pink Beavertail Cactus flowers along Hole in the Rock road

The intense pink of the flowers will present a printing challenge, as it will test the gamut of any inkset. I had to tone down the saturation to avoid gamut clipping in the sRGB web output. The final print will have a more intense color, as well as more saturated stamens, but that will have to be done selectively on dedicated layers.

This was a pleasant and unexpected opportunity on the way to Devil’s Garden, thanks to the active weather. It is very uncommon to have soft light and rain drops on cacti in the middle of a summer day! For a while 12 photographers were scurrying about with their cameras like kids in a toy store just before Christmas!

Stefano

Here is the second image in my Pioneer Spirit tree series. This little solitary pine (compare its size to the blades of grass for a sense of the real proportions) has staked his ground at the base of a large hoodoo formation in Devil’s Garden, Escalante basin, UT.  In this arid and rugged land life seems to sprout in the most improbable places, and thrive on sheer rock, sand and the mere traces of soil. It is not the physical size but the resilience that makes this tree a little giant in its environment. To emphasize this, I captured this image using an exaggerated perspective with the Canon TS-E 17 f/4L on my EOS 5D MK II.

Life taks hold in the most improbable places within Devil's Garden, Escalante Basin, UT

The camera was placed as low to the ground as my tripod allowed, with the front of the lens approximately 18 inches away from the tree. The image was composed using some vertical shift to achieve the desired composition and perspective. A stormy sky, courtesy of the thunderstorms that were traversing the area, adds drama and interest to the image, and helps in conveying the sense of the ruggedness of the area.

Notwithstanding the cloud cover there was a lot of contrast in the scene, as the image was captured in the early afternoon. To control the contrast and achieve the desired result the image was bracketed (0, +2, -2) and then rendered as an HDR using HDR Photostudio 2. The result has the dramatic impact of an HDR image with little if any of the halos that make most HDR images unrealistic. This image is straight from HDR Photostudio and has not been through the layer-based optimization that will turn it into a fine art print, but the result from the initial merge are interesting enough and I wanted to get it online as a preview ASAP.

Stay tuned for more!

Stefano

Posted from Lowell, Michigan, United States.

Since my first trip to Bryce Canyon I have been fascinated by the pines that grow along the rim. Their tenacity in the face of a hostile environment represents for me a metaphor of the spirit of America’s pioneers, and  for that they have a special place in my heart. I will have a series of three or four fine art prints based on this theme in the next few weeks, but I wanted to share a quick HDR rendering of a particular tree that caught my attention at sunrise.

Here is ‘Standing Tall’, as a preview of the beauty of Bryce.

Standing Tall - on the rim of Bryce Canyon's Sunrise Point

This image was rendered from three raw captures (0, -2, +2) using HDR Photostudio 2.

Posted from Lowell, Michigan, United States.

We just returned home from a busy and fun week in Utah with Alain Briot, and we are just starting to process the 30 Gb of images that we captured during the workshop.

It has been a wonderful experience, traveling for five days across some of the most spectacular landscapes of the USA, studying composition and living nothing but photography and art in the company of 10 other landscape photography enthusiasts and two great instructors, Alain and Natalie Briot. It was an intense workshop, as each day we would meet before sunrise (around 5:30 am) on location to capture the morning light, and we would continue to drive to different locations, photograph and learn throughout the day until past sunset (around 9:00 pm).

Checking histograms, getting ready for the sun to rise.

The weather was cooler than we expected, and before sunrise some days it was downright chilly, but the spectacular scenery made it well worth the effort. The mixed weather also brought a series of interesting photographic opportunities, dramatic skies, macro of cactus flowers with fresh raindrops on them and excellent daytime shooting thanks to soft light from overcast sky. It also kept the days somewhat cool, which I much appreciated (not so much for Whitney).

We have a lot of work to do to prepare our best captures for printing, but we are definitely newly energized in our photography! We have already started to discuss what workshop we will attend next! In the upcoming week or so we should have the first gallery from this workshop uploaded to the blog, make sure to come back and check it out!

Stefano

Posted from Lowell, Michigan, United States.

We just started our trip to Utah, first stop Zion!
Packing for this trip required some planning, but so far it is working out. The biggest challenge is the restriction on carry on baggage imposed by the airline, especially when flying on regional jets, which nowadays is almost unavoidable out of Grand Rapids.
To keep our equipment safe we purchased two Pelikan 1500 cases with padded dividers. These are legal roll aboard size on regular airliners, and are the sturdiest available cases that we trust to be gate checked with our gear on RJs.
In addition we have a lowepro backpack with the 5D Mk II and the TS-E 17, plus the RRS panoramic setup and various odds and ends. Whitney is carrying a Swiss Army backpack with the MacBook pro, the iPads and the GPS.

We checked the tripods with our clothes, my lowepro harness, the camelbacks and lots of sunscreen! The weather is going to be sunny and hot, and we both turn lobster-like in just a few minutes of sun exposure… yay for SPF45!

We’ll pick up our rental in Las Vegas and head straight for Zion, in time to check in our hotel and enjoy the sunset! Tomorrow we meet with the group and we’re off!

Update:

We made it to Springdale in good time, and all of the equipment made it with us. I am very happy about the Pelikan 1500 cases: they fit well in overhead bins and kept everything safe. Tomorrow we’ll have a leisurely morning scoping around the place and preparing our gear for the sunset shot with the group. The location is phenomenal, and I am sure we’ll be back in the future!

Posted from Hurricane, Utah, United States.