Archive of ‘Technology’ category

Happy Birthday!

We are planning another birthday celebration for my mother tonight! She has been very busy lately, and it can be tough to keep up with her schedule. Last weekend, she was a sponsor at a wedding that I photographed, so she was in many of the photos. Since I am still working on those images, I have not found any with her from Saturday, so those will have to wait. It’s a good thing, she has been a prolific photographer and photography subject for a long time!

McKee-Beshers-2014-©TimeLine-Media
McKee-Beshers-2014-©TimeLine-Media

Recently, I have had many of our old negatives scanned into digital form so that we can catalog them better. They were just sitting in drawers around her house and garage, and no one has seen them in a long time. It is time to really get them into a format that we can view and share them. I suggest that you do this while you still remember who is in these frames.

On-campus
On-campus
At-Canada-border
At-Canada-border

Just like with society at large, the number of our photos has exploded with digital technologies. But even in the film days, my parents were prolific shutterbugs. There are negatives, prints, and slides all over the place. I may never get to all of them, but it is worth the effort to try. There are so many great ways to share them online. It is not just your memories that you are sharing, it is so much fun to add them to the collective of your friends. This has been my favorite part of social media, and it probably fuels my photographic inspiration in my job. I feel like I am adding to personal histories, and I hope that my images will last at least as long as my family’s images. They are all worth preserving!

Overlooking-NYC
Overlooking-NYC
2008-birthday-celebration-©TimeLine-Media
2008-birthday-celebration-©TimeLine-Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Busy Monday

This last weekend was very busy for TimeLine Media! There have been so many hits to the website which I was expecting with the expiring events. We know it was a busy weekend in the northern Virginia area for ballroom dancers as they competed at the Virginia State Dancesport Championships in Reston, VA. I have enjoyed seeing everyone’s images of the great dancing! We were busy with our own photography projects out of town, but you will have to wait to see our results from that on the blog – there are some great images, and I am excited to share those soon.

Baltimore-Dancesport-Challenge-©TimeLine-Media
Baltimore-Dancesport-Challenge-©TimeLine-Media

As a reminder, the Baltimore Dancesport Challenge photos expire today. They will no longer be viewable on the website, and it will take some time to get them out of the archive after they are removed. Thanks to all the participants that visited the website, and purchased photos from this event!

Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media
Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media

I need to get back to putting in orders and editing photos, so this will not be a big post. If you were following me on Twitter or Instagram, you may have noticed a new camera in the feed. Last week was the official launch date for the new Nikon D810 camera. I was lucky enough to get a copy from my local camera store, and I was eager to make some test images. So, I went out to a small lily patch in the side yard.

Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media
Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media

Luckily, there was someone else on the shoot that I really did not see until after I zoomed in! The very high megapixel count of this camera allowed me to see this lawn big so clearly! I immediately grabbed a macro lens to see how close I could get to this guy. He made it a fun shoot, and a perfect setting to test some new gear.

Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media
Bug-on-a-lily-©TimeLine-Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Panoramic photos – Tech Thursday

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Trying to get in a large scene in one photo can be difficult if you do not have the right tools with you. While traveling, you may see panoramic scenes that you come across that are a challenge to get in one frame. This is especially true if you have a fixed lens camera. Moreover, a limited amount of time to get your photos adds to the problem. All the photos on this post were made with the Fuji X100s which as a fixed 35mm equivalent lens. It is not particularly wide, and I had no chance to get the entire tower of Milwaukee’s City Hall with this camera. Especially with the tour group moving on to the next point of interest, I had to go quickly. If you come across something similar, remember Photoshop for later. It is very good at creating panoramas from multiple images taken in series. For this attempt, I took this series of photos:

Source images for panorama - ©TimeLine Media
Source images for panorama – ©TimeLine Media

Post Processing

Starting at the bottom of the building, I took seven photos from the street to the top. I made sure that there was overlapping areas in each photo. Having this overlap will help the software find common points that will make for a more seamless panorama. One tip that I would give when you attempt this with landscape formatted photos going in a vertical direction for large tower structures such as this would be to turn change the orientation of the photos to portrait orientation prior to merging. Here is what the source images looked like after turning them 90 degrees clockwise:

Source images for panorama turned clockwise - ©TimeLine Media
Source images for panorama turned clockwise – ©TimeLine Media

After this, let Photoshop do the rest of the work! Open all the source images, then select File > Automate > Photomerge. Next, select the “Add Open Files” in the dialog box, and click OK. Photoshop will now work on the images, and will pop out a merge file:

Merged photos from Photoshop photo merge - ©TimeLine Media
Merged photos from Photoshop photo merge – ©TimeLine Media

Because of the perspective differences with each photo in the panorama, this is the result. There are some areas where there is no data resulting in the blank spaces on either side of the photo. I just use the crop tool to remove these areas to get the final, large panoramic image!

Milwaukee City Hall - ©TimeLine Media
Milwaukee City Hall – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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