History, Scenery, and Wonderful Roads—VA & WV at Their Best

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Re: History, Scenery, and Wonderful Roads—VA & WV at Their B

Postby Rick F. » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:34 pm

henwin wrote:
Rick F. wrote:Let's face it: Some tours are better than others. This one was spectacular, from start to finish, and it had everything: Historical sites, exceptional scenery, and winding, climbing, and diving roads throughout, with smooth surfaces and minimal traffic. In fact, it would have been perfect but for the fact that Churchville had run out of their famous apple butter. But I'm quibbling already…Rick F.

WOW! =D> =D> What a travelogue :!: I'm extremely impressed, like everyone else. Your pics are quite something. But as a photog, myself, I'm always curious about how others have achieved their often spectacular looking results...therefore, I've got to ask: did you manipulate the colors at all, do any special processing to them (and if yes, what)? What camera/lenses do you use?

I actually have a photo in Dale's (Coyner) book (Motorcycle Journeys Through the Appalachians)--I've known him for over 20 years! It's on page 290. But you've given me an idea...wifey's going to be out of town starting in late June. Time for some day trips and short overnight trips??? We'll see.

Again, many thanks for some wonderful writing, not to mention, photographing! +100 =D>


Henry,

I've very glad that you enjoyed the trip report and photos so much--thanks for the compliment!

Regarding the photos, I got bitten by the HDR bug a few years ago, after many years of regular film photography and then digital shots. In some respects, it's like using a really powerful polarizing filter, but it really goes a long ways beyond that. The basic idea is to take 3 photos at -2, 0, and +2 stops. That way, you capture both shadow and highlight details along with the regular mid-range information. But then you have to combine the 3 photos into one. A few cameras will now do the whole works automatically, but otherwise you have to use software.

PhotoShop has rudimentary HDR capability, but I quickly graduated to Photomatix Pro, which is easy to use and not expensive. If you want to experiment along these lines, I'd be glad to send you the settings I generally use. It's a lot of fun to experiment, although you can spend a lot of time in the process. Their website has some excellent tutorials.

As for whether the photos look "real" or not, I freely admit that mine tend to be a little over the top. I think they come closer to capturing the "real" colors, for vivid scenes, than standard digital camera settings produce, but my preference tends to go further. The results are usually pretty dramatic, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.

I use a Canon SX40 IS "super zoom" camera. It has all the manual controls and features I want (plus many others), and it's small enough to be convenient. Also, with a 40x zoom lens, you can get decent-enough quality pictures at anywhere from 28mm to whatever 40 times 28mm is--in other words, quite a range. It also has pretty high quality video and audio, for those times that a movie would be nice. Oh, and you can set it to automatically take 3 exposures at -2, 0, +2 stops, making the HDR aspect easy. Using a tripod gives the best results, but I hand-hold almost all of my photos and let the Photomatix software take care of aligning the images. Finally, I use the "vivid" color setting on the camera.

As for the end of June, sounds like you'll have a great time touring. Dale's routes have all been excellent. Other good candidates are the RoadRunner Magazine tours and MadMaps. Have a great time, and be sure to post some pic's of where you go!

Rick
For all my tour articles, check out rsftripreporter.net.

2020 Mercedes-Benz SL550
2013 BMW 335i convertible (sold)
2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage (sold)
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Re: History, Scenery, and Wonderful Roads—VA & WV at Their B

Postby Rick F. » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:39 pm

bdimon wrote:
henwin wrote:Your pics are quite something. But as a photog, myself, I'm always curious about how others have achieved their often spectacular looking results...therefore, I've got to ask: did you manipulate the colors at all, do any special processing to them (and if yes, what)? What camera/lenses do you use?


I'll second the question. The colors in these photos are outstanding! You could write a book on photography. You mention HDR and I've seen good results with it on my phone but my "real" camera does not have it. Did you do post-processing on these? I wonder if there is a program to do HDR on the computer from bracketed exposures. Time to Google...


Bruce,

Thanks very much! I'll warn you, however, that once you start down the HDR path, it's hard to go back. It does take more work than regular snapshots, but I really like the ability to get dramatic clouds and details in shadow areas all in the same photo. In that respect, the photo better matches the reality that you see. Whether the colors are amp'd up or not is up to you, but that's a discussion that goes back to the dawn of Kodachrome! As I mentioned to Henry above, check out the tutorials on the Photomatix Pro website for some ideas on how to use the software and the adjustments that are possible.

Rick
For all my tour articles, check out rsftripreporter.net.

2020 Mercedes-Benz SL550
2013 BMW 335i convertible (sold)
2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage (sold)
2006 BMW Z4 3.0i roadster (sold)
2005 BMW R1200GS (retired)
2003 BMW F650CS (sold)
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Re: History, Scenery, and Wonderful Roads—VA & WV at Their B

Postby Rick F. » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:43 pm

biometrics wrote:I recommend a new "TRAVELOGUE" forum be set up, and All of his Road Reports be stored there... What a wonderful eye for photography!

Thanks for sharing...


biometrics,

Thanks! An easier way to get a list of my reports is by using the advanced search feature. Even easier than that, here's a link to the results! Rick F.'s ride stories. It's a little slow to load, initially, since it's conducting a search, but thereafter it's pretty quick.

Enjoy!

Rick
For all my tour articles, check out rsftripreporter.net.

2020 Mercedes-Benz SL550
2013 BMW 335i convertible (sold)
2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage (sold)
2006 BMW Z4 3.0i roadster (sold)
2005 BMW R1200GS (retired)
2003 BMW F650CS (sold)
User avatar
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Re: History, Scenery, and Wonderful Roads—VA & WV at Their B

Postby Rick F. » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:46 pm

henwin wrote:
bdimon wrote:
henwin wrote:Your pics are quite something. But as a photog, myself, I'm always curious about how others have achieved their often spectacular looking results...therefore, I've got to ask: did you manipulate the colors at all, do any special processing to them (and if yes, what)? What camera/lenses do you use?


I'll second the question. The colors in these photos are outstanding! You could write a book on photography. You mention HDR and I've seen good results with it on my phone but my "real" camera does not have it. Did you do post-processing on these? I wonder if there is a program to do HDR on the computer from bracketed exposures. Time to Google...


There are, Bruce. One is called Photoshop and the other is Lightroom. I'm sure there are others, and I think there are even some freebies. You can even set some cameras to do the 3 successive exposures automatically, though it's probably a good idea to be working off a tripod at that point, since you really don't want to move the cam during the 3 exposures. I'm sure if you Google something like "HDR processing", you'll find something.

As an "old school" photographer, I'm not yet a fan of HDR--and may never be--since the photos don't look real to me. What's interesting to me about that perspective is that HDR may be more real that I think it is, and my "old-fashioned" expectations aren't measuring up. OTOH, with today's photo processing tools, HDR may simply be more trouble than it's worth.


Henry,

I forgot to mention that I'll be sure to check out your photo in Dale Coyner's book when I'm back home. Right now, I'm in Cape Cod, having explored my way here via interesting places in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. More trip reports to come!

Rick
For all my tour articles, check out rsftripreporter.net.

2020 Mercedes-Benz SL550
2013 BMW 335i convertible (sold)
2007 Aston Martin V8 Vantage (sold)
2006 BMW Z4 3.0i roadster (sold)
2005 BMW R1200GS (retired)
2003 BMW F650CS (sold)
User avatar
Rick F.
Board Wizard
 
Posts: 1734
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:43 pm
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