#52weekproject – Week 23: Mazama Village Campgrounds

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Justin Le

Crater Lake, Oregon

52wp-W23 Crater Lake Mazama Campground 2014-09-27

Taken Friday, September 26, 2014.

Drove into Crater Lake National Park, well after sundown. After we set up our tents, I decided to set up my cameras for some long exposure timelapses of the sky, even though I was kind of exhausted. Really wanted to do this timelapse over Crater Lake, but driving back up those switchbacks in the dark from the campground didn’t seem appealing. Unfortunately, putting off til tomorrow what could have been done that day came back to bite me, as the following night was cloudy, and windy, so unfortunately, I didn’t end up getting any starscapes over Crater Lake. Looks like I’ll have to go back out to some other time!

I did crop the photo a bit to balance the image, and cut out the truck and the light from the bathroom. And, since I did do a timelapse with this, I was also able to stack the photos into a startrails photo. Using a different method than I have before, I stacked these in photoshop, grouped them as a smart object, and set the Stack Mode to median, which I think gave a more pleasant result than I typically get (the trails usually look more jagged and noisy). I’m still learning some of the post-processing on these photos, but overall, it’s pretty solid! Let me know what you think, or if you have any tips, or tutorials to share!

#52weekproject: Week 22 – Looking in the Loop

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Justin Le

Taken on Friday, September 12th, 2014. Left work late on a drizzly Friday, when I took this photo on the corner right by my office. I was killing some time waiting for my cousin to come into the city on the Metra, so I had some plans on taking some more train photos in the loop from a parking garage I had spotted earlier that week. While I was checking my settings, I decided to take a few test shots and was checking my manual focus skills when this lady spotted me with my camera. I don’t normally take street photos like this, because it feels a little creepy to take pictures of people I don’t know. But I kinda liked how it turned out, so that’s why I’m posting it here.

If I could change a couple things, I’d have moved a bit to my left, so she would be directly in the middle of the crosswalk lines, where the eyes are naturally drawn by the leading lines, and have the taxi just a little further to the right to balance the picture. The wet streets adds some good contrast, but I would have loved to make it rain a bit more (like I do in the clubs).

Here are a few other photos I took.

#52weekproject: Week 19: State Street Bridge

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Justin Le

Week 19: State Street Bridge

Taken Sunday, August 10th, 2014 in downtown Chicago.

After catching up with my friend Joanna the night before, she mentioned that she there happened to be some construction work on the waterfront walkway and that the State Street bridge was raised up during that time. Even though I have been in the city for over 2 years now, I can’t recall ever seeing one of these main bridges up, so I knew I had to go check it out.

Fortunately, it was not raining by the time I went for a wander downtown, but it was misty and the fog had rolled in. I was half-worried the clouds would just open up and start pouring, but I’m glad it didn’t. I ended up with a few shots I liked, but since I was looking for a square image, this one seemed to fit the bill the best. Taken from the Dearborn Street Bridge, shooting east. I’ll post a few more photos below.

Fun Fact:

The State Street bridge is also known as the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Bridge, in honor of the World War II defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (Which is a peninsula and island in the Philippines which played an important role in World War II).

#52weekProject: Week 5 – Freelensing Chicago

Image | Posted on March 17, 2014 by Justin Le

Week 5: Freelensing Chicago

The Chicago Theater

Decided to try a little bit of free-lensing for this week right around the corner from work. Taken Monday, March 3rd, 2014.

What is free-lensing, you ask? (No, you didn’t. But I’ll tell you anyway.) Free-lensing is when you take your lens off of the body and hand hold it, so you can tilt and shift the lens to create a different plane of focus (basically a poor man’s tilt-shift lens).

I used a 50mm lens from my medium format Bronica ETRSi setup, which allows me a little more room to tilt and shift the lens without drastic vignetting, but you do end up with a softer image and some light leaks. Not sure I really dig it the final image, but you know, it’s all about trying something new!

#52weekproject: Week 4 – Getting Flashed in the Park

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Justin Le

Jared and Hagene

GTFO! Going To Flipping Oregon!

Sometimes, you find yourself so irritated with your friends, that the only way to get away from them is to move just about as far away as possible. And that’s just what my friends, Jared and Hagene did. Sure, they claim it was because Hage landed this really awesome job opportunity with Nike, but one can never really be sure, you know?

Last Monday was their last night in town. They gathered some of their closest friends in Chicago (which I assume includes me, since I was there) for a low-key farewell dinner at Bricks Pizza. We enjoyed some laughs over drinks, and thin-crust pizza, and ended with some hugs, tears, and farewells. It was definitely a bittersweet farewell, as Hage has been one of my best friends for over 13 years. We’ve been friends since our time in the dorms at the University of Michigan, and she was kind enough to tolerate me and let me crash on her couch when she convinced me to take a job in Chicago a couple years ago. So, to me, I’m not really saying “farewell”, I’m just saying, “Hey, can’t wait to crash on your couch in Portland!”

Just around the corner from the restaurant was a park bench, which was basically the first thing I saw that would be suitable for them to sit on. Temps were hovering in the single digits, so I tried to make it this portrait session as quick as possible. I did my best Chris Hansen impression and asked:

“Why don’t you take a seat over there?”

They did as I asked, and got comfy as I set up my equipment. I set up my flash and lightstand with a white shoot through umbrella just to the right, and started moving quickly. I had everything set up manually; triggering the flash with some cheapo (but super reliable, yongnuo rf-602) flash triggers. So yeah, I was the flasher in the park.

The Brenizer Method

So, sure, this looks like a pretty straightforward portrait, shot strobist style. But, that’s the genius behind the whole thing. It’s not an ordinary portrait. It’s shot using a unique technique which replicates the look of large format by allowing more shallow depth of field than is capable with a full-frame camera. How is this done you ask? By taking a series of overlapping photos that can be stitched together and expanding that photo into a larger panorama. This technique is known as a bokeh panorama, or expansion, but more commonly referred to as the Brenizer Method. It’s pretty awesome.

So, I’ve known about this technique for a while, but never really put it into practice. I’ve always had trouble with getting panoramas to line up and stitch together properly, but I think that’s likely because I’m using too wide of a lens. Here, I’m using a 85mm, so I can get more shallow depth of field, but it also means there’s less distortion in the photo, which makes it easier to stitch together. I did still have to do a little filling in since I missed the bottom right corner, but I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt.

Shot with my D800, and a total of 21 shots. I downsized each photo to a 12mp jpeg before I stitched them together (otherwise, it would have been way too big for my computer to handle). I still ended up with a 60 megapixel photo (or what would have been 180 megapixels if I hadn’t resized). And, the extra bonus is that with the larger image, the noise is reduced (or at least smaller when resized), so the image looks extra smooth.

So, yeah. Super happy with the results from this week’s project. Anybody else try this technique before?

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