Vito Paratore Photography » driftwood

Featured: Loch Ness Driftwood

Vito Paratore — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:28:58 +0000

This is one of my favorite photos from the Manasquan Reservoir. When I showed this to one of my friends, they mentioned that the largest piece of driftwood looks like the Loch Ness monster. I had not noticed it before then, but I see it every time I look at the photo. It took quite a while after sunrise for the sun to finally burn off the thick fog. I have been hoping for fog this thick again ever since.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 4.1

Vito Paratore — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:03:03 +0000

Yesterday, I found time to remove the airplane trails from the image. It was interesting to see how many airplanes flew by during one of the thirteen three-minute exposures.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 4

Vito Paratore — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:00:17 +0000

As mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I was able to take two trips to the reservoir: Last night and Wednesday night. Last night, I was more successful in lighting the foreground. I used a Maglite flashlight to “paint” the foreground with light. I used the stacking technique in both attempts, which gave me a bit of flexibility with the foreground. I used the flashlight on the first and last exposures I took; that way if one was too bright or two dark, I had the other one as a backup. It turned out I exposed too much light on the first frame, so I used the last frame for the foreground.

For this photo, I was facing a few degrees west of south, so my trails were longer. I got to the spot earlier as well, so my total, stacked exposure was twice as long as Wednesday night’s (approx. 42 minutes). I was amazed at the number of airplanes that flew over during that 42 minutes. Most of them did not expose on the image, but you can see a few there now. For any prints I may make of this shot, I will probably clone them out.

Manasquan Reservoir: Star Trails 3

Vito Paratore — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:46:04 +0000

Last night, I rode my bike 4 miles in the dark to shoot star trails in 16 degree weather, with around 25mph wind gusts. I was prepared for the cold and was warm enough. Other than the issue of ambient light in New Jersey, I have come up with two main things I could do next time to make this shot better: First, the foreground is barely visible (on my monitor, at least) and could do for more detail. Second, I should have used ISO 400 instead of 200, so the stars would be brighter while potentially having more stars visible. My next blog entry will include tonight’s photo, which takes both points into account, leading to a better result. Tonight’s photo, however, has much less wind, so the reflections aren’t as soft and nice as this one.

Featured: Driftwood Stump in Fog

Vito Paratore — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:58:59 +0000

Here is the first blog post of my ‘Featured Photographs’ category. This category will include photos that I have grown particularly fond of for one reason or another. The photos could be from the last trip I took or from a few years ago. I will include any special techniques I used in making each featured photograph.

This photo was taken at the Manasquan Reservoir in Howell, New Jersey. This man-made lake has a very interesting landscape. Large numbers of dead trees reach into the water, making for many unique compositions. With little rain over the past few months, the water level has dropped creating a strip of land that reaches out in to the water amongst these trees. The receding water uncovers the stumps and root systems of many of these trees.

The dead trees and fog give this photo a desolate feel. I like the variations in the coloring of the trees and how they fade into the fog. The roots of the foreground tree creates many leading lines, guiding your eye around the photo. I usually do not like a pure white sky, but I think it fits well into the feel of this photo. I hope you enjoy it.

Star Trails: New Technique

Vito Paratore — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:26:24 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I tried out a new technique for star trails. For normal star trail images, you use a tripod and lock your shutter open for long periods of time. This new technique makes use of Photoshop’s blending mode, lighten, to stack many shorter exposures. The upside to this is much less noise, more control over foreground exposure, and more visible star trails. The main downside I have found with it so far is the milliseconds between the exposures leaves gaps in the final image. These gaps are minuscule and only visible if you are looking for them, but could impact a large print.

The images I posted below shows a major advantage and disadvantage of stacking. Clouds rolled in during the exposure, blocking off the stars for portions of the exposures. This led to the easily visible gaps in the trails. How the clouds end up in the final merged image shows why stacking has incredible potential. The blending mode in Photoshop called “lighten,” when used with the top layer of two or more layers, shows only the pixels of the layer its used on that are brighter than the layer below. It is a hard concept to write out, but you will see it’s effects once you try it. Because it only shows the brighter pixels, the clouds cover everywhere they were in the frame, but do not get brighter or fuller in areas where there are clouds in more than one of the exposures.

I haven’t had the opportunity to try this on a completely clear night, but I will post my results from future trips during which I have a clear sky. If you have any questions about this technique, please comment, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.