Crop This

8x10, why must you be so square? Your frames and mattes are so readily available, and yet you are virtually useless when it comes time to make a wide landscape print. Your cousin, 8x12, is much more reasonable, and yet nowhere to be found at Michaels or A.C. Moore. If only Aaron Brothers hadn't moved out of Maryland, there might be some hope.

In case you haven't already guessed, I've been in the process of making a lot of prints lately. This seems to happen every year as the weather cools and more time is spent on my butt indoors. It's time to put down the camera and make use of all those photos taken during summer travels. Nostalgic, isn't it?

As for the 8x10 dilemma, perhaps I should just start shooting everything with a Mamiya 7 like Ben Roberts. Then again, he also shoots with an Xpan. :-)

By the way, here's a shot from last March during a special overnight trip to Rocky Gap State Park here in Maryland. It's called Sidling Hill. It's worth a brief stop if you find yourself driving along the I-68 corridor.



This is also one of the photos I had to painfully crop down to 8x10. While it does still work, I think the drama of the striations is significantly diminished. Luckily the trees are still there to provide some struggle.

Reproportion

Photojournalists, cover your ears (or eyes, in this case). This does not apply to you.

One of the interesting properties of landscapes is that they can usually be stretched horizontally without anyone noticing. Hills become more gentle, rocks become flatter, but there's nothing particularly odd about that, so most people never question it. Why do we care? Because this can be very useful for creating a panoramic image from a relatively square one.

Not only can the image be stretched, but it can be selectively stretched. Here's an example with a single image of Chelsea:





The top image is the original, full frame of the photo. Chelsea clearly wouldn't appreciate it if I'd simply widened the whole image (and her figure along with it). Instead I widened only the areas to the left and right of her by doing the following:

• Resize the canvas (not the image) to the desired width.


• Select the landscape to the left of her with the Marquee tool.


• Edit -> Transform -> Scale...


• Stretch the selected area to the left until it fills the left side of the canvas and press Enter.


• Now do the same for the landscape to the right of her.

What I find amazing about this is that widened areas of the image blend right into the unaffected areas. It's a neat trick that can be selectively applied around people, trees, or any figure of known proportion. Give it a try!

Budds Creek

At some point last night, I was poking around flickr (again), and came across some cool motocross photos. Since the greater DC area seems to have just about everything, I figured there had to be some motocross racing around to shoot. Google revealed that Budds Creek Motocross Park was only about 90 minutes away. And wouldn't you know it, there were races this weekend. Perfect.

Before I was even through the gate, I could already tell that this was going to be different than my usual trips to Summit Point. They made everyone sign a waiver on entry, and with good reason; the motorcycles aren't just on the track. They share the pedestrian paths and tunnels throughout the park. Granted, the bikes aren't exactly quiet, but when there are dozens of them running around, some piloted by eight-year-olds, you better watch your back Jack.

For this trip, I'd brought along the trusty 1D Mark II, 17-40/4, 70-200/2.8, and 400/5.6. As you know, I prefer to pack light, but seeing as this was a new venue and sport for me, I figured I'd bring a wide range of lenses. It turns out that I used them all at one point or another. In a pinch, I probably could have done without the 400, but sometimes it's nice to compress the action and force extraneous details out of the frame.

The 1D Mark II is a beast of a camera. It's heavy and it doesn't have a lot of the standard features that have been added to cameras since 2003, but as a raw picture taking machine, it's very hard to beat. Nikon couldn't touch it until they came out with the D3 last year. I know this because my former D2H forced me to switch to Canon in 2005.



I was also pleasantly surprised at how wide the 17-40/4 looked with the 1D's 1.3x multiplier. 17mm comes out to about 22mm, which is still wider than my usual 24-105/4. I kind of threw it into my bag as an afterthought, but I shot quite a few pictures though it. I guess that's also a testament to how close the action is at Budds Creek.

One last note, watch out for all the Amish buggies on MD-236. I didn't encounter any in the morning, but on the return trip, there must have been at least a dozen of them on the six mile stretch.

Unforgetting Philadelphia

It's easy to forget how close Philadelphia is to Baltimore. In some ways, it's closer than DC. Likewise, it's not too far off the path to New York City, and yet it continues to be forgotten. We finally put a stop to some of the ignorance on Sunday.

Even though this was mainly an exploratory trip, I can recommend that you check out the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.  You can walk all the way across on either side of the bridge, though the south side seemed more scenic.  You can get on where the bridge intersects with 5th Street on the Philadelphia side.

Also, The Bourse is worth a quick stop, even if you aren't looking for fast food. It's a former stock exchange floor with plenty of character remaining in its atrium.  Oddly enough, there's also a Mexican consulate located on the third floor.  If only it were a British consulate, then the irony would be complete.

Granted, we barely scratched the surface by mainly staying in the touristy historical sections of town, but we had to start somewhere.  Additional depth will have to wait until the next trip.  And now that we know how close it is, there will certainly be a next trip.

Botanical 50

I've been meaning to slap the 50/1.8 (thrifty-fifty) back onto the 5D for a while. Lately it seems like I've been shooting everything with the 24-105/4, but there's no substitute for getting back to basics. Yesterday I took the opportunity at the United States Botanical Garden. By using the 5D's monochrome Picture Style with a red (digital) filter, I was able to bring out some of the contrasty patterns in the plants. I can only imagine what could be done with a real macro lens.

The botanical garden is often overlooked in DC, but it's worth a quick stop. It's not that large, but has a great variety of plants and environments. I was expecting it to be deathly hot inside in the middle of summer (i.e. greenhouse effect), but it was surprisingly pleasant, especially in the dehumidified desert section.