CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-23 18:38:22 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 41 +1s)

You Caption It

2013-05-22 23:36:57 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 119 +1s)

New York thru Central Park Panorama
Another of the huge giga images I've been doing lately.  This file is 31,000 pixels x 7,636 pixels without any interpolation.  What in the world I'm going to do with these huge files, I haven't figured out yet.

These are the only images I've done so far that really do need to be in a museum or a gallery to be appreciated.  I can look at them at 100% in PS - but these are files I'd really love to print and be able to stand back a few feet from.

Oh, in case you're wondering, this was shot from somewhere in Poets Walk - and it covers three views, east, south, and west.

2013-05-22 02:02:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Photographer's Memoir  Chapter 2 #memoirdlb

I get to work in a PR firm and more
Link to Chapter 1: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116247667398036716276/posts/Y4Jes81QMLV
[In previous chapter, I had left grad. film school to carried sandbags for low-budget feature films; worked my way up to focus puller and then lighting director; quit that to write scripts; sold one feature film; had the star die before production began; ran out of money; and found myself as a secretary at a large public relations firm in New York]
At that time,  it was unusual for a guy to be a secretary.  And although you might think that it was fun, it wasn't.  Secretaries, and administrative assistants, were the slaves of the organization.  I was at a the PR Firm - and one of my jobs (this is after finishing school at NYU MFA) and working on film sets, was to get coffee for whoeverneede... more »

2013-05-22 02:01:54 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 18 +1s)

Memoirs of a Photographer Part I #memoirdlb    #photographer

(I've written five sections so far.  How much of it has to do with photography - that remains to be seen.  But I am under the impression that most of what makes things interesting to an artist of any sort goes back to his / her childhood).

David is not living up to his potential.  My parents had to read that on almost all my report cards in public school.

In fact, that was true and one of the reasons I have almost no memories of my early school life.  I remember trying to get to a seat that was near a window so I could look out, even if it was just at a courtyard.

If I were in school today, I would be put on behavior-changing drugs.  It is also true, that once in a while would shoot up for no reason that anyone could fathom.  For example, in High School, I failed the Frenchstatewi... more »

2013-05-20 15:25:51 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 97 +1s)

From a series of shots...  photographers always love smoke... esp. in New York.

2013-05-17 22:58:44 (11 comments, 9 reshares, 144 +1s)

Images created with Giga Pan head and Kolor APG software.  In short, most of these images are composites of from 30 to 60 separate images stitched together.

2013-05-14 20:38:24 (4 comments, 5 reshares, 148 +1s)

Free Show Coney Island
#streetphotography  

2013-05-14 20:26:11 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 21 +1s)

I'm certain this means something - but what exactly - I can't say.
Babes and Marathon

2013-05-14 20:20:26 (2 comments, 3 reshares, 44 +1s)

But for some - the streets were really paved with gold... (see below)
Central Park

2013-05-14 20:13:29 (8 comments, 9 reshares, 108 +1s)

When immigrants arrived at the end of the 19th century, many believed that the streets were paved with gold.  They were in for a big surprise.

Fifth Avenue - Streets of Gold

2013-05-13 14:48:33 (5 comments, 5 reshares, 131 +1s)

#marseille #provence

2013-05-11 00:01:37 (3 comments, 5 reshares, 88 +1s)

The Future is Here

2013-05-10 23:13:27 (7 comments, 4 reshares, 94 +1s)

You Say Hello and I Say Goodbye
Do you think they were meeting - or saying goodbye?  
(btw shot with infrared film, not that it really matters)

2013-05-09 00:49:10 (23 comments, 3 reshares, 94 +1s)

Whistle While You Walk
What instrument is that?  Too big for a trumpet.  Too small for any sort of string instrument I can think of.  French Horn?  Don't they usually have a big curve in the box? Too small for a baritone horn.  

I'm stumped.

Anyway, if I'm with street photographers, I shoot street shots.  If I'm alone, I do the composite shots.  But I'm sure happy he was whistling.  Couldn't hear what he was whistling because they were blowing up things for the Second Avenue Subway.

2013-05-08 16:29:11 (15 comments, 17 reshares, 246 +1s)

Central Park Cherry Blossoms (composite of 50 images)

The fun thing with an image this size (original is roughly 10,000 pixels by 14,000 pixels) is to look at the detail at 100% view.  It of course fails to allow anything like that on the net - but let's just say that every blossom is crisp and sharp and could make an image of it's own.

The toughest part of the shooting was waiting for people to stop lying down under the falling blossoms.  It's true, that may have made a good picture, but they didn't lie still for a composite shot.

http://www.beckermanphoto.com/central-park-cherry-blossoms-composite.html

2013-05-06 15:56:37 (7 comments, 2 reshares, 39 +1s)

A Political Smile - Mayor Bloomberg

Shot at a Halloween Parade in Queens a few years ago.  There is a sort of mask that politicians wear that is more evident or at least more practiced than the masks the rest of us wear.

2013-05-06 14:56:03 (6 comments, 4 reshares, 106 +1s)

Pershing Square Composite
Here's one that I don't like much - but why should I only post the shots that I  like?   Here's an example of a composite (20-something images)  that only works in spots.  Pershing Square arch is nicely backlit, and I do like the lights in the building on right - but those damned vans in foreground... ugh... and the curve that I couldn't straighten out... ugh... I do like that square building in front of the Chrysler Building.  Anyway - it's easy enough to get back to this area and do it again.  

Next time, even though it's a composite (or pano) you can do away with the curve if you shoot with a longer lens (I was using a 20mm) which also means shooting a lot more images - and project it with the Plannar selection in APG...

After all - most of photography consists of failures.

2013-05-04 14:06:20 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 34 +1s)

An ancient article that seems to hold up.

2013-05-04 14:05:24 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

hmmm... can you spot what's new in the Canon 5ti ???  (Hint - I have an idea but not entirely sure).

2013-04-25 01:11:58 (9 comments, 13 reshares, 185 +1s)

Hazy Shade of Winter

I’ve started to add the panos which I now call composites to the store.  They’re not in panoramic form of 2 x 1, and people just don’t consider them panos, so I came up with Composites.

Anyway, that’s not why I started to write this post.  I just wanted to give you an example of the degree of detail available and the size of some of these things.  This is not even a particularly large one.  So first here’s the shot you see on the web, which I’m calling A Hazy Shade of Winter.

And then a 100% detail (guy on bench).  Click his image for the Lightroom info.

Think about it.  Shot with a 50mm lens.  Huge. And every bit of it is in perfect focus.

2013-04-25 00:06:51 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 21 +1s)

my favorite so far from what i'm now calling "composites" as opposed to panos.  

2013-04-21 21:55:09 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 18 +1s)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2019904644/big-silver-gelatin-prints
DSI (Digital Silver Imaging - the lab I use) just started a Kickstarter Drive to try and purchase a very expensive piece of equipment for doing up to 48" true silver fiber prints. 

They already do silver prints that I think are up to 20 inches...? Whatever. One of the prizes they're offering (which I've already seen the print of) is a beautiful silver print of my Brooklyn Bridge and Willows (shot on Kodak Infrared film).

If you can spare a few bucks - it's for a good cause.

2013-04-20 21:12:34 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 113 +1s)

Alice Tully Hall (12 image composite)
Even though these images are made with Giga Pano software and hardware - I think it may avoid confusion if I just call them composite images.

2013-04-20 15:03:51 (6 comments, 7 reshares, 115 +1s)

What is a Pano Anyway?
I may have made a mistake in calling all these images that have been stitched together with Giga Pano software - panoramics or panos.  At least that is the idea that several people have written to me about.  It's true that many of the images I've been doing are composed of from 6 to 60 separate shots - but they aren't usually in the Panoramic Aspect which I suppose is about length 2 by height 1 or the other way around.

The early attempts were more or less class panoramics - long to short ratios with wide angle lenses (mostly) and maybe showing 180 or 360 degrees of a scene.  There's no doubt those are recognized as panos.  But what happens when you take that pano that was originally composed of 60 images and you project it using the planar projection so that lines in the middle are rather straight - and you crop off the edges where the planarpro... more »

2013-04-21 05:44:53 (17 comments, 26 reshares, 280 +1s)

Central Park - Spring Panorama made up of 12 images, in other words - huge. #spring2013  

2013-04-19 19:45:23 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Began putting a lot of my work up on Pinterest.  It's an interesting idea, but you probably know that already.

http://pinterest.com/beckermanphoto

2013-04-17 00:25:12 (8 comments, 10 reshares, 115 +1s)

Dawn - Grand Central (#pano) 
6 a..m.  I had taken these three shots when I was approached by the police who told me I needed a pass to shoot in Grand Central.  It was 6 a.m. (you can read it on the clock) and the guy who gave out passes wasn't around, so that was the end of my Grand Central adventure - though I will return.
Anyway, my plan had been to pan up to the ceiling which really is beautiful... but this is okay as it is I guess.

2013-04-14 15:46:39 (4 comments, 10 reshares, 144 +1s)

Columbus Circle in Rain (#pano, 16 stitched images)
More of the backstory: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/columbus-circle-in-rain/

2013-04-11 01:56:21 (10 comments, 8 reshares, 156 +1s)

Columbus Circle in the Rain (pano, 12 images)
#PlusPhotoExtract

The Backstory: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/columbus-circle-pano/

2013-04-11 01:57:31 (15 comments, 1 reshares, 50 +1s)

Black & White or Color?
I love the green felt feeling that shows through the opening on the right.  It's the ceiling of Grand Central proper.   And the golden glow of the bricks makes this feel like a scene from an imperial castle.  I even like many of the color touches that you can see through the girded windows, and how the dangling lights have a bluish glow.

Once the colors are removed, I really feel that the image loses something important.  It's one of the very few times that I can say for sure that it's better in color than b&w.  But curious - what do you think?

Perhaps I shouldn't tell you how I feel - and just let you have at it.   But I don't think I can really influence how you feel about it that much.
#PlusPhotoExtract

2013-04-08 01:16:37 (4 comments, 8 reshares, 146 +1s)

And this is a typical look with the 20mm.  Closer you are to an object, the greater the curvature.  And as you may remember, I upgraded the RAM in the MacPro from 6 GB to 28 GB and voila - makes a huge difference in processing time.  So all in all - to make the move cost me a 3 TB internal drive ($200), the Ninja Nodal Mechanism ($600), Kolor Auto Pano Giga software for stitching ($285) - all of these numbers - more or less.  But basically about $1000.  And a month of learning my way around.  Now to compare it to buying say a medium format camera with a digital back - there are many pros and cons.

I'll list some of the pros first.  With the stitching mechanism, there really are no boundries as far as size goes.  You can quickly find yourself writing TB sized files.  Another difference is that you aren't tied to any particular camera.  When I get to it, I expect to use myInfrared ... more »

2013-04-07 22:00:36 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 49 +1s)

Giga Pano of Metropolitan Museum of Art
90 inches @ 300 dpi without interpolation (55 stitched images) 50mm lens
I've posted a 100% piece of the image where you can read the writing on the coke bottles - in cases - and you can barely see the cases in the web image.  In other words - if it was moving - it's blurred - but if it's still - the detail is incredible.
With a little interpolation with a program like ProZoom you could easily enlarge this to 20 feet long @ 300 dpi.  And that's because I shot with a 50mm.  I could have gotten even more detail if I increased the focal length to say 100mm.

To read more backstory stuff about my month with Pano equipment - check out my photo blog: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/

2013-04-09 19:08:18 (6 comments, 8 reshares, 234 +1s)

I prefer this in black and white:

2013-04-04 21:07:22 (8 comments, 8 reshares, 153 +1s)

Tree and Bridge to Reservoir
26 Images / 50mm f1.4 lens / Kolor Auto Giga Pano

Besides the immense size of these Giga Panos, they offer one more thing: a different viewpoint than what can be achieved with a prime lens.  By bending the lines, you can prevent converging lines and give the appearance that the camera is perpendicular to (in this case the bridge).

2013-04-11 01:58:09 (14 comments, 4 reshares, 119 +1s)

This one I was able to take before the cops discovered me.  It's about 21 shots with the 20mm.  Then I pushed my luck and went up to the main plaza - that's where I got caught and couldn't do what I wanted to do.

The coloring is via Color Effex, mostly.  But I had a pretty good "blueprint" sto start off with.  I wanted to center the thing on that first chandelier.  The green on the right is the ceiling on the main level.

And yes +Bob Estremera This one is a killer.  You should see it at 100%, at least on the screen.
#PlusPhotoExtract

2013-04-04 16:20:04 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

A photographer working in NYC that's been doing "fine art" (a term that I have trouble using) for about 15 years after leaving the corporate world where I as a VP of Software Engineering.

My site is: www.BeckermanPhoto.com with the Photoblog at www.Beckermanphoto.com/blog

Damien Franco asked us to ask ourselves WHY ARE WE POSTING what we're posting.

There are two main reasons 1) Hope to intrigue someone enough to take a look at your site with the hope that they'll either spread the word about your pictures or 2) actually buy a print or a file; as unlikely as that may be.


Ad the second reason is EGO.  You've done something that you think is good, and you'd like others to see it and say, wow, that's a good shot.

If you move up a level or two, you write a post which offers more than a good picture worthy of ahs and... more »

2013-04-04 18:32:25 (6 comments, 7 reshares, 94 +1s)

Passageway Grand Central Station / New York
Pano / Giga 21 images / 20mm lens / Canon T4i / 40 inches high @ 300 dpi

http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/underground-passage-grand-central-sta-pano/

2013-04-03 23:10:57 (5 comments, 9 reshares, 126 +1s)

Castle & Turtle Pond (Pano - Giga)
From PhotoBlog: Pano: 48 images / 20mm f2.8 / canon t4i /

2013-04-03 18:43:54 (7 comments, 15 reshares, 122 +1s)

Grand Central Corridor - Pano

Pano: 48 images / 20mm f2.8 / canon t4i /

The main problem was having to move the tripod everytime a cop came around.  They’re right about the law – no tripods in the subway.  So I marked the spot with a piece of chalk, and came back four times to take this shot!  As far as the colors go – it just seemed that pastel made it look a lot prettier than it actually was.

* * *

And of course my processing was getting slower and slower so I called OWL (Other World Computing) and after a brief chat we decided that the best RAM upgrade for me would be to replace the three channels I had with 2 GB  each to 8 GB each.  I’m told that the switching isn’t that hard to do.  Will get the memory tomorrow.  Other advice was to keep the 2GB DIMMs in case anything went wrong.  (Hope the extra memory makes a difference).  I’ve run intoeither extremely slo... more »

2013-04-01 19:04:29 (6 comments, 10 reshares, 194 +1s)

Walkway in Formal Gardens of Central Park (Giga Pano).

From my photoblog, eventually to find its way into the photo store:
http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/hazy-shade-of-winter-central-park-pano/

Lens: Canon 50mm f1.4 (f8), 66 images stitched with Kolor Auto Pan Giga, Conversion to black and white (NIK Silver Effex), Tweaking - Photoshop Masking.  Pixel Size: 29,000 x 20,000 pixels.  File actually too large to work on with NIK, so I brought it down to about half that size for post-processing.  I'll probably be upgrading the amount of RAM in my MAC Pro from 8 GB of ram to at least 16 GB.  Investigation necessary - how difficult is it to swap RAM; and what's the most that the Mac Pro

I've had a bunch of names for it - but it does remind me of the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I lookedaro... more »

2013-04-01 09:37:54 (5 comments, 4 reshares, 115 +1s)

Are these images getting too large for my hardware / software?
I am beginning to build up a substantial number of huge panos.  I think that the next thing I'm going to do is experiment with the virtual tour of the image.  It's not something that I'm crazy about, but one of the main characteristics of these Giga Pano's is the amount of crisp details which are absolutely impossible to show on the web unless I make a gallery of 100% detail shots.

For example, you're looking at an image composed of 36 full size images from the T4i.  This shot, without any interpolation, is about 10,000 pixels (height) by 22,000 pixels.  It could easily be doubled or tripled by using a good interpolation program like ProZoom.  There are about ten people, each one perfectly resolved just stepping onto the stairs from the park's loop.

Working on files of this size doespres... more »

2013-03-31 19:41:53 (6 comments, 16 reshares, 218 +1s)

Turtle Pond, Central Park

2013-03-31 19:37:21 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 60 +1s)

Central Park, Reservoir Entrance Bridge (Giga Pano)
36 images stitched together / 50mm lens / Kolor Auto Pan

2013-04-11 01:59:08 (13 comments, 5 reshares, 123 +1s)

Castle - Central Park (Giga Pano)
this is a first draft; it's a combination of 60 shots from the Canon T4i; and I have some changes to make to it once my NIK Viveza is working again.  But it does show again that the Pano Software / Hardware can be used to make huge files without that "Pano" look.
I'm just calling them Giga Pano files now because the files are just huge and are shot with Pano equipment.  In this case a 50mm Canon lens.
#PlusPhotoExtract

http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/castle-central-park-giga-pano/

2013-04-01 03:55:20 (6 comments, 11 reshares, 117 +1s)

Before I post this image which I did with hdr and Giga Pano - I just want to voice one complaint.  I've been using and loving NIK software since at least 2010, and today when I went to work with Viveza -- it tells me that my trial version has expired.

Now I have the receipt with the code and proof that I spent about $300 on the whole NIK suite.

But of course Google decided to buy NIK a while back, and the various links to NIK support have been replaced by Google, and they stink.  I can't even find the online store where I bought the NIK software, and frankly - the entire system of ordering and downloading - or upgrading doesn't work like it used to.

You used to be able to just login, and you'd see the name you ordered it with and the keys for all your products, and I was never in a position where I couldn't get a NIK product working.  Maybe I'dha... more »

2013-03-28 12:52:56 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 21 +1s)

i'm still waiting for Spring to arrive in New York.  This swinging shot was taken years ago when the weather did as expected.

2013-03-23 04:07:47 (16 comments, 17 reshares, 354 +1s)

Empty Bridle Path - Central Park, New York
(Giga Pano), Backstory in blog: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/empty-bridle-path-pano-color/

2013-03-22 16:22:04 (5 comments, 8 reshares, 166 +1s)

FDR HIGHWAY, EAST RIVER*
Giga Pano
http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/fdr-night-color-pano/

2013-03-22 03:17:42 (10 comments, 3 reshares, 160 +1s)

Triboro Bridge - Night (pano)
see blog for details: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/triboro-bridge-night-pano/

2013-03-21 22:55:32 (4 comments, 5 reshares, 97 +1s)

Bridge to Reservoir and Tree (pano)
You don't need to create panoramic ratio images with the #pano  software.  You don't even need to use a long lens, although that makes it easier, or at least you can use less shots.

This was shot with a 20mm lens, and contains roughly 50 images.