Historic Victorian Row, Presidio, San Francisco
Nikon D100, Sigma 15-30mm
This is the oldest surviving Victorian Streetscape in San Francisco. Many of the original Victorian homes in S.F. were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. This row of Victorians, formerly married officers' quarters in the Presidio, survived and were kept intact and preserved through the years by the U.S Army.
They were recently restored, and they were open for tours over the last two weekends. We were there yesterday.
I took the opportunity to exercise my Sigma 15-30mm and D100.
Things have been slow around here. Where did everyone go??? I see that we lost a few people due to the Blogger to Google switchover. That's understandable because people are busy, and can easily lose interest.
--Warren
posted by Warren T. at 10:00 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I promise I will be participating more after we get back from Argentina. Got a 2 gig memory stick yesterday, so that combined with my old memory stick should get me 2000 shots. I would hope that at least 1 will be ok to post. Talk about bracketing. Jeez...
Weird. Just after I posted this and talked about losing a few people, I looked at our sidebar and I noticed that our contributor list has everyone in it! Did everyone really sign up again, or did Google do something to restore all the old names?
--WT
I signed up. I've been reading about using a graduated filter for shots like these from under a tree in full sun. The shot is very nice, but I wonder what it would have looked like.
In my opinion, a shot with the leaves bright and green may not work as well as the shot as it is, with the leaves silhouetted. But I guess we would never know unless I actually tried to shoot it that way.
Picture yourself standing at the same spot, in the shadow of the tree looking at the row of houses. When you look out at the scene, would you see green leaves or dark/black leaves? Would you even notice what color the leaves were?
If you saw this same picture with brighter/green leaves, your first reaction might be: "Wow, cool!", then upon further reflection you may think that it looks unnatural. Then you'll wonder how the picture was made.
A grad/ND filter is good for balancing dynamic range between a sky and land shot. In this case, the horizon is a bit uneven where the leaves and the roofline of the house make for a jagged horizon. Also, the sky behind the leaves would also be darkened by the ND filter. It would be interesting to experiment with a ND here, but IMO, I don't think it would work for the intended result.
If I wanted to lighten the foreground here (which I didn't), I would have used a fill flash.
Alternatively, you could put the camera on a tripod to shoot multiple images at different exposures and produce a composite in Photoshop.
Dennis F. has experience using grad/ND filters on his landscape pictures, and Steve F. posted a composite here previously of a shot in Death Valley.
--Warren
I like the shot as composed. I think the leaves and the shadowing provides a nice frame for the houses. I would agree with Warren that a ND filter would not create the same effect unless there were no trees above and you wanted to darken the sky a little so it is not blown out.
So picturesque! :)
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