Color Correction

23 November 2010

With all the advances in camera technology, you would think that the color of the resulting photographs would be accurate every time. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

There are a number of factors that affect the accuracy of the colors coming out of the camera. One is the temperature of the light itself, which is measured in degrees Kelvin. Candle light is about 1850° while full sun is 5000-6000°. The higher the temperature, the cooler and bluer the light. Cameras can be set to adjust to these different lighting conditions. This is called setting the white balance. The goal of this setting is to make neutral colors truly neutral. A truly neutral color has equal red, green, and blue (RGB) values.

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Ecological Succession – First Signs

8 November 2010

For early November, it was an unusually beautiful day in the high 70′s with no wind. It was my first visit to this area of the Cloverdale Ranch since the burn on 27 October. See my previous post for more information on the burn.

The purpose of this visit was to establish a photographic baseline of the return of the area to its post-burn state. Botanist Neal Kramer with Kramer Botanical and I established 13 photo points to track different aspects of the burn. Some areas burned lightly while others burned intensely. Some areas didn’t burn at all due to the moisture in the ground as this image of a pond shows.

Here’s an example of an area that was intensely burned. According to Neal, the flames leaped 30 to 40 feet in the air. As you can see, it was a complete sweep. This area used to contain Coyote Bush, wild berry vines, and grasses.

If you have a sharp eye, you may have noticed a speck of green near the bottom of the image.

In the two weeks since the burn, with some rain and lot of sun, something has emerged. What you see is the Soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). It is also known as amole. Here’s a close up of another example.

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Photographing an Ecological Succession

2 November 2010

This Thursday, I’m making a visit to the Cloverdale Ranch owned by the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and near Pescadero, California to start shooting an ecological succession. A controlled burn was recently performed on the ranch to clear out the overgrown vegetation. I will be periodically photographing the regrowth or succession of the vegetation back to it’s pre-burn state, which will take about four years. Native Americans used to burn this area every one to two years.

POST obtained the first USFWS Enhancement of Survival Permit ever issued to make the burn possible. One of the benefits is improved habitat for two federally endangered species: the California Red-legged Frog and the San Francisco Garter Snake. It will be very interesting to see the progress.

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