Some Old Landscape Photos

I was on a search, deep into my archived hard drive, for a specific old photo yesterday morning (I don't even remember what I was searching for because my mind was distracted by other photos while searching!) and I came across a folder of photos that I never did anything with at the time because I was frustrated with the whole shoot on that day.

What I do remember is that I was pretty disgusted with the quality of the photos coming out of this camera and I do have to say that I was absolutely right to be disgusted and frustrated.  Part of the problem was that this camera always captured less-than-sharp photos.  I don't know if it was a sensor issue or an image stabilization issue but I know the camera consistently captured less-than-sharp photos.  I have recently learned that another culprit of the lack of sharpness was the supposedly "outstanding" lens I was using.  This lens was touted as being an outstanding lens but I never got outstanding results from it.  To compound this problem is that this camera system had very few lenses available.  This was one of my Olympus cameras with Olympus lenses and I was absolutely right to abandon Olympus.  I get a knot in my stomach every time I merely think of Olympus.

Not only did I abandon Olympus, but Olympus also felt the need to abandon this camera system.  I was hoping this system would grow and more lenses would eventually become available but, instead, the whole line was killed.  Naturally, production of lenses also came to an abrupt halt and third party manufacturers stopped supporting this system altogether.  This really pissed me off and rendered the future of my camera system obsolete.  It meant I had to start over in a new camera system which was something which would be very difficult to afford.  

I'll admit that the newer camera system that Olympus created was better than the system I was using but I couldn't afford to give Olympus any more of my money because I no longer trusted them.  Before long, Olympus sold off their imaging division so I made the right decision in not trusting them and in abandoning Olympus altogether.  This new holding company who purchased the Olympus Imaging Division, OM Systems, makes me sick to my stomach and there is no way I could go out in public with a camera that had "OM SYSTEMS" embossed across the front.  What an incredibly stupid name of a camera line!  Holding companies such as this one typically cannibalize whatever corporation they purchased and then just leave the bones and scraps to rot.  

To put it mildly, in the 2014/2015 timeframe, I was definitely done with this format of cameras.  It was time to find something better and just chalk up my experiences with this format as a hard learning experience that still remains painful to this day.  

I know that these photos below look really nice at first glance but, believe me, the quality of all the photos I have in the folders from this time period really is horrendous.  These photos are dull, lifeless, lacking any amount of sharpness, noisy, and the overall tone of each of them was completely blue.  Getting the right color balance near water was impossible with this camera.  Everything...  everything...  in any of these photos captured near water was a hue of blue.   

If I just quickly glanced at these photos and didn't look too closely, however, some of the photos had some potential regardless of the lack of sharpness and other issues.  And, by potential, I mean that I would need to spend a lot of tedious time processing these photos to make the color nice enough to distract from the poor sharpness.  So, that was yesterday's project...  improve the color selectively, eliminate the excessive noise, while trying to eek out some much-needed clarity.

This first photo was from a folder from our first days at our lake house.  I spent some time isolating different parts of the image to correct the blue hue that was prevalent throughout the entire image.  With some fussing, I found that there were actually other colors under the blue hue!  I found greens, yellows, and even pure whites!  The sharpness of small details is still lacking in a big way but, at first glance, this is looking pretty good...

In this photo, below (Oakledge Park on Lake Champlain looking toward the Adirondack Mountains of New York), I noticed some seemingly stray pink/magenta in the lower part of the clouds across the lake that I couldn't remove.  It was just enough to be bothersome while the whole rest of the image was tinted in a blue hue.  Even after correcting the blue hue, I still couldn't get rid of that pink/magenta color cast in those clouds so...  I embraced that odd pink color and left it there.  

There was rain falling from those clouds so it is possible that the sun reflecting off those raindrops was creating this pinkish hue.  Those clouds kept getting closer and closer until it was pouring rain on this side of the giant lake too.  

There was always something about this composition that appealed to me but the quality of the image file was always very frustrating to me.  I had to do a lot of selective sharpening to get this even close to acceptable.  

What I do like is this one rather stark rocky peninsula jutting out into the frame...  I like the young tree at the end of the peninsula with yellow-green leaves...  I really like the reflections in the water in the foreground...  and I like the softness of all those storm clouds off in the distance.  

As the storm clouds slowly approached us, I was able to see less and less of the Adirondack Mountains in New York.  I like the soft glow of this image, below, which shows how hazy it was especially where the rain is falling on the right side of the image...

This Lake Champlain shoreline in Oakledge Park has some very old ruins hidden among the trees and brush and I found some of these ruins.  In this one, below, you can see the remnants of the chimney where a cottage once stood overlooking the lake...

The storm...  which is to the right just outside the frame of this image below, was about halfway across the lake now.  I knew I needed to pack up my camera gear and get closer to the car.  I did end up getting wet on this day but my gear stayed dry in a backpack. 

Here are the two last photos from this same day at Oakledge Park before I packed everything up and headed to the car.  I changed lenses from my widest lens that I was using for landscapes to my longest lens to see if I could capture this fisherman out on the lake (seen below).  

As I was capturing the fisherman, two F-16's passed by while returning to base at Burlington so I focused on them up in the sky skirting around the storm clouds as the storm approached Burlington (the last photo below).  

Although these photos were good enough to share here, I'm still unhappy with them and would not waste the money in printing them.  Uggck...