In the past, I’ve tried to dab flies here with a conventional 7 1/2′ bamboo rod with limited success. The rod was too short to reach mid stream from the bank (there is really no reason to wade this little stream and scare the fish) and not good at casting a short length of line. The 12′ Yamame was perfect. Intuitively, you would think a long rod in such close surroundings would not work so well, but that was not the case. It was easy to push my way through the stream-side foliage and stick the rod tip out over mid stream. In a few places, I actually collapsed the rod before “going in” and then extending it out over the water. From this bank position I could easily cast the furled tenkara line using a side cast up and down stream. In some places, I could cast across the stream too. This is stealth fishing at its finest. The trout were not at all spooked like they would be by someone splashing around in their backyard.

On my 5th cast I caught a nice Rainbow Trout on a red-bodied, grizzly hackled fly. I cast the fly upstream from where I thought he was hiding, let it drift in to his lie, and pulsed it across stream. It proved to be irresistible! The first thought that went through my mind was “cool, that was fun”, the second thought was “eeks, how do I land this guy?”. Not surprisingly, landing was very similar to landing a fish with a loop rod. In fact, casting is also very similar. I hadn’t tried a loop rod on Macedonia Brook simply because the opportunity never came up. One big difference though is the lightness and suppleness of the graphite tenkara rod. It made for a very fun, fear-free (“omg, is my rod going to break?”) experience. Being able to collapse and extend the telescoping rod is an interesting advantage too.

Here is the Rainbow:

(click for larger photo)

Even he is trying to check out that tenkara rod – I am sure he has never seen one before! This photo also shows the rod – it is a really attractive olive-gold color, supple and fun. Here is where I caught him:

(click for larger photo)

He was hiding under that big boulder on the left. A little waterfall can be seen just to the right of the photo. I saw him dart out and grab something just before it went over the falls, so I knew where he was hiding. The water is so clear that even the slightest movement spooks these fish. 

Disclaimer on the following photo – I practice catch & release and take great care not to injure or stress a caught fish. I usually do not photo fish except for special cases – like the first caught on a tenkara rod. I do not like “flopping fish” photos where the fish is flopping around on the ground. After taking the photo above, this fish slid gently out of my hand (he was only 2″ above the gravel) and laid quietly next to my rod. He did not flop around. My photographer instinct pushed the shutter release and I carefully picked him up and placed him in the water 2′ away. He instantly revived and scooted off.

(click for larger photo)

I caught one more slightly larger Rainbow a little later. I really didn’t want to leave, but dad duties called!

Pick 1

Description

A little skirmish with the keeper

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 100 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 400
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Description

Right place at the right time.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 115 mm
Exposure: 1/1000 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 1250
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #3

Description

Gooooaaaallll! What else can I say?

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 150 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 400
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #1

Description

Quite the stride there. That’s my son Nick bringing it to the goal.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 190 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 400
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Pick #1

Description

A nice “airplane” shot! This shot led to a goal.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 100 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 320
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Description

Another partial airplane shot – flaps extended!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 135 mm
Exposure: 1/1000 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO400
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #3

Pick #1

Description

Believe it or not, the ref called this on us (maroon). It almost looks like the player in green is going for a dive, almost.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 160 mm
Exposure: 1/1000 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 320
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Description

I love photos of great touches and this one is great – outside of the foot, snag the ball out of the air. Super job!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 105 mm
Exposure: 1/1000 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 400
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #3

Description

Ok, this one is just plain funny! I rarely post funny photos but every time I look at this game, this image pops in to my head, so I just had to share it.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 100 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 200
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #4

Pick #1

Description

Maybe not so blatant holding in this shot but in the next 2 frames the bright red player had a pretty good grip on our player’s jersey!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 235 mm
Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 250
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Description

This may turn out to be one of my favorite shots of the season! Take a careful look at the green player’s foot – it is completely wrapped around our player’s body and he is trying to kick the ball. Our player actually got the touch off his knee and managed to place it nicely for a teammate to make a run at goal. Amazing!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
Focal length: 120 mm
Exposure: 1/800 at f/4.5
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 800
Metering mode: Spot

Description

This is a photo of my son outpacing his defender – who has just given up the chase. At U12, athleticism and stamina counts as much – if not more – than skill. 

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 180 mm
Exposure: 1/800 at f/5
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 200
Metering mode: Spot

This photo was taken the day before my wedding on Nov. 10, 1989. My brother flew over from Germany (he was stationed in Mainz) and my Mom & Dad came to Boston for my wedding. My mom took this photo with a little point & shoot ASP camera in Faneuil Hall in Boston. It is my Dad’s favorite photo so when I was visiting earlier this year I sneaked into his office and scanned the photo. The print was 3.5″ by 5″ and not in the world’s best shape. The scanner was my dad’s and not profiled, but I did the best I could!

Here is the scan of the original photo:

You can immediately see some of the challenges:

• lots of dust speckles and scratches
• print grain
• cyan cast in the lighter colored buildings and pavers
• blue fringe around the tree branches
• blown-out sky
• poor exposure

My mission, to fix as many of the above problems as possible and create a 5″ by 8″ print, frame it, and give it to my Dad for Christmas!

Armed with Photoshop CS3, my Wacom Graphire tablet , and a lot of coffee, I set to work. Here is what I did:

1. After opening the photo in Photoshop I made converted to LAB. I like to work in LAB when an image has a lot of noise/dust and/or color casts. The noise is usually isolated to the L channel and color issues are in one or both of the A and B channels.
2. I made a new layer from the original photo used Photoshop’s Despeckle Filter to remove the dust from the L channel on this layer. This removed a lot of the dust and some of the film grain but not all of it.
3. Then I made sure all LAB channels were selected and then loosely selected the trees in the upper right with the lasso tool and added a new Hue/Saturation correction layer on top of everything. I selected the blue channel and desaturated it. This completely removed blue fringe around the tree branches (chromatic aberration). The photo started to look a lot better already.
4. I then created another selection around the domed building and the light grey building below it using a combination of the lasso and polygon lasso tools. Then I created another Hue/Saturation correction layer and selected the cyan channel. Desaturating this channel really made the building pop.
5. Next came the most difficult and time consuming part – using the lasso tool, I carefully selected my brother, Dad and me on the despeckled copy layer. Once the rough selection was made, I switched to mask mode and used the Brush tool to refine the selection. I’m not going to go in to detail on how to make a complex selection tight now because it would take a lot of writing! Once you make a selection like this it is a good idea to save it (Select->Save Selection…).
6. Once we were selected, I made a copy (command C) and then created a new layer and pasted us over the top of the Despeckled layer (but below the Hue/Saturation correction layers. On this layer, I selected the Multiply blend mode and adjusted the opacity until we popped out a little – somewhere around 20% looked good. This is a great technique to use to restore blown out areas if there is any detail left, or as I did here, to saturate the colors (especially the skin tones) without looking unnatural.
7. Now I masked the paving and created a Hue/Saturation correction layer to remove the color cast. I saved this selection also. After creating a new copy of the Despekle layer, I loaded this selection in to it’s mask. I then added a layer  style and choose Color Overlay. After picking a brick red color from the photo, I adjusted the transparency until the paving looked natural with a slight brick red color.
8. Now I turned my attention to the smoothing the color noise and film grain. I experimented with Noise Ninja and several Filters but didn’t really like the results. So, I created a duplicate copy of the file (saving the original with all of the layer work) and flattened it. I then selected just the L (lightness) channel and used the Blur tool to start to smooth the noise. This step took the longest time because I basically “painted” over the entire photo using a variety of Blur tool diameters and Strengths (usually I use 40%). This technique allowed me to smooth the blotchiness in the black building and windows on the left side of the photo, smooth the speckling in our clothes, etc. I used this tool very carefully on our faces with a small diameter and a low Strength. It took several hours to complete this step.
9. Now I decided to gently rebuild the missing arial on the domed building and the blown out wall on the right side. I used Photoshops Brush tool and a very light shade of grey (that I picked p from the photo) to very faintly add these elements.
10. With all of this work complete, I made another copy and converted it back to RGB and saved it as a JPG. I opened this JPG in Adobe Lightroom 2 to do one last enhancement - Vibrance adjustment. The Vibrance tool is not available in Photoshop CS3 (it is in CS4) and basically it saturates non-skin tones.
11. Back in Photoshop, I finish up with sharpening using the Unsharp Mask Filter. 

Here is the result:

(click to to see the full size image)

So, now I just need to print, matte and frame it!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D 
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 100 mm
Exposure: 1/8 at f/4.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 200
Metering mode: Spot

On a tripod.

Pick #1

Description

This first pick was from one of those cloudy day shoots. I rarely see a keeper turn his back on an opposing player. Of course, this mistake resulted in a goal for our team. As for the shooting conditions, I have my D60 set up with User Mode 1 and forgot to change the aperture to f/2.8 – duh.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
Focal length: 173 mm
Exposure: 1/1000 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 640
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #2

Description

Through the hands – every keeper’s nightmare. This game was very dark with clouds and rain and late in the afternoon.  Again, I forgot to set my aperture to f/2.8.

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
Focal length: 125 mm
Exposure: 1/800 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 1600
Metering mode: Spot

Pick #3 & 4

Description

Picks 3 & 4 are a sequence of our keeper making a great save under pressure. Note the body positioning and final ball grab – textbook!

Shooting Conditions

Camera model: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal length: 375 mm
Exposure: 1/1600 at f/5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
ISO speed: ISO 320
Metering mode: Spot