Lest We Forget

Camera: Canon EOS40D with 17-85mm EF USM

Original RAW file developed and cropped with Canon Digital Photo Professional

Apps used for post processing:
1) SimplyHDR - for a HDR version of the photo.
2) ArtistaOil - for a simulated oil painting.
3) Blender - to blend the HDR version with the oil version 50/50. This added some details to the oil version which was important for the crosses in the background.
4) FilterStorm Pro - I imported the Blender result and the HDR version into FilterStorm Pro where I painted a mask to erase the grave cross and the flowers from the oil layer so that it was coming through from the HDR layer.
5) Blender - I blend the FilterStorm result with the result from step 3 again to smooth the edges of the flowers and cross.
6) Photo fx Ultra - to add a glow effect.
7) Blender - to blend the result from step 6 with the result from step 5.
8) Photo fx Ultra again - to add the Depth of Field effect. This nicely blurred the background a bit.
9) TouchRetouch HD - to remove an unwanted lantern pole from the background.
10) Camera+ - to add the nice Vintage border.
11) ArtisataOil again - to create an oil version with the a maximum of bristle depth and canvas effect. I did this because I wanted some texture in the frame.
12) FilterStorm Pro again - I imported the results from steps 10+11 into FilterStorm and painted a mask over the frame to bring the texture out.
13) TouchRetouch - to touch up the inner border of the frame a bit.
14) Crop 'n Frame - to cut the very large frame to smaller size again. I usually prefer the neat little tool Crop Suey for this but it apparently has some problems with large files because it used to crash.
15) A+Signature - for the copyright watermark.

It was on May 4, 2008, as I visited the US Military Cemetery Meuse-Argonne in Romagne in France together with two friends of mine. It's the largest US Military Cemetery in France, if not in Europe, where more than 14,000 men found their final rest. One of them is Sergeant Bernard L. Pohlpeter (photo) who fought with the L Company of the 126th US Army Infantry Regiment, 32nd Division. He got killed in action in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October 1918, only one month before the war ended on November the 11th. I did some research about Sergeant Pohlpeter and I found a copy of his regiments history online at this page: The Old Command. His grave is at Plot F, row 12, grave 23.

Although the day of death marked on Sergeant Pohlpeter's cross is October the 12th, 1918, he is listed in his regiments casualties list on page 42 as having been KIA on October the 5th. Reading through the regiment's history I also found no report about combat action of his unit for October the 12th but the unit took heavy casualties in the time from October 4-5. So I now wonder what's the truth is. 

As we walked the beautifully made cemetery in awe and respect, we spoke little because nobody wanted to disturb the silence on that place where so many of those men rest who fought for our freedom. So many graves... so many names... so many individual destinies... It really fills on'e heart with sadness to see so many white crosses on such huge fields.

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The Ruins of Montfaucon

Camera: Canon EOS40D with 17-85mm EF USM Kit Lens

Original RAW file developed with Canon Digital Photo Professional.

Apps used for post processing:
SimplyHDR-HD - for a HDR version.
ArtistaOil-HD - for an oil painting simulation.
Photo fx Ultra - for various effects and enhancements.
Blender - to blend a lot. I cannot remember how often I blend what version with what version. I just kept on playing around with it until my picture looked right to me.
TouchRetouch HD - for minor touchups
A+ Signature - for the copyright watermark.

May 4, 2008 I was visiting the region of Verdun in France together with two friends of mine, where one of the fiercest battles of the whole 20th century raged in World War 1. We planned to visit the US Military Cemetery of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, but stopped on every occasion we found something that caught our interest. One of the places we stopped at was the ruins of the village of Montfaucon with the nearby monument erected for the U.S. troops that fought in this sector. The village of Montfaucon had been completely destroyed in the battle of Verdun. This picture shows the ruins of the church of Montfaucon, with the observation post build by the Germans. From this place. the German "Kronprinz" observed the battlefield.

There's a plaque attached to the observation post. It reads the following, original text (I did not do that translation):

HISTORY

THE RUINS WHICH YOU SEE HERE ARE WHAT WAS THE PARISH CHURCH OF THE VILLAGE OF MOUNTFAUCON (MOUNT FALCON) UNTIL 1914.

ON THIS PEAK, WHICH WAS 342 METERS (1.122 FEET) IN ELEVATION, MONTFAUCON WAS FOUNDED IN THE YEAR 587 BY THE MONK SAINT BALDERIC, GRANDSON OF CLOTAIRE, WHO ESTABLISHED A MONASTERY. TRADITION TELLS US THAT HE WAS GUIDED BY A FALCON, THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF THE VILLAGE.

BECAUSE OF ITS GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION, THIS VILLAGE HAS SUFFERED REPEATED INVASIONS AND WAS COMPLETELY DESTROYED MORE THAN TEN TIMES DURING THE COURSE OF HISTORY. HERE KIND EUDES LAUNCHED A GREAT BATTLE AGAINST THE NORMANS ON JUNE 24, 888.

ON 11. SEPTEMBER, 1914, THE VILLAGE, WHICH COMPRISED 900 INHABITANTS, WAS CAPTURED AND BURNED BY THE GERMAN ARMY. AS AN IMPORTANT STRATEGIC POINT, THE GERMAN ARMY ESTABLISHED 17 ARMED OBSERVATION POSTS (BLOCKHOUSES) IN THE RUINS. SOME OF THESE ARE STILL VISIBLE, NOTABLY THE ONE CALLED THE "OBSERVATOIRE DU KRONPRINZ" WHICH IS LOCATED AT THE CENTER OF THE OLD CHURCH.

DURING NEARLY FOUR YEARS FRENCH ARTILLERY SHELLED THE SITE WITHOUT RESULT OTHER THAN TO COMPLETE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BUILDINGS.

ON 26 AND 27 SEPTEMBER, 1918, THROUGH THE COMBINED EFFORTS OF THE U.S. AND FRENCH ARMIES UNDER THE COMMAND OF GENERALS PERSHING AND GOURAND, A POWERFUL ATTACK PERMITTED THE U.S. 313TH REGIMENT OF THE 79TH INFANTRY DIVISION TO SEIZE THIS PEAK THIS NEW BATTLE OF MONTFAUCON PERMITTED THE ALLIES TO CLEAR THIS SECTOR OF THE FRONT AND TO MAKE AND ADVANCE OF MORE THAN 50 KILOMETERS (30 MILES).

TO COMMEMORATE THIS ACTION AND IN MEMORY OF MORE THAN 100,000 U.S. SOLDIERS WHO DIED OR WERE WOUNDED ON THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE AREA, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ERECTED THIS COLUMN OF GRANITE AS A TESTIMONIAL TO THEIR MANY SACRIFICES FOR FREEDOM.

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Billie

Camera: Canon EOS40D with 17-85mm EF USM kit lens.

RAW file developed in Adobe Camera RAW.
Photo processed on iPad2 with the following apps:

PhotoStudio HD - for a pencil drawing version.
FilterStorm Pro - to add the original photo to the pencil drawing, masking off the horse to keep the pencil effect only on the background. I used FilterStorm Pro for the masking albeit PhotoStudio HD offers the masking tool as well but the precision and zooming for mask painting is way better in FilterStorm Pro than it is in PhotoStudio HD.
Blender - to blend the FilterStorm version with the original photo because I wanted some color in the background.
Camera+ - for the inner Vintage frame.
SP PhotoTada - for the outher frame called Statesman. All other sliders set to "None".
A+Signature - for the copyright watermark as well as for Billie's name.

This is my daughter's Anna-Katharina's beloved Haflinger mare Billie, now 18 years old. She's a wonderful horse with a very gentle character and still as crazy as a filly. Born in Tyrol on February the 9th, 1993, Billie was bought as a young filly by the breeder family Gremling-Dauphin where she got trained in dressage and where my daughter started to learn horse-riding at the age of 6 (Billie was 5 then). At the beginning Anka had her little problems with some of  the training horses. The reason for it certainly was to be found in her still very young age, but as soon as Billie got assigned to her the problems vanished. Billie and Anka made a great team, becoming friends for life. So Billie was assigned to my daughter most of the times she went riding. But in 2002 Billie was about to be sold cause some dude woman wanted to buy her for her daughter... Anka was desperate and sad, fearing to loose her beloved friend forever, so I had to do something. I called the breeder and investigated about that woman and luckily for me the woman was still undecided whether to buy Billie or not so I took the occasion to make the deal right on the spot. I had to give up my dream of flying though, cause the money I spend for Billie was initially meant to pay my PPL A with. But a flying license can always be made - a friend like Billie however, cannot be found a second time in life. She's a member of our family since then, and we all love her dearly.

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Rolling Horse

Camera: Canon EOS40D

Lens: 17-85mm EF USM Kit Lens

Extras: Polarization filter.

Apps used for processing:

Squaready - to cut the picture to 1:1 format.

SimplyHDR - for a HDR picture in color.

DramaticB&W - for a b&w HDR picture.

Blender - to blend both HDR pictures with the goal to obtain a deeper blue color of the sky.

TouchRetouch - for minor touch-ups.

FilterStorm3 - to soften (denoise) the sky. I applied a mask to spare the sculpture from being blurred too. Unfortunately a negative side effect of pseudo-HDR rendering by apps is to end up with a dirty and noisy sky.

PhotoForge2 - to create a high pass layer which I then blend in Blender with the original layer in Overlay mode for sharpening the picture.

SnapSeed - to apply sort of a Lomo like filter because I wanted a Lomo effect but wasn't happy with the Lomo effect in PhotoForge2 because it's vignetting effect cannot be adjusted.
FilterStorm3 - to create a 25% white frame.
A+Signature - to add my copyright watermark.

Instagram - to apply the Rise filter. This was fading out to colors again but it was just fine to share it with the Instagram community. Tip: If you don't want Instagram to upload your finished picture all you need is switching your iPhone to "airplane mode". There is no Internet connection possible then so Instagram will tell you that the upload failed but saves the high resolution copy of your picture nevertheless.

 

Because I still wanted to try something else so I was loading the Instagram picture and the previous picture in Blender again to blend them 50/50 in Overlay mode which nicely enhanced the colors. Then I loaded the result in MonoPhix to create a b/w picture that I then blend again in Blender with the previous color picture to create my final, almost black and white version of the Rolling Horse. Setting was 27% color in Normal blend mode.

The title of my picture wasn't chosen by me. It's the official name of this huge 9.5m tall and 35ton heavy sculpture created by the German artist Jürgen Görtz for the German railroad company "DB". The Rolling Horse can be seen at the Berlin Main Station (Berliner Hauptbahnhof), "Europa Platz" right of the North Gate when leaving the station. My original photo was made on September 13, 2008.

Le Coeur Seignant.

Camera: Canon EOS40D

Lens: 17-85mm EF USM Kit Lens

Apps used for processing:

PhotoClr - to correct the underexposed original picture. The original photo had been made under bad conditions without a tripod. In the afternoon of a winter day the light is usually quite bad in a forest. I made the original photo with f/10, 1/125th and ISO200. Don't know why I set aperture to 10 as I made that photo. Maybe I just forgot to change the setting as I usually work on manual mode with my DSLR.

SimplyHDR - to create a HDR picture of my photo

Squaready - to cut it down to 1:1 square format. Squaready is meant to optimize photos for Instagram but it can save the files to 2048x2048 resolution in PNG file format.

Then I used FilterStorm3 for many operations, including desaturisation and importing the original HDR file to apply a mask so the background will be desaturised while the main subject (the heart) will remain in full color. After I was satisfied with my result I plaid around with various apps to find a nice frame for it. I added a tricolor frame in the French colors in FilterStorm but wasn't 100% satisfied with it.

PicGrunger - it was finally the good old PicGrunger that gave me the frame I was looking for. However it looked too saturated so I was loading the file again in FilterStorm to reduce saturation by 25%.

A+Signature - to add my copyright watermark as usual.

February the 21st 1916 one of the bloodiest battle in history of human warfare started in France, nearby the town called Verdun. It ended in December of 1916 with more than 700 000 casualties about equally shared between both sides, the Germans and the French. Verdun is a holy ground in France because it's name stands for strength and resistance against the German aggressor who believed to bleed out the whole French army on that place - but the Germans were wrong. Today visitors of the battle fields, the museums and the old forts are welcome, but they are also asked to walk the ground in respect of the dead. Ammunition can still be found everywhere but shall not be touched and there are many single graves to be seen there. One of these graves I spotted in the woods near the famous Fort de Vaux. I was decorated with an enameled metal heart, badly weathered throughout the decades that followed the death of the two soldiers buried there. Today one can still read the following French words:

Içi rep(osent)

(Ce) Deux cama(rades)

Henri LA(....)

du 171ième R.I.(...)

mort pour la Fr(ance)

à l'age d(...)

Priez po(ur eux)

Translation:

Here rest

two comrades

Henri La(...)

of the 171st Infantry Regiment

fallen for France

at the age of(...)

pray for them.

I made the original photo under quite bad light conditions since it was in a forest and it was winter, February the 27th 2008, 92 years and 6 days after the Battle of Verdun started. As I got home and transferred the photos to my computer I got aware of the red rust running down the enamel heart, almost like blood. For that reason I gave my picture the title "Le Coeur Seignant" (The Bleeding Heart).

Luxembourg City...

Camera: Canon EOS40D

Lens: 17-85mm EF USM Kit Lens

Apps used for processing (as far as I remember):

Squaready - my first step was it to cut a 1:1 piece out of my original photo so I used Squaready, which is a neat little app meant to prepare photos to use with Instagram and it's clones.

PerfectClr - to correct the heavily underexposed photo which had not been corrected in Canon's Digital Photo Professional before. I discovered PerfectClr by chance, after reading an article about the upcoming improvements of the iPhone's Camera App and Pictures App in iOS5. I downloaded it and I am very satisfied with the possibilities PerfectClr offers to enhance any photo. 

SimplyHDR - to create a HDR picture of my boring looking photo. I did two versions, one with the Smooth slider set to full left and one with it set to full right. HDR style used was Brown.

Blender - to blend the smooth picture with the detailed picture in Normal mode to reduce the effect by 50%. After saving that result I loaded it again in Blender together with the original color picture to blend it 50/50 in Normal mode again to give it back some color. The result looked already very nice but still too boring to me.

DynamicLight - to add a slight 25% effect of its beautiful Orton filter. I wanted a soft glow in my picture to the Orton is very useful for that. However one must be very careful with DynamicLight because the negative side effect of it's usually nice enhancements of a picture is the resulting grainy sky. 

PerfectlClr - I was loading my photo in PerfectlyClr again to lighten up the shadows. To do this I used the setting FixDark which is just perfect for serving that purpose. The resulting image was very clear in its shadows but the negative side effect was the sky which was now a bit too bright.

Blender again - to blend the brightened up picture with the previous darker one. At last I was happy with my picture. I now went on to try several apps and settings to enhance it further, among them being the Instagram apps like the original Instagram, Instaplus, Instacam and ClassicINSTA, but I wasn't much satisfied with the results so I tried qbro. The latter is really a nice app to create 1:1 size pictures and it comes with a bunch of very useful frames and filters. I created a version of my picture with the filter Burnt, which looked really great but what I disliked about it was the very heavy grain in the dark brown vignette.

Camera+ - finally gave me what I was looking for. I applied the Hipster filter with a 25% setting and used the Old-Timey border where I added the title of my picture to.

A+Signature - for the copyright watermark.

In my times before the iPhone I used to carry my DSLR around all the time. The old town of Luxembourg-City is a tourist magnet because of it's old architecture, the Palace of the Grand-Duke and the Cathedral Notre-Dame and I love to photograph the buildings too. I made the photo that served for creating this iPhoneography picture on a dull day in March 2008 from across the valley of the Petrusse but like I had no tripod with me and my DSLR equipment not being the best I end up with mostly underexposed photos. But I did not delete them again because I always think that even an underexposed photo may be useful some day. As I stumbled over the neat little app PerfectlyClr I used such an underexposed photo to test its capabilites. The result is what you see here as the main picture of my blog entry. Before I forget - below is the original photo that I made on March 8, 2008:

Signed by Metallica

Camera: Canon EOS40D
Lens: 17-85mm EF USM Kit Lens


Apps used for processing:


RAW file developed in Canon's Digital Photo Professional, then transferred to the iPhone with PhotoSync.
SimplyHDR - to create a color HDR picture. I used the setting Dark Contrasted... for it and created two versions. One version with all settings sliders for Radius, Strength and Smoothing set to the full right, then I created another one with the Smoothing slider set to the full left. The picture with no Smoothing brought out every little detail nicely, but as a negative side effect, every little corn of dust and every irregularity in the inner velvet cover of the guitar box also came out and this didn't look good. With the Smoothing slider set to full right, those unwanted details went away, but here the guitar looked too smooth. 
Blender - to blend both pictures in Normal mode, 50:50 slider setting. This gave me exactly what I wanted to have but still there was too much dust in the picture and too many unwanted details in the velvet background. I did not want to mess around for an endless time to remove every little dust corn in TouchRetouch so I transferred the picture to my laptop computer and applied the Remove Dust and Scratches filter in PhotoShop before I transferred it back to the iPhone. Removing dust in TouchRetouch is possible indeed but you'll need a lot a patience since the iPhone is very slow in processing, compared to a big computer.
To re-sharpen my picture I was loading it into PhotoForge2 to create a high pass version, then blend it in blender with the version I finished in PhotoShop. Settings blend mode Overlay, slider 100%, high pass on right side. Now my picture looked perfect to me and everything I still needed was a nice frame. I found one in Camera+, then I added the solid frame(s) in FilterStorm3. I added a black 10% frame first with dark gray outline, then a 5% white frame, then a 25% black frame again. To let the framed picture stand out from the black background of my blog I then added another thin 2% fark gray frame to it.
A+Signature for copyright waterm


July 28th 2009 was a very special day for my daughter Anna-Katharina as she met Metallica again in person. Lucky winner of a Meet&Greet before their last show in Copenhagen she asked them to sign her guitar which they kindly did. She only got it for her 17th birthday on April 30 of that year and did not have much chances for playing it. But since it got signed by the James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo it became the holy artifact of a true fan. I guess she'll never play it again.

Le bon pain pour tout le monde!

Camera: Canon EOS40D

Lens: Canon 17-85mm EF USM kit lens

Apps used for post processing:

The original RAW file had been developed using Canon's Digital Photo Professional, then trimmed to 1:1 size before transferring it to the iPhone with the PhotoSync app.

DramaticB&W - to create a pseudo HDR picture in b&w.

SimplyHDR - to create a pseudo HDR picture in color.

FilterStorm - to erase the main subject from the b&w layer so the colored version came trough. To do this I opened the color picture, then imported the b&w picture as a second exposure. Then I painted a mask over the woman and the card boxes. I prefer switching "show mask color" on in "Masking View" because it allows a very precise work. After having finished painting the mask I let FilterStorm process the picture and saved the result before I processed it further, adding a slight vignetting and a frame.

A+Signature - to add my copyright watermark as usual.

July 3rd, 2008 was a rainy day in Nancy in France. I walked the streets with my Canon ready for shooting as I spotted this old woman searching card boxes put on the sidewalk to be removed by the garbage collectors. I quickly snapped out a couple of shots because I did not want the old woman to notice that she had been photographed and I felt like a thief about it because I've got to confess that I'm not familiar with the French laws regarding privacy. All that I know is that one needs the consent of a person one intends to photograph in Germany as well as in Luxembourg. But France? No clue! And the two shots had been underexposed anyway so I didn't think much about it anymore.

Back at home I developed my photos of the day using Canon's software and as I corrected the underexposed shots I suddenly discovered something I did not see as I shot the photos. On the card box in the foreground on the right side, the words "Le bon pain pour tout le monde" became readable, which translates as "The good bread for everybody". And then I suddenly got aware of the whole perversion behind this rather accidental picture. The card boxes full of still edible sandwiches, cakes and slices of Pizza had been put on the sidewalk by the personnel of a so called "Sandwicherie" - one of these typical small sandwich stores you can find everywhere in France. The food apparently was from the day before, not fresh enough anymore to be sold. So it had been thrown away rather than giving it to the needy ones, living on the street - "the good bread for everybody" got dumped. This woman looked like she was one of the homeless. She got away with a great prey on that day. 

In Germany this is handled much differently. There are welfare organizations like "Die Tafel" that collects surplus food to distribute it among those who need it. But nevertheless there are many thousands of tons of good food being carelessly dumped on every day in our affluent society while many others must starve. This had always been something incomprehensible to me because I had been educated to respect my food and avoid unnecessary waste if ever possible.

I did a color key version of this photo in PhotoShop already in 2008 but I like this iPhone4 processed version much more because it's more dramatic.

How to: Smart-Sharpen Photos on the iPhone

Camera: Canon EOS40D

Lens: Canon 17-85mm EF USM Kit lens

Apps used:

Photoforge2 - to create a high pass layer.

Blender - to blend the high pass layer with the normal layer, slider at 100%, blending mode "Overlay". This method neatly sharpens the whole picture without adding noise. Look at the details on the jeans of the blacksmith! Zoom in and you can even see it's structure.

PhotoForge2 again - after sharpening the photo by blending the high pass layer with the normal layer I reimported the sharpened layer into PhotoForge to apply a Lomo filter as well as to add a white frame.

A+Signature - to add my copyright watermark

Some apps include the option to sharpen a picture but no matter what app I tried I realized that even the best apps end up with a lot of noise after sharpening, no matter if you are using PS Express, FilterStorm3, Iris or whatever. For that reason I applied sharpening filters only modestly. But I always wished to have the possibility to use the same procedure for smart-sharpening that I use in PhotoShop CS5 where I create a copy of my original layer, then apply a high pass filter to that layer, go to the layer's blending options and choose "Overlay" from the menu - et voilà the picture is crystal clear and sharp. On the slider one can adjust the amount of sharpening. Sometimes 100% is a bit too much so you need to adjust a lower setting.

Ok, that's for PS on the big screen. Now I finally found a way to do the same thing on the iPhone, which will also work on the iPad. Currently PhotoForge2 seems to be the only app that comes with a high pass filter (as far as I know, but I may be wrong indeed since I don't know all the apps). I apply that filter to my original picture and save it as a new picture (=layer). Don't worry if your screen turns all gay after applying the filter cause you need to move the slider to the right to see an effect. I used a value of about 200. You don't need to adjust it to exactly 200.00 which is quite impossible. Just use any value close to 200.

After saving that picture I opened Blender where I added the original picture plus the high pass picture for blending. Settings: Blending mode "Overlay", Slider to 100%, original picture on the left, high pass picture on the right. Please see the screenshots below. Do you see the difference? The first picture is unsharpened, the second picture is sharpened:

I applied the same editing procedures to a set of six photos I made one day in June of 2009 as the blacksmith was at the stables to give my daughter's horse Billie a manicure. I asked him for his permission to make photos while he works and he agreed. Billie is a very gentle horse. She truly enjoys to have her hooves cared for - well, but that's part of the female character, isn't it ;o)?

 

The apps that I used on this set are all top notch apps on the long list of photo editing apps, not just because of the possibilities they provide to create beautiful pictures but also because all of them don't ruin the original photo resolution on saving. I processed all of the above photos in original resolution of 3888x2592px. The iPhone needed some time for processing but this wasn't much more than it needs to process original iPhone pictures. I tested this on a Hipstamatic photo that I also sharpened. See below: 

 

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