About Me

My photo
Spofford, New Hampshire, United States
Jeff Newcomer had been a physician practicing in New Hampshire and Vermont for over 30 years. Over that time, as a member of the Conservation Commission in his home of Chesterfield New Hampshire, he has used his photography to promote the protection and appreciation of the town's wild lands. In recent years he has been transitioning his focus from medicine to photography, writing and teaching. Jeff enjoys photographing throughout New England, but has concentrated on the Monadnock Region and southern Vermont and has had a long term artistic relationship with Mount Monadnock. He is a featured artist in a number of local galleries and his work is often seen in regional print, web publications and in business installations throughout the country. For years Jeff has published a calendar celebrating the beauty of The New England country-side in all seasons. All of the proceeds from his New England Reflections Calendar have gone to support the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program at the Cheshire Medical Center. Jeff has a strong commitment to sharing his excitement about the special beauty of our region and publishes a blog about photography in New England.

Monday, March 25, 2024

The Magic of Generative Fill

 

"Distraction" Removal Strasbourg France


My intention in this article is to discuss the marvelous new Photoshop tool, Generative Fill, but first I feel I need to explain and apologize for my prolonged absence (until a week ago) from publications in this blog.

I am a little surprised and a lot ashamed that it has been just over two years since my last post to my digital photography blog. I understand some, but not all, of the reasons for my absence.  I have always said that I do the blog primarily for my own fulfillment, a way to force myself to consider the challenges of digital photography in a more formal way.  I hope that my discussions have been helpful to others, although I must observe that my ghosting has not led to an uproar of disappointment from my “fans”.

 

The reasons for my absence are many.  Certainly, I must blame, as everyone does, the pandemic, although you might expect that all that free time should have led to more output.  Over the years I always did my best writing while settled at a table in my favorite coffee house and it just hasn’t been the same staring at the monitor isolated in my studio.  The good news is that I started this blog back at a table in the expanded Brewbakers. I did expect that my retirement would have led to more free time to devote to writing but there have been various competing priorities. 

Courthouse Butte Sedona Arizona
Several trips, including to Iceland, Ireland, Arizona and up the Rhine River have added volumes of images requiring editing, and of course the documentation of our two grandchildren have contributed great piles of pixels.  All excuses aside, I must acknowledge that a major reason for my silence must be ascribed to my own profound laziness.  There is something about having all this free time that encourages sloth. My pace is generally slower.
  With all that free time tomorrow, it is always easy to put off what I should have done today. 

 

Enough excuses.  In the last two years the light has not changed and the beauty of New England remains remarkable.  What has changed are the tools that we have available to capture that beauty.  Successive updates to Adobe Lightroom have made it a more capable image editing tool while retaining its file management and organizational strengths.  It is possible to rely solely on Lightroom for your image management and processing, but Photoshop still is the gold standard and offers image editing capabilities that are still not present in Lightroom.  AI supported Generative Fill (GF) is one these powerful capabilities. I should add that GF is only available in the newer versions of Photoshop.  You won’t find it in Lightroom (yet).

 

Marshall Point Light



Added Gulls & Lobster Boat

 Generative Fill (GF) is not a perfect tool, but in many situations, it is almost magical.  Much of the attention given to Generative Fill is based on its ability to insert content into images.  By selecting a portion of an image GF can add almost anything that you may ask.  In my sunset picture of Marshal Point Light, I selected an area in the right upper sky and asked for three seagulls at sunset.  Each time you press the “Generate Button”, after a short period of “thinking”, the tool provides three choices. In this case one of the initial choices worked reasonably well.  Of course, I couldn’t stop there and added a lobster boat on the left.  GF gets these images from Adobe’s extensive image library, and it often    works quite well.  Of course, there is no roadblock to keep you from going too far.

Adde Elephant
 
In this case, an elephant parading among the rocks.  The power of GF to insert content is remarkable and, although it often has an artificial quality, it will certainly get better with further refinement. It is a lot of fun, but for me, I am uncomfortable manipulating the content of my images to this degree and I essentially never use this feature of GF


Generative fill has a couple of other tricks that I find quite useful.  First it can be used to expand the size of image backgrounds.  In this case my Bluebird was cropped too tight to his beak.  After expanding the canvas size to the right, I selected that area, pulled up Generative Fill and triggered it without putting anything in the text box.  The tool nicely sampled the surrounding area and generated a smooth consistent pattern for the background.  GF does a remarkable job expanding the edges of images whether it is sky, grass, water or whatever else you need.

Distraction Removal

Peggy's Cove Light Nova Scotia
Why Do They Watch Beside the Light
By far my most frequent use of Generative Fill is in the removal of distracting content from my images. I have always been compulsive about removing distraction to make my images simpler while directing attention to the key elements of the composition.  I have spent hours with my cloning tool trying to seamlessly eradicate stray rocks and branches peaking in from the edges of my images and most of all, trying to erase all the people who loiter about blocking the natural beauty.

People Removed the
Old Fashion Way
It’s not that I necessarily dislike people. They just don’t belong in my images. I contend that when we look at a beautiful view our minds tend to eliminate the crowds that inhabit the space. In a photograph those interlopers stand out and can’t be ignored.  My view is that removing these distractions brings the image back to the way we originally perceived it.  
With that justification, I want to show how the use of Generative Fill has vastly increased the ease of removing distractions of all sorts.  I can illustrate this best by looking at a few images from my recent cruise up the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Switzerland.  On the trip I was frequently gifted with beautiful scenes of classic villages and ancient cathedrals.  Spectacular but also overrun with wandering groups of tourists.  It is easy to be frustrated by the gaggles, but I always had to remind myself that I was one of the tourists as well.


In the past I would use cloning to carefully remove a few of the most intrusive humans and other distractions, always balancing the severity of the distraction against the time required to meticulously scrub away the contamination. Often the decision was based on the complexity of the background that must be duplicated to fill in the space opened by the removal. In images that I found especially powerful, like the Peggy's Cove Light above, the time required for removal of distractions was more justified and I could spend hours cleaning things up to let the image shine through.

 

Crowded Old Town Strasbourg

Generative Fill has made this process much easier, reducing to a fraction the time required to clean up even the most cluttered image. 

 


Partial Crowd Selection

To use GF, you simply make a selection around the offending area (as above) and then open the Generative Fill tool in the “Edit” drop down menu in Photoshop. Click “Generate” without entering anything in the dialog box and wait for the results.  As always, GF will offer three choices based on the surrounding pixels.  Some can be bizarrely awful, but others are surprisingly good matches.  If you don’t like any of the choices, you can hit the “Generate” button again and get three more possibilities. 


Generative Fill of Selection
I’m not always happy with the first results, but more often my response is “WOW, how did it do that”.  Using GF, the process of cleaning an image is so fast and accurate that I find myself eliminating distractions that I would have previously let slide because they were either too minor or too complicated to work on.  

Further Removal of Distractions

Cologne Cathedral 

Sometimes GF seems to have problems getting things right. GF can dip into the Adobe Image Database to pull up crazy stuff to fill the gaps. You don’t want a poster board filled with gibberish replacing the person in front of the cathedral altar. In these situations, redrawing the selection may help.  



Crowded Bridge Strasbourg
For large or complicated areas breaking the target into a few smaller selections can help GF get a better result.   Here I had to do separate fills on the bridge and the reflection.  The important point is not that the GF results can go awry, it is how often it fills your selection with remarkably appropriate content.


Bridge is Clear


 

Spalen Gate Basel Switzerland

As I worked my way through my thousands of Rhine River images, I was amazed how many times I used Generative Fill to clean up my pictures. Amsterdam and the Rhineland are full of majestic landscapes, quaint villages and breathtaking cathedrals and Generative Fill allowed all these sites to shine past the distractions without adding frustration and hours to my editing time. Give it a try.  Once you get a feel for it, you’ll find GF is amazingly powerful and a lot of fun.

 


Also, check out my Gallery of images from Amsterdam and the Rhine 

 Jeff Newcomer
www.partridgebrookreflections.com

Friday, March 15, 2024

Spring Waterfalls and a Happy Surprise

 

Gulf Road Veil

With the recent rain, we are well into the spring waterfall season.  After a barren, snow deprived winter, the return of flowing water provides a welcome release from my dark seasonal malaise. 

Partridge Brook



A couple of days ago I ventured out to explore some of my favorite waterfall locations.  I first I stopped locally to capture the water of nearby Partridge Brook as it tumbled past the old factory building in Spofford. It is currently a sad site with the deserted brick structure crumbling by the stream, but there is exciting new local interest in rehabilitating the structure to meet a new purpose.
 












After a fresh rain, one of my favorite waterfall locations is along the winding Gulf Road in West Chesterfield.  The dirt road can become difficult following a heavy rain, with thick mud and deep ruts, but the road passes steep uphill cliffs that gush with spectacular cascades of water.  











The various falls weave around the rocks in beautiful veils and interweaving flows.  The roadside falls only become dramatic after heavy rainfalls and tend to disappear to a trickle in just a day or so.  







On that day 
the falls did not disappoint.


 



The light was threatening to fade, but I had time to rush to another favorite spot.  The normally placid flow of the Catsbane Brook in West Chesterfield can fill following a good downpour.  One the best places to appreciate the action is from the bridge across the brook at the Farr Road, near where the Catsbane joins the Connecticut River.  

Farr Road Bridge Cascade


As expected the cascades from this spot were dramatic, but then I noticed a surprise.  

A short distance upstream from the Farr Road bridge is an old mill dam. Seven or eight years ago the mill pond behind the dam had filled resulting in a spectacular flow of water.  I bushwhacked up to the falls and captured what I could only describe as a little Niagara.  The unique scene was amazing, but the next year I was disappointed to discover that it had disappeared.  For whatever reason someone had cleared a sluice at the base of the dam draining the mill pond and eliminating my little Niagara.  It was disappointing and I felt I may have captured the last of this wonderful waterfall.
 
Catsbane Mill Falls 2015


While I was shooting the Farr Road bridge cascade I happen to look up and in the distance I noticed what look like the water cascading over the old dam.  I worked my way up stream and was thrilled to see the mill falls roaring again!  

Catsbane Mill Falls Returned 2024


I don’t know whether the bypass had become obstructed, or the heavy rain had overcome the capacity of the sluice.  For whatever reason my little Niagara was crashing. But the surroundings had changed.  There was a curtain of blowdowns obstructing some of my best views, but even through a screen branches the view was impressive.  Hopefully, the falls may become more accessible after the stream calms down a bit, but I have learned that the mill pond could be drained at any time. 

The Falls Through the Blowdown


I’ll take what I can, but the waterfall season has just begun, and I am sure there will be more excitement to come.

Jeff Newcomer
jeffn49@myfairpoint.net
www.partridgebrookreflections.com

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Through the Mist


Fresh Snow on Otter Brook, Keene NH

  Despite the strangeness of the weather, we had a reasonably colorful autumn.  By December, our typical November “Stick Season” should have been long past.  We were blessed with an inch or so of snow in late December, but that quickly vanished.  It is now mid-January, and we are just getting our next modest snowfall. The result has been an exceptionally long opportunity to explore the patterns and muted colors of New England’s photographically challenging, post-autumn, in-between season.

  

A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of the climatic conditions that can salvage subtlety and interest from the starkness of the stick season.  I awoke to a lovely layer of fog that hung on the landscape and persisted for much of the day.  It is remarkable how a bit of mist in the air can lift a photographer from his pre-winter funk.  I shot out of the house and headed down the road.


I didn’t need to go far, since fog can dramatically alter even the most familiar or mundane scenes.  It can add mystery and depth while transforming bright colors to soft pastels. Seen through fog, distant features can take on a pleasant, uniformly soft, appearance.  Lovely, but I find these images rather flat.  They miss an important feature of foggy weather, the enhanced sense of depth.




Forest Depth

Placing something close to the camera, unaffected by the softening mist, can provide effective contrast to the shrouded distant subjects.  The effect is an expanded sense of depth.  Whenever I begin shooting in the fog, my first question is, “Where can I find something distinct in the foreground”.  Often the soft background serves to simplify the scene, allowing the foreground to stand out, removed from the busy distraction of the more distant elements.


Screened Hay Rake

Partridge Brook Debris


         

On this day, I found plenty of interesting foregrounds, from an old, weed engulfed, hay rake to a collection of storm-tossed brook debris.   I especially like it when leading lines draw the eye through the scene to the distant background.

Granite Leading Line


   

  It was a lovely afternoon with the mist creating interest in almost every direction.  I was only forced to stop by the fading light.


Mt Monadnock Blanket

Misty Wall, Roads End Farm
Chesterfield, NH 2000

 


Now we have some snow on the ground and the hope for more traditional winter photography, 







but remember fog can also work its magic on snowy scenes.











Our new puppy Benjamin Pierce (Benji) is enjoying his first snow.  He is named after the man who built our house back in the 1830s.  Our previous dogs, Nellie and Sophie were named after Benjamin's daughter and mother.


Jeff Newcomer, NEPG
www.partridgebrookreflections.com


Monday, September 27, 2021

Fall Foliage Weekend Workshop (finally)

 


I have always enjoyed teaching digital photography and especially sharing the unique photographic opportunities to be found in my special corner of New England.  This has included conventional courses such as a broad Introduction to Digital Photography as well as the many RAW photo editing features found in Adobe’s Lightroom.  I have also enjoyed exploring our region through a couple of annual photography workshops.  My weekend workshops have included an exploration of our peak fall foliage and the spring waterfall season.





Over the last many months Covid has made teaching difficult.  I have been able to hold conventional classes through Zoom, but it has not been as satisfying as when I could gauge the response of students in an actual classroom.  Over the last year and one half, the pandemic has prevented me from offering any of my in-person weekend workshops.  I couldn’t ask people to expose themselves to the virus around photographic locations and especially not in cars as we moved from place to place.  For me, it has been a prolonged period of frustration.  I have struggled with how to run workshops while maintaining an acceptable level of safety.  It is my hope now that, with the use of masking and social distancing along with the critical value of full vaccination, that an interactive workshop can be possible.



My plan is to offer my Fall Foliage Workshop on October 15th – 17th - as usual for the Weekend after the Columbus Day holiday,   With the strange weather this year, it is hard to predict autumn color, but in past years this has been a great time to go out leaf peeping in the Monadnock region and southern Vermont.  The schedule will be similar to previous workshops with a few modifications for safety.

First our group will be limited to no more than 8 participants and, for everyone’s safety, I will require that everyone be fully vaccinated. Friday evening will be devoted to getting to know each and to a discussion of key aspect of fall foliage photography.  During this session we will make plans for Saturday’s tour of the color based on the local conditions. This year, we will be gathering through Zoom, a safer option but, sadly, without the opportunity to enjoy my wonderful snacks.

Saturday morning, we will meet at a convenient location before heading out on our exploration.  Cars will be a challenge.  I plan to restrict each vehicle to no more than two occupants, masked and with open windows.  I will plan for locations that have room for several cars and for lunch we will look for a place with outdoor dining – weather permitting.

In previous years, the workshop participants have gathered at my house in the evening for pizza and a chance to review the days shots.  This year, I hope to collect your memory cards and critique your photos during another evening Zoom session. 

Sunday morning, we will head out again to visit more interesting locations and plan to finish up around noon.

I feel bad about all the bothersome precautions, but my goal is to provide the best fall foliage tour while doing all that is possible to assure a safe experience.  It should be great fun and a chance to celebrate our region’s most spectacular time of year.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you wish to attend the workshop, since the number of participants is limited.  This year the cost is reduced to only $195.

If you have questions or suggestions, you are welcome to give me a call at:
603-363-8338 (Home)
603-381-8393 (Cell)

Or email at:
jeffn49@myfairpoint.net


Jeff Newcomer, NEPG
www.partridgebrookreflections.com

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Portland’s Six Lighthouses

😡I Hate Change😡

A while back the New England Photography Guild web site was discontinued.  The Guild Facebook page is still active, but along with the discontinuance of our website our blog articles have been lost.  

It is sad to have lost all the great blogs contributed by my fellow members of the Guild, but The members are still out there celebrating the unique beauty of New England.  For my part, I was able to salvage the text from most of my articles.  

I plan to republish many of these blogs with the images retrieved from my archives.  I found that the text can be a bit funky and the background appears white, but the information is still there.  
Enjoy.


Against the Storm, Portland Head Light

 

Portland's Six Lighthouses




A  couple of weeks ago we were visiting friends who every summer, spend a month at Rye Beach on the coast of New Hampshire.  This is a regular yearly trip, but whenever I get to the shore, I try to spend as much time as possible exploring the unique aspects of the coast.  I love the rocks, the surf, and the quaint seaside villages, but, of course, my favorites are the lighthouses.  Around Portland Maine, there are six lighthouses, some of which are more accessible than others, and one has a strong claim to being the ultimate classic beacon along the New England coast.  In the past, I have explored all of these lights, but since we decided to extend our trip up the coast to Portland, I decided to visit all of them in one afternoon.
You can check out the locations on my map and follow the GPS locations.  I decided to tour the lighthouses from south to north starting with the most challenging ones to approach, the Twin Lights.
 

1-2)  Twin Lights, Cape Elizabeth
43.5643N, 70.1989

Forward Range Twin Light, Portland, Maine

Only one of the two Twin Lights is still functioning and both are on private property.  Both were built around 1828, but in 1924, the government dismantled the West (Rear Range)Tower.

It is closed off and is now part of a private residence.  The other light is closer to the shore and, although it is still operating, it can’t be closely approached.  Both lights can be seen from the south at the Two Lights State Park parking lot.  I found a nice view of the functioning light from the parking lot of the nearby Lobster Shack.  I am told that the Shack is famous for its excellent selection of coronary inducing fried food, but even on this mid-week afternoon the line was thankfully endless and the parking lot packed.  I stopped for a couple shots of the lighthouses but then moved on to relinquish our spot to the paying customers.  I will have to return when the weather is more conducive to photography, that is, dark and foggy, and less attractive to the saturated fat seekers.

The famous American Realist painter, Edward Hopper, painted one of the towers in 1929.  In 1970, the painting was reproduced on the first US Postage stamp to depict a lighthouse.

Edward Hooper Lighthouse Twin Light

 

3) Portland Head Lighthouse, Cape Elizabeth
43.6232N, 70.2079W

Morning Passage, Portland, Maine

A short distance to the north along Route 77 and then Shore Road is Portland Head Lighthouse.  It was commissioned by President George Washington and is the oldest lighthouse in Maine.  Unquestionably it is the most photographed light in New England. Located inside the forty-one-acre Fort Williams Park, the lighthouse and the surrounding rocky shore make great subjects for photography in any season, and any time of day, but it is most dramatic around sunrise and sunset.  On this trip, we first visited on a sunny afternoon.  I was hoping that a recent storm might have kicked up some heavy surf, but the waves were just average.   I returned the next morning to catch a sunrise.  The signs announce that the gates open at sunrise but I was able to drive right in about thirty minutes before dawn.


You never can be sure what you will get from an Atlantic coast sunrise.  On this day the clouds were disappointingly few, but the light on the tower was lovely, and I caught some nice waves crashing on the rocks. When shooting an active lighthouse, I try to catch a picture or two with the flash of beacon’s light.  Every lighthouse has its own unique timing and, with a little attention, the light can be anticipated. These images don’t need to be your best, since the light can be blended into whichever picture comes out as your favorite.

 

 

I enjoy shooting any of our New England lighthouses, but a trip to Portland Head Light is always a magic return to Lighthouse Mecca.

 

4) Ram Island Light
43.6314N, 70.1876W

A visit to Portland Head Light is another two-for-one lighthouse opportunity.  Across the entrance to Portland Harbor from Cape Elizabeth is Ram Island Lighthouse.  It sits precariously on a ledge that threatens the northern side of the harbor channel.  The frequent shipwrecks led to the construction of the granite lighthouse, which was completed in 1905.  The lighthouse can be photographed from Fort Williams Park.  I like to include Portland Head Light in the frame.  I usually stand back as far as possible to allow a long lens shot to enlarge the distant Ram Island Light against Portland Head.  When possible, it is worth waiting to capture a passing sailboat or lobsterman.  


What can be better, two lighthouses, a sunrise, and a boat!  The only thing better would be to include massive waves crashing against the lighthouse – an excuse to come back again.  The Rams Island Light is now automated and was sold by the government to a private buyer in 2010 for $190,000.

 

Spring Point Ledge Light
43.6499N, 70.2255W

The next lighthouse up the coast is located next to the Campus of Southern Maine Community College.  Spring Point Ledge Light was built in 1897 to mark a dangerous Ledge which lies to the west of Portland’s main shipping channel.   It is a “spark plug” lighthouse, which traditionally refers to a beacon built on a caisson in open water with the light sitting on top of a cylindrical three-story living area.  They look a lot like spark plugs.  In 1951 the lighthouse was attached to the mainland with a 600-foot granite breakwater, making it the only caisson-style light in the U.S. that can be walked to by visitors.  The lighthouse is owned by the Spring Point Ledge Light Trust, which schedules tours of the structure during the summer.

 

Bug Light
43.6556N, 70.2349W

The final lighthouse in our tour is little Portland Breakwater Light which is also called “Bug Light”.  The current structure was built in 1875 and marks the entrance to Portland Harbor.  It was designed by Thomas Walter, the architect of the U.S. Capital buildings including dome.  The light is easily accessible from Bug Light Park, which includes a memorial to the New England Shipbuilding Corp shipyard.  During WW II, the massive yard constructed over 200 of the Liberty Ships that were so crucial in transporting American industrial output across the Atlantic.  Now, all that is left is a skeletonized bow, representing one of the ships.


Liberty Ship Memorial, Portland, Me

Whether you visit one or all 6 of Portland’s lighthouses you will find endless opportunities to capture much of what makes the Maine coast such a special place for photographers.  I hope to see you there.

For more images of Portland’s Six Lighthouses, check out my Portland LIghthouse Gallery

Jeff Newcomer, NEPG
www.partridgebrookreflections.com
603-363-8338