NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover recently explored Mount Sharp. The mountain is 8km (5 mi) tall and is within the 154km-wide (96 mi) basin of Mars’s Gale Crater. Curiosity captured a new 360-degree panorama at Mount Sharp, revealing its diverse terrain and shedding light on the area’s ancient environment.
NASA writes, ‘Images of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, highlights those features in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).’
Studying the region has been a long-term goal for the Curiosity mission, which is now in its ninth year on Mars. By studying the layers of Mount Sharp, scientists hope to understand how the environment of Gale Crater dried over time. Similar changes in mineral composition are seen across the planet, so understanding Gale Crater should pay dividends in understanding other parts of Mars.
‘The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened,’ said Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
‘NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this 360-degree view near “Rafael Navarro Mountain” on July 3, 2021, the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Stitched together from 129 individual images, the panorama has been white-balanced so that the colors of the rock materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. A craggy hump that stretches 450 feet (137 meters) tall, the geologic feature is located on Mount Sharp in northwest Gale Crater.’ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Click to enlarge.
When Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5, 2012, its primary mission was to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in Mars’s ancient past. Lakes and groundwater once existed within Gale Crater, and scientists want to use Curiosity to understand better what happened and how Mars changed over time.
Looking forward, Curiosity is currently working its way up a path between Rafael Navarro Mountain and a towering butte. In the coming year, Curiosity will drive past these features and enter a canyon. It will then revisit Greenheugh Pediment.
You can learn more about the Curiosity mission by visiting NASA’s dedicated Mars website. You can also check out some of our prior coverage, including Curiosity photographing rare shimmering clouds in June and a neat selfie Curiosity sent to Earth in March.
The post How Expanding Curiosity and Knowledge in Photography Can Help You Improve appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
Maintaining curiosity and knowledge in photography is key to helping you improve your craft. Having a good grasp of your chosen subject material will keep you inspired and full of fresh ideas.
It’s easy to photograph what you find attractive. When you have a deeper understanding of what you enjoy, looking at your photos will have more depth and meaning.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways you can develop curiosity and knowledge in photography that will help viewers engage more with your photographs.
Start with what’s easy. Photograph what you love. When you do this, you’re already well on your way to creating more intimate photos.
Having feelings for your subject helps you see it differently than when you photograph something that looks nice but that you don’t care about. A snapshot made with feeling can be less technically correct but more engaging.
If you have more of a connection to, and concentration on, your camera, rather than your subject, you run the risk of taking technically-correct but otherwise dull photos. Curiosity and knowledge in photography must reach beyond cameras, lenses, and accessories.
Develop a curiosity for your subject. Learn more about it. You will learn to love what you photograph or you’ll grow indifferent. If you lose interest in your subject, find something else to photograph that captures your imagination.
When your imagination is captured, your photos are more likely to capture the imagination of those who see them.
Learning about a topic is easier than ever these days. We have millions of web pages, Youtube videos, forums, and podcasts online. These will teach you anything you desire to learn.
Then there are books, galleries, movies, and all manner of other visually stimulating ways to learn more about your favorite subject.
Open your imagination and you can learn anything you like. Combining your love of photography with becoming an expert on what you enjoy taking pictures of helps you improve.
With a more advanced understanding of the nuances of your subject, you’ll take more intimate, engaging photos of it. If you lack understanding, you’re more likely to miss seeing the subtle aspects that will make your pictures pop.
Even if you’ve been photographing the same subject for many years, I’m sure there’s something else you can learn about it. If you’re not sure that there is, start teaching someone. Once you start teaching about any subject you’re interested in, you’ll soon discover how much more you want to know about it.
Studying a subject until you’re an expert takes commitment. The best photographers know this by experience.
Look at portfolios of any truly successful photographers (not ones who’ve merely acquired large social media followings), and you’ll see what I mean. Their work displays the intimate connection that they have with their subjects.
This takes time and commitment to build. It does not happen quickly or frivolously.
For example, if you love the architecture of the city you live in and photograph it often, take some time to learn more about it. Study its history. Who designed it? Why does it have character? How has it evolved over time? Once you understand the answers to these and other questions, you’ll start to look at your neighborhood in a new light.
Use the internet. Visit your local library. Search out the work of other photographers who have a similar interest. Google is a great source of images. Type in any location and you’ll find others have photographed it and shared their images.
Find well-known photographers whose style and subject material you appreciate. Study how they compose their pictures. When do they take them? Look at the type of light that’s predominant in many of their photos.
You can research any subject you can think of. Taking time to do so on a regular basis will help you become a better photographer. You don’t always have to be out and about with your camera to learn to take better photos.
Taking photos frequently certainly does help you build camera skills, but photography is more than just about using your camera.
Maintain your curiosity and knowledge in photography
No matter how long or how often you’ve photographed a particular subject, it’s best to maintain a curiosity for it.
Explore new ways to photograph the same subject over and over. This should be a healthy challenge. If you find it repeatedly becoming a bit of a drag, consider starting to photograph something different.
The more curiosity you maintain, the more interesting your photos will be to others. Once you’ve covered all the more traditional approaches to taking pictures of a particular subject, a healthy curiosity will lead you further. Your creative journey can really come alive.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Think of ways to make new, fresh pictures that you normally would not take. Looking at the work of other photographers is one of the best ways to discover how you can do this.
Photograph your subject in light you normally wouldn’t use. If you typically work with a long lens, use a wide-angle lens next time. Explore alternative angles and different ways of seeing the same thing. You might surprise yourself with the results.
Be prolific. The more time you spend learning about your subject, the more you’ll want to get out and take photos of it. Frequently using your camera helps you remain immersed. This is also how to maintain healthy levels of inspiration.
Start with what you love. This makes learning easy and fun. Becoming immersed in a subject you are halfhearted about can lead to discouragement. Whatever subjects you photograph should be a pleasure to study and become an expert about.
Curiosity and knowledge in photography will improve the level of engagement viewers have with your art. Taking a serious approach to learning more and developing a more informed appreciation of your subject will elevate your photography experience.
The post How Expanding Curiosity and Knowledge in Photography Can Help You Improve appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
On March 4, NASA shared the highest-resolution panoramic Mars image ever captured by its Curiosity rover. The panorama features 1.8 billion pixels and is comprised of more than 1,000 individual images captured by the rover over the Thanksgiving 2019 holiday break in the US.
NASA explains that Curiosity captured two different panoramas using two different lenses: the record-breaking 1.8-billion-pixel panorama using the Mast Camera (‘Mastcam’) with a telephoto lens and a smaller 650-million-pixel panorama using a medium-angle lens. The larger panorama captured with the telephoto lens was not able to include most of the rover in the final image, but the lower-resolution panorama does include Curiosity amid the landscape.
The Mastcam is mounted at a height of 2m (6.5ft) on Curiosity; it supports capturing color images and videos using ‘left eye’ and ‘right eye’ lenses featuring 34mm and 100mm focal lengths. The camera has a resolution of 2MP, which produces images with a 1600 x 1200 resolution. When recording video, Curiosity’s Mastcam can capture 10 frames per second. According to NASA, the rover’s 8GB storage can hold 5,500 or more Raw frames.
While the mission team was away on holiday leave from November 24 to December 1, Curiosity worked to snap images using Mastcam over a six-and-a-half-hour period of time spread across four days. The camera was programmed to take the images from between noon and 2 PM local time to ensure that the lighting was consistent for the eventual panorama.
The new record 1.8-billion-pixel image. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA explains this holiday break provided a rare moment of downtime for the rover, which typically does not stay in one place long enough to capture so many images from the same vantage point. The resulting 1.8-billion-pixel panorama, which exceeds the rover’s previous record 1.3-billion-pixel image, took ‘months’ to assemble.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said:
While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes. This is the first time during the mission we’ve dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama.
The public can download a full-resolution version of the 1.8-billion-pixel panorama in JPEG and TIFF formats from NASA JPL’s website here, as well as the 650-million-pixel version from the same link. At its highest resolution, the panorama has a massive 2.43GB file size. The space agency offers lower quality versions with file sizes ranging from 82MB all the way down to 350KB.
In addition, NASA has an online 360-degree viewer to present the panorama in full screen with a zoom tool.
Last month, NASA announced that Curiosity rover had wrapped up its work at Mars’ Vera Rubin Ridge and would be making its way to a clay-rich region near the Red Planet’s Mt. Sharp for additional work. In an update on that mission last week, the space agency shared a panoramic image captured by Curiosity’s MastCam at the ridge drill site before it left, as well as an interactive video of the area.
Curiosity’s last drill site on the ridge is known as ‘Rock Hall,’ and it’s located relatively close to the ‘clay-bearing unit’ that researchers will study next. A panorama from the Rock Hall location was created using images captured by the rover before it departed the site. NASA also published a 360-degree video from the images and annotated a few landmarks in it, including Mt. Sharp in the distance.
Visible near Mt. Sharp is the clay-rich region, now called ‘Glen Torridon,’ where Curiosity will help researchers uncover more details about Mars’ landscape and history. The rover is equipped with multiple cameras, including the MastCam and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which is attached to its robotic arm.
Last month, NASA shared a stitched image of the full Curiosity rover at the Rock Hall drill site; that image is made from 57 individual images that were captured using the MAHLI camera. The ‘selfie’ features the final Rock Hall drill site in the bottom center of the image.
Clouds drift across the sky above a Martian horizon in this photograph captured on July 17, 2017 by the Navcam on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University
Last month, NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured something (appropriately enough) curious in the Martian sky: clouds. Specifically, Curiosity snapped several sequences of “wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth’s ice-crystal cirrus clouds” that NASA is calling “the most clearly visible so far” since the Rover landed 5 years and 5 days ago.
As NASA explains in a news release:
Researchers used Curiosity’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement.
Each sequence of 8 images was enhanced and turned into an animated GIF:
To learn more about these photos and the science behind why there are clouds on Mars, and why they were a lot more common billions of years ago, head over to the NASA news release by clicking here.
All photos courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University
No human photographer could capture this aerial photograph. That’s because this image is literally out of this world – it was captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 5th, and shows the Mars Curiosity Rover as it traverses the red planet, approximately 241,500,000 miles away from where I sit typing this right now.
It’s hard to spot, and you have to look really closely, but there’s a small blue dot in the very middle of the photograph above. This closer crop might help:
There, amid the Martian landscape, you can actually see the Curiosity rover as it trekked along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, on its way to ‘Vera Rubin Ridge.’
The photograph was taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which captures a red band, blue -green band, and an infrared band, combining these together to form an RGB image. Because of this, the photograph is not a so-called ‘true color’ image, and the orbiter appears bluer than it actually is.
Oh, and if you’re curious, you can actually see what Curiosity was seeing when this photo was captured. The rover was using its Mast Camera to shoot these photographs of the Martian landscape while its picture was taken.
Earlier this year, NASA released a 360-degree image from the perspective of the Curiosity Mars Rover. The scene is made up of a combination of multiple exposures taken with the rover’s 2MP ‘Mastcam’ camera, which we wrote about back in 2012.
The resulting image is pretty incredible, and if you have access to a Google Cardboard viewer you can experience it in 3D. So if you’ve got a free few minutes this weekend, why not explore the surface of Mars?
AdoramaTV Presents You Keep Shooting with Bryan Peterson. Join Bryan as he discusses curiosity and its role in creativity. Watch as Bryan uses his unique artistic eye to to make visually exciting discoveries. Related Products: Nikon D300S 12.3 Megapixels SLR Digital Camera Body with 3″ LCD, CF and SD/SDHC Card Slot www.adorama.com Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor Autofocus Telephoto Lens – with 5 Year USA Warranty www.adorama.com Flashpoint L100 3 Section Aluminum Tripod, Ball Head & case www.adorama.com Learning to See Creatively by Bryan F. Peterson www.adorama.com Understanding Closeup Photography by Bryan Peterson, Soft Covered Book www.adorama.com Visit www.adorama.com for more photography videos! Video Rating: 4 / 5
photographyequipment.yolasite.com (Budget Equipment) razzi.me www.facebook.com twitter.com In this video I compare the two most popular types of umbrellas, shoot through and reflective umbrella. Shoot through umbrellas are translucent which allows the light to pass. They give you more wrap around light in your portraits. With reflective umbrella, it’s still wrap around light BUT it becomes a bit directional and may cast a little bit of shadow compared to shoot through. Which umbrella should you choose? Well, they are so cheap that everyone who does studio portraits or outdoor strobist photography should simply own both. Equipment used in the video. DSLR: Nikon D3s and Nikon D700 Lens: Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VRII and Nikon 50mm 1.8G AFS lens Umbrellas – Lastolite trifold umbrella and cowboy studio reflective umbrella Video Rating: 4 / 5
While we’re stuck down here on earth, NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently trundling around on the surface of Mars, mapping the terrain and analyzing rocks. This week, Curiosity took time out from its busy schedule to snap an arms-length self-portrait, showing the rover in situ, in Gale Crater – 140 million miles from home. The composite image is made up of 55 high-resolution images, taken using its MAHLI camera, which is mounted on the end of a robotic arm. Click through for more details and a link to the full-resolution image.
Landscape photographers are often striving to photograph new places, but imagine being the first person to ever photograph an alien environment. Some time ago I wrote about his in relation to the landing on the moon in my blog post Isolation and Discovery. My day dreams of photographing landscapes of distant, if not alien environments, has been revived by the recent stream of images from the Mars Curiosity Rover. The rover is equipped with 17 cameras so there will be plenty of photos to come over the next year. The main Mast camera (MastCam) has begun snapping a series of lower resolution (by consumer dSLR standards) images that can be stitched together to create larger high resolution images. Neat, but what is really cool is NASA is making all the images from the rover available on their web site in high resolution (see the Curiosity Rover Multimedia page). If you have the inclination you can stitch and process the images yourself. I had a few minutes the other day to do this and here are the results:
Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected Comparison (Top RAW from NASA & Botom My Version)
View the large color corrected pano comparison (2954 x 1000)
View the large color corrected pano (2954 x 500)
Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected Comparison Zoom
View the large corrected version of the pano with the uncorrected section (2975 x 500)
I thought it would be interesting to take the RAW uncorrected images from NASA and color correct them as I do with my landscape photos. I have my very own recipe of edits that expand on the basics of finding a black, grey and white point in a scene including mid-tone contrast adjustments, edge masks and more. Relying on the “auto” curves or levels feature in Photoshop may be good for a quick fix, but it’s not always an accurate correction. The biggest challenge obviously in color correcting NASA’s images is that I don’t have a firsthand experience of seeing the scene with my naked eye and the lighting scenario/time is unknown to me. I can only make educated guesses and fly blind by referencing the data in the RAW file. While my effort to color correct these images is not perfect it’s easy to see the difference.
Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected (NASA vs Mine) Comparison Zoom
Above is the color corrected version from NASA placed atop my version of the scene. I have to trust NASA on this one, but it still seems like it has room for improvement. It would be interesting to learn more from NASA what the Earth equivalent “time of day” these photos were taken on Mars and possibly get a better understanding of the air quality & atmospheric differences. With this additional knowledge Earth-bound landscape photographers who have a great feel for the quality of light at different times of day on Earth might be able to help create a more accurate rendition of what these scenes actually look like.
For now I’ll be waiting patiently for the next batch of images to be downloaded from Mars. The images above are part of a larger panoramic. It should be pretty amazing to see what it looks like as a whole not to mention see what other amazing images make their way back to NASA.
Additional Info on Mars Color Correction
On this trip NASA included a color calibration target . This is great, BUT it’s only going to help for situations when there isn’t a natural tint of color in the atmosphere (sunset, sunrise, impact from particulate matter, etc.). Here on Earth if you if you use such a color calibration target at sunset or sunrise the golden hour light is completely neutralized even though it’s a naturally occurring color phenomenon. Unfortunately on Mars it may not be known what the naturally occurring hue in the atmosphere is in general or at different times of the day. I’m hoping that NASA is able to provide information about the angle of the sun in the sky in relation to the photos relayed from the rover. While it may be impossible to know what the average natural hue of the sky is (less a spectrophotometer focused on the sky) it might allow for some modeling to make an educated guess. For purposes of geological study the neutral coloring will likely help study rocks better, but in giving the average person a view of what Mars actually looks like the color calibration target on the rover may not help that much.
Mars Curiosity Rover Color Correction Scale Target
Technorati Tags: Mars, Curiosity Rover, Photo, Landscape, Astrophotography, Color Correction
Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved
Curiosity Rover Photos, A Landscape Photographers Perspective
.gif)
You must be logged in to post a comment.