Early Morning

 

No.  I did not die. 

No.  I did not contract a life-threading disease—unless you count laziness as a life-threading disease.  

I just had no desire to post anything. 

A couple weeks ago, I had a job west of Houston.  As is my habit, I left well before sunrise so that I would not be late.  Looking through my rear view mirror.  I saw the sun coming-up in a clear sky.  Since I had my Nikon 80-400mm lens packed in my bag, I decided to stop and try to get one of those classical sun-rising shots. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D800 with white balance set to 10,000K on a tripod, 80-400mm f/4.5~5.6 lens at 400mm, ISO 100, f/5.6 at 1/750^th of a second on a tripod. 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon vivid preset, set white and black points, added vibrance and clarity.

Yellowstone 2013 Visit—#5

 

We often encountered fog early in the morning.  Today’s photo is all about the light.  I have no idea as to why, but the light seemed to have two distinct colors—warm light on the trees and cool light on the water.  This lighting only lasted about ten minutes.  I felt like the different light colors generated two different photos in one. 

I have no idea what caused this, but would be most interested to learn why the light acted this way. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D4 on a tripod, 28-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 180, f/8 at 1/180^th of a second. 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Standard preset, set white and black points, added vibrance.

Yellowstone—Revisited #3

Sometimes, the scene is so peaceful that all you want to do is sit and take in the moment. 

That was the case as JD and I made our way back to our hotel one evening.  JD does not like being on the road after dark (see last weeks post for the reason) in Yellowstone.  However, she also loves sunset (not so much sunrises because that means getting out of bed early).  She insisted that we stop at a roadside pull-out and watch the sky change colors.  To be honest with you, I was so taken-in by the scene that I only took four shots. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D200, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 400, f/8 at 1/30^th of a second on a tripod 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Standard preset, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance, cropped into panorama.

Yellowstone—Revisited #1

 

In August, JD and I are going to Montana/Wyoming to photograph my nephew’s wedding/Yellowstone. 

I do not professional photograph weddings; so, my knowledge about the subject is very limited.  I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos on wedding photography, but, I am not sure I really understand what the “Boss” (JD, my bride, for those new to the blog) has gotten me into.  The wedding is in Sydney, Montana—a somewhat hard difficult destination from Houston. 

After the wedding, we plan to drive to Yellowstone National Park (my absolute favorite national park).  Over the weekend, I started reviewing my photographs from our last visit to Yellowstone in September 2006.  

At that time, I was using a Nikon D200, which I considered the best camera I had ever used.  All the RAW images in my Lightroom Catalog were processed in Lightroom 2 or 3.  Looking over the photos, I soon realized just how far cameras and Lightroom have progressed since then.  WOW!  What a change. 

Today’s photo is my favorite from my last visit to Yellowstone.  As far as back story, the only thing that I remember is that I had used a graduated neutral density filter to tone down the sky. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D200, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 26mm, ISO 400, f/22 at 1/13^th of a second on a tripod. 

Post Processing: 

Lightroom 5—applied Nikon Vivid preset, set white and black points, added clarity, sharpness and vibrance and burned top and bottom of photo using the adjustment brush.

What I Did on My Vacation #7

Before I get into today’s post, I want to answer a question that Ellen posed in her comment abut Friday’s post—do I consider these (my posting) print ready?  The short answer is no.  All of them would require sharpening and probably some additional dodging and burning.  As to specifics for each picture:  I would remove a lot of the specular highlights in the classical crab shot because I think they take your attention away from the subject; I would probably not print the crab in the ice plant because the ice plant leaves (?) directly front of the crab take away from the subject and I am too lazy to spend the time required to remove them from the photo; and the final shot is probably the one closest to “print ready”.

In my What-I-Did-on-My-Vacation-#3, I said: “As to the Galapagos Islands, I would have to say that the landscape is nice but not spectacular.”  Well, several of my co-travels on boat to issue with me in emails.  They completely disagree with me; they thought the landscapes and seascapes were spectacular.

The first photo is our group exploring one of the islands.  The plant life you see is quite common to many of the islands.  The reds, greens and yellows go well with the blue, overcast skies.  The second photo (taken with the Canon G-12 from a Zodiac) shows a granite island take through an opening in another island.  Here, I liked the framing of the island and the contrast of the warm colors of the rock and the cool colors of the sky and ocean.  The final photo is more-or-less a typical shot of the wet side of most islands.  I think that our guide said that the wet sides of the islands were generally characterized by cliffs.  

Enjoy.

Oregon Trip #8—Bridge at Cascade Locks

I love old bridges.  They have such wonderful grace and style.  I wished that bridges built today had the same style.

I submitted this photo at our last Honor’s Night at Bay Area Photo Club.  Even though I like the photo a lot, I was surprised that it scored as high as it did.  Why?  Well, I was worried that our judges might get caught-up with bluish color-cast of the photo.  I had taken great care when I was taking the photo to set the white balance so that the blue color-cast (which was what I was seeing) would be reflected in my photo.  Second, HDR photos are not always well received by our judges.  I think that the judges see them has gimmicks or “photo-by-computer-program.”  I think that can be the case but overall I think most of the photographers at the club who utilize HDR do a pretty good job using the program.

I wanted this photo to show the subtle nature of the scene.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 shot at 28mm, ISO 200, f/13 and at nine different shutter speeds.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, cropped photos, and changed, added saturation of certain colors vignetting.

Photomatix Pro—combined six of the nine exposures and tone mapped the result

Photoshop CS5—removed minor distracting element, adjusted overall mid-tone contrast and sharpened the bridge using the high pass method.

Oregon Trip #5—Early Morning

Early morning along the Columbia River brings fog, low and high clouds and the colors of sunrise.  I really like how the whole scene appeared in three distinct layers—the fog, the low cloud, touch of color from the sunrise and the high clouds.   As I sat with my coffee and camera, I wanted to capture all these elements.  I tried various exposures however I could never get the fog along the river looking like I was seeing it.  This photo is the best of the lot.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 shot at 70mm, ISO 200, f/11 and 1/30^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, increased mid-tone contrast and changed saturation of various colors.

Oregon Trip #2—Another Fall along the Columbia Gorge

Latourell Falls is a little west of Maltnomah Falls and although it is not as spectacular as Maltnomah Falls, it does have an interesting twist because of the unusual lime-green lichen that clings to the basalt cliffs.  I had never seen such a large patch of lichen.  It gave the whole falls a somewhat eerie look.

Again, I took five bracketed exposures and used three (-2EV, 0EV and +2EV) to create a HDR image.  

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 shot at 45mm, ISO 200, f/11 and 1/15^th, 1/60th and 1/250^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, adjusted saturation of various colors, added mid-tone contrast and vignetting.

Photomatix Pro 3—combined three frames into an HDR image and tone mapped the overall image

Oregon Trip #1—An Absolute Must Photo from Oregon

JD and I just got back from a short vacation in Oregon.  I have never spent much time in Oregon and this was my first trip in which I really did much photography in the state. 

I believe it is a state law that you cannot officially say you have photographed in Oregon if you do not have a photo of Multnomah Fall that is along the Historic Columbia River Highway (Oregon Route 30) that runs parallel to I-84 east of Portland.  The falls has a 620’ drop from the top of the upper falls to the pool at the bottom of the lower falls.  It is the tallest falls in Oregon and the fourth tallest in the United States.

To me, the bridge between the upper and lower falls is what makes this fall so interesting.  Speaking of the bridge, it is slightly uphill, so please do not write that I need to make sure that my camera was level.  I used the leveling function in the Nikon D3 to make sure that everything was level and then made sure by using the leveling function in LIghtroom 3 (based upon the fall of the water).

The image is an HDR one.  And, to answer the question, possibly before it is asked, I used Photomatix Pro 3 to convert the image.  I tried Photoshop CS5 to convert it but I was not able to get the details and controls that I wanted.  This may be due to my lack of familiarity with CS5’s HDR functions and the saved settings that I have developed in Photomatix.  Although I shot five frames, I only used three of them (-2 EV, -1EV and 0EV).  The overexposed frames blurred the water too much and made it completely white, which was not what I wanted.  In addition, the overall scene is slightly dark and that is the way I wanted to present it.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at shot at 24mm ISO 200, f/11 and 1/15^th, 1/8^th and 1/4^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast.

Photomatix Pro 3—combined three frames into an HDR image and tone mapped the overall image.

Photoshop CS5—removed a few distracting elements within the photo and balanced the colors within the image.

Sunset before the Wedding Reception

The Patrick’s moved their base to the Chaumette Vineyards & Winery in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri for my niece’s wedding.  The ceremony was very nice and the location was fantastic, but the best part of the week was being with my family—brothers, sisters, wife, son, special daughter and, of course, the grandchildren.

I must admit, young Mr. Cameron stole the show.  He put himself into the middle of everything.  I believe that he truly thinks he is the same as his five year old sister and seven year old brother.  He seems to think that he can get his way by simply smiling at everyone.

Today’s photo was taken after a small storm moved through the area and just before sunset.  In the photo, I wanted to show the colors of the sunset and the shadows that the low sun cast over the vineyard.  I set the white balance to K7,500 to add warmth to the photo.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 shot at 42mm, ISO 800, f/8 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, adjusted hue and saturation of various colors and added clarity and mid-tone contrast.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast filter to add detail to the foreground.

Playing with Slow Shutter Speeds

JD and I truly enjoyed hiking in and around Johnson Canyon.  Within the canyon, there are many waterfalls and a lot of fast moving water—a great time to play with slow shutter speeds.  For many of my photos, I used my Sing Ray variable neutral density filter.  The filter allows you to adjust the you exposure anywhere from 2 to 8 stops.  The filter is great for capturing moving water.

In this photo, I wanted to capture the water flow and the reflective light on the rocks.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28mm f/2.8 shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 8 second with Sing Ray variable neutral density filter attached.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro to add contrast to various parts of the photo. 

Yes Dear, I Think the Bears Are Out

We had just finished a great hike around the Valley of the Five Lakes and were relaxing near our car when the following conversation took place:

JD:  We have not seen any bears.  Do you think they out of hibernation?

Me:  I don’t know.  It is pretty late in the year but then again a lot of the lakes are still frozen and we have been snowed on several times this week; so they may not be.

Me walks to the back of the SUV to get some drinks out and spots a mamma bear with two cubs.

JD:  I think they are still hibernating.

Me:  I don’t think they are.  (as me is leaning over the hood of the SUV and taking rapid series of photos).

JD:  Make up your mind.  What proof do you have that the bears our out.

Me:  About 40 frames of proof.  (as JD comes around to the front of the SUV and finally sees the momma bear and the two cubs)

JD:  Get in this car right now before that bear eats you.

Unfortunately, I did not get any good photos of the entire bear family.  The two cubs always stayed behind momma thus making it very hard to get a clear shot of them.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 shot at 200mm, ISO 200, f/8 and various 1/500^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, cropped photos, and changed and added saturation of certain colors.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to enhance details in the bear.

Church of the Mountains

JD and I visited the Church of the Mountains on our way back from Emerald Lake.  The church sets in a rather deserted area with only a small walking path leading up to it.

Upon reaching the church, I took several shots of it from the front, but really did not like any of them because the background was not very interesting.  I walked around to the back of the building where I was provided with a wonderful view of the mountains and a setting sun. 

The color combination of the sky, mountains and church was not that interesting so I decided to convert the image to black and white.  I wanted to make sure that I retained all the details in the white church so I underexposed the image by ½ f-stop.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 shot at ISO 200, f/8 and 1/350^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points and cropped photos.

Photoshop—converted photo to black and white using nik Silver Efex Pro.

Along a Trial

One of the great things about hiking in national parks is seeing things that you do not normally see in your day-to-day life.  JD and I was about half way through our hike when we wondered upon three mountain goats.  Normally, mountain goats are very shy and take-off the moment that they see you, however, these three stayed around for about twenty minutes while we ate a snack and watched them.

In this photo, I like the way the white of the mountain goat contrasted against the dark bark of the trees.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 at ISO 800, f/9.5 and 1/500^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, and added clarity and vibrance.

Not Exactly How I Remember It

JD, Monte and I had gone to Banff/Jasper many years ago.  All of us thought that it was truly beautiful with many great hiking trails that generally led to emerald colored lakes.  JD and I returned a couple weeks ago, but things were not the same.

Our last visit was during the summer; this time we made the trek in the middle of May.  To my surprise, we found many of the trails still closed due to snow.  According to the locals, most of the trails are open by the beginning of May, but not this year.  In fact, one of Banff National Parks most famous sites, Lake Louise, was still quite frozen, as you can see by the photo. 

I wanted the image to be a classical landscape photo—the rocks in the foreground anchoring the bottom part of the photo, the lake with some interesting shapes and colors and finally the majestic mountains and sky acting as the background to the whole season.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 at 17mm shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/180^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, adjusted hue and saturation of various colors and added some mid-tone contrast to photo.

Photoshop—used Topaz Adjust to bring out the details in the rocks.

Another Texas Wildflower Image

Today, I post another of the photos that I took while viewing the wildflowers with the boss.

I truly like the combination of barbwire fences, dirt roads and Texas wildflowers. I saw this road out of the corner of my eye as we were driving on a small FM road. Unfortunately, I passed it and had to do one of my famous “bat” turns to get back to it.

As I was looking at the scene, I must admit there was one thing about the scene that bothered me—the road and flowers led the eye to a, a, a tree? And, a not too interesting tree at that! The photo had a lot of interesting elements, but, well it lacks a pay-off.

Luckily, after I finished my original shot, I saw a small boy and his dog walking towards me. Oh, just what the photo needed. A little human element. And believe it or not, I did not have to do any retouching on either the boy or the dog. Don’t you think the boy and his dog really adds to the impact of the image. It pays to be lucky!

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3x, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 35mm with a polarizing filter attached shot at ISO 100, f/8 and 1/125^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set black and white points on both images used.

Photoshop—used Topaz Adjust Photo Pop to enhance the detail in the flowers and road.

Texas Wildflowers

JD and I usually head up to the Brenham area every year to see the wildflowers. JD’s rule is simple: use any camera equipment that I want, as long as I can hold everything I bring in one hand. Needless to say, this trip is not an all-out photography trip. We made our annual trip this last week.

I primarily used the trip to scout for Bay Area Photo Club’s upcoming trip to the area which I plan on attending.

Today’s photo is all about colors—blue, green and yellow. As I took the photo, I knew that I wanted this to be a panorama and make the three elements of the photo—flowers, trees and sky—each be approximately 1/3^rd of the image.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3x, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 28mm shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set black and white points and cropped image.

Photoshop—used Topaz Adjust Photo Pop present to bring out details in the scene.

Trying to Capture Some Lighting

A couple weeks ago, I was heading to Galveston to scout for a portrait session that I had booked when I noticed a lot of lightning off in the distance. I pulled my car off the freeway near a marsh where I hoped to get a few nice lightning bolts; but, alas, nothing.

Just for the record, I was not so stupid as to stand outside and try to get the shot of lightning. Rather, I took the “chicken” way out—I stayed in my car and hopped for the best.

I wanted the photo to depict the mood that I felt while watching the storm unfold in front of me. I thought that black and white would do that best.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 shot at 36mm, ISO 200, f/16 and 1/125^th of a second with various strobes triggered remotely.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points.

Photoshop—used nik Silver Efex Pro to convert photo to black and white.