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.

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.

Posted Picture Revisited—Taking Your Comments to Heart

Before I discuss today’s revisited photo, I would like to discuss last week’s revisit.

Unfortunately, I did not do a very good saying what I was thinking. All of the suggestions that I received would have made the photo a better photo and the points that DHaass made were very good, especially if you were creating a fine art print where all the elements of the photo should be spot-on. But, for this photo, fine art was not my intent. Rather, my intent was to show how certain things in life are timeless. Hence, the question, when does bothersome details become a major hindrance to the artist’s intent? I still do not have a good answer to this question—I think it depends upon the photo, the maker’s intent and how well he/she communicates his/her intent within the photo.

Today, I want to revisit a photo that I posted on September 24, 2009.

Everyone correctly said that the photo needed to be cropped. I agree, I agree and, by the way, I agree. But then, where should I crop it? I played around with several crops and finally decided on this one. After looking at the cropped image for a while, I decided that the photo lacked sufficient depth, so I decided that the shadows in the foreground needed a little burning to add some depth.

Enjoy.

Shooting into the Sun

For a landscape photographer, I do not think there is anything more discouraging than getting up before sunrise on a cold morning, slugging through the dark to plant your tripod at the ideal spot and then to find the sunrise just isn’t that interesting. That’s what happened to me on this morning. I had scouted the location the evening before and had carefully selected this spot. I thought that the tree had a great shape and I thought that the sun would rise directly over it.

I wanted the photo to show the sun rising from a cloud filled sky with the tree in the foreground. Yet, the morning greeted me with very few clouds.

This is the best I could come up with.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 40mm with a graduated 4-stop neutral density filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/125^th of a second on a tripod with a Nikon SB-800 pointed at the top of the tree to provide some fill light and overcome the effects of the neutral density filter.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—used nik Silver Efex Pro tonal contrast filter to add contrast to highlights, mid-tones and shadows of water, beach and tree.

What I Did on My Vacation—Part 14

A little advice: if you ever go to Badlands National Park, plan on photographing it either early in the morning or late in the evening. During these periods, you see great colors and the light gives the hills some wonderful texture. Yet, during the middle of the day, the hills have no color and virtually seem to meld into each other. What a difference a little light makes.

Here I wanted to bring out the great colors before me—the yellows and magentas in the hills and the greens in the valleys. The sky was really secondary to the hills of the badlands.

I had about six f-stops difference between the sky and the hills, so I used a three stop graduated neutral density filter to bring the two exposures more in line with each other.

Just so I do not get any notes about it, I want everyone to know that I did level my camera before I made the photograph. The hills run from the high on the right to the low on the left. I decided to leave the horizon as it was rather than “correcting” it. What do you think is the right answer?

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 60mm, shot at ISO 200, f/16 and 1/30^th of a second with a three stop graduated neutral density filter attached.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to add contrast to highlights, mid-tones and shadows of the hills.

In and Around Houston #2

After the Kemah sunrise photo, I headed to downtown Houston. I wanted to take a few photos of the Houston skyline and/or some of the individual buildings. Since it was still relatively early in the morning, most of the city had a nice natural glow to the light reflecting-off the buildings. I shot several buildings and then noticed how the light made the sandstone of the church turn a nice soft orange. I wanted the photograph to be totally about the light and the complementary colors of the blue sky and the orange light on the church.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 42mm with a polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/180^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—sharpened church using the highpass filter method in soft light mode and increased saturation of blues and orange in an adjustment layer.

In and Around Houston #1

A few weeks ago at a meeting of the Bay Area Photo Club, I walked into a conversation that went something like this:

Member #1: “There is just not much to photograph in Houston. I am planning a trip to Place X next month. Really looking forward to working on some new techniques I have been reading about.”

Member #2: “I know what you mean. I have not taken a photo in Houston that I think is very good in over a year. I plan on going to Place Y next week. There are so many good photographing opportunities there.”

Member #3: “I wish I was going some place, but just cannot get away anytime soon. Larry, how about you?”

Larry: “Daaaa. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

I have been thinking about his conversation a lot over the past few weeks. During the Next Step workshop last year, Craig Tanner said that he felt like great photos come from within the photographer and that by allowing your photography to be dictated by what you were shooting, limits you as an artist. I then recalled my experience in Naches, Mississippi last year (written about on my December 4, 2008 blog).

By no means do I want anything that I write to be interpreted as being a put-down of anyone in the conversation. But, I decided that my fellow members were talking about “taking photos, rather than, making art.” Here, I use a very loose definition for “art”—to me, “art” in photography means putting my own unique interpretation on what I am photographing.

With all this in mind, I decided to give myself an assignment: spend a day photographing Houston and publish at least five photographs on my blog. I decided that I would limit myself to one lens, use only available light and not photograph any people (because you could photograph people anywhere); however, I would not limit the post-processing of my images to Lightroom only—any and all post processing will be on the menu.

As I drove around looking for places to photograph, I found several locations that would make for good photographs, but not in the current light. Since it was my assignment and I could do what I wanted, I changed the rules to ten photographs over a two-day period.

A project like this must start with a sunrise photo. What makes a good sunrise photo? Sun, clouds and water. So, my first photo comes from Kemah area. Luckily, the sun was cooperating when I got to Kemah. I took several shots, including some bracketed shots for HDR processing and thought that I was finished, when this bird landed on a piling. The bird made a good anchor for the photo’s foreground. I wanted the photo to be very traditional landscape photo with a foreground anchored by the bird, a middle ground anchored by the pilings and finally the background of the sun hid by the clouds. Overall, I was happy with the results, but I did wish that there was more orange in the sunrise, but decided that I would not change that aspect in the post processing.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 30mm with a polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/180^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—ran nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast filter to add contrast to shadows, mid-tones and highlights to the water and added a curves adjustment to the sky for overall contrast.