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.

What I Did on My Vacation #11

After returning from Sacsayhuman, we treated to a fabulous sunset.  Looking at the dynamic range, I knew that I would need to use HDR to adequately capture what I was seeing.  My tripod was back in the hotel (resting from the travel, I guess), so I had to employ one of Barry Armer’s techniques—hand-held bracketed exposures.  I braced myself against a lamp post and shot five exposures at one-stop increments (+2 to -2 EV).

Last week, I watched an interesting video by Kevin Kubota on [FRAMED] about post-processing HDR shots when you do not have a steady tripod.  Essentially, he exports all of the exposures from Lightroom or Bridge into Photoshop as layers.  He then aligns the layers within Photoshop and then exports the various layers back as individual files.  He then runs his normal HDR program to convert all the exposures into an HDR image.   I tried this on a couple HDR wanta-bes and found that it does seem to reduce the ghosting that you get with out-of-register images.  If you are interested in watching the entire video you can find it here.   (As a side note, Kevin Kubota has presented some good post-production techniques for Lightroom and Photoshop—you might want to check them out at [FRAMED]).

Today’s image is of La Catedral on the Plaza de Amas in Cuzco.  The Plaza is the main gathering point for many tourist and residents throughout the day, and as a result, many people are moving always around in front of La Catedral—not the best conditions for using HDR.  Solution:  crop the people out!  I just felt that trying to fix all the blur of people and cars would take too much times, especially since they are really not the main subjects of the photo.

Enjoy.

All About the Light

Without a doubt, the subject matter is messy—too many destracting details and probably not a clear subject matter.  But, this scene it not about the specifics—it’s about the light.  I saw the golden light on the shrimp boat and the blues of the water and sky.  Two great complementary colors is what I saw and what I tried to convey in the image.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 shot at 135mm, ISO 200, f/11 and 1/80^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points, added clarity and increased contrast.

Photoshop—used spot healing to clean-up various ugly spots and added saturation to blue and orange.

Sunset at Kemah Boardwalk

While JD was visiting her niece last week, I met a friend for dinner at the Kemah Boardwalk.  We planned on taking a few sunset and night shots before eating.

The sunset was really nice, except for all the stuff between me and the sunset.  I was feeling a little frustrated over all the “stuff” that was then in my frame but then decided to make the photo more about the whole scene rather than just the sunset.

I used HDR—seven photos at a range of +3 EV to -3 EV.  I combined the photos using Photoshop CS5 rather than my normal approach of using Photomatix Pro.  This is the first time that I have used Photoshop CS5’s HDR and, I must admit, it did take some playing around to get the image the way that I wanted it.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 shot at 56mm, ISO 200, f/11 and 1/40^th to ½ of a second on a tripod and set white balance to tungsten lighting to bring out the blue in the sky.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Adjusted white balance on all seven photo to be used in Photoshop CS5 to where I wanted the overall color tint.

Photoshop—Used HDR to combine seven images and added mid tone contrast to image.  

New Zealand Sunset

Last Honor’s Night at Bay Area Photo Club, Bob Dempsey presented a photo from his trip to New Zealand.  The photo was a panorama of a fantastic sunrise.  It was a truly stunning photo.  My hats off to Bob for such a fine photo.

My sunset photo from New Zealand is nothing compared to Bob’s but I still like it.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D200, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/60^th of a second with graduated neutral density filter attached to darken sky.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom—Set black and white points and saturated colors in sky.

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.

Getting the Shot I Saw

Last Friday, I had a couple assignments to photograph some of the Houston Rodeo Bar-B-Que cooking teams. I had not been to the cook-off for some time and was not really sure what I was getting myself into. The photographing was hard because of the tight quarters and a lot of smoke around my subjects. But, the people were great and having some bar-b-que in one hand and a beer in the other is what every Texan lives for.

Today, I present two photo of a scene that I tried to photograph—one a complete mistake and the other a partial success. The problem that I was presented was getting some light on the US and Texas flags while keeping all the color and intensity in the sky.

The first photo was taken straight-up with matrix metering and very little adjustments. It definitely was not what I was seeing or wanted.

In the second photo, I changed my white balance to tungsten to bring out the blue in the sky. I used my flash (actually attached to my camera). I tried several shots using the flash in TTL mode, but was not very happy with what I was I was getting. I finally changed my camera to manual mode and shot the ambient light about 1½ stops underexposed. I then set my flash in manual mode and keep adjusting it until I got the light I wanted on the flags. The final flash was set at ½ power.

Not my normal use of flash, but an effective one.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm shot at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 1/250^th of a second with flash in manual mode and set at ½ power.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set black and white points.

Photoshop—used Topaz Adjust to add details to the flags and the building.

A Southern Hemisphere Sunset

Over the past few months, I have been cleaning-up some of my old photos that I plan to make into a book or two for my wife. She has always wanted books of some of our travels and I thought that this would be a pretty good time to do some of them.

This photo comes from one of our favorite places in the world—Port Natales, Chile which is just outside a great national park, Torres del Paine. Port Natales is a very interesting small town with great views of the fjords of the area.

I had set and watched this type of scene unfold before our eyes for three days before I said: "Da, why haven't you been taking photos of this wonderful scene." The clouds generally rolled into the area around two or three in the afternoon and then cleared by about 7 or 8 in the evening. Great sunsets every evening. This photo was taken from our hotel balcony while we sipped on some very nice Chilean red wine.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D200, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 28mm with polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/125^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

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

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

Near Sunset

While on our way to South Dakota this summer, we stopped near this mountain range one evening. I really like the way there seemed to be three areas of the photo: the blue sky, the golden light hitting the rocks and finally the shadow area.

I just tired to keep the whole thing simple.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 28mm shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/15^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

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

What I Did on My Vacation—Part 2

Day two of our travels found us getting an early start in our 650+ miles travels from Amarillo, Texas to Douglas, Wyoming. At mile-post 748, we left Texas and entered New Mexico at Texline, Texas (you must give us Texans credit for our great imagination at naming our towns). The drive through New Mexico was mostly ranch lands with lots of rolling hills. Upon entering Colorado, we encountered some nice mountains. We were making great time and then we hit Denver at 12:45PM. Everything came to a complete halt. It took us two hours to get through Denver. It was a traffic jam that even Houstonians would be proud of! A little advice here: if you are going through Denver, take the toll road around the city; fork over your $10 to $12 and keep more of your sanity. After Denver, the rest of the trip was relatively uneventful.

On our trip, I tried to stop about every two to three hours and to get feeling back into my legs. Naturally, all the stops were at places that might generate a good photo or two. I got a couple of good shots, but it was not until we got to Douglas, Wyoming that I got the photo of the day.

As we arrived in Douglas, I was watching the sky. It looked like the sunset would have lots of nice color and with surrounding hills, I knew a good sunset photo could be in the making. Upon checking into the hotel, I asked the hotel manager if she knew of any place where I could see the sunset. She looked at me blankly and said: “I think you can see it from our parking lot.” After a little more explanation, she told me of this spot not too far from the hotel.

Sure enough my guide was right. The spot was perfect. JD and I sat on the trunk of my car, ate our dinner and watched the sun disappear over the hills. Of course, I had to periodically jump up and take a few shoots.

I was generally happy with most of the shots, but did not like the darkness of the foreground. I asked myself: What would Joe McNally do? Since my camera was already on a tripod, I attached my SU-800 and whipped out two flashes to light the foreground. JD acted as VAL for the flash on the left and I was the VAL for the flash on the right. I had to put a CTO gel on each flash and set the flashes -2 EV so that the light would look more like the fading sun. I was generally happy with what I got.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8, shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/2^th of a second on a tripod and triggered with camera’s self timer with two Nikon SB-800 (gelled with CTO and set at -2EV) that were hand-held to the right and left of the camera controlled by Nikon SU-800.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—ran nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast filter on the foreground to add contrast to shadows, mid-tones and highlights.