My Vacation—Part 8

Occasionally, the fog would lift for a few minutes and I was left to photograph scenes like today’s photo.  However, more times than not, the fog would stay and Janice and I would merely sit on a great location and watch the movement of the ocean waves hitting the rugged shore.   I must admit, sitting and doing nothing but watching the waves, was very relaxing.

In this photo, I wanted to really contrast the colors—the overcast skies and ocean with the bright, shinning colors of the plants and rocks.  I also liked how the people in the scene gives the viewer a sense of scale.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with at 28mm, ISO 200, f/16 at 1/125^th of a seconds on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Landscape preset during import, set white and black points and adjusted the hue, saturation and luminous of various colors within the photo and used adjustment brush on the rocks and plants to add contrast, clarity, sharpness and saturation.

My Vacation—Part 7

As I mentioned in last week’s post, there was a lot of fog along the coast.  As a result, many of my photos from Acadia National Park were like this one:  inland photos taken while hiking the trails.

I have always like birch trees.  They seem to set themselves apart from the rest of the forest.  In this photo, I just wanted to capture the lush greens and the interruption of it by trunks of the birch trees.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with at 28mm, ISO 100, f/16 at 1/250^th of a seconds on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Landscape preset during import, cropped the image, set white and black points and adjusted the hue, saturation and luminous of various colors.

My Vacation—Part 6

Before visiting Maine, one of the things that I definitely wanted to see was Acadia National Park.  Many landscape photographers maintained that it is one of the most picturesque national parks.  There are some great things in the park, but, I would not rank it as high as other might—give Yellowstone, Sequoia, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion, Canyonland, Muir Woods, etc.

Photographing Acadia was made the more difficult by what you are seeing in today’s photograph—FOG!  The coastline was socked-in with fog almost the entire two days that we were in the park.  Yet, less than a half mile inland, there was absolutely no fog.

Today’s photo was taken from the top of Cadillac Mountain, which at 1,528 feet, is the highest peak on the Atlantic coast between Canada and Brazil (just for the education of my readers).

One of my friends is original from this area.  I prepared this panorama for him.  It is a seven shot panorama combined in photoshop.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with at 70mm, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/250^th of a seconds on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Landscape preset during import, cropped the image, set white and black points.

Photoshop CS5—combined the seven images, did some minor cloning where the images were combined, cropped image, added boarder and black stroke around edge.

My Vacation—Part 5

I know this photo does not look like much but it was fifteen frames and thirty minutes in the making.  Why?  Mainly because I did not think it thorough before I started shooting and then the light saved me.  Let me explain a little further.

Normally, I see something that I think is worth shooting and immediately ask myself:  “what is that makes you want to shoot this?” I then look for the best position and angle to “bring out” the reason I wanted to shoot the subject.  In this case I did not do that.  I just sat my tripod down shot it and keep repeating the action. And, guess what?  I keep getting shots that I did not like and becoming more frustrated with my actions.

Finally, I stopped and asked myself my normal question.  What interested me about the scene was:  the texture, the aged look, the order and the simple lines.  I walked around.  Changed my angle of view.  And finally, settled on the view you see here—about 30 degrees angle to the wall and my camera lowered to about knee height.

While I was doing this, luck came my way—a defused ray of the rising sun hit the building.  I waited until the ray got to where I wanted it and then fired away.  I felt that the different color of the light and the diagonal line of brightness that the sunlight provided was enough to turn the image from a picture to a photograph.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with at 65mm, ISO 200, f/13 at 1/4^th of a seconds on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Landscape preset during import, cropped the image, set white and black points, increased contrast, saturation and -->clarity and used adjustment brush to burn various areas.