Fall Colors—Retake of Same Leaves

Today’s photo is a retake of Tuesday’s post.  In this photo, I repositioned the camera, set my white balance to 3,500K (which gave a blue look to everything), use a flash with a CTO gel and a snoot on it, and underexposed the background by about 1½ f-stops and the subject lighted by the flash by about ½ f-stop.   I think the changes gives the photo a totally different feel, but, what do you think?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at ISO 1600, f/8 at 1/250^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and added vibrance to the leaves in the foreground using the adjustment brush.

Fall Colors

Over this past weekend, I was doing some clean-up on my computer’s photo files when I ran across this photo.  Houston is not blessed with spectacular fall colors so when I see colors like this, I sometimes go a little crazy trying to get my “fall colors” shot.

In this photo, I like the contrast between the bright colors and texture of the leaves in the foreground with those in the background.  I used an aperture of f/8 to achieve maximum sharpness in the foreground while also rendering a soft bokeh to the background.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at ISO 1600, f/8 at 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and added vibrance to the leaves in the foreground using the adjustment brush.

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.

A Little Light in the Fog

I think the Giant Sequoia trees are the most breath-taking sights in the world. I also believe they are among the hardest things to photograph. How do you photograph something that stands 300 feet tall and is 50 feet around? I really do not have an answer to that question.

In this photo, I wanted to capture the slight fog in the air, the red of the trees’ bark and the green of the leaves. I thought that the contrasting colors of red and green provided great contrast and the fog and light slipping through the trees also added to that contrast. Unfortunately, nothing in the photograph shows how massive the trees are.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 at 20mm, shot at ISO 200, f/4 and 1/10^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to increase the contrast in the highlights, mid tones and shadows.

In and Around Houston #9

Without a doubt, my favorite streets in all of Houston are North and South Boulevards near the Museum District. Both streets are lined with these great old (very old) live oaks with a brick walkway down the middle of the median. I think that the red bricks, the green grass and the live oaks make for a very striking picture.

The problem with photographing these streets is the sunlight that filters through the trees. I tried to eliminate this problem as much as possible by photographing the street late in the evening.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 50mm with a warm polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/10^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 and then added slight vignette and added boarder using onOne Photo Frame Pro.