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.

My Vacation—Part 4

On our vacation, almost every morning started the same.  I would roll out of bed about my normal time (4:30 to 5:30) and head out to do some shooting before JD graced the world, usually around 7:30.  Generally, I would head down to the dock area to photograph the lobster and fishing boats.  I liked the harbors because they seemed genuine and real.  As I looked at the harbors and the boats in them, I always got the same feeling—they seemed old, worn and tired, but still up to the task.

In today’s photo, the fog (which was a constant every morning) had lifted to the top of the roofs of the buildings.  As a result, you had this splash of worn colors of the buildings and boats framed by the defused colors of the trees and sky and the muted and abstracted colors and shapes of the reflections in the water.  I really liked this contrast and tried to capture it the best that I could.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with polarizing filter attached at 78mm, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/8^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 of the boats and buildings with an adjustment brush.

My Vacation—Part 3

I read somewhere that Maine has more lighthouses than anywhere else in the United States.  Have no idea as to whether that is true or not, but, I do know that you will find many, many lighthouses up and down the Maine coastline. 

Many of them are small ones like this one.  Notice the size of the door in comparison with the size of the lighthouse.

In this photo, I like how the three rock outcrops mirrored each other and formed a nice repetitive lines to lead the eye to the lighthouse.   To lesser degree, I think the bank on the far side also helps carryout this idea.  

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 with polarizing filter attached at 56mm, ISO 100, 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, increased contrast and tweaked the blues and aquas saturation and luminance.

My Vacation—Part 2

One of our hotels had a game room that seemed to be right out of the 1900’s.  In this photo, I tried to capture the old bowling alley.  The bowling balls were about 1/3^rd the size of today’s bowling balls; the bowling pens were about the same.  The alley was well worn and quite uneven.  JD and I bowled several games and I do not think either one of us were able to bowl even a spare!  Despite our dismal scores, we had lots of fun!

The image is an HDR photo taken with three frames at -1 EV, 0 EV and +1 EV.  I used nik HDR Pro to combine the frames.  I wanted the image to have a gritty, aged look.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 120mm, ISO 200, f/22 at one, two and four seconds on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Nik HDR Pro—applied filter.

My Vacation—Part 1

JD and I recently spent nine days in Maine.  We had never visited Maine and it looked like a great place to get away from Houston’s summer heat.  Our visit included only the coast of Maine.

For the trip, I packed light:  Nikon D4, Nikon 28-300mm, Nikon 50mm, two Nikon SB800s, tripod, Canon G12, Epson P6000, extra batteries and memory cards.  Everything easily fit into my ThinkTank StreetWalker backpack.

Today’s shot is of the Driftwood Inn, our hotel the second night of the trip.  The Driftwood Inn is located at the tip of Bailey Island and has a great view of the ocean.  Before the trip, I had told JD not to expect much of this “rustic” hotel however after arriving at the hotel, she parked herself on the porch and told me to cancel our dinner reservations because she had no intention of leaving the “view.”  She pretty much stayed there on the porch until bedtime—you can see her head at the far right side of the porch.

The photo was taken as the tide began to come-in.  I positioned my camera as low as I could to the rocks and used an aperture of f/16 to expand my depth of field.   I tried to frame the shot so that the rocks led you into the photo.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 28mm, ISO 100, f/16 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied landscape preset during import of photo, set white and black points, adjusted color balance, added vibrance and clarity.

My Workflow—Part 5

“To Photoshop or not to Photoshop, that is the question.”  If Shakespeare were here today, that would probably be a line in one of his plays.

On my last post, Allen asked:  “With this photo what would you do in Photoshop?”  Good question.

Let me start by saying that for every professional shoot I do, I use Photoshop on all the final images.  Why?  Because Photoshop has so many more tools that help me develop the specific look that I want in the final image.  Specially, Photoshop has much better selection tools, healing and cloning tools and many plug-ins that can help you achieve what you want.

Now, back to: what would I do on this image in Photoshop?   If I were going to present this image for a photographic show, I would push it more to a fine art image.  I start with the cropped Lightroom image and open it in Photoshop.  The first thing that I would do is, remove the distracting leave on the left side of the flower by cloning it out.  When clone something out, I do it on its own layer so that I can easily mask off errors I make with the cloning tool.  Next, I would tray to make the whole left side of the flower look more symmetrical.  I did this by copying the bottom leaf, moving it to its new position and then changing its shape using the warp tool under edit>transform>warp.  I do not want the two leaves looking like each other.  I then took the image into nik Color Efex Pro and used the Extract Detail and Tonal Contrast filters on the flower.  I believe these to filers really bring out detail and add punch to an image.  I usually dial down the overall effects of the filter both in nik Color Efex Pro and also using the layer opacity in Photoshop.  Finally, I would do my normal dodging and burning.   I do dodging and burning on a separate layer in the soft light mode.  I fill the layer with 50% grey and then paid at a low capacity (3-10%) with white to dodge an area and black to burn an area.  I continue to brush over the area until I get it the shade I want.

That’s it.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—see above. 

Photoshop CS5—see above.

My Workflow—Part 4

Someone needs to teach me how to read a calendar.  I prepared this post before I went on vacation and thought that I had set it to appear on August 7^th.  I did not notice that it had not appeared until I started looking at my blog this past weekend.  Sorry about not catching my mistake sooner.   I am sure many of you put your lives on hold until I posted again.

The final step of almost every photo that I take is to do some dodging and burning.  Here I burned (using the adjustment brush) the bokeh background and the leaves behind the flower.  In addition, I blurred a few of the leaves by reducing the sharpness and clarity with an adjustment brush.  The whole purpose of these adjustments is to make the flower and starburst to come forward and make the background sink further into the background.

I think that if you go back to the original photo you will see that my intended subject of the photo is definitely the subject that the viewers' eyes go to first and rest upon the most.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—see above.

My Workflow—Part 3

As I said before the details is one of the subjects of this photo.  In fact, it is the main subject of the photo; so, I want to draw the viewers’ eyes towards the flower.

But, what draws a person’s view?  For many years, it was taught that a person’s eye always goes first to the brightest part of the image.  Recently, some researches have said that the human eye goes to the portion of an image that the human brain can most easily recognize.  Next, it goes to the area that is sharpest, has the most contrast and most colorful.

With this in mind, I next added: sharpness, contrast, saturation and clarity to the flower using the adjustment brush.  In addition, I warmed-up the color balance on the flower under the theory that warm tones are moved to the forefront and cooler tones are moved to the background by the brain.

Hopefully, the picture that I took is starting to look more like a real photograph.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—see above.

My Workflow—Part 2

While attending his workshop, Jay Maisel said:  “If it does not add to the story then it takes away from the story.  Include only what is essential in your photos.” 

Jay believes in getting it right in the camera so almost all of his photos that you see are not cropped.  They are as he shot them.  I believe Jay is absolutely right but I lack his talent of “getting it right” in the camera.  Besides that, I think that some images just look best at ratios other than the normal 3:2 or 5:4 ratios that my camera allow me to capture.  So, I do crop my images to the format that I feel best suits them.

After I import the image, my first step is to crop the photo into the format that I believe shows only the things that “add to the story.”

In this photo, my subject is:  the details in the flower, the starburst and the bokeh.  I cropped the top, bottom and right sides of the image so that I had symmetry between the top and bottom right corners.  The corners are not important however I think including about the same amount of leaf in both corners helps anchor the flower.  I know some people will be bothered by me cutting off parts of the flower but do you know what it is even after I cut parts of it off and is there enough of the flower left to show-off the details in it.  I believe there is.  Finally, I cropped the right side of the photo so that the bottom leaf was complete.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—see above.

My Workflow—Part 1

A few weeks ago, my friend, Doug, from the Bay Area Photo Club, asked me how I go about processing my photos.  Rather than try to tell him in words (the old problem of trying to accurately writing instructions of how you would go about sharpening a pencil), I decided to show him my basic processing on a given photo.

This photo, to me, is about three things:  the details in the flower, the starburst of the sun and the bokeh.  To get a good starburst, you must use a small aperture—here, I chose f/19.  This aperture would also make my bokeh-circles very small. I though that this combination would look pretty cool.

I shoot in RAW about 99.99999999999% of the time.  I do this because I feel that it provides me with the best file to develop the photos into the image that I want.  The image that you see on the back of your camera will not look like the one you open-up in your RAW processing program unless you do some basic processing of the file. 

Why is that?  Because what you see on the back of your camera is actually a JPEG image that is embedded within the RAW file.  The JPEG image that has been processed in accordance with the “Picture Control” (Nikon’s term; not sure what other manufacturers call it) that you selected in your camera.  Nikon has six Picture Control settings: Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Vivid.  Based upon which one you select, the photo displayed on the back of your camera will show varying amounts of: sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue.

I do not believe in redoing things over and over.  I also like things to as consistent and easy as possible. As a result, I have developed a series of Lightroom presets for each of the Nikon Picture Control settings.  Before I start to shoot, I select the Nikon Picture Control Setting that I believe will produce images that are most consistent with what I want.  I rarely change this setting during any shooting session. 

As I import my photos into Lightroom, I apply the appropriate preset to the photos.  What does this do?  Well, it makes my photo look very much like what I was seeing on the back of my camera as I was shooting.

How did I develop the various presets?  First, I took photos that used the different Nikon Picture Control Settings in both JPEG and RAW.  I then imported the photos into Lightroom.  Next, I applied Lightroom’s Camera Profile (you will find it in the Develop Module under Camera Calibration tab) to the RAW file.  I then tweaked the sharpening, contrast and saturation of the RAW until it matched the JPEG file.  Finally, I saved the settings for sharpening, contrast, saturation and Camera profile as a preset for that Nikon Picture Control Settings.

The first photo today shows the RAW file as it would look without applying any preset to it.  The image is basically flat and definitely not what you were seeing on the back of your camera. 

The second photo shows what the image would look after applying my Nikon Camera Standard Control Setting preset.  Notice how the colors are richer and there is generally more details throughout the photo.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 90mm, ISO 1600, f/19 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—see above.

Nike Look

Several years ago, Nike had a series of advertisements in which they presented various athletes with a look somewhat similar to Joel Grimes work.   That look was what I wanted when I took this photo.

Casey’s look tells the whole story—I am an athlete and I love competing!

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 140, f/6.7 at 1/45^th of a second with an Elinchrom Ring flash to the right.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity and added a vignette.

Photoshop CS5—applied nik Color Efex Pro Bleached By-Pass filter.

MIA Is Back

Several people have asked why I have not been posting to my blog.  One even labeled me as MIA.  Well, she was correct.  I was missing in action with absolutely no reason.

Yes, I was a little busy with my photographic business, my grandchildren, Bay Area Photo Club and this and that.  But, I did have the time; I just decided to do other things.

Today’s photo is a continuation of the session we had with Casey.  In this photo, I wanted to isolate on Casey’s face but still give the photos some context.  I deliberately placed Casey in the center of the frame—damn the rules!  I used a spot meter on her face for my meter-reading which because of the light hitting her face, slightly underexposed the rest of the frame.  The light on her face was from the setting sun and because the rest of the pool was in the shade gave me a warm Casey against a cool background.  I think this helps isolate her.  Finally, I used a very low camera angle (my camera was almost touching the water) so the lane dividers would stack in the background.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/1500^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness on Casey with the adjustment brush and added a vignette.

Casey—Doctor, Competitive Swimmer and Nice Lady

Meet Casey.  She is a medical doctor that swam competitively in college.  In addition, she is a really nice person.  But, I hope I never see her professionally—no offense, Casey.

Here, I was trying to be a Sports Illustrated photographer—I really had no idea how hard it was to time the shot, even at 1/6000^th of a second.  At the end of the shoot, I had lots of shots with nothing but water!  I guess this proves that every time you pick up the camera, something will be different.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm f/2.8, ISO 400, f/3.3 at 1/6000^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness around Casey with the adjustment brush.

Inga

Although Inga had a great big smile and beautiful hair, I personally like her best with a slight smile and her hair put-up.  I think this way just set off her face much better.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/90^th of a second on a tripod with two Elinchrom strobes with umbrellas on each side.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush.

Inga and Omar

Inga is a very out-going young lady who loves to smile in contrast to her boyfriend, Omar.  She lights-up in front of a camera.  She wanted a few shots of the two of them.  I had to work quite hard to get Omar to get this close to Inga.  His idea of a portrait of a couple was each person about three feet from each other looking directly into the camera with no smile.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/90^th of a second on a tripod with two Elinchrom strobes with umbrellas on each side.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush and did some basic dodging and burning.

Omar

Omar was at this portrait session because his girlfriend told him that he would be there.  He had no desire to have his photo taken. 

He had a great smile but no matter what I did, he would not show it for the camera.  Omar is from Iceland and according to Inga, his girlfriend, men don’t smile for the camera in Iceland.  Don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that Omar did not smile for my camera—I think he is a Canon guy!

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/45^th of a second on a tripod with two Elinchrom strobes with umbrellas on each side.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush and did some basic dodging and burning.

Brent—A C&W Singer and Songwriter

I recently had a portrait session with Brent, a country & western singer and songwriter.  Brent is originally from Alabama but recently moved here to promote his career.  He is very natural in front of a camera, but became even more so when he picked-up his guitar.

This photo is a natural light photo.  There was a very small spot in the lobby of the building where the light was streaming-in.  I wanted to use that light as a spotlight on his face, but was faced with a problem—it was right in front of a pole and so I would have pole coming-out of his head.  To me, it was a no brainer—light first!

If I were going to print this, I would probably try to remove the post.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 400, f/4 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush and did some basic dodging and burning.