You look to the west and you have a gorgeous sunset. Turn to the east and you have a magical thunderhead lit up by the setting sun. Wow…what and ending to a perfect day!

With the 18mm back on the D4, it was time to talk small details. Here’s a perfect example of the little things we talk about at K&M Adventures. If you look in the lower right corner of these two images, you’ll see one includes the distance ridge and the other one doesn’t. Now Ron & Phil on the peak is essential in this whole thing since they provide the scale. The visual depth is provided with that little slice of ridge in the background. Now there is no right or wrong way here, it all depends on how you want to tell your story. But if you’re not looking for that little detail, then it will go missed and perhaps, the story of your photo!

To say we lucked into great clouds during our K&M Adventure SD is an understatement. The trick was not finding the clouds but rather, what to put with them. That’s where visiting a location over and over again really pays big dividends. I’ve been to Custer dozens of times so when the afternoon thunderheads piled up, I knew where I wanted to go. What I didn’t know that the 16Fish would be the lens that would be the funniest to shot with. Kevin first got it out and I peaked through his lens and then grabbed mine. I then played with the peaks and valleys to make the designs that would go with the shapes of the clouds. It was so much fun taking the D4 and just pointing and blasting with the great light and shapes!

Custer is such an amazing place! Long ago a dear friend shared a secret with me, a place to greet the new day. It’s a place I share with all I bring to Custer because as you can see, it is a glorious spot. There are a couple of key ingredients required to make this happen. The first is getting up early and as you’ll see, we had a great group who had NO problem with this first one. Next was knowing the place to go. Check. Finally, set your WB to Cloudy to capture the color. After that, the rest are in the hand of the photo Gods. The arrangment of elements then just worked the clouds to bring the up up, around down and over to the sun over and over again. One thing I learned this week in regards to the D4 is it does a GREAT job with this kind of scene with one click. With the D3, I would have gone to HDR to bring this image to life. These are single clicks out of the with the 24-70AFS attached with images just processed in ACR.

We had driven past it a couple of hours earlier, but it was in full sun with bald skies. Yuck. When we came back by, the thunderstorm was building and the aperture in the clouds let enough light in to bring drama while providing a great background. So was required was an illegal U turn as we were shooting.

The only real question was, what lens to use? There was actually no right or wrong answer because everyone could make up and tell their own story. I went with the 18AF for a couple of reasons. One was its angle of view, the other is because it’s rectilinear (that’s not a PC). With that, it was simply a question of getting in the right place to relate the three buildings the way I like in concert with the clouds. So, I danced a little as the clouds and the aperture in them moved about.

The bottom image is the one I like the best, then the color version and finally the top image. When I stopped, I saw this at a B&W image but the clouds were changing and that made me move changing how I wanted to actually arrange the three buildings. Then a burst of sunlight came out when made me think color. All of these images are a handheld, 7 image HDR finished with Photomatix Pro and Photoshop.

We’re up in the Blackhills of SD and man, it’s gorgeous! We headed out to a gorgeous sunrise only to find the thunderstorms from the night before still hanging about. Now it’s really no secret, I love clouds, they call me Mr Clouds so we had to stop! The thermal action kept them on the move, shape and density constantly changing while we stood there and all day long. The key to me in making the shots are the subtle shades of gray along with some element to give them scale. In these examples I used HDR and landscape to capture those elements. Photographically, the D4 and 18AF worked their magic. I’m finding though with the D4 and its new sensor that single click cloud photos along with ACR is producing more cloud shots that I like then HDR. mtc…

I’ve been on the road so much, I forgot I had loaded the new OnOne Software Photo Sutie 6.1 and man…is it schweeet! You see before and afters here and the after was done with just ONE CLICK!!! I didn’t have to do anything but look at what I like and click on it and OnOne did the rest. This is so cool, I can’t wait to learn it more so I can make images to take advantage of all the great new features in 6.1!

We sure do appreciate the excitement folks are feeling for our next issue of the BT Journal, vol 15.4. It’s in layout, Brent is working his magic so we are hoping the iPad version will be available in the next 10 days (cross fingers). This issue, a new issue (opposed to a back issue) will be included in your iTunes subscription. And this issue is chuck full of information whether you own a D4 of a P&S, I’ve covered it all when getting a new camera body. So..keep the good vibs comin! Thanks!

Top shot is f/8, bottom is f/32…other then seeing “more” info in the waves (which to me are now distracting), the Willets behind the front one that I focused on are still not sharp. They are NOWHERE close to sharp. I’m getting weird emails and comments telling me folks still are not getting it. When you have a long lens and you’re physically close to a subject, I don’t care what you want to throw in the mix, you simply don’t have any DOF. So..then..use the minimum DOF as a tool and tell the story.