Oct 16, 2012 | Landscape Photography
I’m coming off simply an amazing 8 days of shooting in some great places with great folks and have so much to share, I honestly don’t know where to start! Sharon & I are now at our friends home in NJ and the blessings simply just keep on going. What I simply wanted to do for your Tuesday, is remind you of just how fortunate we are to be able to get out and shoot the wonders we have around us, thanks to all those who make it possible for me to do what I love to do, and give you a hint of some of the stories to come. Of course, I’ve gotta have a moment to sit down and write them and since I’m on the road for another week (and then only home for 2 days), I’ll do my best to tie a thread through all the photos you see here and a lot more. I’m a very lucky photographer to have such problems!
Oct 14, 2012 | Landscape Photography
We’re still up in NH thoroughly enjoying this gorgeous place. True, fall color is past peaked but hey, looks pretty good to me. We’re been to a bunch of cool places simply photographing the beauty that is almost around every corner. This photo was taken from the rear of the train on the way up Crawford Notch. It’s a simple click out of the D600 & 24-70AFS. I continue to shoot with the D600 as it does just a wonderful job. This day in five hours, shot 24GB of images which while it sounds like a lot, it was only 1029 images. If you look to the top of the frame on the right, that white stuff is snow. That’s where we’re heading today…can’t wait!
Oct 12, 2012 | Landscape Photography
“What do you see?” This is a question I get a lot and there’s good reason for it. I’m simply not normal! This is a prime example, we go to beautiful Jackson Falls this morning and everyone heads to the falls, I go the opposite direction. Folks have on wider lenses and I have on tele. They are pointing them up, I’m pointing mine down. It’s just me, but shooting a waterfall with a slow shutter just because I can doesn’t produce most of the time a photograph I like. And while that is the essences of the waterfall for most, that noisy crash and spray, I like the calm waters. So that’s where I tend to gravitate to when I go to photograph flowing water.
The other thing that personally works against my going to those big, overall waterfall shots all the time is sense of scale. I recently included a shot of one of the tallest waterfalls in No Am in a slideshow. It’s little known so no one in the audience except me knew just how tall it was. Ya, I could have done something about it when I took the photo but in those few seconds of the image on the screen, doubt you would have seen the scale. So for these reason and more, when I tend to do what you see here. And that leads to the question again, “What do you see?”
So what you see here is what I “saw” and then what I saw in making these images. You still don’t know scale, have no idea if the water feature is the size of a quarter or as big as a log. But you do get a little sense that what stopped me is what normally doesn’t stop others. As I said, I’m just different.
The way I go about making these images is pretty simple. I walk along the creek looking at the bubbles. We’re photographing the bubbles the water creates as it turns over the rocks. I look for simple contrast, white against the dark. When I see something I think I like, I set up the shot (D4 w/70-200VR2) and take a quick click. If I see something I like, I proceed to the next step (often, I keep on going). Next step is to dial in the shutter speed. I simply change the aperture to lower or raise my shutter speed. When I find the speed I like the best, I will shot 20+ images of the one water feature. This is because each and everyone is different. I make my selection which I like the best in post. So, I hope this long winded post answers at least for this one example, what I saw.
Oct 10, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Why do we wait? Why do some not wait? Life as we all know is fast paced, time seems to slip away even though we wish otherwise. So I often wonder as I watch photography, why they seem to want to make life and time go faster than it already does. It is not like if we do wait it guarantees success and often it’s quite the opposite. But when we do wait, even if we do get skunked, we still come away with the sweetness of that time we did stop, smell the roses and wait. I treasure those moment when I can do just that, stop and simply let life blow by me knowing, that’s what life should be doing at that moment
And such was this morning. We got up early and hit the road as usual on K&M Adventures to chase the light. We headed to a favorite Pemiquad Lighthouse, a very unique and moody lighthouse on the ME coast. When we arrived, the light was hidden behind clouds. But we knew with time, it would appear. We just didn’t know how it would appear. So we positioned ourselves for when that moment, if it happened, we could make the photo. What you see is 30min of sweet time just smelling the sea breeze with the sound of the crashing waves waiting. As it happened, the sun broke for just a heartbeat to make this scwheeeet image. This is a single click made with a split grad on the lens and nothing more. Oh, there is that one special ingredient that you can’t buy. Time and a love for just watching life go by.
Oct 10, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Lighthouse = House w/light! How do you do that…here’s the answer!
We need to start with our light. Head to Filter>Render>Lens Flare. You can truly create the light that fits your image’s mood. My general preference is Brightness of 35% and the 105mm Prime flare. Once you’ve dialed in those two ingredients, center the light as best you can on the lighthouse. If it’s not exact, it’s not a problem as we’ll make it perfect in a second. Click OK and you’ll see the Lens Flare appear in your image.
We need to remove the lens flare we just created because as is, we have no control over it (if you’re using Photoshop, you’ve gotta have control, right?) Ctrl/Cmd Z. We’re now going to create a layer for our Lens Flare to live on so Layer >New>Layer or Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+N or click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. We now need to fill the layer with gray so Edit>Fill>50% Gray (from drop down menu under content) or Shift F5. Now Crtl/Cmd F to run the Lens Flare filter you just created. You’ll now see the flare you created and have complete control over it.
At this point, I like to paint out the flare elements I don’t want in my photo. These are the colored orbs off some distance from the center of the main lens flare. Select a soft edge brush, click on your foreground color to bring up the Color Picker and in the HSB set the B to 50%. Set your opacity to 100% and paint out the flare. Now, if you’re not sure in the beginning what flare to keep and what to discard, you can skip this step and simply use a layer mask later on to remove unwanted flare. Change the Blending Mode for this new layer to Hard Light and all you see in your image is the flare you just created, the beginning of your light.
At this point, you can stop and say you’re finished. If you were to capture the lighthouse light coming straight at the lens, this is generally what you’d capture. If you want to have the beam of the lighthouse, we need to do a couple more steps.
Grab your Marquee Tool (tap M key) and draw a box around your light. We now want to inverse our selection Select>Inverse of Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I. Then tap the delete key. Reverse the selection with Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I. This makes it easier to manipulate the light in the next step. At this point, make your image smaller with Ctr/Cmd+- so we can stretch out our light.
Your selection is still active from the last step. Now we’re going to use Free Transform Ctrl/Cmd T to stretch our light. You’re going to stretch a WHOLE lot! Once you have your light stretched to taste, enlarge the image so you can move the light so that the bright center is over the light of the lighthouse. Since we’ve put this in its own layer, you can always fine tune the placement of the light with the Move tool later.
At this point, add a Layer Mask to the light layer. With a soft edge brush, 100% opacity and painting with black, paint out the elements of the light you don’t want. Remember, it’s a layer so you can modify the light any time, any way you like. For example, if the light is too bright, just lower the layer’s opacity
