Aug 13, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Last week I wondered about doing some remote video shooting. Hadn’t tried it before so started to work out the system. We had cloudy, thunderstorm weather all weekend and I needed to keep my nose to the keyboard to finish my new book. So remote triggering was essential. Setting up on an immature Allen’s Hummer that has taken possession of one of our feeders, I trained the 70-180mc attached to the D4 with Pocket Wizard IIIs as the trigger. The D4 had Custom Setting g4 set to Shutter release so whenever I wanted to start or stop the video, I just depressed the Test button on the Pocket Wizard. This also got me working on some shoots for this coming week with the Kelby Training crew coming in to film my next class.
The taping went pretty smoothly. My only issue was not totally paying attention a loosing track when I pushed the button to start or stop the tapping. I had to go out to the camera a few times and see where I was in the process. After I was all done, I realized I could have hooked up my Ninja2 to a long HDMI cable and monitored the action remotely. What you see here are five segments edited together in Photoshop CS6. Taking the individual segments and editing each down, drop in the Cross Fade, render the video and upload took less than 30min. I have to admit that I am enjoying video a whole lot more now that creating a finished can be so fast and simple. Enjoy!
Aug 3, 2012 | Landscape Photography
The emails are starting to come in asking what I think this fall will be like in the Eastern Sierra. Great fall color depends on lots of moisture and a good cold snap. Too early to predict the cold snap but we know we’re not getting much moisture. We’re having great clouds but they’ve not shed a drop to help. So we’ll have some great pockets of color in locations where this is water, lakes and major streams, but I don’t think we’ll have the huge blankets of color that are so spectacular. I can tell you a Kelby Training class on shooting fall color is due out shortly that we shot last fall. And I’ll be on the east coast and in the Sierra this fall looking for that color. Hope to see ya amongst the trees!
Jul 31, 2012 | Landscape Photography
Back in the day, one of the things to do was photograph a particular scene four times a year to demonstrate the change of seasons. At the time, I lived on California’s Central Coast where there were only two seasons. So I traveled throughout CA on the look out for a location that had four seasons I could travel to and make the shot. I was particularly looking for a great tree that I could focus on which would have that great fall color for one of the seasons. For over a decade, I was obsessed.
And thirty years later, I still don’t have the great scene! This is the closest I’ve come. This lone tree on the edge of Mono Lake has a classic shape, exactly what I was looking for so I started to follow it. The major problem is there is no real spring in the sage and in the fall, there always seems to be a big blow that removes all the leaves before they have an opportunity to turn all orange. When I was in school, we were encouraged to create an Idea File, a file where we would include ideas of photographs on what today folks would say are on their bucket list. This is one that still is in my file and on my list.
Jul 26, 2012 | B&W Photography, Landscape Photography
We are incredible fortunate to live in paradise! As I’ve mentioned probably too many times, summer in the Eastern Sierra is great with our monsoon storms. The clouds just play in the heavens as they float by. For this reason, I’m constantly heading out to the front deck to look up and see what is floating by. My favorite rig is the D4 with 24-70AFS, the format fits perfectly for shooting among the pines in the front. Here’s a series from last evening.
What you have here is the out of the D4 Jpeg and the finished PSD file. In this first image, first step in finishing is ACR using my Landscape preset. In Photoshop, the Apsens in the dead center of the frame were replaced with the Clone Tool with fir as in the rest of the frame. Then the image was run through Silver Efex Pro 2 and finished with Pro Contrast in Nik’s Color Efex 4. The entire finishing process took less than two minutes.
This next image in the series is the one I like the best. Camera gear and finishing all the same except this time, Pro Contrast was replaced with a Levels layer just to pull the blacks down a tad. Oh ya, I removed a couple of tree tops in the lower left corner with Content Aware Healing Brush. Why do I like this one the best? I have that “burning bush” feel to it, really strong graphics. I like that.
I like this last image more as a color than B&W, I think. I like the shape of the cloud but the tree is a little too bulky for me. The camera was all the same. In finishing, the first thing you’ll notice is the limb in the top left missing. That was done with Content Aware Fill. Then the rest of the finishing was done exactly the same as the first image. I hope this series will encourage you to just step out your door, no matter where you live, look up and make a click. Exploring the backyard and simple processing can open up all sorts of creative doors!
Jul 20, 2012 | Landscape Photography
This is our FAVORITE time to be home in the Sierra. That’s because all the babies are out and right now, the yard is busting open with kids! We’ve got our biggest crop of Stellar Jays ever I swear. When someone calls the office, they all comment on all the background noise caused by these kids. The Evening Grosbeaks fledglings are the most ever as well. And now the Hummers have shown up in force. What we’re not seeing are the chipmunk and squirrel kids, we’ve not seen a one. And of course, we have that Black Bear cubs like you see here. We have one that I swear as learned that just walking up and down the road gets all the neighborhood dogs upset. It does it all the time to a chorus of barking. The D4 with 300f4AFS is always out and left on because of all the activity. I get lost of exercise because every 10 minutes I’m up looking out all the windows to see what’s up. And the 600mm is on a tripod with the D800 looking out ground level waiting for the baby chipmunks to appear. It’s simply a great time to be home shooting in the backyard!
Jul 20, 2012 | Landscape Photography
“When are you taking folks to Yellowstone again?” This is a real common question that we get asked. It is definitely one of the most gorgeous locations on the planet in winter! But for me, it’s got to be winter to make it worth while going. What do I mean by that? For me, Yellowstone is great in winter when it’s -10 or colder. When it’s warmer then that like during our last trip in 2011 when the average temp was 19, lots of things just don’t happen. For example, the Bison don’t have half of Yellowstone stuck on their fur like you see here. The trees don’t have the hoar frost and steam frozen on them. There’s not much snow so the critters can spread out over the park rather then having to be gathered around the springs for warmth and open ground to forage. I don’t think this coming winter will have enough -10 or colder days to predict what days it will have to be in place to get the shots. So it’s going to be at least another year before we take folks back to Yellowstone in the winter. We do miss it so!
