May 31, 2012 | Landscape Photography
I’ve been up to my eyeballs with office work, yuck, so treated myself to some time off finishing images from this past weekend at Mono Lake. I wanted to finish the images to enhance the storm more so went into OnOne Software new Perfect Suite 6.1 for some fun. This really have done a really nice job with this update with more filters, layers and opacity on the preview. Being able to add filters together doesn’t hurt either! So what we have here, the top image I used Daily Vitamin, a filter I’m getting to really like. The next image is a combination of Magic Ocean (50%) and Texture Booster. The bottom image is simply Magic City. All of them are finished off with Borders > Black Key Frame.
One of the hardest things about landscape photography I think is learning the post so when you go click, you already know what you can do and how your want to finish an image in post. On those really great shoots, everything falls into place so you don’t have to do a single thing to finish the photograph. Often, especially when you only have one shot at an image, you have to finish some aspect of the photo. Knowing the possibilities of post give you a broader vision when you go click. If you’ve not tried OneOne Perfect Suite 6.1, download it and try it free for 30days. But here’s the warning, once you try it, you’ll buy it. Have fun with your photography and you will be rewarded!
May 29, 2012 | Landscape Photography
This past weekend was our first Mono Lake Weekend and the luck was with us! We had a freak winter storm come through the Sierra on Memorial Weekend leaving not only snow on the ground but great clouds floating past. To say Mono Lake has been photographed a few times is an understatement. The goal is to make the uncommon of the common and when you have nasty weather, you have an opportunity to do just that. If nothing else with such weather, you sure not going to be bored! Typical Moose style, we were at the lake at 04:30 to greet the day. It was a mighty dark and gray day at the beginning with a wind putting the waves to work on Mono Lake. With that mix, early morning, clouds and wind, I dialed in some settings into the camera. On the hope we’d have some sun for color at sunrise, I set the WB to Cloudy. With the dramatic clouds, I put the 18AF on the D4 and with the wind, I closed the lens down to f/22 and ISO to L1 for the slowest possibly shutter speed. The sun never appeared so the Cloudy WB was a bust. The 18AF definitely brought a drama to the dynamics of the scene and the slow shutter speed captured a flow to the lake’s surface that I like.
With everything working so well except for WB, processing was pretty clear cut. One thing I do in processing a file is follow the same logic that I made the photo by. The subject was the storm, a rather all encompassing subject but has certain elements heightening it. Opening the file in ACR, the first thing I did was remove the blue color cast caused by no sun. Simply grabbed the White Balance tool in ACR and clicked on a white. Then while in ACR, I used the Graduated tool to bring the drama in the clouds to the forefront so the eye is pushed down in the frame. Then in PS CS-6 I ran Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 > Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor. It was cold, it was windy, it was windy and it was spectacular!
May 25, 2012 | Landscape Photography
By the third day of our K&M Adv in SD, we’d chased clouds a bunch. The activity was amazing with the moisture in the air and the heat coming off the landscape. The formations I’ve already posted demonstrate just how dynamic the skies had been. It’s when we stopped for this formation that one of the adventurers came up to me and said, “I didn’t appreciate them before!” He went on to say he had always seen clouds but he had never really seen them as subjects, as sculptures floating around to be photographed.And when there is this much activity in the skies, fleeting!
We were driving down the road when Chris who was riding shotgun pointed up and smiled. Driving, I couldn’t see what he was seeing but knew to find a place to pullover. Everyone was driving with a camera in their lap since getting out “Chinese Fire Drill” fashion happened when on adventure. I got to see this great cloud, saw it’s dynamics and knew I had to move fast. I grabbed the 18mm and shot. The cloud itself is great, it has a shape that was very challenging though to me. While I love to photograph clouds, there has to be something with them. A foreground, some earthly anchor to give them scale and place. There really wasn’t a great one here and with clouds, it’s not like you can drive around until you find the right foreground. This cloud formation was gone in less then 10min. Pretty anger skies!
There are many ways you could finish such a photo and when I originally took it, I was thinking B&W. But when I got in on the monitor in ACR, I knew I needed that little bit of green at the bottom to tell just how angry this cloud was. The last piece of finishing then was in PS when I used Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 > Detail Enhancer on just the clouds. It brought small details in the wisps that I think was needed. One of the highlights of the K&M Adventure for me is when the adventurer came up and said, “Now I see Clouds!”
May 23, 2012 | Landscape Photography
The 400mm lens taught me so much about wildlife photography! I chronicle many of its lessons in my book Captured, the most important is getting close physically. If you are 60′ away from a subject and you get closer cutting the distance in half to 30′, you have more then doubled the focal length of your lens. And the best part, it didn’t cost you a dime! Then when you are closer, you have to think about the background to visually make the subject pop. You need to add to that light, gesture and color and you have the makings of a clean critter photo. That’s exactly what I did here with this Mountain Bluebird. Shooting with the D4 and 200-400VR2, I simply cut close physically to make the shot!
These are skills that take time in honing. And before you can hone them, you need to have the basics in which they work so you can hone them to fit your style of photography. That’s why we came up and are offering the Short Lens Wildlife Photography Course. Now it really doesn’t matter what lens you have, a 105, 70-200, 300, 400, 500, 600, the skill base that is required to make the shot is all the same. The only difference is the lens in you and what YOU want to say in your photograph. That’s what we’ll spend two days talking about, discussing and at times shooting. While this might be a classroom based course, we will have critters to photograph because that’s the only way I know of teaching and learning these important skills. So if you would like photographs like you see above or on this site in your library, come on tell and I’ll share all I know to help you make that happen! 760.924.8632, call today!
May 21, 2012 | Landscape Photography
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!
May 21, 2012 | Landscape Photography
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!
