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!
May 21, 2012 | Landscape Photography
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!
May 21, 2012 | Landscape Photography
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.
