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.
May 18, 2012 | Landscape Photography
And one hour later….
I Love Clouds!
May 18, 2012 | B&W Photography, Landscape Photography
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.
May 18, 2012 | Landscape Photography
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…
May 10, 2012 | Landscape Photography
I cruised up the Eastside this morning on the way to the airport and found it really hard to keep on going. While we had a scad amount of moisture this winter, spring is here and it’s gorgeous! And…can’t believe I’m saying this…I saw some wildflowers that made me want to stop! I’m in NY teaching and shooting but can’t wait to get back home to shoot. Mono Lake which you see above was spectacular this morning and I can’t wait to share it, the wildflowers and waterfalls with the folks joining us the end of the month for our Mono Lake Weekend.
Once of the best things has been the clouds playing with us nearly everyday. This past weekend, the biggest, darkest, coolest cloud I’ve ever seen on the eastside slide over the crest stopping everyone to watch its passing. To make this shot, 5 image HDR was required. To pull the detail from the sunrise to the shadow, I wanted the information to show the depth of a formation we call the Ghost Ship. Can’t wait to share this with folks, mornings on the eastside are always special!
