Sep 18, 2018 | Landscape Photography
The light is making that move towards lusciousness as we approach the first day of fall. I love this time of year as I talked about on my Podcast yesterday. And that brought up some questions in folks, in the form of … help! My first recommendation is to watch my class on KelbyOne on Fall color. This class goes through everything from gear, tactics, finishing and to answer a number of your questions including places to go on the Eastside for fall color.
Cripple Creek
captured by D5 / 24-70
The most important thing to think about when shooting fall color is looking for color contrast. Now color contrast can be the yellow leaves against the blue sky, red against yellow and the one I think is essential, red+yellow against green. What’s important is making that fall color pop in the viewfinder not depending on post-production so when you do go into post, you need just a touch to finish it all off. In this process, the polarizer can be an incredibly useful tool. It can help “isolate” the fall color from teh color contrasting color making the fall color pop. Simply rotate the polarizer and watch the results. Other than that, think real wide or really long and you’ll come back with images with all the warmth of the reason!
Aug 15, 2018 | Landscape Photography
“Moose, help … I suck at B&W!” That email came in this past week and echoes what many others ask seeking help with the most romantic medium available to us. The help these folks are asking for is not so much in the post-processing, but “Seeing” B&W when they are looking at a scene and through the viewfinder. There are many ways you can TEACH YOURSELF to see in B&W, here’s the current method I’m suggesting to folks.
the full spectrum version of above B&W
Standing up on Steptoe looking over the spectacular Palouse, the pallet of colors is, gorgeous! Taking in visually all those colors and condensing them down to just shades of black and white mentally when we see ALL colors is the challenge. Having done this process for nearly fifty years and having an amazing teacher when I started out, it’s real easy for me. You can get yourself there by providing yourself a visual guide you can look at real-time.
Head into your Picture Control settings and switch to Monochrome. This is NOT FOR THE FINAL capture but to help you pre-visualize the final capture (shoot a B&W to remind you of the look you liked, but I do my B&W conversion in post from full spectrum image). You can see the settings I’ve dialed in. The most important is the last menu above where you have the Filter effects. I suggest you put the camera in S Advance firing mode and take one photo for each color filter. Then look at the images on your LCD. Hold the camera up so you can see the LCD and the REAL scene and start to compare what you see in both views. Look at highlights and shadows and the tones in between. Keep doing this over and over again whenever you’re out shooting and the thought comes across your creative conscious, “Would this work in B&W” and start to teach yourself to see the answer. Then, take it one step further.
Head into the digital darkroom and launch Nik Silverefex II and start clicking! Yep, you’re just playing while at the same time looking at the effect your playing with has on your image. Click on the prepackaged recipes on the left and look at the Global Adjustments being changed on the right. Then when you get it basically dialed into what you like, click on the Color Filters below (from the old Polycontrast days of the wet darkroom) and watch the changes in your image. Do this over and over again, teaching yourself to SEE how the shades of black and white change and YOUR preferences, likes and learn them. I wish this was the last step in the process, but this is just the first and most important to learning B&W. It will take out much of the struggle and make the rest of your learning easier. The one setting and slider though you’ll never find which is the most important, romance, is something you must apply from the start and carry it through until the very end!
Aug 6, 2018 | Landscape Photography
Sunsets can stop us dead in our tracks! I remember not too long ago how a whole beach of folks stopped to watch the setting sun, its splendor simply couldn’t be ignored. So it is no wonder photographers want to preserve that moment photographically. With that being said, ever noticed how many sunset, or sunrise for that matter, photographs simply don’t measure up? This could be your own impression of your photograph or the lackluster response from others. Ever wonder why that is, why when sunsets can stop folks in their tracks, your photo is, blah? Could it be you’re a moth?
You’ve heard the old saying, “Attracted to a flame like a moth.” We are really no different than a moth with our attraction to a bright light source and that often blinds us to the rest of the elements that need to be in the frame. The first and biggest one is emotion! Everyone on the planet, photographer or not has a sunset that brings back special, emotional memories. That’s the first hurdle our sunset must meet. Then there are the colors which many obtain in post by cranking up the saturation. Not your best solution. You’d be better served to get the White Balance in the camera and let its sensor do all the heavy lifting for you. In this case shooting with the D850 / 24-70VR, I set the WB manually to 9k. Lastly and perhaps the most important is you need to have a clean black. Then, me being me, I look for the financial hook and in this case, the top photo with Hwy 395 in the lower right corner makes this a great stock photo making easy sales. The morale of the story, sunsets are great subjects but take your photograhs to the next level by not being a moth!
Jun 26, 2018 | Landscape Photography
On 1 June, a lightning strike hit Lion Point in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. It was discovered on the 11th and by 18th was a slow, smoldering wildfire trying to burn its way through the thick pine needle carpet. There is just enough fire to create the thick smoke blanketing our area. With the strike helicopters flying over the house constantly, we decided to head up to the crest to look at it for ourselves since it’s only 9 miles from the house (town and home safe at this time).
Being me, I, of course, went up with the D5 / 180-400VR with my thought being I’d photograph the helos going overhead. As it turned out, the smoke as the sun went down intrigued me more. Here’s what we saw.
[envira-gallery id=”47997″]
As of now, the fire has grown to over 2400 acres, it was just 10 acres when I took these photos.
Jun 20, 2018 | Landscape Photography
It’s simply the most beautiful forest I’ve ever walked! We averaged about five miles a day in our hunt for Great Gray Owls walking the forest. Our walks the entire time were through the most gorgeous, sweeping landscape of Ponderosa Pines with spring grasses and wildflowers at their feet. While we never found the Great Grays, we were enveloped by over thirty species of wildflowers. Their color and smell amongst the pines and grasses were intoxicating and with all the birds singing made for a near heaven experience. Seriously, we all said we’d move there in a heartbeat, it was just that magnificent!
Those who know me know that no matter how gorgeous the wildflowers, I simply don’t put my butt in the air to photograph them. So you might be very surprised to see a blog post with wildflowers. Well, that’s because I didn’t have to bend over to take them! Shooting with the D850 / 8-15Fish, I simply folded out the monitor and shot! The 8-15Fish is so cool because it focuses closer than the 16Fish so all I had to do was move the rig close to the blossom, wait for the wind to settle down (the past I hate) and go click. I shot on CH and with the D850‘s Silent Shutter, blasted away letting “luck” capture the sharp image. The top image was shot at 8mm and the bottom at 15mm and I made that decision based on the blossoms. It was simply, spectacular!
Jun 13, 2018 | Landscape Photography
The Spouting Horn on Kauai is just one of those locations that in the late afternoon, you can’t but take a deep breath and relax! The view is spectacular so much so that even the evening rain shower makes you smile just that much more. Then there is the natural beauty of the coastline enhanced by the “breathing rock” that is the Spouting Horn. Even at low tides, you can hear it take a breath and let it out even if there is no spray. The warm, ocean air, the floating clouds, the gorgeous light, it’s just about as romantic a spot as you’re going to find. Then we interrupt this all by putting a camera to our eye. I say this because there is no emotion setting in the camera, romance slider in post. Argh!
What do I mean by that? When we put the cold-hearted bastard to our eye, we take all those emotional responses to Spouting Horn and make them mechanical. We have all the best of intentions wanting to preserve and share the moment, but we often fall short. For your consideration, I offer up these two photographs from my recent time at Spouting Horn. The top shot is looking west at Spouting Horn, the bottom photograph is looking south right at Spouting Horn. Which photo says, “I was here” and which says, “You SHOULD be here?” I know the answer for myself, but do you when you experience such a moment and put the cold-hearted bastard up to your eye? You might be saying, “The bottom photo has a rainbow, I want that photo.” But does the rainbow really make the photograph, a photograph? For me, the vertical photo has two halves, a top half with the rainbow and the bottom half, Spouting Horn. There is nothing visually tying the two together. So while both are photographs taken with the D850 / 24-70VR (shooting on CS to capture the burst of water), one is simply, I was here and one is, you should be here. So for me, it has to grab heartstrings for it to be a photograph.
