Aug 7, 2017 | Landscape Photography
There are many ways to give our one-dimensional landscape photos visual depth. One quick and easy of doing it is by including the sun. Just knowing this though isn’t your salvation because including the sun has its own ying and yang. The first thing to think about is the sun will be the brightest element in the frame. The eye will go to it with missile speed and lock onto it. Now that can be good, that could be bad. The difference between the two is the visual path you create to and from the sun in your frame. This is the hard part because the power of the sun is great but not so great it can’t be used in your favor. That’s the challenge and at the same time how you bring visual depth to your photo. There are two examples here of that happening but in two totally different ways and there are much more, probably infinite the possibilities. Here’s what you gotta watch out for in this process.
The sun poses its own rules when you include it. First is its brightness which will always extend the range of light in your frame beyond its five stops. There are many solutions to this from Split Grad Filter, underexposure, and post to HDR. Next, there is the flare from the sun itself to the sun reflecting off the dirt on your front element/filter. Lastly is any type of airborne interference between the lens and the sun. Getting the starburst is really simple, just close your lens down to its smallest aperture (and avoid looking directly at the sun with your eye). Some lenses create better sunbursts then others and to determine which is the best in your bag, simply go out and shoot a test. The last thing to ponder in this equation is where to put the sun in the frame. Because of its power, once you solve all the rest you can literally place the sun anywhere you want in the frame. The trick to that is placing it where it will pull the eye through the frame over and over again. When you do that you create the visua depth and that’s our goal. We want to move the eye thru the frame!
Aug 1, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
Well, we call them Jim Bob, the rest of the world calls them Willow Ptarmigan (the Alaska State Bird). When it’s mating season this largish bird simply turns stupid. While not the brightest bird in the flock to start with (some hunt them by simply throwing rocks at them), when there is sex in the air, all thought goes to one thing, attracting a mate. Many years ago we had one basically fly into the window of the van while in pursuit of another male it felt was trespassing on its territory. Every since that moment, we’ve affectionately called them Jim Bob.
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
What you see here is their plumage as it changes from their all white winter garb to the brown summer garb. As they molt out their winter white you get the variants you see here. It is amazing how well this chicken size bird can hide behind just one piece of grass even with their plumage not completely swapped out. And when there are females flying about looking for a mate, the males simply turn stupid which for the wildlife photographer is a golden opportunity!
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
With their concentration elsewhere, getting up close is just a matter of time. At first, when you approach, they are like many birds and move away. But once you wait them out, perhaps just five or ten minutes, you can slowly move in to get the photograph you desire. I was shooting with the D5 / 800mm which permitted me to eliminate unwanted elements in the background while containing those elements I wanted. The time it took to get from the image at the top to the one at the bottom was about twenty minutes of slowly moving up. There was four of us working this one bird and we took turns moving forward five to eight feet at a time until finally, I was at my MFD of 16 feet from this male (photo below). Once I got my photos, I moved away just as slowly and an hour after we started shooting Jim Bob, we all had moved back to the vehicle and he hadn’t moved a stitch. But them, that’s why we call him affectionately, Jim Bob.
Willow Ptarmigan
captured D5 / 800mm
Jul 12, 2017 | Landscape Photography
Mammoth Flats
captured by D500 / 10-24AFS processed with my “Procontrast”
It’s SO cool to see so much excitement and curiosity about MacPhun’s Luminar! The Windows Beta should be available shortly to all and right now only the Mac version is available for purchase. Knowing Nik was going, I’ve been using Luminar since last October. In that time, I have been working to recreate in Luminar my favorites in Nik which is not really fair to Luminar because, in many ways, it does a better job (for example with the following Procontrast Preset, I can tweek a whole of small details you can’t in Nik and that’s huge!). For example, I’m posting here for the first time my Preset for what I call Procontrast. Procontrast is a Nik Color Efex filter I’ve used since I was part of the team that developed it. It is essential to my workflow! There is no easy or clean way at this time to share my Luminar Presets like I have in the past for Nik recipes. So for right now, watch Scott Kelby’s class on how to make a preset and then you can plug these numbers into it to get Moose’s CURRENT number he likes for Procontrast (I say current cause it will evolve).
Moose’s Procontrast as of 07.12.17
Understand this is a pluggin inside of Photoshop. In my workflow, it replaces Nik (it is not how I process a Raw file). My only complaint with Luminar is that in my workflow working with Smart Objects in Photoshop, it just doesn’t automatically reapply the filter I go in and out of the Smart Object, I have to click Apply which in reality is no biggie! Will I share more? Of course, I have no secrets and once I’m TOTALLY satisfied with my creation and know they will work for others I will post them.
Jul 11, 2017 | Landscape Photography
This question came in not once, but twice over the weekend in response to an Instagram photo I posted. I take that as a great compliment! There is a reason my bud McNally calls me “Dances with Clouds” and that’s because I can’t pass up a good cloud. And that’s where it all starts the challenge for many, determining if it’s a good cloud or not. There are a couple of key elements in my approach to a romantic cloud photograph and that does it have character and will finishing bring out that character? What’s cloud character? In my mind that comes from the shape(s) in and about the cloud that shades of blacks, whites, and grays create (foreground earth is key here as well). The way the light plays on the shape and texture in the cloud is key! To see this I think you need to have a vivid imagination which I have. I’m not talking about seeing a face or critter in the clouds but rather, design elements that move the eye around the frame while touching the heart. Clouds require heart. The challenge in this is seeing what’s actually there and what will come forth in the digital darkroom tying this all up in drama.
Mammoth Flats
captured by D500 / 10-24AFS
What you’re seeing at the top is the finished photo, the bottom what the camera captured. You can see what I saw in both instances, the character I saw in reality and that in which I envisioned. In this photo, the main character is the “formation” that is dead center in the frame with the highlight on the right and the darkness on the left moving the eye through the frame once finished. Now part of this equation is knowing how the image will finish in post. It’s kinda which came first, the pixel or the egg? Working with Luminar, I knew exactly how the Preset I created would make that center formation pop. So those two elements I count on in my cloud photography might be the biggest challenge for your cloud photography that only time and playing in post will make successful. Until you come across that next great cloud, take one you have in your files now and start experimenting with the post processing that makes your passion come alive. Then remember that as you frame up those floating pillows of drama.
Jul 6, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
We were so fortunate last week to spend it in the company of some great shooter and amazing birds. That combination should have produced some killer images. It was on paper the perfect mix of biology and technology, hummers and flash. Madera Cyn, Santa Rita Lodge, in particular, is simply a spectacular location for birds, specifically hummers. With that biology, today’s iTTL technology is the perfect tool for produce the images we were after. We should start there, the image we were after. There are definitely two camps when it comes to Hummer photos, frozen wings, and blurred wings. After seeing my aviation work and the blurred props, it’s no coincidence I’m in the blurred wing camp. It’s simple, I experience hummers as this blurred jewel and that’s how I want to tell their story in my photos. And that’s where this all begins, the subject and the story I want to tell.
What makes hummers so darn cool? Their hovering abilities and the amazing colors they bring to our world. The key to bringing this to life is flash. There is a simple rule in photography regarding light … The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. This rule is very angular, straight line but our subject is anything but flat! The curve of the hummingbird gorget, throat, is very curved so if we use a flash by itself, we end up with just one specular highlight or one spot on the neck with color. To overcome this rule of physics, we used two SB-5000s each with a Rogue FlashBender 2 small. As you can see below, they are attached together and curved. With this, you can light up the entire throat of the hummer and the light bounces back with all the color to the film plane. Easy peasy! There is just one little flaw in this whole light, hummer, success theory!
The technology worked great. The main rig was the D500, 300PF, 2x SB-5000s (with SD connected) with the 2 Rogue. Shooting using the Autoarea AF in the D500 along with wireless WR-R10 iTTL made the technical pretty simple. The 300PF with its fast focsuing and MFD was the perfect lens to use for this challenge. More importantly, this very small, totally portable rig took the hassle out of big lights, boxes and expense out of the picture. And with the ease came the fun! The hitch to all this great theory is the person behind the camera and the bird in front of it. As you can see in the Magnificent photo at the top, when the Hummer was facing into the lights, he lights up like neon. But when he doesn’t face into the lights, the rule of light means we see only black neck.
So, what went wrong? The fault is all mine, the person behind the camera and not the theory or the technology but rather the execution. Control in wildlife photography is a myth but we can slant things in our favor. In this case, the hummer was able to feed on the side flowers on the feeder. By not placing tape on them, the hummer could come and go sides ways rather than in from the back which would have made them face the lights (like in the top photo). Now can this all work? Oh hell ya, just take a look at what Carol captured with the same rig, same hummer, gorgeous! So what does this all mean? It means I will spend more time working on my end of the deal, the person behind the camera and I will be heading back again next summer to Madera to put it into practice! Because where it has to look great in the photo, all the light melded together to show off these flying jewels. It doesn’t count if it jsut looks great on paper!
Note: Many have asked for my settings in doing this. Knowing that info is useless as the ambient light always changes, the flash to subject distance fluctuates and most importantly, how we meld light will always be different. If you want to find out the settings for you, set up your rig and photograph a red xmas ball in various light and then you will have your numbers for YOUR photography.
Jun 28, 2017 | Wildlife Photography
After sitting, stewing, and sleeping on it, I came up with minor changes in our technical tools and ideas and they started to payoff for us. Still shooting with the captured by D500 / 300PF / 2x SB-5000 set up but have made better use of Auto Area AF. The idea, of course, is not only capture the photo but have a ton of fun and enjoy the magic that is hummingbirds. We got much closer to that today. Now it’s still not “the” photo I want, but it’s now moving in the right direction so while slow progress, it’s still progress.
