Pemaquid Lighthouse

Oct 10, 2012 | Landscape Photography

We need to start with our light. Head to Filter>Render>Lens Flare. You can truly create the light that fits your image’s mood. My general preference is Brightness of 35% and the 105mm Prime flare. Once you’ve dialed in those two ingredients, center the light as best you can on the lighthouse. If it’s not exact, it’s not a problem as we’ll make it perfect in a second. Click OK and you’ll see the Lens Flare appear in your image.
We need to remove the lens flare we just created because as is, we have no control over it (if you’re using Photoshop, you’ve gotta have control, right?) Ctrl/Cmd Z. We’re now going to create a layer for our Lens Flare to live on so Layer >New>Layer or Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+N or click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. We now need to fill the layer with gray so Edit>Fill>50% Gray (from drop down menu under content) or Shift F5. Now Crtl/Cmd F to run the Lens Flare filter you just created. You’ll now see the flare you created and have complete control over it.
At this point, I like to paint out the flare elements I don’t want in my photo. These are the colored orbs off some distance from the center of the main lens flare. Select a soft edge brush, click on your foreground color to bring up the Color Picker and in the HSB set the B to 50%. Set your opacity to 100% and paint out the flare. Now, if you’re not sure in the beginning what flare to keep and what to discard, you can skip this step and simply use a layer mask later on to remove unwanted flare. Change the Blending Mode for this new layer to Hard Light and all you see in your image is the flare you just created, the beginning of your light.
At this point, you can stop and say you’re finished. If you were to capture the lighthouse light coming straight at the lens, this is generally what you’d capture. If you want to have the beam of the lighthouse, we need to do a couple more steps.
Grab your Marquee Tool (tap M key) and draw a box around your light. We now want to inverse our selection Select>Inverse of Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I. Then tap the delete key. Reverse the selection with Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I. This makes it easier to manipulate the light in the next step. At this point, make your image smaller with Ctr/Cmd+- so we can stretch out our light.
Your selection is still active from the last step. Now we’re going to use Free Transform Ctrl/Cmd T to stretch our light. You’re going to stretch a WHOLE lot! Once you have your light stretched to taste, enlarge the image so you can move the light so that the bright center is over the light of the lighthouse. Since we’ve put this in its own layer, you can always fine tune the placement of the light with the Move tool later.
At this point, add a Layer Mask to the light layer. With a soft edge brush, 100% opacity and painting with black, paint out the elements of the light you don’t want. Remember, it’s a layer so you can modify the light any time, any way you like. For example, if the light is too bright, just lower the layer’s opacity

The Day of a Lifetime!

Oct 9, 2012 | Landscape Photography

started with a glorious sunrise with an old friend. The Portland Headlight has produced some great images for me in the past and today, it did not disappoint! What you see is a simple click right out of the camera. The key, -2exp comp. The reason, the highlights, that’s the photograph. You don’t need to show all the detail for folks to know it’s a lighthouse so I went artsy fartsy. It was a glorious start to a day that, well, while I might have been prepared for, I would have never imagined it would have ever happened. In time, I might tell the story. For now, for all those involved in the great gift, thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Love ME in the Fall!

Oct 8, 2012 | Landscape Photography

Typical Moose style, we were up early and greeting the sun. With the rains during the night, we went chasing fog and light and found some gorgeous stuff to play with! I wanted to see how the D600 would do so did some serious shooting with it and I can tell you, I seriously like this camera! It nailed the exposure, it nailed the focus, quick and easy producing gorgeous files!

These are actually simple clicks. I shot at -1/3 exp comp, starting with Cloudy WB then going to AWB once the light wasn’t as warm. Then for finishing, I showed the group my favorite finishing technique at the evening DD session. With the image selected in Mini Bridge, hold down the Shift key and hit Enter. The image is instantly processed in ACR and you’re done. Wanting blacks a tad stronger, I used levels going to 5 on black. Done…and I love the images. Fog is just so much fun to watch dance and than make glow in the photograph!

Back on Task

Oct 4, 2012 | Landscape Photography

Ok, with the “distraction” of the big launch over with, I got back down to telling a story. One element I wanted to tell was the early morning launch. These folks got up (and us up) really early to photograph the launch. I wanted that in the photographs. How to do that? How do you make the uncommon out of the common? With the sunrise on the horizon, I used the tools I know so well. I underexposed -1.3 to bring the sky and clouds down and then used ACR to bring up the value of the balloon. I ripped the motordrive to be sure I had the blower going so the eye would suggest the bright balloon is from it and not my lighting the balloon in ACR. After just feeling the frustration of not making good images, this felt good to be back on task!

Visual Overload

Oct 4, 2012 | Landscape Photography