Light beams are a special way to celebrate light in our photographs. Capturing God Beams is simply a gorgeous way to bring drama to our visual stories. They not only lead the eye through the frame but give a “warm all under” feeling making them simply a win-win to include whenever possible. The classical way of capturing those beams is to include the sun in the frame, close the lens down to its smallest f/stop and go click. If there is no cloud, zero, between your camera and the sun, you can bring those beams in. Not every lens makes a great sunburst so you can use a filter, technique like The Pinch and now, Luminar ’18’s Sun Ray!
Yes, you could create sun rays where there were none, but that’s not how I’m using this great new tool. Rather, I’m using it where there is a slight cloud cover between the sun and lens so the beams are really wimpy. IMHO if you can see the effect, you’re using it too strongly. In this case, Luminar 18’s Sun Ray is enhancing what I was already incorporating into my photograph. It’s a thing of beauty with the most difficult thing was pointing the D850 / 18-35AFS and making the click.
The beauty of the Sun Ray is its simplicity. Understanding light and how it’s playing in your photograph, you can first place the sun ray where you want it in the frame. Then with its settings, you can increase or decrease the White Balance of the beams, quantity, intensity, all the controls you need to meld the sun ray filter with your beams. I posted an earlier time version of this photo on Instagram a few days back before I explored the Sun Ray. While it has beams, it doesn’t have BEAMS with LIGHT like this finished photo has. It was my favorite for only few days. While it’s a tool I’ll use very sparingly, it’s a tool none the less and the more you know, the more power you can place in your visual storytelling!
Compacting a big range of light into a single photo is the goal of HDR. It’s now a whole lot simple with the D850 and MacPhun’s (Skylum) Aurora HDR. The D850 brings to this its 7FPS making hand-held HDR, 5 shot bracketed shooting a snap! What Aurora brings is not only its ease and speed but REALISTIC HDR math! Ya, you can quickly and easily go to the dark side, I prefer realistic so no matter your taste, you’ve got it. Bottomline … it works!!!
Your DSLR has the ability to teach you about light if you let it. Your Highlight Warnings or what I call affectionately, Blinkies, show you visibly in your photograph where you might have a possible exposure range issue. If you have blinkies in your photograph, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, if you have blinkies, you might not have any problems! You have to remember that the mind’s eye goes to light and bright first. If the blinkies are truly lost detail but if they pull your eye to the subject, there is no issue. But if they pull the eye away from the subject, then you might have to do something. Either case, this is a great tool to understand and use this powerful tool to your storytelling advantage. And to learn more about moving the eye around the frame with light, be sure to check out this class on light.
Blurry water, been doing that for a long, long time. I hated the days of guessing with film, even in the early days of digital. Now though, it’s really dang simple to the point of I probably do it more than I should. The simplicity comes from using the D850 which can easily focus through the Breakthrough 6x ND. Now the Breakthrough is the FINEST ND I’ve ever used! Besides totally loving its knurled filter ring, its color integrity is spectacular! There is no color cast, period! And with the ND Timer app, it’s a snap to make the perfect exposure from the get go. I start at ISO64, then close the lens down and look at the shutter speed (shooting in Aperture Priority). I have the AF Sensor on an element in the frame that provides either contrast, strong vertical or diagonal lines then screw in place the Breakthrough 6x ND filter. I then hit the AF-ON button to make sure focus hasn’t been effected, look at the ND Timer app to calculate the exposure time, put the D850 in M Mode then Time, hit the start button and enjoy the photo. Just darn simple and a ton of fun. Check out the Breakthrough ND filters, simply gorgeous making fun photography, fun!
