I am going through a lot of old images that I didn't fully appreciated before. This one is of a bend in the Virgin river in the Wall Street area of the Zion National Park Narrows.
Around the bend. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
High resolution composite stitched from 9 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 1.3s, ISO 200.
I made several versions of this image, several of which are in the Zion gallery on my smugmug site.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Baker Beach Sunset
These images are from a California trip I did with my family last winter. We went to Baker Beach at sunset and played in the water a bit. This is a really nice place to see the sun sink into the ocean and see the famous bridge illuminated by nice golden light. Even though it was December 22nd, it was wonderfully warm and we had a blast. I posted one image from this little outing a long time ago already over here so I won't repeat that image and instead give you a few others.
Sunset at Baker Beach. Buy a print. At flickr.
Stitched from 10 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/320s, f/11.
As you can see my daughter was having a lot of fun in the water. Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
The breaking waves gave lots of opportunity for interesting shapes. Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
And gorgeous color contrasts. Red and Blue. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 52mm, ISO 200, 1/125s, f/8.
That got more intense later. I just love the contrast between the blue water reflection and the red bridge. Sun worship. Buy a print. Not on flickr ;-).
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 55mm, ISO 200, 1/800s, f/5.6.
I did not put this image on any social media. Baker beach is well-known for a "certain kind of sunbathing". Even though this image is in no way risqué in my view, American sensibilities are rather strange to me so I only put it here.
Stitched from 10 images. Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/320s, f/11.
As you can see my daughter was having a lot of fun in the water. Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
The breaking waves gave lots of opportunity for interesting shapes. Golden Gate Sunset swoop. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ISO 200, 1/80s, f/11.
And gorgeous color contrasts. Red and Blue. Buy a print. On flickr.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 52mm, ISO 200, 1/125s, f/8.
That got more intense later. I just love the contrast between the blue water reflection and the red bridge. Sun worship. Buy a print. Not on flickr ;-).
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 at 55mm, ISO 200, 1/800s, f/5.6.
I did not put this image on any social media. Baker beach is well-known for a "certain kind of sunbathing". Even though this image is in no way risqué in my view, American sensibilities are rather strange to me so I only put it here.
Evening over Denver
Impressions of the great smog cloud ;-)
These are some images I took testing out a rented Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Truly an amazing lens. Incredibly sharp, even hand held. Heavy though. Be sure to click through for much bigger versions. Denver dusk panorama. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Stitched from 17 handheld images, Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 800, 1/80s, f/5.6 Color layers. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 handheld at 200mm, ISO 1800, 1/200s, f/5.6
On the original you can see the individual cars on Colfax avenue. You can also see that air quality sometimes leaves something to be desired in the Denver metropolitan area. The blocky structure up front is NREL's new solar covered parking garage.
These are some images I took testing out a rented Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Truly an amazing lens. Incredibly sharp, even hand held. Heavy though. Be sure to click through for much bigger versions. Denver dusk panorama. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook.
Stitched from 17 handheld images, Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 800, 1/80s, f/5.6 Color layers. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On Google+.
Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 handheld at 200mm, ISO 1800, 1/200s, f/5.6
On the original you can see the individual cars on Colfax avenue. You can also see that air quality sometimes leaves something to be desired in the Denver metropolitan area. The blocky structure up front is NREL's new solar covered parking garage.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Narrows reflection
I recently found this image from the Narrows in Zion National Park while going through my Lightroom library. The image is a composite of 9 images to create a very high resolution image and I hadn't noticed while shooting it that I had blown out (i.e. it was overexposed outside of the range of the camera's sensor) the cliff in the back. At the time, Lightroom wasn't able to bring these back to anything resembling nice color so I never bothered stitching the images. However the latest Lightroom versions are far better at this and surprisingly by just dialing back the exposure slider a little on the individual raw files, suddenly a blue sky showed up and detail in the rock appeared. So after some stitching and editing (mostly some dodging and burning) the image below was created that I am very happy with.
Narrow reflection. Buy a print. Image on flickr. Image on facebook. On Google+
High resolution composite from 9 images from Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 200.
High resolution composite from 9 images from Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-55mm at 24 mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 200.
Friday, November 9, 2012
The importance of white balance revisited
A little post for all you photographers out there. This is a revisit of an older post that gets a fair amount of hits every month. In the previous post I showed how the white balance setting in your raw converter, whether it is your camera or in software, has an enormous influence on the look and feel of an image. Also, there are many situations that simply confuse your camera's automatic white balance algorithms and so you often cannot trust it. This is especially true in landscape photography done at the edges of the day or in situations where there are deeply saturated colors present. A few days ago, I was photographing the sunset at a lake near my house and my D600, although far better at interpreting white balance correctly than any other camera I have shot with clearly got it wrong as should be evident from the image below.
Click for bigger!
This was shot with a 3-stop graduated ND darkening up the sky. The left image shows what the camera thought of the color balance. It rendered the water weirdly green. The white balance it chose is actually pretty close to a tungsten white balance but with a large green value. It is pretty close to the out-of-camera jpeg as I chose landscape picture style and chose the same profile in Lightroom. second from left is the result of clicking on auto in Lightroom. This gives an interesting result with very blue water. I did not use a Blue/Yellow polarizing filter for this image so this does not correspond to what I saw, but is still an interesting image. Again, the automatic system thinks the white balance is close to that of a tungsten bulb. The right three images are daylight, cloudy, and shade in that order. Those all correspond to the mood of the scene much better and choosing between them comes down to taste I think. In fact I would choose close to "Cloudy" if I were pressed.
I haven't posted this and other images from this sunset yet except for the panorama I posted a few days ago where I actually went for the bluish look that the camera itself selected but will do so soon.
Click for bigger!
This was shot with a 3-stop graduated ND darkening up the sky. The left image shows what the camera thought of the color balance. It rendered the water weirdly green. The white balance it chose is actually pretty close to a tungsten white balance but with a large green value. It is pretty close to the out-of-camera jpeg as I chose landscape picture style and chose the same profile in Lightroom. second from left is the result of clicking on auto in Lightroom. This gives an interesting result with very blue water. I did not use a Blue/Yellow polarizing filter for this image so this does not correspond to what I saw, but is still an interesting image. Again, the automatic system thinks the white balance is close to that of a tungsten bulb. The right three images are daylight, cloudy, and shade in that order. Those all correspond to the mood of the scene much better and choosing between them comes down to taste I think. In fact I would choose close to "Cloudy" if I were pressed.
I haven't posted this and other images from this sunset yet except for the panorama I posted a few days ago where I actually went for the bluish look that the camera itself selected but will do so soon.
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