LUMINOSITY UNDER WATER

Pacific Sea Nettle, Oregon Coast Aquarium, Newport, OR

It’s tempting to just follow the actual time line and post only the photos that reflect what’s going on at the moment of publishing. I would follow the ”journalistic path” of the blog but many photos I create, especially those on the more artistic side, would fall under the table and never ever being shared with you.

Today’s image of a Pacific Sea Nettle is one of my favorites from our recent trip. It’s not wildlife and it was all about dealing with the circumstances of shooting through the thick glass in the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon.

I pressed the lens tightly against the glass of the aquarium and the rest was done by the lighting source of the tank above the water level. A few years ago I would never ever had dreamed about using a sensitivity of ISO 16000 for a photo. Now, with the great handling of high ISO settings in mirrorless cameras and much better noise reduction features in our software, this is just a matter of employing all these tools. Don’t take me wrong, I still believe shooting with the lowest ISO settings as possible is the best way to go for a high quality image. This time ISO 16000 allowed to expose at 1/640s at extremely low light conditions and to get this pulsating jelly fish still sharp in the frame.

A public aquarium tries to tell the story about the life under water for a certain habitat, that most of us aren’t able to see in their life time. When I take a shot like this I try to keep any men-made items out of the frame and hope to continue their story telling.

Here in Dubuque, Iowa we have the Mississippi River & Aquarium, one of the best in the country, and practicing many times before at their beautiful fish tanks made it easier to nail down the photo I can present for you today. I hope you enjoy it!

ICE STORM (THE UPSIDE)

We are still dealing with the outcome of a big ice storm with freezing rain that hit us last night and today. I probably could host a bob sled race here in our drive way…😉  With all the negative impacts it brings for the people it also comes with a certain beauty. Nobody likes icy roads, electrical power lines down, or falling trees, but the glass-like look of tree branches bares some photo opportunities. A small adjustable LED light, set to 5000 Kelvin, was used to bring out some colors in the yew bushes that grow in front of the house.

The second photo was made on the balcony already last night when the ice cover was still growing. The power of two LED lights, that we use to illuminate the deck if necessary, comes from behind the camera. All the boards overhead that support a climbing vine plant  had this gallery of icicles. I shot this with ISO 10000, something I have never done before. The Nikon Z6II does a very good job for noise reduction in general, but of course at ISO 10000 there was noticeable noise in the picture. Since a few months I use Topaz DeNoise AI in my post-processing workflow whenever necessary for an image. The noise in this photo was most visible on the illuminated boards in the background. I’m amazed about the results, even at such a high ISO level, with no noise left and the icicles remained sharp and unaffected.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: BOWMAN LAKE, GLACIER NP, MONTANA

Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 2008

As I reorganize my photo library during the winter I come across some pictures that trigger great memories from the time they were created. This one is from September 2008. We had pitched our tent at Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park in Montana. A walk along the lake, with the camera on tripod over my shoulder in the morning, was the first attempt to capture some of the endless beauty Glacier National Park has to offer. Clouds and fog over the lake were lifting and the diffused sun showed up above the mountain ridge.

Only three pictures from that walk in the morning were kept in the archive but due to the lack of knowledge I probably missed a lot of opportunities. My post-processing skills were also still at a beginner’s level at that time and obviously one of the reasons I didn’t touch the file for almost fifteen years. Luckily from day one, since a DSLR camera was in the photo bag (in April 2007), I shot every single image as a RAW file, means all the data are lossless “conserved”. In addition post processing software has evolved tremendously during the last fifteen years. Taking an old photo like this, tweaking and processing it with the latest tools is fun and allows us to share photos, we maybe would not have considered at the time right after they were captured in camera.

So, what was done here? The gray in the sky overpowered all the colors and took a lot away from the scene as I saw it. It was important that the highlights in the sun and reflections of the sun were not blown out and would render in a white “blob” in a print on paper, or just on the screen of the computer. Although the photo was shot at ISO 100, I still used Topaz DeNoise AI for further noise reduction. This fantastic software also does a great job for the basic sharpness every RAW file needs to undergo for a final sharp image. Subtle fining tuning of vibrance, contrast, highlights, and shadows, most of it locally in Adobe Camera RAW with its relatively new mask features, has led to the final image.