FIRST BE PATIENT, AND SECOND, DON’T FORGET THE POLARIZER

A hint of fall colors, Walnut tree, Mississippi Valley, near Guttenberg, Iowa

Another great day with warm weather and some hope to find the unbeatable light of autumn here in the Mississippi Valley. It has been a dry year for the most part and many smaller trees loose their leaves without putting on a great color show. But we are not at the peak of fall colors yet and it may take a little time to find the spots that satisfy the eye and mind. I’m not a big fan of bare branches and dead sticks in my tree photos and some decent light has to be present before I make the click. This walnut tree below the steep slope of the Mississippi Valley caught my attention. I love the shape and how it stands out against the background and the surrounding trees. When the layer of clouds thinned out and more light revealed the colors of the leaves, the click was finally made.

If you like to photograph the fall colors for the first time during the next few weeks, here is a little tip that may help you to come back home with some good shots on the memory card. Don’t forget to bring a polarizing filter! No, we don’t need that for a better blue in the sky anymore, but it will remove the glare from the sky on the surface of the leaves and it will reveal the true colors. This works for leaves that either still hang from the trees or maybe make a nice pattern on the ground already. Glare on a surface is one of the things you can’t “fix” in post process.

PAINTED DESERT (5)

On the Blue Mesa, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

When you visit a landscape and your time is limited, you have to make the best out of it if you like to come home with some decent photos. In Petrified Forest National Park I had clouds only for a short period of time and tried to incorporate them in my images. In addition they helped a little bit to mute the sun and lower the contrast, although in January the sun is still not really high. Without a polarizing filter the glare on the rocks and sand would overpower everything. Shooting at 16 mm focal length the use of a polarizer is a little tricky. It is easy to produce a totally uneven blue in the sky that is difficult to fix in post process, but without a polarizer… well, the glare just takes over. 😉

KEEPING THE SKY OUT OF THE FRAME

Canyon of the Blackwater River, Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia

In search for fall colors we came across many different situations and they all raised the question, how to tell the story with one photo? At Pendleton Point, overlooking the Canyon of the Blackwater River, it was clear that the gray sky had to stay out of the frame. After a rainy night and a day with heavy overcast the saturation in the leaves was perfect. The polarizer helped to minimize glare on leaves and the water of the river. A light fog from low moving clouds in the canyon made for a great autumn mood. I focused on the bottom of the canyon and shot relative wide open (f/4) to keep the speed within a range I can handhold with the Sigma 150, f/2.8. Depth of field was no concern without a foreground in the frame.

Nikon D750, Sigma 150mm / f2.8 APO EX DG HSM, @1/200 s, f/4, ISO 400,   B+W F-PRO Kaesemann High Transmission Circular Polarizer MRC filter,

YOUNG BULLHEADS (DEHAZED… ;-) !!)

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM

One of my goals with this blog has always been to show you the variety and beauty of wildlife we can find here in the Mississippi Valley, but I don’t think I ever published any image of fish yet. Last weekend I saw this swarm of young bullhead catfish at one of the boat landings in the Green Island Wetlands. I have never seen this before and thought it was very interesting to watch and finally like to share it with you.

The original RAW file had a certain glare from the reflection of the sky on the water surface and I was wondering if I could overcome it in post production. I don’t have an 86 mm polarizer that would fit my long lens and that may have taken care for this problem.

A new feature in Adobe’s Lightroom CC came to my help and it worked like a charm. LR has now a Dehaze slider. I read about its usefulness for landscape photography, doing just what it says, dehazing a scene. I thought that glare on the water is almost like a haze and so I gave it a try. This is pretty much all what it took, plus a little warmer white balance and lowering the luminance of blue and purple slightly.

I hope this was not too much gibberish for you, but as you know, I write for photographers, nature lovers, and friends and people that just enjoy looking at some wildlife photos. Thank you for stopping here!