TURKEY RIVER, NORTHEAST IOWA

Turkey River, Motor Mill and bridge ---

As mentioned in a previous blog post I usually don’t take the camera with me while paddling a river with a good chance of whitewater passages. The Turkey River, and as well the Volga River in northeast Iowa, had a good water level last weekend. We didn’t feel like it would exceed our paddling skills and we went down with our kayaks safely and without any incidents (except our little dog Cooper jumped out of the boat a couple times when he wasn’t supposed to do it… 😆).

Today’s photos were taken at the Turkey River, at the old mill of Motor, a rural Iowa community that is now a historic site on the National Register of Historic Places. I always like to provide the sources of information that I use, so please click the following link if this is of interest for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor,_Iowa

We have been at Motor Mill a couple times before and I always make a mental note if I want to come back to a particular site and shoot with the right light in place. Camping at the primitive campsite nearby allowed just doing this and working around sunset with the old buildings of Motor, and of course the Turkey River, led to some new photos that met the expectations . More to come…

SUNSET AT THE BOAT RAMP

Joan and I checked out the canoe access near Motor Mill, Iowa around sunset last Friday. We had pitched our tent at the campsite and looked forward to paddle the Turkey River on Saturday and the Volga River on Sunday with our kayaks again. Despite heavy damage on trees and parts of the river bed in both rivers from the flooding about a week ago, both paddle tours were very delightful and we had no problems.

Some people had left their rental kayaks and canoes at the boat ramp and these made for a great story telling element in this photo.

WORKING WITH LUMINAR

Lake Superior, Pukaskwa National Park, Ontario, Canada ----

We have this typical end-of-July-weather right now, very warm and way to humid for my taste. I haven’t been out much for photography this week, except for the daily “yard exercise” with the birds that hang around the house. But of course, I don’t want to post about our house wrens or hummingbirds every other day.

About a month ago I reported about trying out Luminar from Macphun for the post process in my landscape photography. Well, I really like it so far and decided to use it as a Photoshop plug-in instead of the old NIK collection, that will not be supported by Google in the future anymore. The Macphun website has lots of short videos that make it easy to learn about all the different filters and techniques. Luckily there are enough untouched pictures on my hard drive to explore the ins and outs of Luminar. And this is what I do right now to beat the “hot-summer-blues”…😊

This photo was made on a dark and stormy day in Pukaskwa National Park, Ontario, Canada. Lake Superior was in a “bad mood” that day back in September 2016. The dominant color was gray, and all the other colors appeared muted. Luminar helps to improve the tonal contrast and reveal the colors as they appeared in reality. I still have a long way to go with this new software but I like what it does for my landscape photography so far.

NICE WHEN THEY MOVE AWAY

We had a big thunderstorm with very heavy rain and strong winds a couple nights ago, leaving us without electrical power for a day and hundreds of broken trees and branches on the ground in our area. Today’s photo of a developing storm cell was made already last weekend after our paddle tour in the Green Island Wetlands. This kind of weather is not unusual here in July but not every cloud is as beautiful as this one. And yes, it is always nice to see them moving away from us…😉

I had only the long lens with me but it can deliver some good results for landscape photography. Zoomed out to its minimum focal length of 150 mm I had enough to leave most of the not so pretty lake surface out and still have my subject, the nice anvil cloud, in its entirety in the viewfinder.

1/640 s, f/8, ISO 100, @150 mm, Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm / f5-6.3 DG OS HSM S,

WORKFLOW FOR LANDSCAPES

Mississippi River, Dubuque, Iowa --------    

It was quiet here in the blog for a week. We had good friends from Germany visiting and although the camera was always with me while we showed them Dubuque and the Mississippi Valley, there was no time to write a new blog post.

Thursday evening we went for a cruise on the Mississippi River, followed by some beer and food on the deck of “Catfish Charlie’s”, a popular restaurant at the river. I could not stay in my seat when the setting sun put some magic on the clouds and boats in the marina… 😊

For this photo my usual landscape post process workflow was applied to the RAW file. I start in Adobe Lightroom for small corrections of the shadows and highlights if necessary. Many landscape photos benefit from the use of the Dehaze slider and sharpening and noise reduction are of course mandatory. If necessary “spot removal” is applied to get rid of any spots from sensor dust in the camera. I than open the file in Photoshop as a Smart Object, a layer that has the RAW data embedded. This allows me to make changes at a later time in case I change my mind about any previous adjustments. The NIK Color Efex Pro 4 plug-in is still my best friend when it comes to romance the image. Most of the time I enhance the tonal contrast, color contrast, and darken the edges of an image slightly. There are tons of filters in CEP but I only use what benefits the photo. It is easy to overdue things. 

Google, who owns NIK, has recently announced that they will not longer support this product. With other words it may stop working when a new operating system comes out or Adobe makes changes to their software. This is the reason that I currently test Macphun’s software Luminar. I use it the same way as the NIK collection, I apply it as a filter to my smart object. This is a non-destructive way to work with the photo and if I want to make changes at a later time, I can always revert to the original file and settings. Many other photographers write good things about it and have already replaced the NIK plug-ins with Luminar.

The last step in my workflow is “border police”, the removal of anything around the edges that distracts from the subject, like a small branch sticking in from the side or a piece of paper that is just an eyesore in the photo. This all sounds like a lot of work for anybody who is new to post processing but usually I do not work longer than 5 - 10 minutes on one of my landscape pictures. The trick is to work with presets that I have created or copied from other photographers. I use them in Lightroom, Photoshop, and with the NIK software. Luminar is new to me. It comes with a number of presets but finding the right settings for my own photography may take a little time...

EASTERN IOWA AT IT'S BEST

June has been a “lean period” in regards of my photography endeavors so far. Not my fault, work has been in the way one more time. That has changed this evening when I finally went to the Green Island Wetlands again, and as you already know, this is one of my favorite areas for wildlife photography here in the Upper Mississippi Valley. At this time of the year, early mornings or evenings are the times when birds and critters come out of their hiding places. In addition the light is a lot more “workable” as during the times in between (of course, I’m not talking about the night… ;-) . I had some exciting moments today, but let me start with a view across the wetlands during some quick changes in the weather pattern. 

Especially friends in Germany have asked before, how is this area laid out? This photo, taken from one of the levees that I call “snake alley”, (more about this in a later blog post) gives you an idea how this part of the Mississippi backwaters has been dammed up. The river doesn’t flow through anymore and the water level and flow is managed according to environmental and other requirements.

My wife Joan may tell you I’m crazy showing you a landscape picture after coming back with a memory card full of exciting wildlife moments. I like to get it settled and will post about critters and birds here shortly. So, please stay tuned…

PREDICTING THE OUTCOME

Mississippi River, Finley's Landing , Iowa

This is what you get at this time of the season when you go down to the Mississippi River and find a spot that has all the supporting elements for a photo. Exposing strictly for the highlights and predicting how they will effect the composition of the image is key for the outcome. Colors don’t play a big role in this picture, green and yellow dominate, but all the different tones of the lush vegetation tell the story about the transition from spring to summer.

STITCHING A PANO TOGETHER

Click for larger image! --------

We had a dull, dreary, and rainy day and as a result no new pixels made it onto the memory card today. Not a big deal and it was a perfect time to browse through older images and clean up the photo library this evening.

During my recent visit at Mono Lake on the east side of the Sierra Nevada I made a few attempts to shoot some panorama images. As mentioned in an earlier post, it was extremely windy that day and so I shot handhold the whole time. I remember my first attempts to make a digital panorama, about 8 - 9 years ago, were a nightmare in post process. Thanks to the amazing software capabilities of Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop (I used Lightroom for this photo) it is really a breeze to stitch several photos together for a panorama these days.

So why even doing it? On a website, like this blog, a panorama looks most of the time tiny, depending how big your computer screen or mobile device is. It is the printing that makes all the difference. This picture was made from four photos. The content needs to overlap a little but at the end it led to an image with over 12,000 pixels on the long side. This allows to make a print 40 inch wide (~ 1 meter) or even larger without any loss of detail.

MONO LAKE

Nikon D750, Nikkor 16-35mm / f4 ------    

My goal last weekend was to come back with some decent photos from Mono Lake, California with its tufa columns and formations. Due to the three hours drive from Reno, Nevada I knew I wouldn’t be there in the early morning hours. I also didn’t want to risk to get trapped in fresh snow that was expected for the following night and so I left the lake in the early afternoon. With just a small time window around midday my expectations were not very high regarding the light. However, a very windy but clear day made for good colors and little haze in the air. The geology of the lake basin is fascinating and if you like to learn about the basics, here is the link that gives you some insight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake

 

GOING OUT WEST

Rocky Mountains, Colorado -----------

Today I have nothing but a picture made with the camera in my phone through the window of a Boeing 737-800 on my way from Chicago to Las Vegas, Nevada. This was not my final destination and I’m writing these lines from a hotel in Reno, NV, where I will stay during a business trip over the next few days. I’m always excited to fly over the Rocky Mountains, especially since Joan and I have been at several locations in the mountains of Colorado during recent vacation trips. It seems always difficult to identify part of a landscape from high up in the air, even if you think you know the area. Shooting through the window of tinted plastic in an airplane may always lead to goofy looking colors, and processing the image on my 2008 notebook may not be the best recipe to produce a quality image. But some guy smarter than me said before, the best camera is always the one you have with you… My photo gear was safely stored up in the overhead compartment and it would have been a long story to explain why I didn’t even try to get it out of the bag…

MISSISSIPPI RIVER STORIES 2017 #6 - WATER FOWL MIGRATION

Mississippi River, Mud Lake

I wrote that before, Mud Lake Park is never twice the same and it seems to be not difficult to come back with different impressions all the time. Today thousands of gulls had gathered on the last remains of ice and hundreds of ducks and mergansers were on the water. We saw Canada Geese, Buffleheads, Canvasbacks, Common Goldeneyes, Mallards, and dozens of Common Mergansers. Bird migration is in full swing since about two weeks already. The first Red-winged Blackbirds are here since a few days, a sure sign of spring. Birders on the IA-Bird Google Group reported about migrating Snow Geese and White-fronted Geese in five digit numbers. I have seen only a few thousand of them ten days ago at Cone Marsh in Iowa. Most of them left obviously in the morning, just before I arrived, but it was still quite impressive.

Weather was changing fast today and so was the scene on the river. Colder air moved in and as you can see in the background fog built up over the Mississippi very quickly. When the last shaft of sunlight hit the gulls on the ice I was ready to make the click for today’s photo. Usually I would clone away single birds in the sky that are the size of a little dot in my landscape pictures but today the ducks and geese flying over are part of the story in my image.

CERTAIN VALID MOMENT

Water tower, John Deere Works, Dubuque, Iowa

As I looked at the same scene today as already last Monday, a quote from Paul Strand (American photographer 1890-1976) came to mind, “There is a certain valid moment for every cloud”. Ansel Adams wrote in his book “Examples- The Making of 40 Photographs” that Strand said this to him during a meeting in 1930. I think it is a true and great quote and I was happy that I didn’t hesitate to go back to the Deere Marsh again when Joan asked me to go for a walk there this evening. I have been a believer since a long time that some improvement of photography skills can be achieved by shooting the same subject at different times with a critical analysis in between.