Playing with water

 

We had a good amount of much needed rain this weekend. I used the time for several photography related projects (see my post from yesterday) and finally thought it is a good time to post some "water pictures" from our recent trip to the Rocky Mountains.

The first shot was taken above the Copeland Falls in the Southeast corner of the National Park. I made quite a few clicks, knowing that each picture would look differently by using a variety of different exposures from 1/20 to 1 second . The creek was in the shade of trees and the absence of bold colors made me process the image in B&W. It was the pattern, created by air bubbles in the flowing water and revealed by the long exposure, that I was after and 0.7s at f/16 created a desirable result for me. As always, NIK Silver Efex Pro2 is my software of choice for processing a B&W image.

The second image was taken after a hike higher up to Ouzel Falls. Despite a heavy overcast and even some rain sprinkles some light was left and revealed the colors of the surrounding rocks. I liked this one better than a B&W version I made and I want to share with you.

I wish all of you a great week.

Creative hole

I have been in a creative hole during the last week and as a result haven't made any new photos. It was hot and humid again and maybe it is just the weather that kept me from going outside and explore things in nature or somewhere else. Coincidently "The Grit", a podcast from Kelby Media Group that I download and watch every week, had as their discussion topic "When Inspiration Fails You" (episode 63). Couldn't be a better time for me to watch what other photographers had to say about this. Well, I'm not alone. It seems that even some of the most creative professional photographers have sometimes a period without any inspiration. Check it out here if you like: http://kelbytv.com/thegrid/

Not having any new images helped me to work on the backlog I have with my catalog. I made a lot of clicks this year already but the busy travel schedule recently prevented me from working on some of the pictures.

This photo is still from last Sunday. It was taken near the Mines of Spain, a nature area south of Dubuque, IA. I underexposed it by one stop in order to catch the sun rays coming through the clouds. I had to bring back carefully some of the light in the foreground in  Lightroom because I did not have any of the split grade ND filters with me. I could have done more for the detail but I wanted to give the scene a "painting-like" feeling. I applied my changes, including the usual sharpening, very subtle in order to get the result I had envisioned.

New portfolio - Landscape photography

Even if I do not have the chance to go out shooting because life dictates something different, I still try to work every night on my images or maintain my photo library. The recent update of Adobe's Lightroom software (we are now at LR 4) made me digging out some photos and redo the whole post process. Thanks to shooting always in Raw I can start from scratch with any file in my library. Adobe has done some great refinements in the Develop Module of LR4. In combination with NIK's Color Efex Pro 4 I have now some tools in my hands that have never been so powerful and at the same time subtle before.

It was time to think over my landscape portfolio. I kicked out some images, reworked some others, and added some new photos. If you like to have a look at the results, feel free to click at the left hand side on the PORTFOLIO bar or just right HERE.

Lightroom 4.0 Beta - I'm already hooked...

Nikon D300s, Sigma 150mm / f2.8 APO EX DG HSM

As many photographers these days who rely on Adobe's Lightroom software for all or some of their post processing I have downloaded their Beta-version of LR 4. It is out for trial and testing since a few weeks. If you are not familiar with this software but you would like to give it a trial, this is your chance now. The Beta-version is free but will expire March 31, 2012. It is expected that then the final version will replace the Beta-version. You can find it on the Adobe website.

I have used Lightroom since version 1.4 and I still think it is great. I use other software and plug-ins for my workflow as well (like Adobe Photoshop CS4 and most of the NIK plug-ins), but every post process of an image starts in LR. With every new version released this product became better every time. Critical things, like noise reduction and pre-sharpening of a RAW file, have seen big improvements over time. If I work with an image for a second time that may have been processed before some time ago (five years in digital photography are a very long time!!), I usually start from scratch and use the latest RAW converter and rendering engine that comes with Lightroom. Having a much better understanding about the post process now, plus better software leads always to a better result. Well, almost always, an image that is not sharp from the very beginning will still not result in a tack sharp photo. And I have plenty of them… ;-)

Beside many other new features Lightroom 4.0 Beta has some changes in the develop module. Some sliders are now differently named and  seem to have a much more subtle response. I used this photo of some actually pretty dull looking clouds over our neighborhood to try out different settings. I ended up with this contrastive look. It is not just one slider, it is a carefully chosen combination of several settings that boosts the contrast and luminosity in this picture. Give Lightroom 4.0 Beta a trial, you may get addicted… ;-)

Tool for file organization, maintenance, and analysis

It doesn't happen very often that I don't find the time for making any click during a whole week. Too many other things had to be taken care of during the last few days. I have to admit that I wasn't really sad about this because I found the time at night to do some maintenance in my picture data base. I'm a strong believer in a good file organization and I assign keywords to all of my images. Not only that finding a particular photo is so much easier, I believe it also helps me to analyze my work by comparing older shots with my actual creations. For instance, before I went in November for the third time to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Southern California I viewed my photos from the previous visits carefully. With a simple click in the keyword data base I can pull up every photo from a particular bird species. It helped me to see where I have room for improvement and to set new goals for the next shooting event in the same area.

During my nightly sessions this week I realized that I had neglected nature close up shots during our time in the Smokies this fall. A single click on the keyword "Fine Art" made me aware of this fact. This photo with the leaves in the crystal clear stream and the sun reflected from the minerals at the bottom of the creek was one of the few.

I use Adobe Lightroom for organizing my photos since four years now (version 3.6 was just released a few days ago). It's library module with all the features for searching, selecting, and file handling is awesome. Lightroom has many strongholds that I like but the library module is one of the best tools in my digital darkroom. If you have someone who is still asking for your Christmas wish, hey, here is a gift idea… ;-)

New layout, more space for images

Clingmans Dome, Great Smoky Mountains,   Nikon D300s, Nikkor 24-120 / f4

It was overdue. It always bugged me that the size of my pictures in this blog was so small. Sure, 620 pixel at the long side is big enough to see what the image is about, but I know my blog is the #1 showcase for my photography and I like to push the compromise between file size and display quality towards the latter.

Another reason I expand the space here is that I like to streamline my workflow. The blog is not the only place where I publish my images. I have my galleries hosted at the Pbase website and I also show some of my pictures at the German Fotocommunity. At all these websites I use about 950-1000 pixel length for my photos. The idea is to use 900px for all three from now on. This still leaves me the chance to add a white border around an image without exceeding a length of 1000 pixel. Because of the black background in the German Fotocommunity I like to add a white border and they will automatically downsize your image if it goes beyond the 1000px limit. The automatic downsize goes along with a big loss in quality and I don't want that happen.

Finally I added a share-button for any of the social networks out there or for sharing by email, just in case you may like something you find on this blog ;-) To make a long story short, I hope you will enjoy the new format here, despite the fact that it may take a few seconds more to load the website. Thank you for stopping  by!

Let's talk about workflow

Nikon D300s, Nikkor 24-120, f/4

Probably most people that visit the Great Smoky Mountains drive at least once up to the mountain ridge and walk the last mile to Clingmans Dome (6643 ft / 2025m), the highest point in the National Park. We did too, even if we prefer the quieter places in the mountains. Lots of tourists up there! It is nice to be on the watchtower and have a view in all directions but I found the more interesting views on a little lower elevation along the roadside. Luckily there are many pull-outs along the roads in the Smokies that allow you to park the car and shoot your pictures safely. The clouds moved fast and the sun rays let the leaves glow whenever they touched them. It was just gorgeous.

If you are interested, here is the workflow I used for this image:

I dialed in -1EV exposure compensation to bring the clouds to their full potential and not to have any highlights blown out at the right hand side. I used a graduated filter and the adjustment brush in Lightroom 3.4 to bring back some of the exposure in the foreground. Next I used the tone curve to enhance the overall contrast a little. This is followed by the usual capture sharpening, necessary for any RAW file. No color enhancements for this picture! Next I switched to NIK Color Efex Pro 4 (I have version 3 but just used the free 15-days-trial on the new version) and worked with the tonal contrast filter. As always, my last steps are done in Adobe Photoshop. I have a special downsize algorithm that also serves to sharpen the image for the web. I learned this step from the book "Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera RAW, and Lightroom" by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe. A book that I can highly recommend to anybody who tries to understand image sharpening. Before I save a jpeg for the web I apply my watermark. Most of the steps in Photoshop are done by pre-recorded actions and require only one click to execute them. Done deal!

Time of transition

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

I did not really have a plan for my photography last weekend in Dodge State Park. I just thought I look for the light that the transition between summer and fall provides. The leaves haven't changed color yet, only slightly. Green and the yellow of the wildflowers were dominating and I tried to capture this late summer mood in my pictures.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

I treated each of these three images a little different to make the important elements stand out. The Woodland Sunflowers (at least that's what we believe they are) have just some darkening around the edges applied. I used a very subtle 'Glamour Glow', one of my favorite filters in NIK's Color Efex Pro, for the back-light maple leaves. This gives it an almost ethereal touch.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

This meadow of Golden Rod was very beautiful and in order to get some depth of field I dialed in f/9.5. This left at the other hand too many distracting details in the background. The application of a neutral graduated filter in post suppressed most of them and separates the flowers from the background nicely.

These are all little things that don't take much time but they helped me to create the images as I want them to be seen.

Rain, light, and colors

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

It has been quiet here in my blog during this Labor Day weekend. Joan and I went camping into Governor Dodge State Park in Wisconsin. It is a very nice park that offers a lot of recreation opportunities and is only an hour away from home. We went swimming, hiking, bird watching, and enjoyed some great vistas with beautiful clouds in the sky. Despite the rain on Saturday I was hoping for some good photo opportunities and I can tell you, I was not disappointed.

The rain was still drizzling on us when I made the picture above. The light reflected by these boats and canoes and the colors of the kayaks caught my attention. The green of the duck weed in the water and the gray asphalt on the right framed the whole scene nicely. A minute later the light had changed again and I was happy that I didn't miss this chance.

In post I just gave the color contrast a very slight boost with one of the filters in NIK Color Efex Pro 3.0. More to come…

'God Beams'

My neighbor and friend Boris and I went on a short hike into Whitewater Canyon in the late afternoon today (Yes, there are canyons in Iowa!!!). Boris is not a photographer but enjoys being outdoors the same way I do. I didn't snap any pictures in the canyon today. There wasn't really any good light left because clouds had moved in and we even caught a few raindrops.

The showers were only short and I was hopeful that the sun would break through the clouds again on the way home. My hopes were not dashed. Clouds in front of the sun created wonderful crepuscular rays, better known under photographers as 'God Beams'. It doesn't get much better for landscape photography, especially here in Iowa. We are not spoiled with great vistas like so many places in the west of the country. Boris was very patient with me and didn't mind that I pulled off the main road several times for a good perspective. Thanks Boris!

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

The first image is an HDR made from four handhold pictures. I didn't go for the 'grungy' look and tried to keep it natural. NIK's HDR Efex Pro keeps it simple. Love this software! It is a really nice tool that helps me to develop my style of landscape photography in new directions.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4G ED VR

The second pic is a single click that I underexposed by one stop. I went for the silhouette of the farm on the left hand side. The light was magical…