Colors and snow

Sometimes it needs an inspiration from someone outside of our own bowl to make us look in a different direction or look in the same direction with a different pair of eyes. This happened to me after reading three blog posts from one of my favorite photographers, Moose Peterson, during the last five days. BROWN ON SNOW / GREEN ON SNOW / RED ON SNOW, they all talked about how to work with these colors in a photo with snow and still telling the story about winter.  

It was still snowing this morning when I went out to the rocky bluffs we have behind our house. The snow had painted the brown tree trunks nicely but I was looking for more. It isn’t easy to get a clear view of any of the rocks without having too many bare sticks or small trees in the frame. I finally found a spot where I was able to implement the red-orange tones of the rocks into my photo.

Later in the day, with sunset just ahead, Joan and I went on a walk with the dog down in the valley where the Little Maquoketa River runs. I have the white balance settings in camera most of the time on Auto mode. That works pretty good for most landscape photos but in this image it leaves a blue color cast on the snow because the foreground was completely in the shade already. This is easy to change but I actually like it this way. The low sitting sun brought out the warm tones of the tree trunks and rocks on the other side of the valley and even the snow reflects the power of the sun. The blue color in the foreground is complementary to the warm colors in the back and it tells the story about another cold winter night that was just half an hour away.

Cardinals everywhere

I think I stayed a little more on the conservative side when I told you a few days ago that we have a conclave of Northern Cardinals of about 15 birds here in the woods around our house. They are here now most of the day and I had the chance to count them again. Now I would say the flock has at least two dozen birds that stay together during the winter. I hope you don’t mind that I show you a few more images of these great looking birds. They will separate soon and it is hard to make a click that close during the summer (oh, I will try anyway).

Here is “The Punk”. The photo was made yesterday during the big gathering in the evening and the wind was still blowing after we had some more snow during the day.

This female had checked in at our “balcony studio” and used the Red Cedar branch to wait for a free spot at the bird feeder.

The last image is a day older than the other two but it was made also a few minutes after 6pm. The snow on the slope in front of our house made for a nice background and bounces the indirect flash light nicely onto the cardinal.

Nature clicks #192 - Icicles

 

Just a simple click made today in best sunlight when I came back from a quick lunch trip to town. The gutter on the south side of the house didn’t do what it is supposed to do. It was still frozen solid inside and some water that had melted from the roof spilled over and froze again on the branches of the barberry bush down below. The icicles looked interesting with the sun coming from behind but when I had the image on screen in Lightroom I thought it was still missing something. I moved the temperature slider for the white balance setting quite a bit into the blue, giving it a much cooler, punchier look. Wouldn’t do this with my wildlife images, but hey, it’s artsy-fartsy… ;-)

It's out now - my first book!

I did it! My first ebook is finally published and if you like you can download it as a pdf file right here in the blog. And here comes the best, it is free of charge! :-) Just click over in the side bar on “Andreas’s books” and you will enter the download page.

Why a book with photos about Prag, the capitol of the Czech Republic? Joan and I were over in Germany in May 2012 for the wedding of my son André and his wife Seraphine. Following this wonderful event was a three day trip to Prague, which is only three hours away by train from my home town Bautzen. I have been many times in this magnificent city during the Eighties and had very good memories of all the visits. Joan has never been there and so it has been for a long time on her travel agenda.

I didn’t really plan on making a book. I just had the camera with me and was shooting away for three days. We had some gorgeous light situations but no matter how the weather is, this city has so many nice places and subjects for all kinds of travel, street or architecture photography. Back home and after reviewing the images I decided to create a book about Prague as a Christmas gift for Joan. It is a hard cover 12” x 12” and it was printed and bound by a professional print service. Later I showed a first ebook version to some friends and family and everybody asked me, did you publish the book yet? So finally, over a year later, here it is. I added text for some of the images to make it a little more accessible for people that have never been in Prague and made some small changes in the layout.

Travel photography isn’t really what I’m doing most of the time anymore (have done a lot back in the days of film and slides) but working on this book was a great learning experience that hopefully will help me to make another one about wildlife or landscape photography sometime soon. Maybe this book will inspire you to pack your bags and travel to Prague. A wonderful city full of history, good food, and awesome beer is waiting for you…

Bald Eagles - gestures and light

Today was a perfect day for going out to the Mississippi River and photograph Bald Eagles, though it was very windy and therefor bitterly cold. It was the first time this winter season that I was back at lock and dam #14, down south in LeClaire, Iowa. It is the location with the best access to the river and the open water below a dam and many other camera owners can be found there on a day like this. I took off late because I like the late afternoon light and the hour before sunset the best at this location. The eagles were very active today and we had plenty of opportunities to practice proper hand holding and panning technique with the long lens. I have used the Sigma 50-500 on a tripod quite often during the last month around our house but shooting with this lens handhold is a total different ball game. It took a little time to get back into full swing.

There are lots of Bald Eagle pictures on my hard drive already, so the question is, what can still be accomplished? I’m now looking for particular gestures of the birds in quality light and I also want to make images that don’t need to be zoomed in because the birds are too far away. With other words, there is plenty of room for improvements.

The first photo is as it came out of the camera, no crop and exposed for the highlights (head and neck), which makes also the blue sky a little darker. I like that. What makes this photo special for me is the gesture how the Bald Eagle turns its head to the side.

The second image is all about movement and great light. It is the moment when the eagle stopped soaring and made the turn to go straight down to the water for a fish. It is a photo I wanted to make since a long time. The picture isn’t zoomed in. I just decided for a 1:1 aspect ratio and cut some sky off on both sides. I think this supports the eagle’s gesture better than the original 3:2 aspect ratio and still leaves the band of clouds intact as an anchor point.

The last photo doesn’t need much explanation. A shaft of late afternoon light hits the eagle perfectly and having the Illinois side of the Mississippi River in the frame makes for a nice environmental shot. What always amazes me is how the long lens compresses a distance. The trees on the other side of the river are half a mile away (~800 m)....

At Forest Gump's turning point

 

Last Saturday night I zapped through the programs on TV before I went to bed. Sure enough, one channel had Forest Gump with Tom Hanks playing. It seems there is always a TV channel that has this movie running on Saturday nights ;-). It happened to be that I just joined the movie where Forest Gump started running all across the United States. That includes the scene where he reached the east coast and turned around to run in the other direction. This scene was shot on the wooden bridge of Marshall Point Light in Maine, a place that we visited during our vacation tour in the fall of 2013.

This lighthouse is an iconic landmark and we were not the only people visiting as this image may imply. I don’t manipulate much in my photos but here I used “content aware fill”, a feature in Photoshop CC, to make five people disappear after only a couple minutes of work. Love it! It is a very useful tool for a situation like this.

Nature clicks #191 - Northern Cardinal

The last birds that we see here every day are the Northern Cardinals. They seem to prefer the very early morning and early evenings for their visits. We have a conclave of about 15 cardinals who stay together during the winter. The daylight lasts already a bit longer than during the winter solstice a month ago. This allows to make a few clicks after work without relying totally on the flash light. However, I use the speed light as a fill flash to bring out the colors. This photo was made at 5:30PM today. As you can see there is still some daylight coming through the woods in the back and from the side, making for a nice separation of the bird from the background. The branch from a Red Cedar is part of our “balcony studio”. I think it worked for this photo… :-)

NEW Landscape Portfolio finally online

 

I finished another one of my “winter projects”. A long overdue update of my landscape portfolio is finally online. The most difficult part was the selection of the images that really represent, what I believe is my best work in landscape photography. I have quite often very emotional attachments to many of my pictures but that does not automatically mean that those are the best pics to choose from. Some photos have been in the portfolio before, some have been replaced with new images from the last two years. If you like to check it out, feel free to click on the portfolio button in the side bar and to choose the respective gallery. As always, I’m very thankful for your visit here in the blog and for your comments, messages, and emails.

Enhancing the light with flash and soft box

Today we got reminded that we are still in the middle of winter. Lots of snow fell during the morning until noon. Well, I call it ideal weather for bird photography! The snow drives the birds to the feeders and water sources that we provide for our feathered friends. Snow flakes create always a nice dynamic in the photo and help to tell the story about survival in harsh weather conditions and this is why I like this kind of weather for shooting birds around the house.

The lack of light (strong overcast) was compensated by using the Nikon SB600 speed light and my self-made soft box. If you like to see how that light enhancer looks like, click on the link HERE , and one of my older posts will open in a new window. The softened light from the flash brings out the colors in the birds. While this works well you still don’t want too much reflection of the flash in the frame. I set the camera to manual mode (today I used most of the time 1/250s, f/8) and also reduce the output of the flash by -2/3. The shooting distance was about 3 meters (10 feet). After a few test shots it is not difficult to find the settings that you may like for your photo. I prefer to use the manual mode for this kind of shooting because it gives me consistent results over a period of time. If the light changes on a larger scale I change the settings of the flash light accordingly.

If you like to try something similar at your bird feeders but do not have a soft box, just take a white napkin and put it over your flash. This is not perfect (neither is my self-made soft box!) but it will give you some results you may like much better than just from the naked speed light. It is a starting point, give it a try!

Post processing for these images was very simple. I cloned out a few snow flakes that reflected the flash light a little too much. Other than that, just the usual tweaks in the basic menu of Adobe Lightroom, RAW sharpening, a little noise reduction, and finally some Highpass sharpening in Photoshop of the critical parts (eyes, maybe feet or some feathers). After three minutes the photo is ready to be saved as a jpeg file as you can see it here in the blog.

I hope my little description of today’s bird shooting may encourage you to try something similar at your own bird feeders, or even better out in the woods. Stay warm and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

All about ice fishing today...

Ok, today’s post isn’t so much about photography or nature. I posted already a couple landscape images a few days ago, but Brian, my German photography friend from Texas, wanted to see more about the ice fishing we did last weekend. So, here are some pictures and a few words about the fishing itself.

First we had to remove some snow and drill the holes with an ice auger. The ice was about two foot thick and that took about a minute before the drill touched the water underneath. Whatever you do on the ice, there is a lot of joking going on as you can see here. Our friend Doug swung the shovel while Bryan got ready to drill the next hole, and I was waiting to clean the snow and ice out of it with a ladle.

Since a few years our buddy Dale brings his dog Tucker along, who enjoys to run around in the snow and check out the deer tracks along the lake shore.

In Wisconsin every angler can have three fishing lines in the water and we use so called “tip-ups” for fishing. If a fish bites and pulls the line, a flag goes up and a little bell rings, indicating that there is some action going on. Sometimes that never happened during the whole weekend but this year we caught nine Northern Pikes (German: Hecht!!). As soon a flag goes up everybody who sees it yells”tip up!!” and the owner runs to his hole and tries to get the fish out of the water. Well, this is sometimes easier said than done… My friend Bryan got this one onto the ice and tried to get the hook out of its mouth.

Well, the rest of the time you hang around “base camp”, talk smart, drink some beer or German style “Glühwein”, eat unhealthy food from the grill, and have a good time with friends… ;-) Every year since 2007 we meet for a weekend in January up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and our TEAM ICE adventure became a nice tradition everybody looks forward to. Bryan, Dale, Doug, and I know each other through business in the graphic industry and my brother in law Don joined the group three years ago. Don, who is a farmer, wasn’t able to join us this year because of some problems with his livestock (we missed you Don!) but I’m sure he is sharpening the hooks for 2015 already… ;-)