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So in the last few weeks I have been storing photos to blog, in case I had ended up not shooting due to weather or just due to being to busy, but now I've been shooting almost daily, getting lots of photos I like, and I haven't been posting anything because I've also been working a ton too!! So I'm gonna try to post more frequently here in the next week or so, and try to get some new stuff up on the blog, and try to get out and shoot at the same time. We'll see what happens.
There was a bit of a "Car Show" in town today, only about 15 cars in a small parking lot, but there were a few that I really thought were interesting and caught my eye. Of course my first thought was HDR, and that is pretty much all I tired to shoot for all day. I only spent about 45 minutes shooting, but still came out with a few images I'm pretty happy with, so that makes it all worth it. Two of these are HDR that may be processed a bit too much, but I'm happy with what I've got for now, I've only made minor color and contrast adjustments on them for now, but when I'm ready to print, I'll do some more work in photoshop and make sure that they're top notch.
I tried a new technique on the image of the black car, I added a massive amount of contrast to the whole photo, and than ran the "high pass" filter on the image to give it a whole new level of "pop"....it's more like a "bang" in my eyes, but I can live with that for now.
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8, 10.5mm f/2.8
I've been a little busy as of late. I've been getting out to shoot on my days off and have been working a lot every other day. It seems as though summer has finally made itself permanent for a while, so that's great. The wildlife have been out and about quite a bit. We went for a drive last week to find a Black bear with a couple of cubs. We weren't the only people looking either, there were about five other cars that were just driving up and down the road for a few hours waiting for the bears to come out of the woods. After about two and a half hours we decided to direct out attention to the mountains for a little bit. I have been trying to really get my HDR workflow perfected, and trying to edit them to be ready for printing in the near future. I shot a few HDR panos of Edith Cavell from the road, and I think they came out really well. The one I've posted is four vertical shots, left to right. Each shot is also an HDR of three seperate frames bracketed at -2/0/+2 exposure. I once again used a pano stiching program to make the final pano, then just some minor curves layers to finish it all off.
So to top that day off we never did see the bear and cubs, but we did end up seeing a lone black bear. It could not have been more than two years old, he may look a little big in the photo, but I'm sure that's just because of the framing of the shot. I did get out for another shoot last week, but I'll post that in the coming days.....
On a non photo related note, a friend of mine has created a cool new Jasper website. It geared towards promoting local businesses, events, artists/musicians, etc. . You can also post things you want to sell or give away on there too. Check it out Here.
Photos: Nikon D90, 80-200mm f/2.8 (pano), 55-200mm (bear)
Well, the past 24 hours have been quite productive for me in a photographic sense. For the past few weeks I have been reading about off camera flash, and considering buying a flash to add to my camera bag. So I was in luck when I found out a co-worker of mine has an Nikon SB-800 and said I could borrow it to try it out. I am an avid reader of the Strobist web site, and last week there was a really cool video on how to use off camera flash to capture water drops. So for my first attempt at off camera flash, this is what I chose to try out.
Now the possibilities of off camera flash spread WAYYYYY beyond lighting water drops, but this is for sure an awesome application of the technique, and I was pretty happy with some of the results I got in the first tries.
For my first few tries I had the flash at about 1/32 to 1/64 power and pointed it at a colored background. This proved some decent results, but then I thought I'd try to change my camera to Auto FP (High Speed Sync) so I was able to shoot at sutter speed into the 1/1000s of a second. This produced the results that I've posted here and my pics from the day. I plan to borrow a Macro (close-up) lens in the next few days and I'm interested to see the results from that as well.
Needless to say, I'll be buying a flash sooner than I thought I would be!!
Photo: Nikon D90, 50mm, SB-800
Another few days off and great weather this time. I didn't get out to do much shooting these days, but I did go over some older images again. I've been having a bit of car trouble as of late, so getting further than 10 minutes from my home is kinda hard, unless I feel like walking back.
It was nice to get out and walk around a bit today and hopefully the car issues will be over soon so I can get to some great summer spots and work on a few projects for the summer.
This image is from a few weeks ago. My fiancee and I went for an overnight trip at the Num-Ti Jah Lodge on Bow Lake. Being in a rush to get out of town, I forgot my tripod mount, so sunset and sunrise shoots were out of the question, I went out anyway, but there wasn't much light to shoot. After breakfast the clouds broke and I tried to get a nice Pano of the area. A friend of mine had just purchased a new Panorama Stiching program, PT Gui, so I asked if I could give it a try to see the results from my panos. This particular one is 24 vertical images, and I was really amazed at how fast and seamless the pano came out. I'll have to look into this program a bit more, but from this trial, I'm pretty impressed.
So here we are again, a couple days off and more bad weather...don't get me wrong, I really don't complain all the time, and I actually could have put up with some rain this week, I wanted to work a few street scenes in the rain, but of course, I woke up yesturday morning to AT LEAST 6 inches of snow on the ground!! Wow, I know we live in the Rockies and the weather changes every day, but Spring sure has been delayed this year!
On a very good note, the slightly displeasing weather caused me to go through some older images from the past few months, I created a few presets in my software and cleaned up some files on my computer that seemed to have no sense of organization. So it has been a productive few days. It's back to the ol' 9-5 tomorrow..or lets make that 10 to 9...I have started a second job so I'll have some extra cash over the summer. Getting married costs money, and I currently don't have a lot of that, so it's time to work my butt off for a few months, then relax and hopefully have lots of time for photography over the fall and winter!
On the old photo revival note, this image is of a church in Reserve Mines, NS. I shot a wedding during my Christmas Holiday in Nova Scotia, and this was the church where the wedding was held. I think i shot this after the wedding while waiting for the bride and groom. It is a three shot HDR , shot handheld, and processed in Photomatix Pro. I originally did it as a color image, and you can see that on my website here. I do like the original color image, but I have been wanting to play with textures lately, so today my motivation finally came about and I made this. It was pretty easy acutally, I simply converted the color image to a sort of nostalgic old time look, and added the texture layer on top and changed the "blend mode" to overlay, and presto...there you have it! Maybe next week I'll get my rain and put my ideas to work in town with some rainy street scenes. Who knows?!?!?!
Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
Ahh, another beautiful day in paradise. Oh wait, that wasn't today, or yesterday, or the day before, because it's been RAINING the past few days!! Man, I know we need the rain, and that I still got out to shoot those days, but I am a bit tired of not being able to get any great sunrise or sunset shots the past few days. Rain is great for rivers and streams and sometimes we've had some pretty cool clouds here, but not as nice as a great sunset!
This shot is from earlier in the week, we got out to a little spot East of Jasper, along the Athabasca River at the end of the Colin Range. I got this one just as the sun went beyond the horizon and lit up the mountain with the rays of the day.
I used a Graduated Neutral Density filter on this one to keep the sky a little darker and keep the warm glow the center of attention.
Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8, Cokin 121 GND
Well, after more than a week of no activity here, I've been working at my regular job a lot lately, I finally got out to shoot a couple times this week. I got out with a friend of mine who really got me into photography and taught me a few things from the start.
A few days ago we went out the Miette River just west of Jasper, and got some cool shots of the clouds that were around at the time, great clouds that day, I haven't finished any good images yet, so I may post one in the next few days after I get through them all. I've been trying to really perfect my HDR skills, so that is mainly what I shot that day.
Today we went south of town to try and catch a sunset on the Athabasca River, but as our luck would have it, the storm clouds rolled on in just as we left town and about ten minutes later we were standing in the rain on the side of the river. No worries there, we kept on shooting, and didn't mind the weather, there was a really great old tree root on the side of the river that made for some great shots, and the overcast weather got me thing Black and White.
The above shot is of the Athabasca River, with Mt. Kerkeslin in the distance, storm coulds on their way to the south. The photo was converted to B+W in post processing, added some contrast to the overall photo, mostly in the coulds. I used a circular polarizer to keep away the reflection on the water and make the rocks the foreground subject.
Photo shot with: Nikon D90, 17-55 f/2.8, Cokin Cir. Polarizer
