Florida Fresh Corrected

Posted by Mike on June 29, 2016

International Flower & Garden Festival

My original post and image of this truck I found at the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival has never really sat right with me. It didn’t speak to me nor did it make me feel the way I did when I captured the image. I have been reading quite a few books about photography lately but none of them have been technical books. They have been about creativity and expression.

A few of those books are:

Creative Visualization for Photographers – Rick Sammon
Learning to See Creatively – Bryan Peterson
The Creative Fight – Chris Orwig

and a few eBooks:

Chasing the Look – David duChemin
The Evocative Image – Andrew S. Gibson

These books have fueled a change in my approach to photography. Not only am I trying to capture a beautiful or interesting image, I’m trying to capture and process an image that conveys more of a feeling.

This is what has bothered me about my original Florida Fresh image. It was a very colorful image of a scene I found in Epcot. But for me it lacked a connection to that day when I clicked the shutter. On that day I was feeling deflated. Disney was losing some of its luster. It was crowded, I felt I was being nickle and dimed to death and I was not being successful in what I wanted to achieve photographically.

When I found this truck I was both excited and frustrated. I waited patiently for my turn to grab a picture but there was a lack of etiquette among the guests. When I am at Disney I always wait my turn and make every attempt not to interfere with someone else’s enjoyment of the parks. I was not getting back what I always tried to give…

I eventually gave up and sat down on a bench away from the truck. It was then another idea for this image came to mind. I switched to my 60mm macro lens (I brought very few lenses that day) and waited for that brief moment when my long view would be clear. I was able to grab one image before the guests returned to the area. Success!

I felt like a hunter who stalked and captured his prey from the safety of distance. I grabbed an image in a very narrow window of opportunity. I also felt like this compressed view of the truck is more how I would find it in an orange grove back in the 30’s. My original processing didn’t bring any of this out.

Below is my second attempt to present Florida Fresh…

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Florida Fresh Corrected

Florida Fresh
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/80s, f/11, ISO 400

One

Posted by Mike on June 28, 2016

Squared – SQ97

MLCreations Photography: Squared &emdash; One

One
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/500s, f/4, ISO 200

Hinckley in the Morning

Posted by Mike on June 27, 2016

Hinckley Reservoir

Sunday morning was the perfect day to get up early and catch some pre-dawn images. I finished reading Below the Horizon by David Delnea (you can see more about the eBook here) and was inspired to drag my butt out of bed. This book talks about light at the edges of the day. I spend a lot of time getting photographs during this time frame but David’s book still provided me with great information. I truly enjoy the authors and books you can find on the Craft & Vision website.

The two pictures in this post were captured only 4 minutes apart. As the sun approaches the horizon the light is changing drastically. You can see this in the color tone shift between the two images. The first image is cooler in tone with blue hues being the most dominant. The second image is starting to get warmer as more of the sunlight is crossing the horizon and lighting the sky above the reservoir.

This was another chance for me to play with my filter set. Not only did I have the circular polarizer working for me but the first image also has the 2-stop ND graduated filter. It is a soft edge filter which means the transition is gradual. That zone is centered on the horizon. By using the graduated filter I was able to get a single exposure image without any areas being too dark or light.

For the second image I added a 4-stop ND filter which allowed my to get a full 1 minute exposure time. This allowed the slow moving clouds to blur as they worked their way toward the horizon. It also allowed me to show the slight breeze with the blurring of the lake grass as it swayed.

I’m going to keep my eyes open for more opportunities like this… 🙂