Temple of Heaven, China Pavilion, World Showcase, Epcot
Temple Sunset
Nikon D7100, Tokina 12-28mm f/4, 1/100s, 17mm, f/8, ISO 400
Temple Sunset
Monorail Odyssey
Food & Wine Festival, Epcot, Walt Disney World
Finally! I thought I had my computer all fixed last Sunday and all I needed to do was straighten out the Windows activation problem. Boy was I wrong! I’ll go ahead and date myself but I miss the simpler days of DOS and even the first versions of Windows. So much easier to deal with… lol
So this is the image I was working on for Monday when I realized I was going to be working on this computer a little longer. It isn’t Monorail Monday any longer but I didn’t want to wait until this coming Monday to share. Just a little hand-held image of the Monorail gliding through the Epcot entrance loop during the Food & Wine Festival last fall. I love the colors the Odyssey building (on the right) picks up from the setting sun. I also get great colors on Spaceship Earth.
Monorail Odyssey
Nikon D7100, Tokina 12-28mm f/4, 1/250s, 28mm, f/11, ISO 3200
Helsinki Bus Station Theory
I have talked about photographer Tom McLaughlan (Ministract) before on this blog. He is the photographer I found on Google+ when I started my photography journey who peaked my interest in abstract and minimalism in photography. Although I attempt to produce work as visually interesting as Tom when I fumble at abstract images I have more steps to take on my journey to be able to see the beautiful patterns before me. Tom’s latest blog post (Helsinki Bus Station Theory) not only brings another set of wonderful images he links to a very interesting article about photographic vision and personal commitment by Arno Minkkinen. I encourage you to go check out this post…
As I am still having issues with my main photography computer I am including one of my abstracts from last year. An interesting pattern found in the shop…
Cross Patterns
Nikon D7100, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5, 1/80s, 55mm, f4.2, ISO 800
Last Light
Delta Lake State Park
I’m back! Did you miss me? I have been having fun these last few days, how about you? The latest Windows update that was installed Wednesday night decided to trash my hard drive. Luckily it didn’t do anything to my files as I have them on a second hard drive but my operating system needed to be re-installed and I am still in the process of reloading all my software. I have one more issue Microsoft is going to have to deal with but the one department I need to talk to does not work on the weekends so that will be an interesting call on Monday.
Just to get me back in the swing of things I processed another view of the sunset from last Sunday evening up at Delta Lake State Park. I just love the colors! The ice was starting to melt and break up some so there is also a cool channel for the sky reflection. After these past few days I’m hoping to get back out with the camera today… 🙂
Last Light
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/25s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200
Ice Channel
Wordless Wednesday
Ice Channel
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/3s, 24mm, f/16, ISO 200
Rockin’ the Sunset
Delta Lake State Park
Sunday was the perfect end to a beautiful weekend. The weather the whole day was gorgeous so I knew I would be heading out around sunset in search of an image. I didn’t have to travel far as my favorite state park around the corner from me had everything I needed. Empty beach. Melting ice. And just enough clouds in the sky to make it interesting.
After capturing a few images in the landscape orientation I found this rock that was begging me to take its picture. I rotated the camera into portrait mode and zoomed in to get its good side. I ended up having to use my thumb over the sun trick I wrote about a few posts ago to be able to remove the flare but I think everything turned out well. I love the colors in this image. I’m hoping the rest of the week is as nice so I can continue exploring.
Rockin’ the Sunset
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/15s, 23mm, f/16, ISO 200
Slow Ice
Working the Scene
Backyard Creek
Saturday was a beautiful Spring day… oh, wait, it isn’t Spring yet. Well, it reminded me of a Spring day. The sun was out, there was a little breeze and we have barely any snow on the ground. I half expected to see crocuses blooming in the woods as I explored the creek behind the house.
It wasn’t warm enough to remove all the ice from the creek and the recent rains had the water level up with a decent flow. Perfect conditions for me to go playing and to create some abstract, long exposure, water and ice images. Of course, normally I like a little cloud cover to make the conditions more favorable to getting my long exposure settings but yesterday I threw on the variable neutral density filter to help me get to my ~1 second exposures.
I thought rather than just post to final product I would attempt to show my thought process as I am getting the image I want. When I play in the creek, creating these long exposures, it is always a balancing act with the shutter speed to achieve just the right amount of softness in the water. You can go full on with the filter and completely smooth out the water but for these creek scenes I like to show the flow. I believe it adds some energy to the image.
After climbing down into the creek bed I start looking for areas were there is some turbulence in the stream. I’m looking for a little waterfall type area or quick changes in direction. I want to capture the swirling water as it splashes its way through the rocks/ice. When I am including ice in the image I am also looking for some interesting formations in the ice. Here is the view of the first area I chose.
Slow Ice 1
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/6s, 24mm, f/16, ISO 200
I like this section of the creek. Good ice. Good flow. And some good turbulence so I can highlight the water stream. What I wasn’t happy with was the large chuck of bright ice in the top right of the image. It is drawing the eye away from the water and the ice detail in the rest of the image. Attempt number two is a slight composition change to minimize the impact of that ice.
Slow Ice 2
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 26mm, f/16, ISO 200
Definitely better. The ice on the right has less impact. I really like the flow of the water. The turbulence is highlighted just the way I want. Still, I’m not quite happy with the image. The chunk of ice in the top right right is giving my a problem. The composition was still off too! The balance of the elements and the movement of the water through the image was not right. Time to move my position. I place the tripod almost 90 degrees to where it was originally.
Slow Ice 3
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/4s, 27mm, f/16, ISO 200
Now I’m getting what I want. The structure of the ice at the top left of the image is better from this view. I love the water coming in at the top right and exiting bottom left. There is a good mix of flowing water and chaotic water. Almost there! Still that darn chunk of ice on the right. Tighten up the zoom!
Slow Ice 4
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 40mm, f/16, ISO 200
There it is! That is the image I was looking for when I climbed down into the creek. I have the detail of the ice. There is energy from the flowing water. There is amazing visuals in the chaotic portion of the flow. I have a good balance of the tones. Now I can move on to the next area of the creek.
There is more to my whole image capture process that I haven’t shown. For each one of these images I was playing with multiple exposure settings. As the sun was weaving its way in and out of the clouds the light in the creek was changing. I was constantly adjusting the variable ND filter to change the shutter speed. Each 1/3 change in exposure from the shutter created a different amount of blur in the water. The choices I was making impacted the energy in the image. Too long with the shutter open and the water smoothed out to just be tonal changes. Too quick and the water was frozen in time completely stopping the energy. So for almost every one of these images I have 3-4 versions at various shutter speeds.
Normally all I would post is image number four. The final product. The winning image. I thought maybe it would be interesting to peak inside my thought process as I am capturing my images. Maybe it isn’t. You will have to let me know…
Photo Fix Friday
Photo Fix Friday
Well I guess I can officially call this Photo Fix Friday concept a blog series now that I have reached three posts! I was looking through my old Disney images when I ran across this colorful image of the Pop Century resort. I remember this trip back in May of 2012. It was my first solo Disney trip as well as my first with a DSLR after almost a year of learning about photography with my old point & shoot.
What strikes about the original image is the color tone. I had the image way too warm (for my tastes and my memory of that evening). The beautiful darkening blue sky was the perfect backdrop for the colors of this section of the resort. I also had the image too dark and lost some of the details. Although I had been processing my images for quite a few months I was still learning about a good balance between the highlights and the shadows. I am sure I relied too heavily on the Topaz Labs’ Adjust plug-in to achieve my images.
For this photo fix I chose to start by changing the crop. I is a subtle change but I think it gives the Rubix Cube stairwell a little more room to breath in the image. The second change is the white balance. The original was at 5000K which although is not too far to the warm side of the scale is adding a lot of oranges and yellows to the image. The new image has a temp at 3500K. This brought the sky back to the color I remember and gave the buildings a nicer look, not like the sun was still shining on them.
For the second image I definitely adjusted the exposure more than I did originally. I increased the overall exposure by 2/3rds of a stop to bring up the background details and brighten the colors on the cube. I adjusted the highlights down and further brought attention to the rest of the scene by increasing the shadows. These changes give the image a definite boost toward the cheerful side rather than the darker, slightly intimidating original image.
The last changes I did to this image would be the final processing steps. Rather than go through Topaz Labs, I used the OnOne Perfect Effects 9.5. The ability to layer in multiple enhancements like increasing the contrast, increasing the dynamic range and adding a slight vignette all from within one application is very beneficial. If the changes I see in my head are more creative than these minor tweaks then I would have used Photoshop and spent a little more time processing.
Overall I like the changes I was able to achieve. I know my early processing was a little dark and tended to be warm in tone overall. Let me know what you think of these changes….
Pop Goes the Night
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800
Pop Goes the Night Two
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800
MLCreations Photography 