Tag Archives: monochrome

Slow Ice

Posted by Mike on

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.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Slow Ice 1

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.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Slow Ice 2

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.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Slow Ice 3

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!

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Slow Ice 4

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…

Winter Campus

Posted by Mike on

SUNY Polytechnic Institute

I am pretty sure these images were influenced by my reading of Our National Parks this week. It might seem cliché for me to admire Ansel Adams, being the iconic landscape photographer, but I truly enjoy his images and have learned quite a lot about photographing light by studying his images.  The one big take away for me every time I look at his images is that shadows are just as important as the highlights.

On Thursday my daughter usually gets out of class early and I rush over right around 4pm to pick her up from campus.  One of her friends has another class at 6pm and she usually spends the in-between time with her.  Me getting to campus too quick just doesn’t work for them, so this Thursday with the warmer temps and beautiful blue sky I spent an hour roaming the campus with my camera.  It was a win-win…  🙂

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Student Center

Student Center
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/1000s, 17mm, f/8, ISO 200

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Cayan Library

Cayan Library
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/160s, 12mm, f/8, ISO 200

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Wildcat Field House

Wildcat Field House
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/400s, 25mm, f/8, ISO 200

 

Photo Fix Friday

Posted by Mike on

Photo Fix Friday

I have been posting quite a lot of my Disney images lately as a stop gap to my current trend of not capturing anything new with the camera. That trend I plan on remedying this weekend! So as not to get everyone to hate Disney I thought I would try something different – Photo Fix Friday.

I was looking over my older images (from 2012/2013) to see where I started and try to understand if I have improved any over the years. The improvement can come in many forms – image composition, style, post-processing, etc. I think it is good to review your older work. It definitely lets me appreciate my current work even more.

So on to the “fix”…

This image was captured at the beginning of my journey. I had just spent 9 months learning about photography and using my Sony point -n- shoot for all it could give me. I had just purchased my first DSLR, a Nikon D5100 and a pair of lenses to get me on the next leg of my photography trip. This is also during the phase of constant Google+ theme participation. This image being part of my Grass series of images.

As you can see from the original I was experimenting heavily with post-processing. This particular image getting the old sepia treatment. I hadn’t learned of the word subtle yet… 🙂

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – Original
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400

 

I liked the composition for Three Sister. I was also fascinated with shallow depth of focus as you can see. If I was to capture this image again I would definitely increase the DoF to get more of the foreground grass in focus. This second image is practically what came out of the camera. A few minor tweaks in Lightroom but my starting image none the less.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – Start
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400

 

For this Photo Fix I chose to go with a less cramped crop on the grass. I know now that I cropped the image to remove the lump of blurry, green grass on the left of the image which I felt was a little distraction. Today, I used Photoshop to blend it away. The larger crop allows for more of the background to be visible and provide some breathing room for the subject.

I also stayed away from the sepia tone and went with my more preferred silver tone for the black & white processing.  You will also notice a little less contrast in the new image which gives a more natural look to the details in focus and not so much a processed look.  I can now look at this image without cringing…  LOL.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – New
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400

Light & Shadow

Posted by Mike on

Spaceship Earth, Future World, Epcot

MLCreations Photography: Epcot &emdash; Light & Shadow

Light & Shadow
Olympus OM-D E-M10, M. Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R, 1/1250s, 41mm, f/8, ISO 200

Wordless Wednesday: Chained

Posted by Mike on

In the Shop – ITS17
Squared – SQ82

MLCreations Photography: In The Shop &emdash; Chained

Chained
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 60mm f/2.8, 1/125s, f/8, ISO 200

Interrupted

Posted by Mike on

West Canada Creek

Frequent readers of my posts know how much I love playing in a creek. When I was young it was about building dams and diverting water to watch it flow over different areas of the creek bed. I use to spend hours with my hands in the water adding stones here and there to create a bigger wall for the water.

Now I am fascinated by flowing water. I love that I can capture a different pattern in the same area of a creek just by adjusting the time on my shutter. A second faster or a second slower and the entire scene changes. These water images all about that control over the capture just like my dam building was about controlling the direction the water was taking. I hope I never get tired of playing…

MLCreations Photography: Monochrome &emdash; Interrupted

Interrupted
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/3s, 40mm, f/16, ISO 200