Tag Archives: sunset

Hosta Worlds

Posted by Mike on

In The Yard – ITY19

I wasn’t sure how the evening would end as the clouds were not giving me much hope for a sunset. I had all but given up for the night when 30 minutes before the official sunset a thin layer of orange appeared between the clouds and the horizon. This is when I remembered watching a Bryan Peterson video in the morning about shooting macro photography in my backyard (well, I have been doing that and wanted to see what he had to say…). Definitely check out the video here.

I played with the concept from the video in my own way.  I think there are times I get caught up in trying to capture my next great image I forget I can go create an image that I want.  This little creation brought back my failed Saturday attempt and now I am planning to give it another try.  I think it will be worth the effort even if the image doesn’t turn out the way I expect, the fun is in the attempt…  🙂

 

MLCreations Photography: Floral &emdash; Hosta Worlds

Hosta Worlds
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro, 1/40s, f/5.6, ISO 800

Easing Into the Night

Posted by Mike on

Wordless Wednesday
Delta Lake State Park

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Easing into the Night

Easing Into the Night
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 40-150mm f/4-5.6, 1/125s, 40mm, f/16, ISO 200

Highlights

Posted by Mike on

Delta Lake State Park

Yesterday was a short work day.  My company offers summer hours which allows us to work four, nine hour days and then only have to work four hours on Friday.  With this being a long weekend, and it was a very long week for me in which I had unintentionally worked nine-plus hours all week, I allowed myself to take advantage of the summer hours offer.  It isn’t something I regularly participate in but I needed it this week.

Of course, I never did mention to Mother Nature that this was my plan so she decided to hit us with a little rain in the afternoon.  It was OK with me though, I did some reading and I am not afraid to say I took a cat nap too!  By the time dinner rolled around I was ready to go again.

We actually had a tornado watch in affect most of the evening up until 9:30pm.  As far as I know a tornado never did make an appearance.  With me being the adventurous kind (not really) I decided to catch the sunset but chose to stay close to home for my exploration.  I drove to Delta Lake State Park as the clouds started to roll in.  The earlier rain had basically cleared the beach area and I found I had the sunset to myself.  I was running back and forth along the beach capturing images for over an hour.  It was a good way to end my work week!

I found an interesting composition which included a small, water filled depression in the sand.  I aligned myself with this small water pool and the setting sun which created a very nice line of highlights.  By including the sun I had to be careful about lens flare and as you can see in the first image I wasn’t able to remove it all with camera orientation.  I ended up using my ‘finger blocking the sun’ trick to get a second image without the flare and used Photoshop to combine the two images.

After processing the image I felt there was empty space on the left which was not adding anything to the composition.  I regretted not turning the camera into a portrait orientation while I was at the beach.  It is a practice I typically follow but in my enthusiasm over the empty beach I forgot.  I decided I still liked this image but needed to change the orientation through a drastic crop in Photoshop.  I basically threw away over a third of the pixels I had captured but the end result is the image I wanted to have.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Highlights-1

Highlights – Start
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Highlights

Highlights
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/8s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200

The Watch Never Ends

Posted by Mike on

Delta Lake State Park

I went back to my old stomping grounds last night for the sunset.  I hadn’t been back to Delta Lake State Park since I purchased the filter system.  There were not a lot of clouds in the sky but I was hoping the few along the horizon would add some color as the sun passed below.  I was also itchin’ to try out the graduated ND filter combined with the circular polarizer.  Neither disappointed…

 

MLCreations Photography: Landscapes &emdash; The Watch Never Ends

The Watch Never Ends
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 5s, 12mm, f/16, ISO 200

Almost

Posted by Mike on

Melbourne Beach Pier

As I work to plan another couple of trips to Florida I found myself looking through the images from March.  I definitely will be going back to Melbourne Beach to capture more images like this one.  There is a lot about this image that I like but when I go back I will be re-shooting this to correct what I do not like.

I’m sure current followers will be aware of my recent fascination with the piers in Florida.  I love exploring the coastline in search of a new pier and the chance for a beautiful sunrise/sunset image.  This pier is in the Indian River and faces West which allows me to grab those sunset images even on the East coast of Florida.

Looking at this image I just love the color that was developing as the sun passed the horizon.  The brilliant orange glow in the sky against the darkening blue of the clouds and water just works for me.  I am happy with the location of the sunset as it is right behind the pavilion at the end of the pier.  Even the lines in the image help focus the eye on that pavilion.

What I want to change is the horizon location itself.  I should have tried for either a higher viewpoint to bring separation between the top of the pier and the skyline, or gone lower and bury the skyline in the pier.  To me, the hint of the buildings in the skyline above the top rail along with the mast from the sailboat are distracting.  Hopefully on the next attempt I will be lucky enough to get a few more people on the pier.  I am enjoying the addition of the human element in my images.  It is a challenge I still need to work on.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Almost

Almost
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 2.5s, 21mm, f/16, ISO 200

On The Pier

Posted by Mike on

Melbourne Beach Pier

Today we return to Florida with an image from Melbourne Beach Pier. I am truly hooked by the coastal ways of Florida. I have been planning a trip back down sometime in late August to travel the eastern coast gathering images of lighthouses, marinas, bridges and of course piers. It probably doesn’t help that I have been following Kim Seng (Captain Kimo) almost from the start of my photography journey. I learned quite a lot from his HDR photography tutorials and recently I have been trolling his galleries looking for locations to visit on my next trip.

This image was another instance where I applied the finger filter method (where I block the sun with my finger to remove any lens flare from other parts of the image).  It was then a simple matter of combining the two images in Photoshop, making a few exposure adjustments and adding my normal tweaks.  This is another example of me trying to make my images feel more ‘alive’ by including people.

Time to get back to plotting out my path along the coast…  🙂

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; On The Pier

On The Pier
Olympus OM-D E-M1, M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, 1/100s, 27mm, f/16, ISO 200