Calming Reflections

Noticing that the clouds were starting to break, I thought I might have an opportunity to catch an amazing sunset.  The wind was calm and the situation wasn't right for filter painting.  I decided to pull out the trusty Rokinon 14mm for this.  The reflections from the sky turned out to be amazing.  There were some fishermen nearby so I wasn't able to get down close to the water like I had planned, but I really liked the spot I picked out.  I used luminosity masks to bring out the colors in this file.  I have really enjoyed learning how to use luminosity masks and think they are an amazing tool to use for landscape photography.

More Waterfalls

I ventured out earlier this springtime with my youngest to photograph the waterfalls at Platte River State Park.  I am trying to get shots of it in every season to put into a collage.  I was a little more prepared this time around with a 10 stop filter and a 3 stop grad to keep the upper areas of the falls the same exposure as the lower falls.  I used a circular polarizer to cut out the reflections in the water.

Fisheye Sunset

I have always been a huge fan of the fisheye lens and since my wife purchased it for a birthday present last year, I have had nothing but fun.  It took a little while to figure out focusing since it is a pure manual lens, but once I mastered that it has been a true gem in the camera bag.  Being down a tripod, I grabbed a piece of driftwood and tipped the camera up while setting the base on the ground to get the largest view of the sky I could.  It was a very colorful and dramatic sunset this evening.  Enjoy!

Long Exposures Daytime Style

Something I have always wanted to try was stacking multiple ND filters during the day time to get a super long exposure.  Taking a long exposure in the day is tricky due to the sun and shadowing factors.  You also need to have clouds for some movement in the sky to make the picture more interesting and show depth.  I found the perfect situation to try this but didn't have much time.  I have a 6 stop and and 10 stop filter that I stacked on to each other to get a full 16 stops of light.  Moving the exposure to around 3 minutes with enough depth of field caused me to move my f/stop to f/11 and increase my ISO to 400.  I didn't want to take a much longer exposure due to the amount of noise that you will already have in your image due to the time and thereat of the day at 3:30pm.  The other problem is with 16 stops of ND filter in front of your image, you can't really compose a shot due to everything being so dark.  I probably should have composed the shot then added the filters on later, but time wasn't on my side.  I took the original photos and worked them as I normally would in Lightroom and was given the suggestion of cropping and conversion to black and white.  

90 seconds

235 seconds

217 seconds

90 seconds

This is the first photo I took from the day and ultimately turned out to be my favorite once I cropped and converted the file.  I did a massive amount of work on this file to make it presentable and I am very happy how it turns out.  This was 217 seconds.