Using a 10 stop Neutral Density Filter

During the early morning hours of the Thanksgiving holiday I took the opportunity to try and get some sunrise photos.  The skies were cloudy the previous evening, but they were forecasted to break in the night and be partly cloudy for the morning sunrise.  They were off by about 2 hours.  Sitting in a hayfield, I anticipated the sun to break on the horizon and reveal a beautiful sunrise, but it just didn't show itself.  So I used a little creativity and an opportunity to try using some older filters I had along with a new one I had purchased on sale earlier in the week.  In this post, I not only wanted to show what the possibilities are with filters but what surreal beauty they can add to the mundane.

In this first photo, I set up my camera and took the picture with a bare lens.  The clouds were streaking that day and it made for an interesting shot.  This photo was taken with a rather fast shutter speed which froze the clouds in the photo.  

I then placed my old trusty 6 stop neutral density filter on the front of the camera.  This allowed me to use a shutter speed that was much slower because the camera was now seeing 6 stops less light than before.  The slower shutter speed captured the clouds movement which gives the photo a better feel and mood than static clouds.  

Finally, I put the 10 stop ND filter on my camera and took a couple shots.  The color is a little different in this photo because the sun had now risen a little more into the sky and the clouds were starting to clear.  I took the liberty of saturating the colors a little more to give this a better feel of warmth.  If you notice, there isn't any static subject in the clouds and the are filled with silky smooth streaks.  I was worried initially after viewing this photo that my new filter was going to produce a magenta color cast which is sometimes troublesome for a 10 stop filter.  The colors were much different than the 6 stop.  Again, the sun had risen a little more and the clouds were beginning to break on the horizon.  This photo was also about 4 minutes long compared to 30 seconds of the other photo.  I was planning on taking a couple more shots, but not being prepared for the very cold wind that morning I decided to call it a day and head to eat some turkey.

Wanting to give the filter another shot at giving me the type of photo I want and to make sure I wasn't seeing a color cast, I stopped on the way home to capture this sunset.  The clouds were amazing this evening and the 10 stop filter added the drama I wanted to this photo.  There was a much brighter almost like the sky was on fire show 30 minutes later, but I was on a road that made it impossible to stop and get a shot.  I was very happy with how this photo turned out.  I didn't have time to get all different types of filters for this shot so I took two separate exposures, one 90 seconds and one 120 seconds.  I combined those photos in Photoshop to make the final shot evenly exposed.  

Thank you for viewing.

Foggy Morning on the Prairie

I visited family this past weekend and was greeted by some pretty awesome fog the following morning.  My son and I set out to get some breakfast pizza but were sidetracked with the site we had before us.  Not really having been in a true fog, I decided to take him out to see the countryside.  We stopped by the family hayfield to capture a couple iconic shots that I really love.  I plan to print these for myself as something to remember.

All of these photos were taken within miles of each other.  The sun was rising quickly, but the fog was hanging on.  The suns rays illuminated the fog in a beautiful hue that worked great with the frosty browning grass.  Here are a few from the morning.

"Trails End"

"Golden Bales"

"Windmill Sunrise"

"Lone Tree"

"Prairie Windmill"

Sunset on the Prairie

I haven't had the chance to get out and take sunset photos in a very long time.  Over Labor Day weekend, we were traveling and saw this amazing sunset happening before our eyes.  Wanting to find a nice location to stop and photograph the sunset was going to be tricky.  Luckily we were in hay country and a lightly traveled dirt road lead us to this location.  The area wasn't far off the road so I had time to pull over before the sun had completely set and the pinks of the sun's rays had not completely dissolved.  Having my main camera packed away for the trip, I pulled out the Canon EOS M and not wanting to fuss too much with the settings, snapped a quick picture for reference.  I then used those settings in Manual Mode and snapped about 33 vertical shots back and forth across the hayfield.  I then used Lightroom to adjust the photos and stitched them in Photoshop.  This first photo is the full 33 shot Panorama.

Seeing as that I took the photos in almost a full 180 degrees, the area in front of me was a tad too bent for my taste.  I had to significantly crop and attempt to straighten it as best I could.  So I decided to cut the stitched file down to 17 shots.  This dramatically straightened the flowers in the ditch and made the photo much more appealing.

For a more full resolution look at these photos, you can click on the photo itself to be taken to my website where they can be viewed as wide as your monitor will allow.  Another location you could see them at their full resolution would be on my 500px account.  You can also see other photos that I am particularly proud of on that site also.  If you have a 500px account, please follow me and I will do the same.  I always enjoy viewing other work!

Panoramas Galore

I have decided to try to get more landscapes in my life.  I have found that panoramas give a little more to the scene than your average wide angle shot.  Shooting with a wide angle lens you get basically the same shot; however, with a longer focal length it seems like the distant landscape is actually in the picture.  Shooting with a wide angle lens, it actually makes the distant landscape seem more distant.  This is a panorama of a tributary flowing into the Niobrara River.  The Niobrara is a special river to Nebraska as it provides tourism and some of the most beautiful scenery in the state.  If you were to move further up the river, a tributary to the Niobrara has the largest waterfall in the state.  That waterfall is called Smith Falls.  This is a panorama of 10 vertical images edited in Lightroom and stitched together in Photoshop.

"Confluence"

In a previous post, I explained this shot.  This was a 33 shot panorama shot in vertical orientation, edited in Lightroom and stitched in Photoshop.

"Sunset on the Prairie"

This photo was taken shortly before the "Sunset on the Prairie".  The clouds were very cool and the sun was making sun patches across the sky.  Originally I thought this would be a great location to get a sunset photo, but the road was way to slick from the rainfall that occurred just before we traveled on it.  From the photo, you can see what stitching a photo at 180 degrees can do to the foreground.  This photo it is especially pronounced because of the fence line accompanying the scenic overlook.  This photo is a 17 shot stitched panorama.  There would have been more but I was moving too quickly across the frame as I was rotating and some of the shots were blurry.  

"Lonely Tree"

I took this on our walk around the lake.  I have always enjoyed this little area of the lake.  It is secluded and the water is usually very calm.  I believe there use to be a dock where the poles are sticking out of the water.

This is one of my favorite panoramas.  It definitely isn't my best but it has the most meaning.  I traveled through Pilger, NE a couple days after the EF-4 twin tornado struck the area.  I captured this Panorama showing the path of destruction.  This was the second of the two twins that passed over the area.  The first struck the city of Pilger.  The second make its way on the outskirts of town and up the hill, destroying a feedlot and killing many of the cattle located there.  The fire burring on the right side of the frame contained many of the downed trees, buildings, and I would assume cattle from this location.

"Pilger"

This is the panorama I took prior to the old barn photo.  I initially stopped to photo this expansive view or field after field of soy beans, but discovered the barn nestled in the trees behind me.  

"Soy Beans"

This was one of my first panorama photos.  I snapped this after a visit to Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuge shortly after the great flood of 2011.  This is on the southern side of the Missouri River that was the lowest lying in the area.  This desert looking area is where the river deposited massive amounts of sand as it crossed over this area.  The area still hasn't recovered completely and I don't know if it ever will.  I wanted to have the foreground in focus more than anything due to the sand waves the wind had created.

"Deposit"