When Skies are Gray

I was reading an image description on Darren White’s Flickr page the other day and he commented on how most of his Oregon coast images were in black and white. He noted that this was due to the fact that so many times the skies were cloudy and gray. This is often the case. In fact the day after I shot the images in my previous blog entry the skies were gray. Given that, I didn’t shoot as many images and I knew I would be processing them in B&W. What am I trying to say? Remember to adapt when the weather isn't what you hoped for. Maybe you need to be seeing in B&W. Great images are still there to be captured.

Blog image: This is another long exposure image – 8 sec at f22 using a variable ND filter. In post processing, several things were done. A row of houses was removed from the far ridge using cloning (something I expected to do), the sky was darkened, foreground rocks were lightened and structure brought out in the water. Silver Efx Pro was used to convert and process the B&W image. I started with the high structure preset and added a red filter. I used a control point to bring out the far sea stack by adding contrast and darkening it. One thing I love in Silver Efx Pro is the “zone” bar that lets me see what portions of the image are in which tonal zone.

Beauty in the Mist

This past weekend my wife and I took a little get away and caught one of those rare sunny and warm January/February days on the Oregon coast. It was pleasant and there was really good wave action. As late afternoon came on with the ocean just past high tide the table was set for a beautiful evening shoot. I had been wanting to do more experiments with long exposures and so I put on my variable ND filter. The results are what you see here.

All of the exposures were 3-6 sec long at f22. While the images look very good at this size they aren’t quite as perfectly sharp as I would have liked. There was a strong wind that was creating quite a bit of vibration in the tripod and camera (even with a large Gitzo Systematic tripod). I was able to keep one hand on a tripod leg to damp out the vibration but there is still some there (didn’t have a good weight handy). The other thing that comes with wind by the ocean is a steady fine mist that gets on your filter all the time. I had to constantly clean the filter (have lots of micro clothes handy for these conditions).

As you may have noticed, I love to mix and blend colors within my images using movement – movement of the camera, textured glass, or the subject itself. This was just another way to get that mixing and the colors are wonderful.

Do you have a favorite?  Let me know.

Painters Tone Map

It struck me the other day as I walked through the Portland Art Museum that painters use tone mapping when they create their images. Look at a master landscape painter’s work and you will see what I mean. You can have a painting with the sun shining right at you, yet detail and light in areas that would be very dark to black if shot as a normal picture. The painter sees the full High Dynamic Range of light (as you and I do) and maps the tones as he desires into tones that he can show on a canvas. In some respects, HDR photography has now given that power to photographers.

Blog Image: Just for fun I decided to take an HDR image and make it look like some of the work I saw in the museum. This was a 5 exposure image from Bandon, Oregon. I processed it in a rather extreme fashion in HDR Efx Pro from Nik. This resulted in the bright glow around the stacks to the right. The landscape painters did that in their paintings to create a high contrast area that draws the eye. There is also detail in the stack to the left that wouldn’t be there in a single exposure image but could be in a painting. I then used Topaz Simplify to set to the “oil painting” preset to add the texture. For the final touches, I desaturated the image a little, shifted the white balance (to a bit warmer) and added a vignette.