 Over Yonder
While walking back to my car at Bowditch StatePark on Fort Myers Beach, the fence and path reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode where a hillbilly who had died was walking along a fence. When he came upon a stranger and asked where heaven was, he was told "over yonder." It was for this nostalgic impression that I decided to make this a black and white image. Black and white has a timeless quality that is never achieved with color.
Exposure was 1/60sec at f16, with an ISO of 100 in black and white mode. The lens was a Nikkor 28-80mm zoom, extended out to 42mm, with ayellow filter to give the sky and clouds more contrast. |
"Tiki"
Getting this shot was an added bonus on todays outing. I hadn't expected to see Snook Bight Marina's "Tiki" outside on a perch getting some sun. Since parrots and pirates seem to go together so well, I had an idea for this shot which is explained below.
Exposure was 1/60sec at f16, with an ISO of 100. The lens was a Nikkor 18-55mm macro zoom.
I photographed "Tiki" against a clear blue sky, so that I could remove it later. Once I had removed the sky in Photoshop, I set about creating an ambiguous backdrop that had a "pirate" feel to it. I had some miscellaneous boat and ship silhouettes from various projects, including a Photoshop tutorial I had completed a couple of years ago and it's a simple matter to create clouds and landscape silhouettes in Photoshop. Adding layers with different transparency levels helps give the background depth. After creating the shapes I gave the image color washes starting with a bluish purple on the left and graduating to a greenish gold tone. I did the color wash on a separate layer so that I could control the opacity of it and a black layer on the bottom, which was my canvas color. The technique is very similar to painting on black velvet. And this is the result. |
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 Rough Seas At Bowditch Point
I thought I was crazy going out to take photographs on this cold, windy day. With thirty mile an hour winds, we had a "feels like" tempreture of 30 degrees, which is cold for us. And yet, here were these folks taking a sailing lesson from Offshore Sailing School, a local Fort Myers Beach business. I imagine these people were chilled to the bone. I did find it interesting that while the students had on yellow raincoats, the boat's pilot was wearing a wet suit.
Exposure was 1/60sec at f11, with an ISO of 400. The lens was a Tamron 300mm. I used a mono-pod to steady the camera, due to the slower shutter speed. Since the sky was sort of an overcast yellowish gray, I added a yellow filter to the lens in order to create a little more drama to this stormy image. |
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 Headdress
I wanted to try my hand at producing HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs, so this was the motivation. With HDR you take at least 2 exposures of the same shot. I've been working with 3, a normal exposure,2 stops over and 2 stops under. It varies depending upon the subject. The results can be almost surreal. Of course if your camera does not have the ability to set the multiple exposers to be taken in a burst, you'll need a sturdy tripod to take them one at a time. Inanimate objects will be the easiest, since they don't move.
And now about the photograph. Don't ask me what I was thinking with this image, but while down in my parking area on a "self" assignment to find something of interest to photograph, I saw this flower cluster protruding out of a palm plant pod. For some reason it reminded me of an indian headdress. Remembering that I had an indian head nickel I took the shot and went upstairs and took a macro shot of my nickel. I combined the two images together in Photoshop to create this strange photo.
Normal exposure for shot 1 of the plant was under natural afternoon light, 1/30sec at f11 using a Nikkor 18-55mm macro zoom. Exposure for shot 2 of my nickel was also using natual light on my lanai, 1/125sec at 5.6. In Photoshop I cut the outside of the nickel away leaving the indian head. I assigned it an alpha (transparency) value of 60% and blended it into the plant pod forming the indian headdress. The final step was to merge my normal, under exposed and over exposed images. This is the result. |
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"If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up."
- Richard Avedon
(Side Note: He photographed the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album cover, arguably the most famous album cover ever.) |
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Let's Talk About Filters
Normally I've been making blog entries after a shoot, but after processing a photograph I shot a couple of weeks ago I thought some talk about filters would be of interest to some shutterbugs. These days most digital cameras have a few filters built in to color correct for different lighting conditions. My opinion is that when you're in the middle of shooting, it's a pain in the butt to stop and try to adust for light conditions by reading the settings on the LCD screen, which is sometimes impossible when in direct sunlight. If you understand color temperature, it's faster to screw on the appropriate filter on the lens.
The temperature of your flash is about 5500 degrees Kelvin. The basic color temperature for direct sunlight in the mid afternoon is between 5000 and 6000 degrees Kelvin. The is a very cool light. Of course this temperature is somewhat warmer early in the morning and the late afternoon. If you're shooting in the mid afternoon, you can warm up your photo by using a number 81 or 85 warming filter. These filters are shades of orange. They are good for warming up flesh tones and beach scenes, etc. If you're shooting indoors where the light source is incandescent lights, then a cooling filter will remove the "orangish" color and produce more of the color balance you are seeing with your eyes. These filters are shades of blue. They are numbers 80 and 82. If you are dealing with flourescent lights they will give your photo a green tint. The correction filter is an FLD. It is magenta in color.
And then there are the specialty filters like the polarizing filter which will remove surface reflections in glass or water, etc. The filter you shoud have on your lenses at all other times is either a skylight or UV filter. These filters cut through haze and also protect your expensive lenses. After that there are the special effects filters like starburst, diffusion, sepia, etc. I have very little use for the special effects filters, though they can be used artistically when photographing events like weddings or parties. Read more... |
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