Posts in Category: water
3/24/2009
Surf Foam
A day of particularly foamy surf, which left all kinds of interesting patterns on the beach. Each lasted only a second before it dissolved so you had to keep your wits about you and your finger on the shutter release. This particular extended line never happened again while I was there.
I cropped the image in Lightroom to place the leading line at the left corner.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I cropped as above, and straightened the horizon slightly. Graduated filter to darken sky. Clarity and Vibrance, and a very mild sharpen. Because the sharpening routine in the camera, due I think to the angle of the lens to the plane of the image (tipped down), had already sharpened the horizon portion of the image quite a bit, I used less sharpening than normal, and applied a bit of luminance noise reduction.
From Around Home.
3/21/2009
Loch View
A little loch on South Uist. The mountain dominated the skyline to the east, and we spent some time looking for a spot to get off the road. (Roads on the Hebrides are one lane with passing pullouts every 1/4 mile or so. Casual stopping is not possible.) We finally found a little dirt road that lead up a hill sharply and pulled in. Scrambling out of the car and up to the brow of the hill there was the loch, totally hidden from the road, and making a wonderful foreground for the mountain.
Now you do need to understand that the road lead to what amounted to an unofficial rubbish tip (as my UK friends would say), and immediately behind and below the flowers in the foreground a landscape of broken furniture and discarded household implements, various car parts, etc. took up the immediate view. I was squatting in a discarded tire to take this shot, kind of balanced on the lip of the tip, so to speak, in a vary precarious and unstable location. I had to work fast. I got off three shots from low down, trying to frame the mountain, get a bit of the loch for effect, maintain sufficient (barely) depth of field, and not get any rubbish in the view. Not easy.
For this shot I used Program Shift on the H50, which allowed me to shift to my smallest aperture (only F8, unfortunately) without losing automation. As I say, the depth of field could have been a bit more, but we do what we can, and it is still a satisfying image. I gave up perfect focus on the mountain to keep the flowers sharp.
Sony DSC H50 at at full wide (31mm equivalent). F8.0 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with program shift.
In Lightroom, I used a graduated filter to decrease exposure and add sharpen in the sky and the upper reaches of the mountain. Fill Light pulled up the foreground. Vibrance and Clarity overall, and the global Landscape sharpen preset.
From Scotland.
3/15/2009
Three (click image for different sizes)
Interesting light, interesting patterns in the water and an interesting arrangement of birds. The zoom on the H50 reaches out to frame it.
Taken at the mouth of the San Diego River (flood control channel), an excellent place to see a wide variety of water birds in San Diego.
Exposing for the water meant that the backs of the birds, in full sun, is slightly blown, but since it is the pattern that is of interest, I can live with that.
Sony DSC H50 at 400mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom, which adds transparency to the water almost as a polarizer would, and some fill light to lighten the shadows on the birds. Normal Presence settings (added Clarity and Vibrance). Sharpen landscape preset.
From San Diego 2009.
3/10/2009
Sunset Cliffs, San Diego CA (click for SmugMug views)
Another recent shot from San Diego. There is a tiny city park along the cliffs behind the Nazarene College on Point Loma, overlooking the Pacific. I found my way there while waiting for the military gate on the road to Cabrillo National Monument to open. The cliffs are heavily eroded, relatively unstable earth, carved by water into intricate shapes that always remind me of Stalagmites, and the flowing formations of calcite found in caves. In this shot the formations form a strong foreground for the open ocean ocean and low clouds, with the deeply shadowed side of the jutting headland taking the midground.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/500 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I pulled back the sky with some Recovery, added Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel, and use the Sharpen landscape preset. A good deal of Fill Light was needed to bring up detail in the shadowed headland. Since the sky was still too light, I applied a very selective Graduated Filter effect reaching down just beyond the horizon, and set to about -.6 EV (exposure). This darkened the blue of the sky and made the clouds right on the horizon stand out more.
From San Diego 2009.
PS.
This image was selected for Flickr’s Explore when I posted it to my stream there.
3/3/2009
Hebrides Sunset Loch: click image for larger views at SmugMug
We arrived on North Uist in the Hebrides, via the ferry from Skye, in the long long sunset. That far north it seems the sun hangs on the horizon for about 3 hours. As we drove down the island toward our B&B, we were just about pulled off the road by scenes like this. Just a little unnamed loch, with a fishing pier.
The light of the sun from behind the low clouds was clearly the subject, and always a challenging one. I exposed a variety of shots, metering on the foreground, the sky, the horizon, etc. To change the metering, my quick and dirty approach is to center the area of interest and use the exposure lock (half press the shutter release), then to reframe for composition. By including more or less sky in the metered position you and dramatically bias exposure, and you can immediately see the approximate effect on the LCD. This version was exposed primarily for the sky and the foreground was brought up in post-processing: though I have others were the sky is even more dominant.
I also cropped out a significant section of dark sky to aid the composition.
[I should mention that this is a Hebrides sunset. The sun was 30 minutes to an hour above the horizon and the color is from the low clouds. In the Hebrides, the sun hands at and just below the horizon for what seems like hours. It did not get dark for at least 3 hours after this shot, so the challenge of bringing the foreground up to natural levels was particular to the scene. Even this does not show the foreground as bright as it was in reality.]
Sony DSC H50 at about 800mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Besides the Fill Light and Curves necessary to bring up the foreground, I applied some Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel. Because the foreground and high clouds (away from the sun) was dark in the original, I had quite a bit of noise once the curves were set, so I used Lightroom’s noise reduction sliders to smooth out the color.
See more of Scotland in the Scotland gallery.
PS.
After some discussion on one of the digital photo groups, I decided to go back and do some dodge and burn on the image using Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush. I selectively darkened the sky half a stop, and brought up the midground hills about the same, while bringing up the foreground rocks almost a full stop. I also increased the contrast of the foreground rocks, and the saturation of the midground hills on the right. This was a quick and dirty experiment. I would work much more carefully for a keeper.
Lightroom dodge and burn
And here it is using Lightroom’s Graduated Filter effect.
Graduated Filter effect.
2/5/2009
Jetty Point
Another from that intense afternoon at Jetty Point in Arcata California. The light was spectacular. The seas ahead of the squall were amazing. The wind took your breath away. And that literally breath-taking experience is what I attempted to capture. The standing stone of the Jetty dominates the foreground and anchors the image. The sweep of the violent sea behind provides the energy. The sunset touch in the clouds warms the scene just slightly and pins it in time.
Sony DSC H9 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/250 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Some color temperature adjustment was required in Lightroom to eliminate a slight blue cast from the cloudy light and to bring out the colors of the beginning sunset. Some Recovery for highlights. Clarity and Vibrance for Presence. Sharpened slightly.
From Northern California.
2/4/2009
Jetty Point
Jetty Point near Arcata California on a particularly dramatic afternoon. Squall coming in. Rainbows after.
The drama of the waves is what I was after here. Water in violent motion. I might have tried a long exposure to turn the water to silk, but I feel that this frozen instant does a good job of capturing the power of the sea.
Sony DSC H9 at 31mm equiv. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the clouds and other highlights. Vibrance and Clarity. Sharpen landscapes preset.
From Northern California.
2/1/2009
Standing Tall
While digiscoping I always carry two cameras…whatever I am digiscoping with, and my Sony DSC H50 superzoom. Some birds are just too close, and there are always sunsets and sunrises, irresistible vistas, and quirky fellow birders.
This was taken out the window of the rental car, from the dike road, not even at full zoom on the H50.
Sony DSC H50 at about 365mm equiv. F5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. -.7 EV exposure compensation.
Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpen in Lightroom. Cropped for effect.
From Space Coast Birding.
1/28/2009
Hooded Merganser
The Hooded Merganser is one of my most sought after subjects…in that I have, to date, not gotten a completely satisfying image of one. Part of the problem is that 1) I only reliably see them in Florida or New Mexico, 2) I am only in FL and NM a few times a year, always the same weeks, and the Hoodies may or may not be there then, 3) they are never close enough, 4) the brilliant white markings on the jet black body are almost impossible to expose for, and 5) even the yellow eye is so intense against the black that it often burns out.
I went to Viera Wetlands specifically for Hooded Merganser. I knew there would be a lot of bonus birds (though I did not expect the treasures I actually found), but it was the reported Hoodeds, and some images my friend Roy Halpen had taken there a year ago, that inspired me to spend the morning of my flight home there.
It took me three loops of the dike roads to find this guy. The distance was right. The light was a bit more intense than I would have liked by that time of day. And he never did flare his head crest all the way out, but this is my best Hooded Merganser shot so far. Softer light would have maybe allowed me to maintain some feather detail in the crest, but then I would have lost the drama of the reeds and their reflections, and the highlighted ripples. All in all, pretty good okay. I still hope for a better shot someday…but I am pretty happy with this.
Sony DSC N1 behind the eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 85FL. Equiv. combined focal length approximately 3000mm. F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 64. -.7 EV exposure compensation. Selective spot focus placed on eye.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.
1/22/2009
Alone
The odd pose of the bird as it hunts…the odd lighting in the shadowed channel and the late sun, the reflections beyond the bird, and patterning in the water in the foreground, all combine for me into something more than the sum of their parts. Not a picture of a bird, though the bird is important to the picture, but a picture of a moment in time, a quirky moment, when the lone hunter is most alone. The distance keeps us distant, but so do the harmonies of the composition…the pattern of light and dark, color and the silver of the water. Not your typical bird portrait.
Sony DSC H50 at almost full telephoto (400mm equiv.). F4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I used some Recovery to bring up detail in the foreground water, Clarity and Vibrance for overall effect, and the Sharpen landscapes preset. Once more, the image required some Fill Light to open shadows.
From the Space Coast Birding Gallery.