My www.krittersmenu.com has a category, It’s What’s For Dinner. In the terms of my foodie blog… it’s what we have for dinner and recipes and ideas worthy of sharing.
On this photography blog, it’s not so much what we had for dinner… but what our fair weathered friends did, making for a photographic story of nature and the food chain. Case in point, this blue heron in search of a meal.
The hunt
The target identified
The catch
Gulp!
It’s What’s for Dinner.
Following Scott Stulberg’s workshop, I guess this week is all about special effects. Cool and fun as they may be, I am an old fashioned kind of gal. I tend to like the traditional landscapes and wildlife photos, done the old fashioned way… in camera. Having said that, some photos just lend themselves to such effects. Case in point… old cars are often done in an HDR effect.
Now HDR (High Dynamic Range) means two things to me… (1) blend 3 exposure compensated photos – light, neutral, and dark together to balance high contrasting scenes, and (2) an ‘artificial’ over-the-top high pass graininess and unsaturated look over a photo, bringing out the texture, rust, and old paint of such subjects.
I haven’t studied HDR much, and I know there are numerous pre-sets in multiple 3rd party apps… Topaz, Nik, Lightroom, etc. I don’t use pre-sets. I like knowing how to do anything I do with the sliders in Photoshop. I also don’t really like the unsaturated look like traditional HDR effects, sort of like the below. It seems so ‘over done’ to me.
So I devised my own ‘formula’ for HDR in Photoshop ACR (Adobe Camera Raw, or Develop Mode in Lightroom), adjusting of course for each individual photo and personal tastes:
Highlights: Slide far left, darkening Highlights
Shadows: Slide far right, minimizing Shadows
Blacks: Slide left (blacker)
Whites: Slide right a little (whiter)
Clarity: Slide right to the MAX (this is where most of you HDR effect comes from)
Saturation: Slide left de-saturating colors (to personal taste)
DETAIL tool
Sharpening, Radius, and Detail: Slide all 3 to the right, MAX
Who knew you could take great photos in pitch black night? Scott Stulberg carefully made sure everyone in his workshop knew how, and got THE shot. We got moving clouds, star lit skies, and milky way magic.
Check out my other Sedona pix on http://www.kritterspaw.com and http://www.kritterspix.com/photo-musings.
I have never done light painting before, so this was my first time. I was surprised at what you could do with it… and how easy it was really. Set your tripod up on your night time scene. Dependent on your aperture and focal length, focus around 50′ (light up something approx that distance away and focus.. then turn all lights off). At your lowest aperture f2.8 or f4.0, set camera on Manual and set to a 30 second exposure. Fire a test shot to be sure your exposure and composition look about right.
Then run across the scene like a crazy person twirling colored lights (not too bright of lights).
I’m not sure how practical this technique is.. but it was fun and interesting none the less. Thanks to Scott Stulberg for showing us. Pretty cool.
Check out my other Sedona pix at https://kritterspix.com/pix and http://kritterspaw.com
Spring is coming. It’s still a bit chilly in our neck of the woods, but we took a trip down to Phoenix, and the flowers are all a bloom.
We had hoped to see the fields of poppies, but the poppies were rather scarce. I’m not sure whether we were too early or too late. We won’t see the flower blooms up north for a couple more months.
We did see one cactus bloom. The mass cactus bloom won’t be until May, but this little guy was an early flower.
Workmen’s Creek is on the other side of Young, AZ. It can be driven to via a long well kept dirt road past Young, off of SR260, or via the longer route past Roosevelt Lake off SR87.
The road to the falls was closed, so we wound up hiking along the closed road the relatively short distance.
It’s certainly worth the short walk. It was very picturesque and peaceful with the running water and babbling brook atmosphere. The rushing creek made for a pleasant place to have a quiet lunch amongst the trees and the cascading water.
On our way to Grand Falls, we saw this great little fox. It was getting toward dusk, and she was looking for a warm spot to soak up what was left of the sun outside of the snow.
At the risk of stating the obvious, photography is all about the light.
That was never more clear to me than during our visit to Grand Falls this week.
I used to look through the viewfinder and be completely oblivious to the lighting and it’s shadows (what was I thinking?). I’d take all these pictures and come home and wonder what that line was going across my photo. Now I look at that and wonder how I couldn’t see that when I was there.
Case in point… on our trip to Grand Falls, this stark line struck directly through the center of the canyon. The sun was going down, slowing putting all the fall pools and canyon completely in the shadows.
So I was forced to work fast on those areas that were still lit, and forget about the cool looking areas that were in the shadows. Great light makes great photos. Crappy light, well… you get the drift.
kritterspix 