It's My Nature » Nik Color Efex

Making Lemonade

Ed — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:44:29 +0000

There’s a saying that goes something like “If God hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

And of course there is the Jimmy Buffett/Parrothead corollary – “If God hands you limes, make Margaritas!”

This story below is an example of making lemonade from lemons… or, if you prefer, Margaritas from limes.

Late Saturday night we made the decision to head to Sand Island (in Bethlehem, PA) early Sunday morning in order to photograph sunrise coming up behind the industrial ruins of Bethlehem Steel. I though it would make a splendid composition and a wonderful image. We got to Sand Island before 0500, about 45 minutes before sunrise. We went to the spot where I want to shoot from and much to my delight, I found the water level in the Lehigh River low enough that I could easily make my way out into the river for the perspective that I wanted. Unfortunately that was the last thing to go right. I no sooner got set up when a train (the plant is dead, well except for the casino built on the brownfields, but the train tracks are still active) headed right into the composition and came to a dead stop. As I waited and hoped that the train would move on I came to the realization that I had misjudged where the sun would rise (bad planning on my part). Oh I was pointed in the right direction but this time of year the sun rises more northeast than I was pointing. On top of that, what little color there was in the sky was totally diffused in haze that was not going to burn off soon. My vision of a sunrise over the stacks went down the drain fast.

As I stood there thinking about the family members (my father, both grandfathers, four uncles) who toiled for Bethlehem Steel, I decided I might as well make a few images before closing up shop and heading home. So I made two five-image HDR series of images – a total of 10 images. When I got home, I processed the images in Photomatix Pro (for HDR) before going into Nik and processing the image in Dfine (noise reduction) and Viveza 2 (to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and structure) before moving into Color Efex Pro and using the Graduated Neutral Density filter there in an effort to pull some color out of the sky. It wasn’t working. here’s what the image looked like when I was about to give up.

… then the idea of black and white hit me. I went back into Nik and used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to B&W and then used the Vignette Blur filter in Color Efex Pro to create the vignetting effect. Finally, I sharpened the image using Nik Sharpener Pro. (Have I said how much I love the Nik Complete suite .)

Here’s the finished product. Much more dramatic. And, I think, a really nice keeper image out of what looked to be a wasted morning. What do you think?

Sunrise at the Jake (Jacobsburg State Park)

Ed — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:20:15 +0000

Those of you who have followed my blog for the past year or longer know that Barb and I will often head to Jacobsburg State Park (PA) since it is close (a 20 minute drive) and a great place for Barb to bird and me to photograph (particularly wildflowers this time of year).

This post is a testament to keeping your eyes and mind open and always looking for other opportunities along the way. And also a reminder to do your research whether you are going to be in your own backyard or a thousand miles away.

A couple of weeks back (on Father’s Day, if memory serves), Barb and I headed to Jacobsburg so she could look for the Yellow-breasted Chat and I could photograph some wildflowers. She came up empty but I did come away with several rather nice wildflower portraits that I really like. But as Barb looked and listened for the Chat, I started to do some nosing around an area of Jacobsburg that we don’t often to visit unless we are just hiking through. The more I looked, the more I liked what I was seeing – meadow up close, rolling hills, farmland, what passes for mountains in this area off on the horizon. It had the makings of a very nice bucolic landscape. What would really set it off though would be a sunrise or sunset.

A quick check of the map showed, much to my delight, that we were looking pretty much east. The sun should rise over the farmland.

So this past weekend we headed to Jacobsburg in search of a sunrise over the rolling hills and meadows. As we left the car at about 0440 you could see the beginnings of sunrise off to our left. As we walked straight into the meadow to the main trail, we turned… a sharp right. The sunrise was now at our back. As we twisted and turned through the meadow and woods, we eventually got turned around in the right direction and when we arrived at the spot we had scoped out before, the sunrise was beginning to unfold… right in front of us.

And a beautiful sunrise, it turned out to be!

5:17 am

5:21 am

5:23 am

5:40 am

Hope you enjoyed the sunrise!

Morning at Jacobsburg

Ed — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:54:37 +0000

It struck me that it has been a while since I had visited one of my favorite local wildflower locations – the meadows at Jacobsburg State Park in Northampton County, PA. And even worse, it had been a long time since I got out and actually worked some wildflowers anywhere. So I decided to rectify that situation yesterday morning. Barb and I headed out to Jacobsburg, she to search for the elusive Yellow-breasted Chat and me to find some wildflowers to shoot. As I guess it should be on Father’s Day, I found the flowers but, alas, she came up empty on the Chat.

Anyway, here is a sampling of images from meadows at Jacobsburg. Hope you enjoy them.

Wild Blue Flax

Yellow Goatsbeard

Bumblebee on Thistle

Leatherwing Beetle on Daisies

An Inside Look into the Life of a Nature Photographer: The Weekend in Review – Day 3, Monday (Memorial Day)

Ed — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:18:57 +0000

When we went to bed Sunday night we had no definitive plans for Monday. I awoke around 0330 and as I lay in bed, what to do became crystal clear. I thought back to Thursday, the day I made the sunrise abstracts. I set out that morning to make some vertical sunrise images at Lake Nockamixon (Nockamixon State Park, Bucks County, PA) and came away unhappy with all of them. They all had too much water and too little structure in the foreground. I ended up scrapping those images and only keeping the abstracts.

This morning was my opportunity to return to Nockamixon and right the wrong. It was my chance to make some vertical sunrise images that I would indeed be happy with. So I woke up Barb around 0400 and we were out and on our way by 0430. We made it to the marina before 0500 and I set up my 5D Mk II and 70-200 2.8L IS on the tripod down at water level making sure to include boats in the foreground with the sky and reflections off the water filling the background. Without belaboring the point, here is a sample of the images that I came away with that morning. I don’t usually fawn over my own images but I will say that I absolutely love the colors that I was able to capture in the sky (lavender, peach, yellow, orange, red) and in the reflection on the water.

I was done shooting by 0600 (actually before that) and we were ready to move on to Peace Valley Park, also in Bucks County, in search of some birds to photograph. However, things don’t always work out no matter how hard we try. And after about two hours at Lake Galena in Peace Valley, we gave up and headed out in search of breakfast. Breakfast is really my most favorite meal and I am always looking for new places to experience something a little exotic. This morning it was the “Back 2 the 50s Diner” in Dublin. My Buffalo Chicken omelet breakfast was followed by a brief return trip to Lake Nockamixon before returning home for a late morning nap.

And so ended this nature photographer’s three-day Memorial Day weekend. We never traveled farther than an hour from home but were able to photograph wildflowers, make abstracts, shoot sunrises and even delve into the soul of a fisherman as he peered into the fog. And we visited places like Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, walked along the Delaware Canal, hit the Delaware Water Gap and returned to Lake Nockamixon. One of my prevailing themes (and one that I am building seminars around) is “Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Great Images from Your Own Backyard”. I hope you enjoyed this little foray around my (figurative) backyard and I hope you agree that I came away with some very nice images.

See ya down the road!

An Inside Look into the Life of a Nature Photographer: The Weekend in Review – Day 2, Sunday

Ed — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:44:42 +0000

Sunday was the day we chose for a return trip to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I wanted to do some more scouting for the workshops I plan to offer there in 2011. (Keep an eye out this Fall for more details.) This was a trip that we had planned for each of the past three weekends only to have to cancel for one reason or another (weather twice and sick cat once). This Sunday it seemed it would come off without a hitch.

The alarm went off at 0315 and we were up and out of the house by 0400. As I loaded the gear into the hatch, I looked skyward and just smiled at the moon and stars filling the sky. The drive to Hidden Lake (our first stop for sunrise) was uneventful. Traffic was very light at that time of the morning and conditions were fine even though we passed through several short stretches of fog where the road crossed wetlands or streams. We arrived at Hidden Lake a few minutes before 0500 and I set out to set up along the banks of the lake while Barb decided she would stay in the car for now and watch for bears. (NOTE: When I returned to the car, she was sound asleep. So much for bears.) I set up with the Canon 5D Mark II and my 24-70mm f/2.8L lens mounted on my tripod and made my first images (for a 5-image HDR composite) at 0509. The second set of images for another 5-image HDR was made at 0511. That is the image I have posted below. By 0513, that little, itsy bitsy, tiny bit of fog you can see in the middle of the image, completely overtook the entire lake. We were socked in! There was no water. There were no trees. There was no ridge. There was no sky. Only fog… and the solitary fisherman to my immediate right who had settled in a couple of minutes earlier.

So there you go. Up at 0315. Out by 0400. Arrive before 0500. Shoot two HDR sequences. Fog. THE END. So here is the sunrise image I was able to come away with. I think it is a testament to quality over quantity. It’s not about how many images you make; it’s about making sure you’ve made good ones.

Now I’m not going to tell you that I just quietly packed my gear and left. Oh no! I don’t give up that easy. I stood there staring into the fog, hoping against hope that it would lift before sunrise and I could get a few more shots in. I chatted a bit with the fisherman as I waited. It was becoming cleared by the minute that this fog was not going to miraculously lift just because I wanted it to. So without moving the tripod, I pivoted the camera and lens and took aim at the fisherman, the only thing I could really see in the fog. And over the course of the next 10 minutes or so, I would make the occasional image. When I got home and took a closer look, I thought briefly about cropping in on the fisherman to make him the subject of the photograph but quickly gave up on that idea. This image is about the vastness of the fog not about the fisherman. Still as a long-time fly fisherman, I was taken by the intensity portrayed in the posture of this fellow as he seemed to be leaning into the fog. As much as I like the sunrise image above, this is probably my best image of the day.

The rest of morning in the Water Gap was spent scouting out locations for the workshops under the brightest blue skies I have seen in a long time. Absolutely cloudless.

What’s that saying… when God gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or as Jimmy Buffett is wont to say… and if God gives you limes, make margaritas!!

It’s not about quantity; it’s about quality!

We left the Water Gap before noon. As all the traffic was heading in, we were heading out. We got home in time for lunch and I was able to do some image processing before heading out to do a bit of grocery shopping in preparation for having our son and his soon-to-be fiance along with my mother over for cookout dinner.

And thus ended Day 2. Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 3, Monday, Memorial Day.

An Inside Look into the Life of a Nature Photographer: The Weekend in Review – Day 1, Saturday

Ed — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:46:09 +0000

I was contemplating what, from this weekend, I wanted to add to my blog. After thinking about it a while, I concluded why not take you through the entire weekend. So let’s start at the beginning, Saturday morning.

Saturday more was a “late” start for us. We were up at 0530 and out of the house at 0630 headed for Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve. If you love wildflowers (and I do), Bowman’s Hill, just south of New Hope, PA is wonderful place to be. And this time of year, it is doubly good because they also have early morning bird walks on Saturday mornings. So my wife heads out on the guided bird walk (she has seen life birds her last two walks) and I wander about looking for wildflowers that just somehow speak to me. It funny (and a bit painful) but I always lug around my entire backpack arsenal of camera bodies, lenses, filters, teleconverters, extension tubes, etc. etc. And I always seem to use just a single camera body (this time the 50D), a single lens (my Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro because to me wildflowers tend to beg for close-ups) and, of course, my tripod. And so it was on this day. As I said, I tend to look around for those special flowers as opposed to opening fire and shooting everything in sight. The entire morning, I only photographed five flowers. This Virginia Spiderwort image is an example of what I came away with on Saturday morning.

We stopped for breakfast/lunch at a favorite little roadside cafe and were home for the afternoon during which I processed images from the morning shoot. After dinner, we decided to head out for a ride. Barb always takes her binoculars and I have to take along at least a camera and lens. And that’s what I did. After dragging along the 30+ pounds of camera gear in the morning, I went out with just the 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Heck, I didn’t even know where we were going at this point. And the 24-70 is my basic walkabout lens. We ended up at a small county park along the Delaware River just south of Easton, PA called Wy-Hit-Tuk (don’t ask; I have no idea what it means). We walked through the park and along the Delaware Canal towpath where I came across these stands of bright yellow flowers. I’m not even sure what they are but as soon as I saw them I knew I had to create an impressionistic abstract of them. The key to making any type of blur abstract is to lengthen the shutter speed so that you have time to move the camera. Sometimes that movement is a vertical pan, sometimes it is a horizontal swipe and sometimes it is just a slight little bounce or jiggle that creates the blur. I dropped the ISO to 100 because that will lengthen the shutter speed. I happened to be in AV mode so I stopped down to around f/18 which in combination with the ISO 100 gave me a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds and I was ready to shoot. (Note, it just just as easy, probably easier, to switch to TV mode and set the exposure of 0.8 sec and let the camera select aperture.) Then I started to shoot – handholding the camera and introducing slight little movements to get the effect I wanted. What effect? A Monet-like photo-impressionistic effect.

Upon returning home, I surveyed the images made (maybe a dozen), selected the few that I liked and processed them. And thus ended Saturday, Day 1 of the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Stay tuned for Day 2 (Delaware Water Gap) and Day 3 (Back to Nockamixon) coming to you tomorrow and Wednesday.

Reflections on Acadia

Ed — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:20:50 +0000

It was a tough weekend. Between some lousy weather and other commitments, I didn’t get a single image made this weekend. So today I started to look forward to our October 2010 trip to Acadia National Park (ME) and reflect back on our last visit in June 2009. I looked through some of my images from last year and thought “Hey, I can do better than that!” So I took some time this afternoon and reprocessed several of my favorite images using the new tools (particularly Nik Complete) that I did not have a year ago. Here are three of my reworked images.

The first is “Tranquility” and is the view from one of our favorite spots in Acadia – the rocks of Otter Cliffs looking toward Sand Beach. So peaceful. So tranquil. I so much wish I was there right now.

The second image is one I’ve entitled “Melancholy Morning” and is actually the view looking back toward Otter Cliffs from the Cobble Beach.

And the third image is one I’ve simply entitled “Home”. It is the village of Bar Harbor and the mountains of Acadia as seen at sunrise from Bar Island. Over the past 10 years, Bar Harbor has become our home away from home.

Sunrise/Sunset Over the Lake (Part 2 – Sunset)

Ed — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:46:57 +0000

This is the follow-up to my previous post highlighting the sunrise images from the weekend.

This first sunset image is one that I had been thinking about all week. I knew what I wanted to do or at least try. I wanted to make sunset (and sunrise) images using the Lensbaby with the Fisheye optic. I just thought it would create a very interesting effect. I thought about it on my drives into work in the morning and on my drives home in the evening. I thought about it during the day. I keep trying different things in my mind. What would work? How would it look? Why? Why not? In the next day or two I will post a more detailed description of the process I went through leading up to making this image on my second blog - “Making the Ordinary Extraordinary!” (see the link in the right-hand column)

Friday was my first chance to get out and put all my thoughts into practice. I didn’t get as much color in the sky as I had hoped but getting the fog on the water was a real bonus. Here is the result.

The next evening, Saturday, I returned to the same location and decided to try another, more traditional approach capturing “The Farm Across the Lake” which is just to the right of the view captured in the fisheye. I particularly like the reflections on the water in this image.

Hope you enjoy viewing these images as much as I enjoyed making them.

Sunrise/Sunset Over the Lake (Part 1 – Sunrise)

Ed — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:25:42 +0000

This has been quite the crazy weekend. Nothing really went as planned and yet as I sit here on Sunday evening, everything appears to be ending well. And for that I am thankful.

Virtually all my photography this weekend involved very short jaunts (it’s about a 20-25 minute drive) to a local lake (Lake Nockamixon in Nockamixon State Park, Bucks County, PA) for either sunrise or sunset. I caught sunset Friday and Saturday nights and sunrise this morning. Sunsets were not as dramatic as I would have liked but sunrise this morning was spectacular. So I will start with the sunrise images.

Both sunrise images are 5-image HDRs but that is where the similarity ends. The first image was made with my Canon 5DMk2 and the Lensbaby Composer with the Fisheye Optic. Using the fisheye optic with a full frame camera like the 5DMk2 results in an image surrounded by a wonderful circular vignette. (NOTE: On a crop camera like the 50D, for example, the vignetting will only appear in the corners – not near as dramatic.) Here is the fisheye sunrise over Lake Nockamixon as taken from the marina.

The second sunrise image was made just nine minutes later from precisely the same spot. The tripod did not more. But everything else changed. I swapped out the 5DMk2 and Lensbaby Composer w/ Fisheye Optic for the Canon 50D and 70-200 2.8L IS lens. With the lens at 70mm I was able to focus in on just that part of the sky and water with most color. The result was the following image which I have entitled “Fire in the Sky”.

Two very different views of sunrise shot just minutes apart. I like them both and hope you do as well.

The Rise and Falls of Ed Vatza

Ed — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:23:59 +0000

I’ve been making some noises of late about photography workshops and seminars that I am planning to offer in 2011. Workshops will be themed “Creativity, Composition and the Camera” while the seminars will be themed “Making the Ordinary Extraordinary! Great Images from Your Own Backyard”. Right now I am planning for four workshops with two in the Spring 2011 and two in the Fall 2011. One and possibly two of the workshops will probably be in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area in northeast Pennsylvania/northwest New Jersey and one will be in Acadia National Park (ME). The fourth workshop location is up in the air right now.

Anyway, I decided to spend Saturday morning in the Delaware Water Gap so I could do some scouting around for additional shooting locations on the Pennsylvania side as well as exploring opportunities on the New Jersey side of the Gap. I wanted to find another possible location for sunrise photography so we were up at 0400, out of the house at 0440 and along the Delaware River at Smithfield Beach at 0530.

“The Rise”

After sunrise over the river, we moved on to visit some of the waterfalls on the Pennsylvania side.

… and Falls

Upper Factory Falls

Fulmer Falls

Dingman’s Falls

So there you have it. I hope you enjoy “The Rise and Falls of Ed Vatza”.