Anyway, we went out to a local community park/rail-trail where my wife looked for birds and I looked for interesting compositions. It wasn’t a particularly interesting morning so I found myself trying some different things. When we returned home, I realized that I really only had four images to speak of (multiple versions of each) and each, as it turned out, highlighted a different technique.

#1 – So here goes. Not 60 seconds from the parking lot, I came across a tree with multiple trunks rising from a single base. So I stopped and decided to make some motion blur images. Here is one example.

#2 – Next we moved on to the old quarry hole now filled with water. As I said the sky was cloudless, the sun bright and the reflections on the water were mirror sharp… actually way too sharp for my tastes. So first I broke out the Lensbaby and tried some selective focus images of which this is one.

#3 – But while there I also shot several images with my 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, tripod-mounted and at f/32. As I said the reflection was so sharp, so crisp, so detailed that it almost hurt my eyes so I decided to tone it down by creating a digital sandwich in post-processing.

#4 – As we were returning to the parking lot, I stopped by one of the abandoned buildings left over from the heyday of the cement industry in the area. This building was empty but I was taken by the stonework in the walls that still remained in remarkably good condition. It was dark and dirty with bright light shining through the windows. Perfect for HDR. So here is a 7-image composite HDR image of the inside of that abandoned building.

So maybe not the most exciting subjects I’ve ever encountered but an interesting morning nonetheless.

After shooting some very straightforward images of the trees and seeing that the 70-200/1.4x combo would work just fine (giving me 98-280mm at f/4.0), I decided to work on some motion blurs and came away with several images like this.

(1/25 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 98mm)

I know I am kinda partial to motion blur images like this but I really liked what I had here. And I left it at that basically forgetting about the straightforward images that I made before and after the blurs… until now.

Using the digital sandwiching technique that I learned from Tony Sweet and described two entries below, I reworked one of the straightforward images by sandwiching it with a copy which I blurred pretty significantly (Gaussian Blur of around 24). I also like how the sandwich turned out.

(1/100 sec @ f/11; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 98mm)

So there you have it. Fall Foliage – Two Ways. You have your choice of in-camera motion blur or post-processed digital image sandwiching. The choice is yours!

The actually process is really very simple (thanks Tony!).

1) Open an image in Photoshop

2) Create a duplicate layer

3) Go under IMAGE to APPLY IMAGE and select BLENDING SCREEN then OK out

4) Make a copy of the Background layer

5) Go to FILTERS to BLUR and to GAUSSIAN. Select a level a blur you want to try. I am usually in the 12-20 range.

6) On LAYERS PANEL switch from NORMAL to MULTIPLY

7) If satisfied with result, FLATTEN image.

Make any necessary post-processing adjustments to the image as you normally would. Here are two examples of digitally sandwiched images.

The first is a simple aster image that was shot at f/20. The sandwiching makes for a much softer image as can be seen from the edges of the petals and the flower’s center. Just another look, if you will.

The second image is from last weekend’s workshop and was shot at f/22. The reflections in the water appeared razor-sharp and seemed to need to be softened a bit. So I created a sandwich to accomplish the softening. Again, just a slightly different feel to the image. Nothing super-dramatic.

Let me know what you think?

Hope you enjoy the images.

Here are some of my images from the third and final day of the workshop.

The early morning light danced beautifully along the reeds on the far side of one of the small ponds. I decided to try to capture to colors and textures in an abstract way by once again doing some in-camera motion blurs/pans. Here is one of the images that I liked. I’ve entitled this one “Fire on the Water”.

I know that some of you prefer the “real thing” to the abstracts. In this case I think the “real thing”, despite looking very busy, holds together very well. I’ve entitled this image “Reflections”.

I also did some HDR composite images. This is a 5-image HDR composite. The colors of the two trees as well as their reflections in the ponds just seemed to good to pass up. This one is entitled “Left Hemisphere; Right Hemisphere” (like a brain, get it!).

And finally, a little puzzler for you. I call this image “Totemic Illusions”. How many faces can you pick out in this totem of sorts?

Hope you enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed the workshop.

I am getting things together for a trip to Ohio (Cuyahoga Valley National Park) for a photography workshop with my favorite photography and brilliant digital artist – Tony Sweet. I leave Thursday morning. As I was putting together the kit to take along, I started thinking about leaving the big mother 300mm f/2.8 lens at home and covering that range with my 70-200 2.8 and a Kenko 1.4x teleconverter which could get me out to 280mm at f/4. Before I made a final decision though, I wanted to do some test shots with the 70-200/1.4x combo. So I took the set-up to work with me and went out into a local parkway at lunch (Noon) for some test shots. The sky was blue, the sun was high and the light was harsh but I did make some images of the colors of autumn.  Here is one such image.

(1/25 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; Sunny WB)

My objective in this image was to capture the colors of autumn as represented by the two different trees – one with yellow leaves and the other with red. I was also looking for image quality and image sharpness with the teleconverter. I was satisfied with the quality and sharpness of the images captured with the 70-200/1.4x combo and I felt good about the colors captured in this image. But I felt all the leaf detail detracted from color focus and my eye just kept wandering around the image. there was nothing “bold” enough there to hold my attention.

So I started to work with the image in Topaz, looking for some combination that would further highlight the colors of autumn while maybe de-emphasizing the distracting details. I will admit, it wasn’t as easy as it might seem. I tried three or four different approaches and none of them was what I was looking for. Finally, I came up with this and I knew I had found what I was looking for… an image that emphasizes “the colors of autumn”. This is the above image processed with Topaz Adjust, Detail and Simplify. Hope you like it.

Whaddaya think?