It's My Nature » Nik Color Efex Pro

Longwood Gardens – Macro Photography – “Take Me to Your Leader!”

Ed — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:32:16 +0000

I think I will end this series of images made during our recent trip to Longwood Gardens (PA) with one that continues to bring a smile to my face every time I look at it. Yes, the kids did appear. And yes, they had mom and dad in tow. It was time to break out the macro lens and really work in close. So I put my Sigma 70mm macro lens w/ a 12mm extension tube on the Canon 50D and went to work getting up-close and personal with the orchids.

What can I say? Had I not brought along the macro lens, I very probably would have missed this “Close Encounter of the Orchid Kind”. There standing in the heart of this beautiful orchid was a tiny little alien screaming “Take Me to Your Leader!”

ZOOM – Blurs and Multiple Exposures of a Gerbera Daisy

Ed — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:48:32 +0000

If you’ve come via the home page or wandered through the galleries, you may have seen these images before even though they are barely 24 hours old. I took some time yesterday and worked on making images of the Gerbera that were different from what I often see and interesting to me from a compositional perspective.

This first image is a single image zoom blur made with my Canon 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens w/ a 500D close-up filter/lens; tripod mounted. I set up for a long exposure (2.0 sec @ f/20; ISO 100; -2/3 EV), started with the lens at 70mm and a brief pause before zooming to 200mm where I ended on a brief pause before the shutter closed. The result can be seen above.

The second image here is a 10-image zoom multiple exposure. I focused in on the flower at 70mm and following each exposure, I zoomed in a little more ending at 200mm. As I zoomed in shutter speed varied from 3.2 sec at 70mm to 1.6 sec at 200mm @ f/20; ISO 100; -1 EV. The images were combined in Photoshop using a script written/designed by Uwe Steinmueller & Tony Sweet. The result can be seen below.

The third image is a 4-image zoom multiple exposure created the same way as described above. The four images were shot at 70mm, 100mm, 135mm, and 200mm. You can see the resultant image below.

The Apple of My Eye

Ed — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:17:49 +0000

Slam on brakes; swerve to the right. Every once in a while, I’ve got to try something different. I hadn’t touched a camera since last weekend so this morning before we headed out for a quick visit to Barnes & Noble, lunch at Panera’s and a trip to the Farm Market; I packed a small backpack with the unlikely arsenal of my 30D with the Lensbaby and accessories and my IR-converted Rebel XT with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. By the time we hit the Farm Market, I had yet to hold a camera or, obviously, take a picture.

But that was soon to end not with the 30D and Lensbaby nor with the IR-converted XT but rather with my iPhone camera. I made a series of fruit and veggie images with the iPhone and when I got home, processed them using Nik filters in Photoshop CS4. This particular image was processed with Nik Dfine for noise reduction and Viveza 2 for some global brightness, contrast, saturation and structure adjustments. I then moved into Color Efex Pro where I ran it through the Glamour Glow filter followed by the Vignette Blur filter. And I finished with just a touch of Sharpener Pro.

I kinda like the results. Your thoughts?

Fire and Ice

Ed — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:27:59 +0000

(1/2 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 43mm)

Image was made yesterday morning at Lake Galena in Peace Valley Park (Bucks County, PA) in the minutes before sunrise. The lake obviously was frozen.

Used my Canon 50D; 24-70 2.8L w/ a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter; all tripod mounted.

When I got home and looked at the images on the big screen, I felt they were cold, desolate, lonely and boring. I wanted cold, desolate, lonely and less boring. So I went to work. I started with cropping out some of the excess ice in the foreground in order to provide a better balance. Then I ran the image through Nik Dfine to remove any noise that may have presented itself. Moving on to Viveza 2.0, I opened up the blacks in the trees on the left and right and reduced brightness while adding saturation to the ice and sky accentuating the blues and reds. I also reduced structure a bit in order to start smoothing the ice blemishes. After contenting myself that I did what I wanted to do in Viveza, I moved on to Color Efex Pro. I said that I had used a 3-stop GND while shooting but felt it could use a bit more so I used the Graduated ND filter in Nik and finished it off by softening and smoothing the image using a filter designed, I think, for portraits called Glamour Glow. Finally I used Sharpener Pro to, believe it or not, reduce the structure and focus a bit more in order to reduce the impact of the ice blemishes even more – much like a portrait photographer would do to remove skin blemishes.

“Fire and Ice” is the result. Remember… cold, desolate, lonely. Let me know what you think!

Sandy Hook (NJ) Back Bay Wetlands (Horizontal Pan)

Ed — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:08:08 +0000

(0.8 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1/3 EV)

(0.8 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1EV)

These were the only blurs that I did during our recent (weekend past) trip to Sandy Hook, NJ. The layers of water/ice followed by reeds followed by more water/ice and more reeds before finally reaching the sky just seemed to beg for a horizontal pan which helped eliminate some of the messiness while keeping and emphasizing the layers of color unfolding from front to back. Processing with Nik filters (Dfine, Viveza, Color Efex Pro and Sharpener Pro) brought out just enough reed detail in the reflections to accentuate the reediness.

Image made with my canon 50D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens w/ Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to help provide the longer exposures for the pan.

Sunrise, Sandy Hook, NJ – 01/16/10

Ed — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:45:33 +0000

8.0 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -1/3 EV

6.0 sec @ f/22; ISO 100; -2/3 EV

Barb and I were up at 0400 and headed off for Sandy Hook. We arrived before sunrise, actually before civil twilight, and I set up on Chokecherry Beach to photograph the sunrise. The morning was tad cloudier than I had hope but I was still able to capture some nice color in the early morning sky. We ended up having a very nice day at the Hook and came away with a number of nice images (at least to my eye). But the day started pre-dawn so that’s where I’ll start with the images. Additional images from Sandy Hook will follow through out the upcoming week.

Images made with a Canon 50D and 24-70 2.8L lens w/ a Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to lengthen the exposures. Camera and lens were tripod-mounted.