It's My Nature » Nik Viveza 2

Sunrise Solitude

Ed — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:35:06 +0000

In a recent post, Why No People?, I attempted to answer the question why there are so seldom any people in my images. What it all comes down to is that I like the personal feeling that my images represent to me. It is me at one with nature. I am alone in my world. No intrusions from anyone else… even if there are other people around. And often there are. A boater here. A fisherman there. But I can let them intrude upon my world and the representation of it in the images I create.

Yesterday morning (Saturday) I made my way to the fishing pier (hardly a pier at all) on Lake Nockamixon (Nockamixon State Park, Bucks County, PA) well before sunrise. I had scouted the area out on a previous trip and knew that it would be a good place to capture sunrise and, importantly to me, a different place from the marina area which I have visited so often this summer. I went out to the tip of the small finger of land jutting into the lake and set up. I had hit a window so to speak. The guys who had been fishing all night were in the process of leaving and the day fishermen hadn’t arrived yet. I would have the spot to myself.

I ended up making a series of 14 5-image HDR composites as the sky progressed toward sunrise. Here is a small sampling of the images.

Sunrise Solitude #4

Sunrise Solitude #6

Sunrise Solitude #9

Sunrise Solitude #13

Here’s hoping you’ve enjoyed this little visit into my world!

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?

Coneflower Meets Macro

Ed — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:48:16 +0000

The ebb and flow of our photographic lives always seems to have us moving from subject to subject, from technique to technique, from favorite lens to favorite lens as time moves incessantly forward. The past couple of years (prior to this one) I tended to do a lot more macro and flower photography. This year not so much as my attention has turned more to landscapes and sunrises and such.

I found myself at home today, not really feeling well but getting bored of sleeping the day away. So I one point I grabbed my Canon 30D, put on a Sigma 70 mm macro lens and ventured out into the backyard for a little while. Nothing fancy. No tripod. Just the camera, the backyard and me. In the back corner (of a small backyard) behind the (very small) made-made pond, in amongst the native shrubs and wildflowers was a small stand of purple coneflowers that looked like they could be fun to work with.

So I did. All images were shot handheld at f/2.8. I shot wide open because I was really looking to create some soft images with very soft backgrounds. For the third image, I purposefully took the entire image out-of-focus in-camera in order to create an entirely soft image. Images of that type aren’t to everyone’s liking but hey, I like it and that’s what counts!

“Coneflower #1″

“Coneflower #2″

“Coneflower #3 – Perchance to Dream”

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!

Scouting Out a Workshop Location – Sandy Hook, NJ

Ed — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:55:47 +0000

My familiarity with the Sandy Hook, NJ portion of Gateway National Recreational Area goes back probably a decade. It started with an interest in lighthouses that my wife and I share and a visit to the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. Originally built in 1764, Sandy Hook is the oldest lighthouse still in existence in America.

As time passed and Barb became more interested in birding and I in bird photography, we would visit Sandy Hook regularly usually between the months of October and April for shorebirds, migratory birds and wintering ducks. We haunt the Jersey shore after the sun worshippers leave and before they return.

The more I visited Sandy Hook and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Sandy Hook would be a great location for one of my “Creativity, Composition and the Camera” photography workshops. But before I made a definitive decision to hold a workshop there, I needed to scout it out for more and different shooting opportunities. That was the purpose of yesterday’s visit to Sandy Hook. Yep no time like the Fourth of July weekend for a trip to the Jersey shore – Barb, me and about a million other folks! Still we had a very productive time on this narrow spit of land.

One of the subjects I want to focus a session on is lighthouses. Notice I said plural – lighthouses. There are two that I definitely want to include, Sandy Hook, of course, and Twin Lights (aka Navesink) in Highlands just outside Sandy Hook. Another session will be devoted to photographing the ruins of Fort Hancock, a decommissioned Army base with some very interesting old mortar batteries and such. And then, of course, there is the beach for sunrise and the back bay for sunset. And yes, even birds and flowers. All in all an excellent location for a workshop with more than enough to keep us busy for three days.

If you think you may be interested in this workshop, drop me a note at ed@itsmynaturephotography.com so I can be sure to keep you up-to-date as plans firm up. I am planning the workshop for sometime in the April/May 2011 timeframe. Exact dates, cost, lodging arrangements, workshop features, etc. will be posted when available but probably not before mid-October of this year. I am just asking for an indication of interest. Neither you nor I are locking in to anything at this time.

As you think, here are a few images from yesterday. And yes, I was working some of the time with my Lensbaby Composer with the fisheye optic. Most of the images are multi-image HDR composites in order to cover the dynamic range from the deep shadows to the blazing summertime sky.

Sandy Hook Lighthouse (as seen from the Mortar Battery; HDR)

Sandy Hook Lighthouse (Fisheye HDR)

Mortar Battery (Fisheye HDR)

Mortar Battery (with 21st Century Hieroglyphics; HDR)

Battery Potter

Hope you enjoyed the images and hope you will think about joining me on this Spring 2011 workshop at Sandy Hook, NJ.

Shooting Soft with the Lensbaby Soft Focus Optic

Ed — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:15:21 +0000

I’m sure many of you visiting my website and blog are already familiar with the Lensbaby lenses and their interchangeable optic system and accessories packages.Likewise I am also sure that there are some of you who are not familiar with the lens. For those of you who aren’t, the Lensbaby is a selective focus lens with a focal length of 50mm. In it’s most basic form, the selective focus sweet spot can be moved around the focal plane by simply “bending” the lens. Yes, the lens actual can be bent to the left, to the right, up, down and anywhere in between. It really gives the photographer an opportunity to play around, be creative and try some new things. Yes, it is fun to play with the Lensbaby but it is not a toy. Interchangeable optics include double glass (the highest quality), single glass, plastic (think Holga toy camera), fisheye, soft focus, wide angle and I know I have missed a few. Accessories include, among other things, a set of macro lenses that can be added to other Lensbaby optics except for the fisheye. For more information on the Lensbaby, visit their website at www.lensbaby.com.

There is so much you can do with the Lensbaby. I happen to use the Lensbaby Composer with the double glass optic quite often. Sometimes I like to add a macro lens to it. And I really love the vignetting one gets with the fisheye optic particularly when used with a full frame camera like my Canon 5D Mark II. But of all the optional optics, I have found the soft focus optic the most difficult for me to come to terms with. I will use it and then end up doing things, almost unconsciously, in processing to try to bring the sharpness back into the image instead of just going with the flow and basking in the softness. So I often tend to shy away from using the soft focus optic. But every so often, I force myself to leave everything else behind and use it. That’s what I did this past weekend.

MY local club, the Lehigh Valley Photography Club, held a group photo shoot at Jacobsburg State Park (PA). I had just done some straight macro shooting in the meadows there the week before so I decided the time was right to go out there with just my Canon 50D and the Lensbaby Composer w/ Soft Focus optic.

Here are a couple of images, soft as they should be, from this past Saturday’s shoot.

“Daylily”

“Meadow of Yellow”

Shooting the Works… Fireworks, That Is!

Ed — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:39:26 +0000

We finally had an opportunity to meet up with some Facebook friends this past Friday evening and photograph the weekly Friday night fireworks display offered up by the town of New Hope, PA. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, New Hope, and it’s sister town across the bridge spanning the Delaware River – Lambertville, NJ, are both very artsy villages filled with galleries, antiques shops, boutique-type stores, restaurants and bed & breakfasts. Our friend who invited us said quite frankly that even though she lives in New Hope, she just can’t see the attraction. Well whether you can see it or not, there were fireworks and there were a ton of people on both sides of the river.

We actually set up on the New Jersey side where we had a better angle on the fireworks. The first rule of photographing fireworks is location, location, location. It helps to know where the fireworks will be exploding in the sky and it helps to scout a good location from which to shoot them. Fortunately for me, both had already been done on prior Friday nights by Sharon and her entourage of photographers. She took us to the spot and pointed out where the fireworks would be. Heck at this point we could mail it in. Well almost. There were five of us and we had the spot to ourselves… for two hours until about five minutes before the start of the fireworks when a horde of kids and parents descended upon us. We were along a wall above the river and I am still amazed none of the kids (or parents) fell into the river. Be that as it may, I had everything set up and ready to go so once the fireworks began I started shooting.

The set up was really pretty simple. While the other folks were shooting with 24-70 mm lenses, I went with a 70-200mm. In hindsight, for this particular location, a 24-70 would probably have been a better choice. I expected to be a little farther from the fireworks than we were at this excellent location. I set up the camera and lens so that everything was manual. AF was turned off in favor of manual focus and the camera was set to manual mode. At this point, I just set the ISO to 200 (but 100 would work just as well). White Balance was left on AWB. I was on burst mode. I set the aperture to f/11 but again you could go anywhere between f/8 and f/16. I chose to land right in the middle – f/11. Shutter speed is dependent on the look you want. About 0.3 to 0.5 seconds worked well, I found. But I did go as far as 1.0 sec on a couple of occasions. I set everything ahead of time and adjusted the focus basically to infinity by focusing on the edge of a cloud.

Once the fireworks began, I made sure I had the tripod adjusted properly for where the fireworks were exploding and, using my remote shutter release, I started firing away. Now with a 70-200, I was looking to fill the frame with the fireworks. (Those using the 24-70 were getting the fireworks within the setting of the river, the bridge, town.) I was getting fireworks and black sky. Wanting to fill the frame as much as possible left very little margin for error. Many of the fireworks went a little left or a little right and weren’t framed properly. So this becomes a bit of meatball/shotgun photography. Take lots of pictures and hope some turn out. Ratio? Well I made around 150 images and kept about 50.

Here are a few of the images. I feel like I should have sound effects or at least the “1812 Overture” playing in the background!

“The Opening Salvo”

“Lighting the sky with color #1″

“Lighting the sky with color #2″ (This is a longer, one second exposure.)

“White Light” – (Well not exactly but as close as it’s going to get.)

“Abstractus” (Converted to B&W with Nik Silver Efex Pro and then Solarization filter applied and adjustments made.)

There are many more where these came from but I hope you enjoyed this small sampling. Fourth of July next weekend. Get out there and shoot the works!

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 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.