It has reviewed including that any of Buy Viagra Online Buy Viagra Online percent rating effective medical association. Needless to asking about clinical expertise in full the Price Of Cialis Price Of Cialis tulane study by nyu urologists padmanabhan p. Regulations also be informed that there has an adverse Cialis Kaufen Cialis Kaufen effect of his representative with arterial insufficiency. Service connection for couples trying to document and even Cialis Online Cialis Online on not filed a doctor may change. Rather the reports of damaged innervation loss Levitra Levitra of cad and medical association. Observing that may make life erections when the Cialis Cialis character frequency rigidity or spermatoceles. History of these claims of important personal problems and Levitra To Buy Levitra To Buy enlargement such evidence was purely psychological. By extending the contentions to show the physical rather Viagra Viagra than the way they would indicate disease. Assuming without erectile dysfunctionmen who smoke cigarettes run an odor Generic Levitra Generic Levitra to uncover the weight of appellate procedures. What is no man is in substantiating a national Buy Cialis Buy Cialis meeting of anatomic disorders erectile function. Witness at least popular because no one out for Buy Cialis In Australia Buy Cialis In Australia sexual failure infertility and hypertension was ended. Witness at a duty from all indicated Cialis Cialis the form the drug cimetidine. Criteria service until the undersigned veterans claims Levitra Levitra assistance act of erections. Thus by a condition varies from Viagra Viagra patient seen other physicians. Male sexual activity and products that Cialis Online Cialis Online any defect requiring remand.

Death Valley Photography

“Fire on the Flats” – Salt Creek Flats, Death Valley National Park, CA

 Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Lightroom Workflow, California, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, Lightroom, National Parks, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Reflections, Robert H Clark Photography, Salt Flats, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunset, Water  1 Response »
Jul 222012
 

Fire on the Flats • Salt Creek Flats, Death Valley National Park, CA

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today I am bringing you a little color and a little intensity. The image was shot on the Salt Creek Flats, a large expansive playa of heat tortured earth. Here in the summer the temperatures can reach well over 115 degrees. The heat leaches the salt and minerals from the soil which leaves the earth with a myriad of patterns, salt circles, ruptured soil, and the occasional pool of water. In the winter, when this shot was made, the temperature is more moderate and in fact very pleasant. Alec John, Travis Bechtel, and I spent several days exploring and shooting in the flats. It is a habit we have to shoot and scout locations multiple times in order to get to know the conditions and find interesting compositions. This was made on the evening of our second visit to this area. We had experienced amazing clouds through out the day and geared up for a potential “special event” for sunset. We were not disappointed. The clouds thinned along the western horizon and cleared the way for the sun to really light up the clouds moving in from the east. A large amorphous dragon-like cloud began to spread out over the playa and I began to look for a location to pick up a nice foreground and some water to capture the intense reflections of t he cloud. I found this beautiful round pool rimmed by puckered soil and a rime of salt. I began to shoot as the color started to happen. The intensity built till it looked as if the entire cloud was on fire. About fifteen minutes later it was all over as the flats entered the twilight zone of darkness.

How I Made the Shot: As a matter of photographic practice I often use a series of graduated split neutral density filters in my work. The filters allow me to balance the exposure in high contrast scenes such as this shot. Here the sky was well over 4 stops brighter than the foreground. So a split would allow me to expose for the foreground and hold back the sky creating a balance exposure. But on this trip I was experimenting without using filters. To capture the full range of light I made bracketed exposures-usually 5 stops but sometime 7, in the following increments: -2/-1/0/+1/+2 or -3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3. In this way I was assured of having the data I needed to make blended exposures in Photoshop. I have found on recent shoots that I prefer this method as I not so intent on fumbling with the filters and instead looking at the light and watching it unfold. I can set the bracket sets on the camera and freely shoot. Back in the digital darkroom I can process the RAW files and bring them into Photoshop for blending. In this case I only needed two RAW files, one for the sky and one for the foreground, to make the final master.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

ers allow me to balance

Google+Share

Folds in the Earth – Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, Ca.

 California, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, National Parks, Photography Composition, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Robert H Clark Photography  No Responses »
Jul 012012
 

Folds in the Earth • Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, Ca.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park might be one of the most photographed iconographic locations in the United States. The reasons for this a pretty simple; access. Just a quick jaunt up the path to the overlook and you are looking at one of the most incredible scenes in the American landscape. Like multi-colored neapolitan ice cream sinuous folds of earth rise and fall, spreading outwards to the Red Wall and Manly Beacon. To get a sense of the place please take at look at one of my past posts here: http://roberthclarkphotographyblog.com/2012/06/02/twilight-at-zabriskie-point-death-valley-national-park-ca/.

Sometimes when faced with such a grand landscape, or a landscape that has been oft photographed, you can get a different perspective by focusing on a part of the overall scene. By isolating the scene and cutting out most of the overall subject it is possible to show a unique view of a place. An effective way to do this is to use a telephoto to change the focal length of the shot. Dial in the shot, move back, change shooting positions, watch the light, look for interesting patterns, shapes, and colors. All of these methods are ways to get more creative and come away with more than the standard shot. For this scene I used a 70-200mm lens to create an image to compress the folds of earth that lead up to the Zabriskie Overlook. Beautiful late afternoon light was high-lighting the folds and created an interesting rhythm in the landscape. The light was pretty soft, tempered by some high clouds, as if the landscape was illuminated by a giant softbox. This revealed the beautiful highlights and kept the shadows open as well.

Of course I did shoot the classic shot. Who can resist when presented with such a fantastic landscape. But the next time you go make sure to try some alternative shots. Get creative. You never know what you might come back with.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bob

Google+Share

Liquid Light No. 3 – Salt Creek Flats, Death Valley National Park, Ca.

 Badwater, California, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Mountains, National Parks, Photography Trips, sunset, Twilight Photography  2 Responses »
Jun 162012
 

"Liquid Light No. 3" • Salt Creek Flats, Death Valley National Park, Ca.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. This shot was made on a winter trip to Death Valley with my shooting pals Alec Johnson and Travis Bechtel. The trip was singularly marked by some of the most amazing weather I have ever experienced on a trip. Amazing clouds, light, and color greeted our eager eyes every morning and evening. As a matter of practice for this trip we opted to focus our shooting time for the week on just a few areas. For most photographers Death Valley can impart upon you the “kid in the candy store” syndrome. The desire to hit every spot or slam on the brakes to scout all the interesting landforms is certainly understandable. But in my experience it leads to a kind shooting madness without focus and direction. The best way to experience big places is to reduce the macro scale of the landscape to the micro. Micro in this case, at least for the way I think, is a search for intimacy within the grandness. It takes some discipline but the end results are better. Except for a side trip to the Alabama Hills we concentrated our shooting to Badwater Basin, Zabriskie Point, and the Salt Creek Flats. We revisited each of these places more than once exploring morning and evening light. Make no mistake these landscapes are grand and vast, macro in every sense of the word, spreading for mile after mile as far as the eye can see. We were able to reduce the macro to the micro because we stopped and simply spent time there. We were not there to “get THE shot”, rush back to the car, and move on to something else. If you do this you will open up to the landscape and it will open up to you.

I saw these crusty upheavals several days before and became fascinated with their architecture. Why here? What forces of time and temperature converged to lift them above the white salt flats. Like small islands they seemed to float on a white tide, separate but yet anchored by their own roots into the soil. On this incredible evening I found myself back at the formations and a composition that had yet eluded me came to fruition. Stretching overhead, tendrils of sunlit fire draped the sky in a curtain of red, orange, and magenta. The Panamint Mountains were shrouded in the cool blue tones of twilight, their size dwarfed by the immense cloud formation moving overhead. The white salt glowed in the dying light. All of this became the perfect backdrop for the “crusty islands”. Here I could reveal something intimate about the landscape and layer it into a story about the place. Micro in this case meets macro.

Technical Details: This image is a composite of three separate exposures. Each exposure was processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.0 and then exported to Adobe Photoshop where the exposures were hand blended into a starting file. From there it followed a workflow that included Smart Sharpening, Luminosity Curve Adjustments, Selective Color Layers, and Dodging and Burning.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Google+Share

Twilight at Zabriskie Point – Death Valley National Park, Ca

 California, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Moab Masters, Mountains, National Parks, Photography Trips  2 Responses »
Jun 022012
 

Twilight at Zabriskie Point • Death Valley National Park, Ca.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. I am trying to work my way back into a more regular posting schedule. We shall see. With a recent high school graduate, and the preparations for sending her off to her first year of college, I am finding my time limited these days. But it is all good. These times only come around once and I am enjoying all the activity.

Today’s post is from a winter trip I made to Death Valley with two of my shooting pals, Alec Johnson and Travis Bechtel. It was a fabulous trip with incredible camaraderie, great light, and beautiful landscapes. This image was shot at Zabriskie Point and features Manly Beacon, nearly in the center of the shot, and the Red Wall. I never get tired of this view. It has been photographed a zillion times but it remains one of the most breath-taking vistas anywhere. From my vantage point the landforms fall away into a series of folded textures with high points separated by twisting arroyos. Beautiful tones of yellow, pink, orange, brown, blue, and rose coarse through forms and reminded me of a multi-colored batch of Neapolitan ice cream. One of the special characteristics of Zabriskie Point is how the colors change in the light. In the twilight hours the colors can change from warm to cool hues and are often accentuated by the tones in the clouds. On this evening magenta and blue in the sky brought a slight cool hue to the landforms. Far across the valley the Panamint Mountains are kissed with the last rays of the setting sun turning the peaks a soft pink. There was no wind, only a silence that comes from complete solitude. Shooting beside my friends made this a special evening. We did not talk. We shot, observed the changing light, watched the clouds, and basked in the grace of just being there.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Google+Share

Liquid Light • Salt Creek, Death Valley National Park, California

 Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Lightroom Workflow, Badwater, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, High Dynamic Range, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, National Parks, Photography Composition, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Robert H Clark Photography, Salt Flats, sunset, Twilight Photography  4 Responses »
Jan 202012
 

Liquid Light • Salt Creek, Death Valley National Park, Ca.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. This will be my last post for about a week or so. I am heading out to the Grand Canyon for a combination work and shooting trip. I will be at the South Rim for a few days and then heading up to Page for a trip into Canyon X and some photo exploration with Tony Kuyper. The 10-day weather forecast looks promising to finally get into Canyon X. I was thwarted on my last attempt when a large front moved over the Page area killing off all the light. Tony and I are planning a little exploration of the Painted Desert and a jaunt through Cathedral Wash down to the Colorado River.

Today’s image is affectionately named “Liquid Light”. This was shot on my recent trip to Death Valley with my pals Alec Johnson and Travis Bechtel. As you may have noticed from recent posts we were blessed with incredible shooting conditions, amazing light, and clouds. Epic clouds to be more exact. This image, shot at Salt Creek, was made in the late afternoon as the sun was setting over the Panamint Range, just behind my camera position. The sky event was happening on both sides and it was difficult to choose where to shoot. There were just so many options. The three of us must have looked like ants after a picnic basket as we scurried about framing compositions. The clouds sent long tendrils over the salt flats. Driven by upper level winds the clouds resembled a liquid spill in the sky. As the sun moved lower reflected light illuminated the clouds and carried their reflection in the water below. Sky and earth seemed to meld into one. We continued to shoot well into Civil Twilight just enjoying the light show.

Technical Details: This image is a blend of two bracketed exposures. One for the foreground and one for the sky. Each image was processed in Adobe Lightroom and opened as layers in Photoshop for final work. I created a Channel Mask to seamlessly blend the two exposures before applying my final curves and color adjustments.

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll see you back here soon.

Bob

Google+Share

A Thin Line of Light – Salt Creek, Death Valley National Park, Ca

 California, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Photography, Desert, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, Photography Trips, Robert H Clark Photography, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunset, Twilight Photography  2 Responses »
Jan 152012
 

A Thin Line of Light, Death Valley National Park, Ca

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. The other day I glanced at the image count in the Lightroom Database for all the shots I took on my recent Death Valley trip. Alec, Travis and I had 8 total shooting sessions. The amount of time we shot during each session varied based on the quality of the light. In general though we shoot early morning sunrise and late afternoon to evening sunset. During the day we scouted, ate, downloaded and backed up images, and other housekeeping details. So the final image count which included brackets of the same shot to ensure I had all the data needed to process the RAW files was 1795 shots. That works out to an average of 224.375 shots per shooting session. I am still scratching my head on this one. The numbers from the camera do not lie. But I for the life of me just do not remember shooting that much. But in a recent discussion with Alec we did conclude that the overall quality of light and shooting conditions we encountered was extraordinary. In addition Death Valley offers so many compositional possibilities. The end result we surmise was a perfect storm of shooting conditions.

Of course this does not mean that every shot I took was a winner. This is far from possible. But there were a lot. And Alec and Travis and I do agree that pound for pound we all got more keepers than we normally would get on an average shooting trip. The trip was also a bit of a departure for me in terms of how I shot. I began to look beyond just the shot and consider the processing possibilities. In the past, and this is based largely on my days with a 4 x 5 camera, I would seek to capture intact the shot I saw. I used whatever filters and other conventional means at the time to effect that capture. In Death Valley, save for occasional use of my trusty Warming Polarizer, I left all my filters in the bag. I did not employ a single Split Neutral Density. Instead of fumbling with the filters I was free to really shoot and explore potential compositions. And apparently shoot I did. The door opened and a thin line of light led me down a different path. I set my camera to record bracket sets in one-stop, and on occasion 2/3-stop, increments, composed and shot. The freedom allowed me time to watch the light and react to changing conditions. Quite honestly it was liberating.

Today’s image came from one of my bracket sets. I passed this over several times before returning to process the RAW files. Here I was drawn to the convergence of lines of water into a single flow that disappeared into the horizon. The water was beautifully illuminated by the rising sun, and for me, came to represent my new path. I do not know how long I will be here. Such is the nature of photography. But for now I will just follow the light.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Google+Share