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Seastacks at Waters Edge – Bandon Beach, Oregon

 Bandon Beach, Helicon Focus, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, Oregon, Oregon Coast, Pacific Ocean, Photography Trips, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunset, Wide Angle Photography  6 Responses »
Sep 062011
 

Seastacks at Waters Edge, Bandon Beach, Oregon. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Sony SAL 20mm lens. Images exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 2 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today’s image was shot at sunset on Bandon Beach along the Oregon coastline. I had an opportunity to shoot on the Oregon coast about a year ago and though I had dreadful weather I knew I wanted to make a return trip. It is a wild and rugged coastline with beautiful stretches of beach and incredible shoreline seastacks. Bandon Beach is but one of many accessible shorelines along the Oregon coastline. It is an intimate and intriguing beach that is very accessible and can be shot at sunrise or sunset. In this shot the late evening sun backlit a large seastack out in the ocean causing it to glow in a warm, orange light that was the perfect complement to blue hues in the sand and water. The tide was out and an impromptu river of water was flowing back towards the Pacific Ocean. There was a beautiful, crisp, clarity to the air and the light was simply stunning.

Technical Details: The image was shot in two exposures with a 3-Stop, Singh-Ray Soft Edge, Split Neutral Density Filter. The two exposures were focus brackets and the file was merged in Helicon Focus before final finishing in Photoshop. Each of the RAW files was processed with the same settings in Lightroom and saved out as TIFF files before exporting to Helicon.

If you make the trek to Bandon I would recommend the Bandon Beach Motel. The hotel sits on a cliff over looking the beach and offers instant access to the shoreline via a stairway. When you get there ask for Caleb and tell him you want room 205, the one on the corner with the amazing view.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Rio Grande Palisades – Big Bend National Park

 Badlands, Big Bend, Big Bend National Park, Desert, Helicon Focus, Landscape, Landscape Photography, National Parks, Photography Composition, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, River, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, Texas, Zeiss Lenses  3 Responses »
Apr 042011
 

Rio Grand Palisades, Big Bend National Park, Texas. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 55mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f13 for 1/20 of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. This is another shot from my recent trip to Big Bend National. This image was taken from the Rio Grande Overlook and is a view looking south into Mexico. This is not the classic view from this point and I resisted the urge to shoot that shot. I choose instead to move away from my group in search of other vistas. When I found this composition I was struck by the sweeping curves in the river as it flowed past the rocky palisades. From my lofty perch I could see far and away into Mexico. I find edges very interesting both compositionally and intrinsically. Here we have the edges of two countries separated only by a thin ribbon of river. So close and yet so far away. At the time it was a landscape I could only gaze upon as I was not allowed to cross the river.

There are several interesting and powerful compositional concepts found in this image. The first and most prominent is the leading line formed by the river. It is far and away the most powerful element. The rivers shape and form leads the eye into the frame and moves it deeper into the landscape. It is also the lightest element in tone and contrast and is framed on each side by the darker land forms. The eye will always be drawn to the light in a photograph and this occurs in the upper one-third of the shot.

There are also repeating shapes within the the image. The foreground rocks, the palisades at the turn of the river, the far cliffs, and even the light colored tones in the background are repeating elements in the shot that add visual interest. They also form a secondary leading line that runs diagonally in contrast to the sinuous curve of the river. The combination of these two singular lines makes for a dynamic image full of visual interest.

The image was shot in split-light. Split-light is where there is a defined edge between light and shadow. Split-light is easy to recognize but can be hard to handle with exposure. this is especially true since I shot this image in three focus brackets to combine in Helicon Focus. To this end I could not shoot exposure brackets to combine or blend. To handle the exposure I used a Singh-Ray 3-stop, hard edge, Split Neutral Density Filter to compensate for the dynamic range of light in the image. The focus brackets were made of the foreground. mid-ground, and background and then combined in Helicon Focus to create one image. This was taken into Photoshop for final finishing and conversion to Black and White.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Hozógo nasádo (Navajo): Walk in Beauty

Bob

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Terlingua Creek Sunrise – Big Bend National Park

 Adobe Lightroom, Big Bend, Big Bend National Park, Black and White, Helicon Focus, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, National Parks, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, sunrise, Texas, Zeiss Lenses  4 Responses »
Dec 172010
 

Terlingua Creek Sunrise, outside of Big Bend National Park. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f8 for 1/2 of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to todays post. This image is a sunrise shot along Terlingua Creek just outside of Big Bend National Park. This area of the creek is located a few miles from the Terlingua Ghost Town along Highway 170. This was my second visit during the week that I visited this area so in a sense I had prescouted this shot. All I needed were the clouds. On this morning I was blessed with some amazing clouds. They rolled in as a single mass and then began to break apart over the bluffs along the creek. I positioned the camera to take advantage of the strong series of repeating leading lines of the creek, creek bed, reflection, and the bluffs. The clouds added a hugh dynamic component to the shot.

The image was shot in three focus brackets and combined in Helicon Focus software. Additionally I used a 3-stop Singh-Ray Soft Edge Split Neutral Density Filter dropped in along the top of the bluffs. The filter was rotated to account for the angle. The image was converted in Adobe Lightroom and finished in Photoshop.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Terlingua Creek Sunrise – Big Bend National Park

 Badlands, Big Bend, Big Bend National Park, Helicon Focus, Landscape, Landscape Photography, National Parks, Photography Technique, Photography Tools, Photography Trips, Photography Workshops, Sony α900, sunrise, Texas  No Responses »
Nov 082010
 

Terlingua Creek Sunrise, Terlingua, Texas, gateway to Big Bend National Park. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Sony SAL 20mm lens. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f8.0 for 1/30th of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. This image is from a recent workshop I attended at Big Bend National Park. The landscape specific workshop was taught by Craig Tanner and Marti Jeffers of The Mindful Eye, with assistance from TJ Avery. I have known Craig for many years and I would highly recommend any of his workshops. It is an intensive, week long, photography immersion that includes two shooting sessions a day, assignments, concept lectures, and critiques. It has been a number of years, probably over 10 to be exact, where I have participated in a workshop. I came away feeling energized about my work and with a host of new friends which is just a small part of the benefits. Additionally I was able to spend time in one of the great national parks in the lower 48 states. Many of us, myself included, spend so much time alone shooting in the field and forget that one of the great pleasures is sharing our work with other photographers who can provide other perspectives and ideas. Craig’s teaching methods, critiques, and assignments are all aimed at improving our technical and artistic abilities. Assignments such as limiting your equipment to one lens, composition challenges, shooting in varied lighting conditions, shooting macro, or for me, the dreaded portrait, can push you to new challenges. No matter where you are along the path of photography, new challenges can push us towards expanding our creative possibilities. I would encourage you to visit The Mindful Eye website for more information on Craig and Marti’s workshops.

For those of you who visit my blog on a regular basis you might think this looks fairly typical of my work. And while that may be true it does represent an exploratory departure for me in terms of workflow. For many years I shot with a 4 x 5 and enjoyed the incredible depth of field I could achieve through the cameras tilt and shift movements. These movements are not available for modern day 35mm cameras except through expensive perspective control lenses. And even so it is very difficult to use them to get the same foreground to background focus. At the workshop each of us had to select a concept area to work in and I choose “depth of field”. To assist in this challenge Craig introduced me to Helicon Focus and the concepts of “focus bracketing”. Focus bracketing is where you take a series of exposures, all at the same shutter speed and aperture, where you adjust the focus with each exposure. With the composition above I focused on the closest foreground point I could see in the viewfinder and then looked at the numbers on the focus ring. I would then divide that number to the infinity mark into a series of brackets. I would make the first shot, rotate the focus slightly, shoot again, and continue in this way till I reach infinity. What you are doing is overlapping the focus zones with each shot. In general most of my shots use anywhere from three to five separate exposures. Now comes the magic. The Helicon Focus software will take each of the focus brackets and combine them into one file blending the focus zones together and creating an image with near to far sharpness. The RAW files can be imported straight into the software. The process also allows you to shoot at lower f-stops virtually eliminating lens defraction. Now what about wind and moving clouds? With moving clouds there can be an issue with overlap but the software allows you to retouch by using the last layer as a reference. You simply paint away the blur to reveal the clouds in a stationary position. It is more of a challenge in windy conditions and usually it is best to resort to hyper focusing over focus bracketing. The saved file can be opened in Photoshop and put through your normal workflow.

Over the next few months I will be posting more images using this workflow. I want to thank you for stopping by today. Don’t forget to consider a workshop.

Bob

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