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This is my first panorama. It is also HDR. Look at the bigger picture by expanding your browser and following this link. I shot it with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 lens at sunrise at the scenic viewpoint on Highway 20 between Sisters and Bend, Oregon. The mountains are called the Three Sisters and Broken Top in the Cascade Mountain Range.
This is a pathway through the woods of Chip Ross park in Corvallis, Oregon. It was a lovely, brisk morning. The fog was starting to lift and everything was peaceful and quiet. I took pictures of this path with both my Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G lens at 14mm and 24mm and I took pictures of it with my Nikon 85mm f/1.4D lens both horizontal and vertical. In a few shots I focused more on the path and in a few shots I focused more on the trees. I’m trying to experiment with being creative in how I approach an object of interest. A fellow photographer recently mentioned that in a class he took, they recommended trying to take pictures of an object of interest in at least 15 different ways. That can be a challenge. I’m also trying to take fewer pictures the exact same way. I’m trying to get away from the “spray and pray” way of shooting. Trey Ratcliff mentioned avoiding that in one of his eBooks. I need to remember how to setup my camera in exactly the way that I want it and then take only one picture for that one way of interacting with the object of interest. I have noticed this is difficult with such things as sunrise and sunset when you don’t know exactly what the colors are going to do as the sunrise or sunset progresses. It is also true with animals. When I was in a photo blind at the National Wildlife Refuge, you don’t know if the animal of interest is going to come closer or not. So I shoot what is available and then shoot again if it comes closer or does something interesting. With sunrise/sunset and animals, I assume it is just a matter of experience to reduce the number of “spray and pray” type shooting that you need to do. But I was proud of myself with this photo shoot of the pathway. I only took a few pictures and they were exploring different ways of shooting the path. I should have taken shots with different aperture settings. In the end, the photo I thought that looked the best as far as composition went was shot with an aperture of f/2.8 when I think I should have shot it at an aperture closer to f/16. All part of the learning experience. I also only took one shot of it because I didn’t think I was going to do HDR with this photo because it was foggy and there wasn’t a dramatic range of lighting that needed to be captured. In the end, I did do HDR but it was unfortunately based off of only one photograph because that is all I had to work with. It was a RAW 14-bit photo, so that helps, but I should have shot a 3 or 5 bracket set of exposures for a true HDR treatment. I also used Topaz Adjust to bring out the colors that were there within my mind’s eye but that the camera fails to treat adequately. So here is my simple photo of a pathway through the woods.
Another picture of oak trees in the fog from Chip Ross park in Corvallis, Oregon. I love the fog. Instead of a black & white and using Lightroom to tweak the photo, I used HDR and Topaz Adjust to reconstruct what I saw with my eye. After that treatment I masked in some of the original photo to straight out the whiteness of the fog. It was brisk out this morning and foggy, just like I remember it from when I was growing up in Corvallis.
I’ve been down around Albany and Corvallis lately and they have these lovely, foggy mornings. I went to elementary school in Corvallis and these fall, foggy mornings that are brisk remind me of when I was a wee little lad. I walked around Chip Ross park in Corvallis and there were a couple of oak trees that looked very intriguing in the fog. I have a couple of different pictures I took of the trail and these oak trees. Here is one in black and white. With the fog, everything was kind of black and white to begin with. With no color to the landscape, it was spooky and quiet, just like I remember it from when I had to walk to elementary school. I love the fog. It accentuates shapes and features that you normally don’t see.
I took this photo of Mt. Jefferson from the Hwy 20 scenic stopping spot at sunrise with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 AF-S ED-IF lens. I did the HDR processing in Photomatix and then touched it up with Topaz Adjusts to make it look the way it looked to my eyes. It was a beautiful sunrise and the mountain looked magnificent in the early dawn colors. The air was crisp and by this time I was actually awake and no longer sleepy. It was a glorious morning.
I took this photo in February when there was still a lot of water coming over the falls and all the shrubs and deciduous trees did not have their leaves on. But I think there is some interesting color with the red from the branches of the shrubs, the green from the moss on the deciduous trees, and the dark green of the conifers. I processed this image in HDR in March. I’ve learned a lot since then about processing HDR images and perhaps I should revisit this one to see if I could get a better result. The cliff walls seem a bit off in this image but that is one of the challenges of HDR photography. Anyways. I hope you like today’s photo.
I took this photo in February at the Silver Creek Falls State Park of the South Falls and the trail that leads to the foot bridge across the Silver Creek. I hiked the entire trail of that goes by ten different falls. It was very beautiful. Every year people die in this park. It was no different this year. A foreign exchange college student died when he went off the trail and went over one of the falls. The trail is slick when it rains but people never seem to think that it will be them that might go over all the cliffs that ring the trail. No matter how many signs might be up to warn them about how dangerous it is. But it is amazingly beautiful through this park. It is a rain forest with huge trees, moss that glows in overcast skies, and all the falls as they go over the cliffs.
While we were vacationing at Sunriver, Oregon we went to the Lava River Cave. My mom, my two kids and I went down this cave that is a lava tube. It took about an hour and a half to walk to the end of the tunnel and back. The average temperature is 42° F. The kids had fun blowing their breath into the lantern. I was using my Nikon 85mm f/1.4D AF lens. It works absolutely amazing well in low-light conditions. I love being able to catch these images without a flash. I still need more practice with the metering to optimize the exposure to get the right amount of lighting. I’m glad I shoot my photos in RAW so that I can recover and change the exposure to adjust the lighting in post-processing. Although, I haven’t done any of that with these photos. This is how my Nikon D700 captured them. I did change the white balance for the different shots but I haven’t changed the exposure. Also when it is very dark, the auto-focus has problems because there isn’t enough contrast to focus on. So I need to either figure out how to focus manually or be quicker with adjusting the auto-focus.
This is a beautiful sunrise at Sunriver, Oregon. It was not fun getting up early but once I was up, I’m glad that I made the decision to sacrifice a little shut eye in order to experience this brisk morning with the sun making its appearance in such a fiery fashion. You can click the image to get to my Smug Mug Portfolio and hit the i button for the photo’s information such as focal length, aperture setting, etc.
I just got back from Sunriver, which is a beautiful place to relax. It’s a nice vacation community with lots of bike and walking paths, houses that are spaced out from each other, and deer and coyotes moving through it. It is very relaxing to be there and it was a great way to spend Labor Day weekend with my kids. I took the photo below that started at about 9:45 PM. The exposure was for about 42 minutes. The light on the pine trees at the lower left is from a house nearby that had their lights on. I’ve processed it two different ways. Both started out with a reduction in brightness, an increase in contrast, and a white balance for tungsten that I processed in Lightroom. The pine trees were too bright in the original picture because of the nearby house’s lights. The first picture I didn’t use HDR on but I did use Topaz Adjust. The second picture I used HDR processing and I also used Topaz Adjust. Which one do you prefer? No HDR –
HDR -
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