f8, ISO100, 1/60s, 8mm on a Canon 60D

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This is a sibling image to ‘Have A Seat On The Pier‘ where the clouds prompted a quick trip to the Lake Elmo Park Reserve fishing pier and some fun with the fisheye lens. Sounding like a broken record, I can’t begin to explain how much fun this lens is, particularly with point of view experimentation. Never have I been on my belly more because of the way images like this one look by literally setting the camera on the ground and pointing up. The tonal range and details it can bring out match any of my other lenses. I know, “On and on and on about the fisheye.” – it’s my blog and write what I want to! Ha!

The most difficult part of taking a shot like this is getting the orientation symmetrical and balanced. This effort is further compounded by having a third party lens that does not work well with my camera’s LCD screen – see, I can dig on it a bit. If you can line it up, though, the distortion from the fisheye really exaggerates the lines and perspective while also giving what seems to be a never-ending vanishing point. I may go out this weekend and try another shot like this and alternate between the fisheye and my wide angle and compare. Might be a fun experiment!

I don’t say it enough, but thank you for taking a minute and stopping by. I so look forward to the interactions here on the blog, as well as those on my social sites - Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. You make my day! Thank you!

Have a great weekend…hope it’s filled with plenty of laughter and smiles!

The post On The Planks appeared first on Jim Denham Photography.

f11, ISO100, 8mm, HDR, 5 Exposures (-2EV to +2EV)

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These oil rigs are all over the Texas countryside, but this was the first that actually was accessible, at least that I had seen in my journeys. No gates, fences or anything to keep me from grabbing some shots of it. On my way out to Camp Tonkawa Springs, the rig caught my eye and stayed in the back of my mind until leaving the springs just before sunset. Much to my luck, there was a truck in this lot, so I at least had someone to ask for permission – the truck driver obviously didn’t own the place, but he didn’t think there was problem with me taking a few pics and even though it may not have been necessary, it made me feel a whole lot better about it.

It was extremely difficult to find an acceptable composition of this beast. The only one I liked was this one, but I’m not tickled with the distortion. My main intent was to capture the motion in the rig, though, so the distortion became secondary. Even though the sun had set, the tonal range was still such that bracketing became necessary, but this was not a bad thing. Actually, it made it easy to show off the movement by not de-ghosting the tone mapped image, then masking in some of the original frames to give the ghosted areas a bit of meat! It wasn’t easy, but it was fun to see the image come together!

I’ve said it before, this photography thing is fun!

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f11, ISO100, 8mm, HDR, 8 Exposures (-5 EV to +2 EV)

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Texas pines. I’m not sure if that’s what they’re called – they could be the same as Georgia pines for all I know, but I don’t make it to Georgia anymore, so the only time I see these guys are in Texas – thus, Texas pines. Growing up in Tennessee, we had pine trees everywhere, but they were skinny and had branch growth from nearly the bottom of the tree all the way to the top. The pines in Texas can be more broad, have a heavier, more textured bark and are mostly bare until about 3/4 of the way up the tree. They are quite impressive trees!

This one was at Camp Tonkawa Springs in Garrison, TX, and took some effort to get on the card. It was not my intention to take brackets, but the sun was in a spot that cast a pretty strong shadow on the tree if it were at my back and was bright enough that backlighting literally blew out anything but the tree in a single frame. There was also a lot of noise in the background depending on which tree and angle selected. This pine had an old run down building and water tower flanking it, and I liked how they looked compared to the other alternatives. Another issue was trying to line up the shot using my 8mm Rokinon – the LCD doesn’t work well with it so seeing the composition was challenging. I know, “Would you like some cheese with that whine?” Seriously.

Another reason I like going back to Texas!

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f22, ISO100, 60s, 17mm on a Canon 60D

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One of the things I love about long exposure photography is how it can be used to isolate a subject or minimalise a scene, transforming an otherwise boring landscape into something of interest. A picture of the scene above taken at a normal shutter speed would likely be kind of boring and uninteresting, but smooth out the water to a layer of silk using a 60 second exposure, isolating the roots (or whatever those things are) and letting the clouds drag above and the scene is totally transformed physically and emotionally. At least, that’s how I see it – I could be wrong!

This image was taken at the tip of Roanoke Island on our trip to The Outer Banks at the end of March.

My heart breaks for those in Oklahoma effected by the tornadoes yesterday, especially to the families of the children involved. Your pain is not anything I can even imagine and there’s nothing that can be said on this blog to ease it, but know that prayers have been offered and you are in our thoughts.

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f22, ISO100, 1/5s, 17mm on a Canon 60D

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If this looks very similar to an older image of mine taken at the Fort Worth Water Gardens a couple of years back, it’s because it’s similar to an image of mine taken at the Fort Worth Water Gardens a couple of years back. Actually, almost exactly two years ago to the date. You can see the original image here, one I took while out with James Brandon and Cliff Base. I am proud of that image, but when the return to the gardens became possible, a slightly different take on it immediately came to mind and became a priority.

The intent was to add more of a 3-D feel/depth to the image by including the steps leading down to the bottom of fountain. Unlike my first trip, I did not walk down the steps, but the memory of how it felt to do so is still fresh in my head. With the steps being stationary and the water running all around them, it created a vertigo-like feeling for me and made me uneasy moving down them. It was weird, but the trip back up was no problem. This feeling can’t be expressed in the image, but seeing the steps descend into the fountain very much reminds me of it!

Even better than getting a retake on the water gardens was getting to meet a long time internet friend and fellow photographer Jeffrey Wooten. We’ve been friends prior to either of us owning a D-SLR, meeting originally on a site called Spokeup.com (remember Cody Willard on FoxNews – his baby) – which in turn brought about my first experience with Twitter. Jeff’s a free thinker and also amazingly creative – and a standup dude ta boot! It’s so cool that every person I’ve met in person after developing a friendship online has been exactly the same person, or better, as they are online! Thanks for the evening Jeff – I owe you big time!

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f2.8, ISO800, 1/250s, 180mm on a Canon 60D

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In much the same way as yesterday’s post, Reflections On La Nana Creek, today’s image took some experimentation to get what I wanted and it also utilized the same technique – going telefoto and compressing the scene. The image was taken at a place called Camp Tonkawa Springs, just a little west of Nacogdoches, TX, where the proprietors of the facility have combined an RV camping area, a domestic animal safari (there are deer roaming all over the place) and a live spring swimming hole, all into one gated spot. Can’t speak much for the RV and animal area, but the spring is quite nice and can only imagine how refreshing it would be to take a dip into that cold water on a hot Texas afternoon!

There were several swinging ropes tied to overhanging trees at the spring and for at least an hour I tried to find the right angle to place the rope, tree and short pier into a shot with very little success. Part of the limited success was related to the surrounding elements, like trash cans and autos, that I really didn’t want in the image. I loved the down home, country feel to swimming in a spring and did not want the other components ruining that.

It wasn’t until I was packing up to leave that the idea of taking the 70-200 lens out and shooting the rope, tree and pier from across the spring hit me, but I’m glad it did. It was a good way of combining the main elements and eliminating the unwanted ones. Probably looked silly laying on my belly taking the picture, though, but I’ve gotten used to looking silly.

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The post Taking a Dip appeared first on Jim Denham Photography.

f11, ISO200, 4s, 86mm on a Canon 60D

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Chances are good, if you’re a photographer, that you’ve experienced a situation where the weather and/or environment did not cooperate with your best laid plans. Unless you’ve got a line to Ma Nature, it’s out of your hands, so if it hasn’t happened to you, it will eventually. Happened to me yesterday.

On Tuesday afternoon, I went for a walk on the La Nana Creek Trail in Nacogdoches, TX, and loved it! It’s a natural path along the creek and it was quite cool to get some exercise and appreciate the surroundings while doing it. After the walk, I scoped out this spot along the creek where the water was still and there were a lot of stumps, trees, and really green color. It became my sunrise spot for Wednesday morning!

Got up at 5 AM on Wednesday to make sure I got to the spot and was set up for dawn, which I expected to bring with it similar conditions as the last couple of days – sunshine, warmth and possibly some rising mist. Much to my disappointment, as the sun came up, it became obvious to me that it was overcast – no sunshine. No mist. The best laid plans were now trash. What do you do? Here’s what I did, but rather than write about it, I’ll show you in a video. Enjoy!

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You ever have the intention of taking one kind of image but the environment doesn’t participate? What do you do? Here’s what I did at La Nana Creek in Nocaogdoches, TX

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f11, ISO100, 1/100s, 8mm on a Canon 60D

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It seems like we’ve been waiting for 6 months or so for spring storms – because we’ve been waiting 6 months or so for spring storms. Finally got one last week, small as it was, but before it came along, the clouds were starting to get good and I had just the shot in mind. The intent was to take advantage of the tonal range and visual volume in the 8mm fisheye to show off those clouds while using the pier at Lake Elmo to add both lines and contrasting textures. Got both of those along with a cool bench seat on the right side of the pier – bonus!

Being the Land of 10,000 lakes, we happen to have a few piers laying about the place and once you’ve taken a couple of shots of them, they start to look alike. The challenge is to find a unique way to present them in an image – here comes the 8mm fisheye. Just taking a straight on approach looks different, but the beauty in the fish really shines when you change up angles. Just dropping the tripod down below the pier railings makes an impact. It’s also a ton of fun! Will share another soon taken from a completely different pov – guess which one!

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f22, ISO100, 60s, 17mm on a Canon 60D

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It was really disappointing not to gain beach access to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel – it’s entirely residential and you have to know someone who lives there so that can both park and get to the beach. No such luck for me, but the Norfolk public beach was a decent alternative, especially when the first thing seen when walking onto the beach was this rusty drain pipe sticking out into the bay. It seemed a bit out of place being that most of the beach is residential access and this dude was big time rusty and obtrusive, but that sewer water has got to go somewhere!

Technical: Used the B+W 10-Stop to slow the shutter down to 60 seconds at f22 using the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. Adjusted white balance due to color cast from the filter, then exported to Silver Efex Pro2 for the black and white conversion. I love the tone control in this program and the blacks just seem to be deeper in this product than others I’ve used. Sharpening in Aperture then noise reduction in Topaz DeNoise.

Take what you get, especially when it’s rusty long exposure goodness!

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f11, ISO100, 1/8s, 8mm on a Canon 60D

Click on image to view LARGE and/or purchase print

It would seem that I’m a bit of a fad follower these days. For Christmas last year, I was gifted the Perfect Photo Suite Upgrade containing the Perfect B&W software and it was used it almost exclusively, until, for my birthday (April 2), the NIK Collection dropped in my lap. The main want in this collection was Silver Efex Pro 2 – for some reason, conversions with software seem to get deep, richer blacks than other tools, and the structure slider is amazingly awesome for use in both black and white images, as well as use in Luminosity Layers in color pics, bringing out some serious detail and tonal range!

What I didn’t expect was to be using the color plug-ins from NIK, Color Efex Pro and Viveza, as much as I am. Now, Perfect Effects still has some presets in it that I like and will use them when the image calls for them, but otherwise, the NIK tools are satisfying everything I need and using the control points has really become easy and comfortable. For color images, the Viveza tool is used for basic, but selective, editing, like exposure and structure. Then, presets in Color Efex Pro are applied for stylization.

Here’s a typical color image workflow. Basic exposure editing in Aperture, then export to Photoshop Elements 11. Depending on the image, the next step is either Viveza for specific exposure and structure application, or to Silver Efex Pro for a high structure luminosity layer, typically masked selectively in PSE11. Either of these two options help to either balance or establish the base exposure of the image and both have been amazing at illuminating shadow detail! Today’s image, a sunset on The Mississippi River in Hastings, MN, started out (see below), where the shadows had little detail. A simple control point applied to the rocks in Viveza pulled out all of the detail and structure I needed to get the desired look!

Back in PSE11, we then select Color Efex Pro for stylization, which is typically found in only a couple of presets. First is Brilliance and Warmth to get the desired color  - this preset is typically applied globally. Depending on the image, I might apply a graduated ND or polarizer globally, as well. Then my favorite, tonal contrast, is applied to bring out the details and is almost always applied selectively with control points.

Once back in PSE11, some dodging and burning can take place if desired, then it’s on to Topaz DeNoise to clean up any noise, then back to Aperture for finishing edits and cropping. It’s a pretty simple workflow and one that’s become relatively quick too. More than anything, the ability to take single images where compromise had to be made due to exposure and balance it out so that it looks more real than anything tone mapped is quite exciting to me. I’m loving the NIK Power!

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• Camera: Canon EOS 60D
• Focal length: 50mm
• ISO: 100
• Shutter speed: 1/8s

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