Tuesday, January 15, 2013

My Top 5 From 2012

I thought since it's January I would go back and look at my images from this past year. It is amazing to me how far I have come as a photographer in the past year. It took a lot of reading, reviewing, editing and of course shooting, I can't wait to put even more into my photography this year to see where I can get at the end of 2013. I have a lot of planned for 2013, it's going to be a great year for pictures.

Here are my top 5 shots from 2012.

Snake River Overlook


Moulton Barn

The Browns

Oceanside Pier

Joshua Tree Stars



Saturday, January 5, 2013

Oceanside Pier 2

ISO: 100  Focal Length: 11mm 
Aperture: f/22  Shutter Speed: 5 seconds

The Shot

Piers present a lot of opportunities for shooting. The texture of the sky and the pier along with all the strong lines made me immediately think of doing this shot in black and white. In order to make it seem like there weren't very many people on the pier I used a long shutter speed. When you do this you can make very crowded places seem almost empty. So to do this I put my polarizer on to cut down some light and then used the smallest aperture I could. I also decided not to make the image symmetric because I thought the clouds on the right side of the shot were too interesting to cut out.

Post Processing

When I got the image onto the computer all I really had to do was convert it to black and white with Nik Silver Efex Pro and then sharpen it.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Holbrook Canyon

ISO: 100  Focal Length: 13mm 
Aperture: f/13  Shutter Speed: 2.5 seconds
Exposure Compensation: +1.33

It was a very cold morning when I got up to shoot this. When I arrived at Holbrook Canyon it was snowing. Luckily, I had an umbrella in the car so I could avoid getting snow on the front of the lens. After walking down into the canyon I made my way to the creek and worked through a few compositions before I finally arrived at this one.

Composition



I composed the image this way mainly because of two things. The ice and cascade provide a definite focal point for the image and the way the creek meanders around the snowy outcropping creates great leading lines that create depth. Notice how the eye immediately goes to the cascade and then will generally follow the stream. The use of curves like this is an excellent way to make a stronger composition.

Post Processing

Once I got the image on the computer I took down the highlights some to bring some texture back into the snow. I sharpened the image and added some definition to make the ice pop out even more.


When shooting snow you will usually have to overexpose the image. If I did not use a +1.33 exposure compensation the snow would have shown up as a grey color.