New Floral Work

I had some free time this weekend, so decided to set up a little makeshift studio in the house and do some floral/abstract/macro work. I used a small portable lightbox, remote triggered flash for backlighting, and extension tube. Finding flowers in their natural habitat is always nice, but when that's not possible, a simple set up and stop at the supermarket will suffice :)

Top Ten Photos of 2012

2012 was an exceptional year... in the Spring I shot in Death Valley NP and the Eastern Sierras, and in the fall spent a week in Glacier NP. I added a very diverse collection of images to my portfolio, including snowscapes and mountains in the Sierras; dry and desolate desert photography in Death Valley; fresh snowmelt cascades through the meadows of Glacier NP; intimates of fall foliage; and night shots of the milky way and cloud streaks over joshua trees and old gnarled whitebark pines.

View these images and more, or purchase a print, on my website: Exploring Light Photography

Here is my selection of my Top Ten Photos for 2012 (click and image to enlarge):

Honorable Mention: Ocean Dreams
Beautiful soft light and incoming tide at sunrise on a unique stretch of Florida's Atlantic coast.

10. Mystic Waters
Fierce winds provoke crashing waves on the shore of St. Mary's Lake at sunset.

9. Years Gone By
Five minute exposure captures cloud streaks behind a gnarled Whitebark Pine, illuminated by a full moon.

8. The Dreamer Awakens
As the moon sets, the glow from the rising sun reflects off crashing waves and rough surf on a windy morning.

7. Endless
Cascades through the meadow of Glacier Park towards a vibrant sunrise and mountains beyond.

6. Fading Glow
The sun sets on a calm evening over St. Mary's Lake in Glacier Park.

5. Beyond the Invisible
A large joshua tree frames the summer constellation of the Milky Way, photographed in the wilderness of Death Valley. Single exposure of f/2.8, ISO 4000, 30 seconds.

4. In the Beginning
Clouds split the late afternoon light on a smoky day on Glacier's St. Mary's Lake.

3. Desert Passage
Reflected light of sunset on the salt lined flats of Death Valley.

2. Last Refuge
A lone sagebrush and distant dunes in Eureka Valley.

And my favorite, 1. Soft morning light on Mt. Tom after a snowfall in the Sierra Mountains.

In the Beginning

I had just arrived to Glacier National Park in the mid afternoon after two long days of traveling. Coming from Florida, I flew to Spokane, spent the night and drove 7 hours the next day across Montana to the East side of the park. It was an unusually calm day. Most who have visited here remember consistently strong winds over the lakes and Logan Pass area. This day was quite different. Some late afternoon clouds filled the sky, and I was surrounded by a smoky haze from some distant wildfires. As usual at the beginning of my trips, I was full of energy and ready to go, having a hard time waiting to try out my new Nikon D800 that I bought before the trip to replace my Canon 5DII that I had used for the previous three years. I first set out to the banks of St. Mary's Lake. The atmosphere was great for some late afternoon shooting. As the sun became lower in the sky, the low clouds split the light, with rays (aka, "god beams") accentuated by the haze. I shot in this location for just over an hour, and created this monochrome image of the light rays over the lake with a lone tree in the foreground.

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As the sun began to set, the low clouds started to dissipate, but hung around long enough to produce some nice color. I walked about a quarter mile west on the banks of the lake and set up at a relatively popular location to shoot the sunset. Most shots I've seen from this area capture fierce waves crashing on these foreground rocks, but as you can see the lake was totally calm that day. This was a single capture just before the sun dipped below the mountains. I did not add any Orton effect here; the soft glow of the sky was created by the hazy air.

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Endless

Cascades through the meadow of Glacier Park towards a vibrant sunrise and mountains beyond.
This particular morning in Glacier NP gave some of the best light I've seen in awhile. My main shooting was done earlier in the morning down below in the meadows, capturing the pre-dawn pink and purple glow over the cascades. Once that light faded I hightailed it up stream and a little higher up to shoot this scene directly into the sunrise. Even after the sun peaked above the mountains, the light hung around for another hour or so, thanks to some nice cloud placement and the smoke that was ever present in Glacier during my trip. I created this image using a blend of two exposures, one for the sky and another for the foreground and mid ground. With my new D800, I probably could have captured this in one exposure, but old habits die hard. I'm amazed at the tonal range that camera captures, and the amount of recoverable detail in the highlights (as long as they are not blown), and shadows in particular. I processed the sky exclusively in Lightroom, and blended with the midground and foreground I processed in Photoshop, mainly by some selective levels and curves adjustments, dodging and burning. Thanks for looking!

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Years Gone By

Five minute exposure captures cloud streaks behind a gnarled Whitebark Pine, illuminated by a full moon. This was a lot of fun to shoot. These gnarled old pines are located atop a lonely plateau just outside Glacier Park. We scouted the area in the early evening, camped nearby and returned at 3am to catch the moonlight. The conditions were perfect. A full moon illuminated the landscape with cloud streaks moving east, while the winds on the ground were blowing around 40mph consistently, with gusts well above 50mph. And did I mention it was very cold!

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Summer Cleaning

    Three months ago I undertook the ambitious project of going through and cleaning up my image library of over 2 terabytes. The organizational scheme I have used since 2009 was no longer working for me. I had my images catalogued primarily by date, and only secondarily by location. I found it increasingly difficult to locate files, and found that some had vanished completely. I do maintain several backups, and was able to locate some images that had been lost, but that made the process all the more time-intensive.

    Currently, I have my library stored on my Mac Pro at home, on a separate drive from the system software, just in case that somehow becomes corrupt. I also have a Drobo system at home which backs up daily, and itself is a RAID system for redundancy. I have an additional backup that I keep locked up off site, and my final backup is to CrashPlan, where I can upload unlimited data for just over $5 per month. Barring a natural disaster on an epic scale, my images are safe.

    My current catalogue organizes images by both genre and location. For example, I have a top-level folder for all "floral" images as a genre, but separate folders for those best organized by location (e.g., North America-->California-->Death Valley). In the Death Valley folder, I have folders for "Gallery" (those images on my website), "Previous Versions" (I like to save the previous versions of images I have reprocessed), "Processed Extras" (photos I processed but did not make it on my site), and "Original RAW" (I always keep my original RAW files in case I need to start from scratch). So far this system is working well.

    One benefit of going through this exercise, is that I browsed most of my RAW files from previous trips, and several caught my eye that I had overlooked for whatever reason the first time around. There are those who believe that photos should be processed as soon as possible to try and preserve the feelings and emotions invoked when the image was taken; others prefer to wait a while and "let things settle a bit" before processing to view images more objectively. I think the answer is somewhere in between.

    Here are a few images I dug from the archives and added to my galleries (click an image to enlarge):

Islands

Looking through my portfolio, almost all of my landscape images are created during that magic, golden time around sunrise and sunset (except many of the slot canyons and sandstone images which require a higher sun to bring reflected light). The islands of the South Pacific and Caribbean have always been a favorite travel destination of mine, though I regret not having done much photography in these places. Many shots there are made best by a high sun bringing out the beautiful water. I started a new Islands gallery, which I hope to fill and improve upon in the coming years. Such places of beauty are certainly the gems of the world.

Turks and Caicos Islands

Mountain Light

I spent an amazing week in the Eastern Sierras a couple of months ago for the first time and it was incredible! I also had the chance to visit Galen Rowell's Mountain Light gallery in Bishop, California a couple of times. His photos from the area are inspiring, to say the least. One of my last mornings there, I caught some great light on the peak of Mt. Tom just after sunrise, and thought "Mountain Light" would be a fitting title.

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From the Archives: Out to Sea

Every once in awhile I will remember taking a shot that I really liked at the time, but just couldn't connect with enough to put into my portfolio. Such is the case with this shot, that I took almost four years ago on the Atlantic Coast of North Florida. It was my very first visit to this particular location which has since become a favorite local shooting destination. The tide was at its peak, and intermittent rains from an incoming storm made shooting very difficult. The sea was rough, with sets coming in one after the other. The shutter speed I chose was perfect to showcase the water here. I pulled this photo from my archives to give another shot at processing, using techniques I have since learned with luminosity masks, dynamic range blending, and dodging and burning. The result really sang to me, so much so that I made it my cover photo for my Coastlines gallery.

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Beyond the Invisible

Taking advantage of the clear night sky, we camped in a remote section of Death Vally laden with Joshua Trees. Seeing the Milky Way like this really makes it worthwhile to crawl out of the tent at 2:30 am! It's amazing how much color the camera can capture on a clear night, far more than is visible to the naked eye. I shot this with my Nikon 14-24 at 14mm, positioned very low to the ground and looking up. Using a single exposure of 30 seconds, ISO 3200 and f/2.8, I briefly painted the tree with a pocket flashlight for a couple seconds of the exposure. This image required minimal contrast and color adjustments, along with some dodging and burning in PS.