American Landscapes

Lightroom 4

2012-01-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

Lightroom 4 beta is up for free download over on Adobe's site. The beta lasts until some time in March when the new version is officially released. I remember playing with LR1 and thinking it was fun but not worth the time to learn or the money to buy it in addition to photoshop. The latest version is amazing. You will need to make a free account with with Adobe to download the software.

Lightroom 4 Beta

Here are a few edits with the new software:

Eastern Nebraska

Toadstool Geologic Park

Photo Highlight 2011

2012-01-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

Near Schuyler

Last year was surprisingly unproductive for me. I am having trouble photographing Nebraska with the same enthusiasm and enjoyment I found in shooting Colorado. The sense of adventure is less and there is significantly more driving and less time spent out of the car on foot with the camera hand. Most of the locations are stop and hop it out for a few shots because the location is smaller and less dynamic. Further difficulties arise because much of the year Nebraska is dead and brown. The skies can do amazing things in the winter, but often the foreground just lacks the pull I find so charming of a green vista or a tall mountain. Still some fantastic images were made this year.

Bramble Wildlife Management Area

Platte River State Park

Near Fremont

Near Arlington

Toadstool Geologic Park

Metal Prints and Bay Photo

2012-01-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

I am a huge fan frameless options for presenting photography. Standouts, wood or aluminum mounts, and acrylic sandwiches are attractive and do away with mattes and frames. Often enough perspective buyers are more concerned with matching frames to their house than complimenting the image. To me the most appealing styling would be the aluminum floats. Either the image is printed normally and then dry-mounted onto aluminum or printed onto the metal itself. Then the image is then raised off the wall by recessed box or frame usually 1" in height.

Back in college I was first introduced to the idea by a gallerist at Metro Frameworks Gallery. There I mounted four images from Great Sand Dunes National Park for my senior thesis show. They were epson prints dry-mounted onto aluminum and then given a protective acrylic spray coat. They looked amazing. When they mounted them for me, they scratched one print, noticed it, and offered to redo it free of charge for me. The scratch would have been negligible except then when lit from overhead it showed strongly. They redid it for me and I offered to let them keep the damaged one as an example. To my knowledge they still have and use it. I thoroughly enjoyed process. The prints looked gorgeous when mounted and with a luster finish reflection was not an issue, especially when compared to what could have been done with glass at that price. I kept this set of prints in the family. Right now they're up at my father's place in San Francisco enjoying the bay air.

Lately I have been getting work done with Image Wizards and overall I am very satisfied. The images come out looking similar in dynamic range and color to the epson prints I used to make and have strong and appealing build quality. They use a small folded edge aluminum box to raise the print off the wall and place the usual rubber feet on the box. For the hanger they cut one sawtooth hole for either hanging orientation. I would prefer a way to get a wire on it but considering the size of the box on the back it makes sense. There have been a few hiccups in the finish but the customer service fast, polite, and effective so this is of no issue. Things are different with my experience with Bay Photo. Currently you can find some of the prints I have made through ImageWizard for sale or on public display at Nebraska At the Market or at the Great Sand Dunes National Park visitor center.

on display in the Great Sand Dunes Visitor Center


pin striping, white wedges and dirt

I have been shopping around for a good gallery and store host. While I like the website I have created, having an integrated store with an outsourced customer service would be amazing. SmugMug came recommended to me as well with their integrated printer Bay Photo. When I saw that Bay Photo did metal prints, I was sold. I started setting up a website through smugmug and ordered a set of 5 metal prints from BayPhoto for the Emerging Artist Show at the Artist's Cooperative Gallery here in downtown Omaha. The photos arrive and they're awful. Thin white edges adorn the corners of the images from where they didn't cut the images out of the boards strait. One is cut a full 1/4 shorter than the others. The prints that terrible pin striping that is the tell tale sign of a clogged nozzle on your printer. One print had a dirt smudge in the sky under the finish. Needless to say I wasn't happy. When I contacted Bay Photo they did offer redo the prints for free which is what I wanted but at no point did I feel that they knew how egregious it was for this to go out the door of their shop. Nor was there ever a real apology. When the new set of prints arrived I was similarly dismayed. Of the five, three came in okay. A different one came in 3/8" shorter than the others and the fifth came in just bad. I'm not entirely sure how or why this happened. Time wise I was out, so I ended up only have four photos for the show open (I used the short one) and just left a space for next week when the fifth arrived redone.

Left: what they sent Right: file

As a result I am never going to BayPhoto again for printing. Nor am I going to able to effectively use SmugMug's service (Which I ended my account as a result of this. They were very polite and fast about the whole thing, including refunding the money for the account.) Other photographers I have talked to are generally surprised about my experience in that it happened at all and that happened from BayPhoto. This isn't necessarily indictive of what kind of experience you would have but it was mine.

Theme Music

2011-10-04T20:11:00.001-07:00

If there was ever a song that would be the theme of photographing landscapes, this would be it.

Awesome Weather Tools

2011-04-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

Related to the last post on weather, there are some helpful tools for determining what is going on where. I like to use the following:
National Weather Service Storm Map
Weather Underground Satellite view (day)
Weather Underground Satellite view (day and night)

How you use them is up to you.

Nature Tips #6 Weather

2011-02-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

For landscapes weather is what really can set a photo apart from others, unfortunately it rarely cooperates. So what do we do when out we're energized to shoot, restless, filled with wanderlust? You make do. In this post I will provide suggestions of what do with different conditions we come across when we leave home in hubris shaking our fist at the overcast sky with the intent of making photos.

Fog

Fog is easy to shoot but it does lend itself to certain applications more than others. What I love fog for is that allows you to pull of those foregrounds that you've always loved but what is behind it is simply garbage. Here it's taking out these rather unaesthetic 1950's New England homes and power lines behind the trees. Fog and overcast skies also create a very distinctive light that is fantastic for showing deep greens in forests and fine detail.

Overcast

Overcast about detail and consequently I often find myself defaulting to black and white images. Strong foreground and often minimal to no skies are typical compositions. Anywhere you want a long exposure without a sky this is the time to shoot it. The soft light gives depth to whole image while preventing strong shadow and highlight contrast problems between the flowing water and ground. The soft light also provides you with an opportunity to really drag out those exposure times without having to stop down past f16 (the land of diffraction) or having to slap an ND on your camera (expensive, limited use, often vignettes when stacked with a CPL). It is important to have a CPL along for these days along with foggy days and some some rainy days. Often there is a lot of moisture on everything and you will need to pull of the reflections.

Partial Clouds

There is no real trick here other than what is normal. These days are your bread and butter, your staple diet of delicious days to get some serious work done. Don't forgot the usual rules and tips. The half before sunrise to 2-3 hours after and the reverse for sunset are still your golden hours. Keep in mind that if you can manage it, get those clouds to interact somehow with the ground bellow. Don't just do the usual of softness verses the harshness of the ground, but pay attention to shapes, lines, and positive/negative space in the sky and ground that you can use to give power to your image. Also do not always default to sky/ground, but look for times when you split it up further like sky/clouds/ground, sky and clouds/mountains/foreground and so forth.

Clear Skies

The bane of everything! Woe unto us who get so punished for driving hours upon hours to camp in the cold and then awake before dawn to setup somewhere wonderful and then become inflicted by boring clear blue skies. More than ever are sunrise and sunset important because you will need to find away to make the land itself particularly interesting. Watch for special shapes and colors that would be unusable to mesh with clouds and sky and use them on these days. The sky becomes one giant blob of negative space and balancing it with the ground or just removing all together is the trick.

Rain

The real trick with rain is of course is not to be in it but on the edge of it, but it rarely works out that way. Being successful in shooting in the rain really comes down to keeping your front element clean, for this there are a few tricks. I like to wear a poncho that I drape over myself and my setup with the lens poking out from the edge. Over my front I have placed a clear plastic bag. The bag allows you to compose your shot and set an auto focus point. Then you simply pop off the bag grab the focus and shoot. Lens hoods are help in keeping the element dry as well. It's also a good idea to keep a microfiber cloth on you to spot your lens as you go.

Snow

A lot of the same tricks that apply to fog and rain apply here as well. The trick to all three that's easy to forget is that they'll obscure what you actually want to be in focus and sharp. For rain and snow avoid dragging out the exposure times as more of the snow and rain will fall. Often it's good to include strong foreground elements or details that will provide a visual anchor of detail and interest while the rest fades into weather. Remember to keep your batteries warm and watch ice build up on your camera. Especially when you just come out of a warm car in blizzard the snow will melt on the camera and then freeze which can mess with your controls, especially your shutter, and delay you as you melt and dry your camera.

Photo Highlight 2010

2011-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

A reflection of twelve photos, one from each month, taken over the last year.

January

While I was in school at Regis I always offered to take other photographers in class with me on my hikes, Chris was the first one to accept in my last semester. None of them were ever interested in shooting landscapes but mostly shot street or portraits. So here we are, first or second time out together up in Rocky Mountain National Park and a blizzard (as usual) blows in on the higher lake set. To his credit, he stuck it out with me as we hiked up higher. When we got out onto Dream Lake I stopped to try to work with edge of ice formed from melting and freezing in the wind. Sure enough Chris walks right out into my frame and it's so windy he can't here me yell. On impulse I take a few with him in it and when I get home it made the shot. Without him in the frame the shot is mediocre at best. What makes the shot even better is when you find that Chris is Hawaiian native.

February
This shot is from what was going to be bromeet of photographers who had met on-line, but two of the other photographers bailed on Alex Burke and me so again it was just two us. I love Great Sand Dunes National Park, I really do, and on this day it was in particularly good form. Frozen ice and snow under wind driven sand really gave it a deepness of color and texture that worked and the clouds decided to be heavenly for us. I took this shot using Alex's 3 stop hard edge GND (first time using a gnd) and knew I had gold one even before I checked the lcd for the exposure. Luckily I realized before taking this shot that I had left my 30D up at 3200iso from the last time I went shooting at night but not before I had already taken 70 or so shots. There's some great shots lost to image noise from this trip.

March
Shot mostly for school otherwise I probably would've been playing WoW or something at the time. I always seem to have trouble shooting this location (El Dorado Canyon) and this isn't quite the best one I have gotten from the place, but it is the best non-blizzard shot of the area. It's so narrow that it's hard to work with the light that it gets.

April
This is from another trip out with Alex Burke, this time out to the Pawnee Buttes. It was shot from south of the parking lot for the trail out the buttes. When you're standing there the beauty of the place is somewhat marred by these stupid windmills. All the way up to the mountains nearly and then as far as the eye can see to the east is a wall of them that loops around the park jarring the landscape. I've never really cared for these things and they worry me a little. I fear they'll end up doing what other things like this has. They always said that rivers were too big to be effected by the dams all that much, that the fisheries of the ocean too numerous to be depleted, and atmosphere to large to be effected (ozone layer) but each time it hasn't been the case. I worry that with enough of these things out there we'll end up taking too much energy out of the wind systems and screw something up. I actually talked to a pair of scientists at Creighton U that are working on renewable energy and they gave me a rather dismaying answer, that the wind systems were too vast and powerful to be really effected by these things.

May
I have a lot of photos from May. I went out for the third time with a camera to my ancestral home of Long Island Maine. My Grandmother rents out a house she owns from her parents there and each spring she goes out to open it up, I went with this time worried about her in her age. Each time I go out I am struck by the amount of death I find on the beaches. The first time out I found a striking set of wings washed up a beach, a dead and eyeless seal, the skin of a cat, and other macabre findings and this last time was no different. This round I found dead dear parts, this striking snail, and strange vertebrae washed onto the beach. I found this snail in a cove I struggled with to get a good landscape from (a struggle that was ultimately in vain) and I was delighted with it. It was the snail that produced the delightful and hard to find shells that I loved to find on the beach. It's foot was still intact and the flies had already found it, how could I not shoot it? I've got this one printed off my room now.

June
This is from the second time I was up in a plane flown by long time friend Ted Manos. Over last summer he frantically built up hours to get his next level of flight license and often I went along to keep him company. He was flying some tiny Cessna of one kind or another but more importantly you could open the windows. There really isn't anything like shooting a sunset over the Platte River with your head stuck out a plane.

July
Originally Ted and I were going to go flying again but an incoming storm prevented us. Camera in hand along with the car wheel I dragged Ted around rural Nebraska outside of Fremont to work with the scattering clouds from the storm. Since then, for whatever reason, Ted has started accompanying me outings, sometimes bringing an old Canon a-1 to take shots of his own.

August
From a cross country with instructor flight with Ted. We flew across half of Nebraska or so, away from a developing storm in Iowa. It was fascinating to watch from a plane, the clouds just rise and billow growing mysteriously and continuously in mass. As they grew they were hit by the striking colors of the setting sun from west.

September
Found this guy out the front of my house while doing yard work. He's a swallowtail butterfly larva. I identified him by realizing he looked like the poke'mon Caterpie and then looked up what it was based on. The strange orange horn would emerge when threatened and stank like sulfur, it was very strange.

October
Taken north of Omaha near what would be 72nd street. First time my friend Ted brought a camera along.

November
This is from day 2 of a three day shoot at Hitchcock Nature in Iowa. The strange mist and color are a result of smoke from the fires they lit. As part of a prescribed burn they lit the whole place fire which let me tell you is a photographers paradise. Ignoring the incredible color from the smoke and setting sun, the setting is just so much fun. Small fires appear and burn out in the grass while trees (not these ones mind you) would glow with burning embers. Crackling and crashes could be heard as you stood still as burning trees fell. I had to cut this trip short unfortunately, the smoke eventually started to become too much for me.

December
This a farmers field from a trip out to Hitchcock during a particularly nasty blizzard. I don't know why I always feel compelled to go out these stupid things but I do. It was bitterly cold with a strong gusty wind making it impossible to do anything towards it. It was bad enough the I had to leave Hitchcock early. The wind blow ice encrusted my tripod, camera controls, and glasses making taking photos mostly impossible. Such are blizzards.

Editing Video

2010-11-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

Rather often I get asked what kind of editing I do images. This video shows what kind of editing I typically do. This isn't universal just typical. Video: Editing Landscapes

I got asked again what kind of editing do I do for low contrast shots in references to luminosity masking so here's a quicker and dirtier video: Low Contrast Landscapes

Nature Tips #5 Trespassing and Public Access Land

2010-10-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

Trespassing in Maine

All the photos in this blog are from times when I was trespassing or on public access land.

Trespassing comes up every so often when I'm out photographing with someone. Often times they find it astounding that when I am out in the middle of nowhere I just wander out onto some guys land to make photos or I slip into some abandoned building to take photos. While trespassing is indeed illegal and I can't recommend that you do it, there are some basic rules that can help you stay out of trouble when doing it.

1) Don't take anything from the area and don't leave anything behind.
2) Don't break or destroy anything, keep your presence low impact.
3) Anything you open, like windows, doors, gates, etc you should close as you go.
4) When possible, just ask them if they care you're out there. More times than not they won't care in the slightest and often enough they're delighted someone is out photographing their land.
5) If you get caught, don't act like an ass. You're just a photographer doing your trade. Hand them off a business card if they want one and tell them straight up that you liked the lay of their land and so you went out to shoot it. If you didn't ask them hopefully it was because it wasn't obvious who owned the land or that your light was fading fast, just explain yourself.
6) Stay away from livestock. Regardless of anything just don't go near them, like stay a few miles away at least. Even if you've told them you're going to be out there just stay clear of them.

Following these rules you should be able get access to what you want without getting in trouble. Landowners get burned by people (usually weekend warrior hunters) not following just basic ettique rules like these. If they can't tell you've been there, there's no harm in it.

Now if you're just not comfortable with trespassing or talking to landowners but state and federal parks are just not working for you, you have another option. For those of us in the USA each state should have a handy dandy Public Access Atlas (Nebraska's) that will list and show on maps every single piece of land that you can legally wander aimlessly around in. You can find them on the state's Park and Rec page or you can find them in some sporting good stores like Cabella's here in Omaha tends to have them. These are put out each year for hunters to find areas in which to practice their sport. Keep this in mind when you go to these places and mind the seasons (listed in the front of the atlas). I would stay away from most of these places during deer season for example and I would wear hunter's orange near those seasons as well. Unfortunately the best hunting times are often the best times for photography so there are chances you will overlap. Regardless, the atlas is an excellent and detailed resource.

Next: ???

Nature Tips #4 Vignetting

2010-07-31T20:49:00.000-07:00

Vignetting is a dirty but useful tool. It allows you to place emphasis where you want after the photo has been taken, but using it is frowned upon. The trick is to get away with it. You tend see three versions, one in which it happens on its own, hipsters just blocking out the corners, and people using more discrete but still noticeable methods in photoshop. Lens vignetting happens when the image circle created by the lens does not quite cover the sensor, causing fall off on the corners. Usually these days you see it with older film cameras especially with the cheaper super wide zooms. It can still happen with the new lenses, especially when filters are stacked. Holgas and other such garbage by purposeful bad design tend vignette. Hipsters love to recreate that effect in photoshop with sloppy black mask and gradient. With more careful adjustments, the same emphasis on your subject can be achieved with more taste and discretion.

The intent on creating a vignette should be to change areas of contrast or to create a new contrast between the subject and the rest of the image. The most basic way to do this is to create a level adjustment and then to mask out the subjected with a simple graduated mask. By creating this mask, you create a contrast between subject and the rest of the image by placing the majority of the brighter tones in the subject. Using a curve layer you can fully remove true whites from the rest of the image again drawing the viewer's eye by placing the stronger contrast in the center of the image. The adjustments do not have to be entirely tone based, but can be based on color as well. Look at the image of the ants, using the movie poster popular blue/orange contrast the image becomes stronger because it feels more dynamic because of the contrast. The ants to begin with were already red orange and yellow dominant, so it was easy to create the contrast by making the area surrounding them green blue and purple dominant. Further since the center of the subject is warm while the outside is cool the ants again become the focus. As teh view's eyes are drawn to the warmer tones first.

Next: Nature Tips #5 Trespassing and Public Access Land

Nature Tips #3 Shooting The Sun

2010-07-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me last time for tips on shooting the sun, so random guy out there, here you go.

When you put the sun the image the trick is to get light between it and the rest of image balanced. You can balance the light with a filter or some work in photoshop. A graduated neutral density filter (referred to as a gnd from now on) fits this role just fine. It still has all of the normal problems of flare and unwanted vignetting that can come with using filters, but it still does the best job. If you do not have one, simply cannot get the shot without a prohibitive amount of flare, or the scene has too jagged of a horizon for a gnd, you can come back and fix it up in photoshop.

When you fix it up in shop, you can either simulate the effect of a gnd filter, exposure blend, or shoot HDR (which has its own problems). There are limits to what you can do with a single exposure in terms of 'fixing it.' First is that when you brighten, noise becomes apparent in the image but to expose the sky correctly you need to underexpose the ground. Make sure you have histogram on in your display and highlight warning. Take a test shot and then compensate (it's hard to meter well for this at first, so enjoy the advantages of digital as you learn to gauge it). You are aiming for a shot that has the sun true white and reasonably small while retaining cloud detail. The highlight warning will show you when you start clipping the highlights in the clouds, showing that you have taken in as much as you can get away. When correcting like this, you have to pick and choose the foreground. Silhouetted or shadow heavy foregrounds, like a forest, the dark side of mountain, etc do not work well, there is just too much correction and subsequent noise. Well lit sand, brush, flat areas, and particularly snow work the best. With snow, there often is hardly any correction at all.

Once you have the image in the raw importer, you should notice a little icon shaped like a filter and filter holder on the top menu bar, that is the gnd simulator. Like with everything that has to do with exposure correction, if you can do it in the raw import, do it there. The gnd tool allows you to draw the transition line creating a primitive gradient mask in the importer. While the masking leaves something to be desire, you get a solid set of tools to edit with that draw on data from raw file allowing for less damaging changes to the image. Once you have corrected the image import it and edit as normal. Masking based on percent gray is the best way move on from here. Tony Kuyper has a good tutorial on creating and using such masks over here. For this image, I made brighter than 50% mask and brought down those tones in the sky while retaining the top ones with a curve. Then a similar move with the shadows. Next I added contrast to the moving water with a brighter than 50% mask lowering the mid-tones while brightening the highlights. Finally I adjust the cyan to true blue in the sky and removed the yellow in the sky along the horizon.

Now suppose you were smart enough to bracket your shots and you have multiple exposures to work with you can blend exposures or do HDR now. Pick two exposures, one for the sky and one for the foreground and open them in Adobe Camera Raw. In ACR process the exposures with only the relevant area in mind. Once you are satisfied, adjust for the color on which ever has the most information. Then, in the upper left, select both images and click "synchronize." In that menu select white balance to make the two match in color. Leave checked anything else you want synced between the two images (like cropping or leveling the horizon). With both selected, click open images.

After opening the images select all of one of the images (for the example I selected the one set for the sky) and then copy paste it into the other file. With the top layer (sky in the example) selected click on the layer mask button. Into the mask were going to make a gradient, to make sure it is level you will want to turn on your grid lines (hot key cmd ' on mac). The gradient tool will auto snap to these lines. Usually to get a gradual enough change you will want the gradient to cover up a fair portion of both the ground and sky. What will look best will be different for each image. In the example image you can see the placement of my mask in red. On the right is the final blend, from here you can continue to edit as normal.

Next: How to vignette not like an idiot hipster

El Dorado Canyon

2010-06-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

El Dorado Canyon is a nice but popular State Park located just inside the front range between Denver and Boulder. Nearby is the southern half of Boulder Mountain State Park and Flat Irons Vista both of which can make heading over to the area worth your time. By being so close to Denver and Boulder near H-36 it is an excellent evening hike if you are in the mood for less driving (from Denver) and a laid back walk. There are three trails in the park, one that goes up to the foundations of an old hotel and for an overlook of the continental divide (plagued by trees, but what view isn't?), one that runs by the north side of the stream, and a third that provides access to the western side of the park leading near the Walker Ranch and even further west Gross Reservoir area. The western part of the park actually caught on fire back in '09 as explained in a previous entry.

The park consists of a impressively sheer faces leading down into a rather charming steam that cascades occasionally through out the eastern half of the park. In the summer the place becomes a solid green sprinkled with purple flowers while in the winter the whole of the park enjoys the edge of mountain snows. The snow in the winter can become quite deep and it does get the mountain blizzards that can make driving sketchy, but every time I have gone out in such weather I was only chap in the park besides the rangers. More for than just the solitude, the park really shines photographically at this time as it hides much of the human impact, covers the problems with the sky, and can make for simply gorgeous textures on the mountain faces that will not last the first direct sunlight on them. During the winter excellent ice forms throughout the stream and over in areas at times. I would never test this ice to walking over it though. Along the sides where there is less flow you might be able to get away with it but the stream remains active all year making center ice always questionable. In the spring, particularly during storms the flow becomes impressive.

Photographically I have always found the park to be frustrating under normal weather. Effective evening and morning light is difficult. The stream bends back and forth so much that light becomes blocked quickly often leaving one side of the stream completely unlit (see the first photo). Further I have never had good luck with clouds here either. I don't know what it is about the spot, but it is almost always all or nothing useful. For those reasons, I prefer the park during winter storms for photography.

As one would imagine, the park can become very busy or even full on summer weekends while at all times during the week it is common to find at least one face obscured by climbers practicing on its convenient faces. During winter all of that disappears, usually a handful of hikers will be out on the forested part of the trails leaving the stream and mountains free of distractions for photographing.

More photos of the area, refer to my: flickr

Hanging Lake

2010-04-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Hanging Lake an incredible spot along I-70 south of Glenwood Springs that is perfect for an afternoon photo shoot. The whole of the experience is enjoyable and fits that rare category of being just the right amount of effort to be physically satisfying but not exhausting. The trail starts next to a stream and it is uphill continuously from there for 1.25 miles. Around you are tall trees in a deep narrow canyon, accompanying you for the duration is the stream that is fed by Hanging Lake and Spouting rock.

Once, with another photographer, I hit the trail an hour before sunrise just after a rather nasty little snow storm. To our somewhat sheepish horror, along the trail going in the same direction as us for about 1/2 mile were mountain lion tracks. We could see in the tracks where it came right up the stream at one point, presumably to get a drink.

While in the summer the trail is relatively easy footing that becomes rather less true in the winter. The trail becomes a well-worn rut in the deep snow that people smooth to a perfectly terrible sheen by sledding down in parts, making it rather maddening if you don’t have metal spikes on your shoes. The last little bit that curves around a tree sprouting up out of the rock, where they have rough steps and placed a crude and seemingly not quite substantial enough banister, can also be rather nervous in the winter if it has just snowed. The whole thing can turn into a nasty slick. Bring some snow-shoes with spikes for grip if you make a winter go!

Once you have made it up, you get a fantastic view of the canyon. The canyon faces south-east making morning light better than evening for photographing the lake, but even then the lighting is not fantastic. The lake itself is just past the view point and is rather unfortunately bridged by a wooden walkway to allow access to both sides of the shore. From the far side you can gain access to a rather tempting-looking downed tree that has a flat side facing up. I would avoid this unless you are truly the surest of foot. The water all times of year will be in the least brisk and that rather stable-looking tree is deceiving you. The further out you go on it the more you will find it is actually swaying back and forth from the flow of the falls making balance difficult.

Rather than falling into the lake at the wrong time of year and having a right bad time of it, make your way up to Spouting Rock behind the lake and further up the trail. You can go up from either side of Hanging Lake really, but the left is usually easier depending on the snow. In the summer either is fine. Up there you will find a stream that leads up to a small pool being fed by yet another waterfall. If you make your way behind these falls you will notice that below them out of the rock face is another much smaller water-fall that jets water. This formation can really shine in the winter when the upper part of the falls is frozen and just Spouting Rock is flowing.

There are no fees for the park and its proximity to I-70 makes it a popular spot to go. In my experience on early mornings you can enjoy the place by yourself until normal day hikers come and ruckus up the place.

For more photos of the area, refer to: my flickr

Nature Tips #2 Cyan, Cobalt blue, and You messing with the Hue

2010-04-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

A quick and easy trick to make your skies more aesthetic:

You may notice in some images the most amazing blue skies and you are not quite sure what it is about them that is so appealing. In some cases, it is lack of cyan. While this will not be a universal tip for skies, it works in many cases, particularly when you are creating darker images.

When you darken a sky in Photoshop, especially when using luminosity masking, you will get these kind of muddy dull cyan colors mixed in with the brighter areas of the sky, particularly when the sky is filtered by clouds and horizon haze. To fix this, open up a hue and saturation adjustment layer. Select Cyan from the menu and then move hue to the right until you have the desired sky. Then mask out the rest of the image to preserve the color balance you achieved on the raw import. A quick little fix like that can make or break an image.

Similarly this can be done when you have large bodies of clouds. In these cases I find simply de-saturating the cyan out of the clouds gives a better cloud color. Keep in mind when you are removing this cyan, what you are doing is creating an image that is closer to what we on some level believe it ought to look like. Clouds are black and white with shades of gray. Skies are a Parrish or cobalt blue. Similar things can be done with yellows to greens, though the adjustments are often more slight.

The point of this tip is to bring to attention the power of targeted hue adjustment. In the example images consider that sand is orange and the sky is blue which are complementary colors. If the sand was more yellow, I would consider targeting it to make more orange or targeting the sky to make it more magenta. This is applying basic but effective color theory to a static environment.

Next: Shooting the Sun

Nature Tips #1 CPL – Circular Polarizer Lens Filter

2010-04-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

This one is pretty basic. If you are going to be out shooting in nature, this is your single greatest tool.

Effects

What a CPL does is remove unattractive reflected or glare light. When light becomes reflected from a surface, it becomes polarized. By rotating the filter, you can block this light. This is how photographers remove reflections off of water, give foliage a more saturated feel, and create deep graduated skies.


reflection removal

In the example of the water running over the rocks you can distinctly see the effects of a CPL. Keep in mind that a CPL when set to block reflections reduced on average one stop of light. Both of the images were shot at the same settings at show this loss of light in addition to removal of reflection.

wedges

The CPL darkens the sky creating a strong and apparent graduation of tone (which is not only aesthetically pleasing, but can help create the illusion of a greater dynamic range) but this can be drawback in some cases, especially when shooting with a wide lens. In the example image you can see that the CPL creates a giant unpleasant wedge shape of tone in the sky. The wedge becomes apparent at wider angles. Keep in mind though, the angle of the graduation of tone is related to where the sun is in relation you. In the image the sun is rising and I am shooting the northeast. If I had been facing west, the sky graduation would go up and down and not an angle.

There are other drawbacks to using CPL, but they can be ameliorated somewhat by simply buying a nicer CPL. The problems will always be there, but the higher quality filters will suffer from it less and in less conditions. Cheaper filters can cause your images to be slightly blurry.

Flare

The worst problems appear when the sun shines directly onto your filter. Two things can happen; contrast loss and flare. When the sun shines onto your lens some of it is reflected off the filter, washing out the image. When the sun hits imperfections and the like or becomes split, it can flare. See the example image for flare. More expensive filters try to prevent this with different coatings and lens materials. Keep in mind that is may not be just the filter causing this, but the lens itself. Lenses like filters suffer from these problems.

Flare and contrast can be fixed in photoshop, but its better to get it right before hand. Every edit you make degrades the image slightly. Another two edits can make or break a sky from being a nice gradient to a banded mess of garbage.

A rare but terrible problem that can happen is when light reflected off the lens itself on the filter becomes strong enough to be visible in the image. This occurs under very certain conditions. I have only had it happen to me with CPL a handful of times out of the 20,000 or so shots I have made up to this point.

The bottom line is, buy a CPL as a tool it is essential for photographing nature even with its drawbacks and problems.

All the images presented with this are unedited raw images resized and labeled

Next will be Cyan, Cobalt blue, and You messing with the Hue

Indian Peaks

2010-03-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

Indian Peaks is an excellent location located just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. While the park lacks the large sweeping valleys, it contains much of the same high mountain beauty that you can find in the longer hikes of RMNP. The mountains loom over you once you get far enough giving you the same kind of feel you can find on your way up to Chasm lake, but almost more scenic. As you approach Blue Lake, you pass many smaller calm crystal clear ponds and great piles of boulders littered with strange spiders that bounce in their web. Throughout the trails are numerous wildflowers that gather around the many streams leading to the ponds. Morning light can make these locations glow, but only if you brave the numerous mosquitoes that sometimes fill the lower parts of the trail.

Indian Peaks unfortunately becomes rather inaccessible during the winter months. A gate closes with the first serious snow fall, which extends round hikes by approximately 3 miles. Coupled with the snow it makes hiking there in the winter tiring. Further complicating winter hiking is that the three times I have been there during the winter, I experienced white out blizzard conditions. Like all high mountain locations, weather can be unpredictable but such hikes can be particularly rewarding emotionally. The gate tends to open in late May and closes in September or October.

In the summer, The Blue Lake Trail or the Mitchell Lake trail are relaxing and rewarding afternoon hikes. Expect ice to vary amounts all year around. When I was there in late July standing snow was still present as well as glacial ice and floating ice in Blue Lake. With the ice and blue color Blue Lake is the gem of the park. Various small water falls feed it surrounded by purple and pale yellow flowers and rather tame marmots and mountain grouse can be found near its edge.

During the summer months, park can be busy, especially on the weekends but no exclusively. Come early both for the better light and so you can even find a spot to park while avoiding the crowds. Parking is rather limited, so even when the park is full, once you are out on the trails it does not seem crowded. You are aware of other people, but it is not the point where you feel like a touron standing at the side of the road in RMNP watching elk. Most people stay near Long Lake to camp, fish, and picnic leaving the trails for people who will appreciate them. If you choose to go in the winter, you will likely need to pick up a day pass in a nearby town that is authorized to sell them. They do not sell passes at the park gate during the winter. I do not know if you need a pass in the winter, I have a universal state park pass so I never looked into it.

For more photos of the area, refer to: my flickr

Gross Reservoir/WildFire

2010-02-23T11:56:00.001-08:00

Gross Reservoir is an interesting location near Denver that can easily be accessed en route to Indian Peaks or the mountain highway route to Rocky Mountain National Park for access to Long's Peak. It works particularly well as a quick side trip as not much hiking is required at all. There are three areas for parking that be reached from the highway turn off for it, and more in a private property area. From the three lots good vantage points can be found along with easy access to the shoreline. Unfortunately the park closes at sunrise and sunset rather firmly. Since the area is a water supply, there are always rangers present.

The area in interesting to shoot because you have a large lake in relatively dynamic mountains. Further since the lake is artificial, strong lines have formed along the edges of it. There are several sweeping vantage points from which good panoramas can be made of a sunsets (if you are lucky enough to get a decent one) but doing them for the shores usually is an exercise in futility. Strong winds whip the lake, particularly around an aptly named Windy Point making the water hard to blend the sky equally as difficult.

Nearby are Walker Ranch and the western access to El Dorado Canyon at which a fire burned last fall. On the way back from Gross Reservoir I saw what I assumed to be a controlled burn and pulled off to the side of road. There was middle age pot bellied man walking around a fire. The fire at this point was rather small, smaller than most livings. I grabbed my camera and addressed the man, asking if this was a controlled burned, and after a rather confused exchanged it became clear that this was not and that it had been started by accident. He was trying to stomp it out and asked my to help, but it after a minute or so of doing so it seemed rather futile. The fire started at the top of a wide grass valley with sparse tree cover. Blowing down into a the valley was strong gusting wind, which whenever it gusted would jet the flames over my head. The fire was spreading, fast, and seemed to be inline to go rushing down the valley into a pine forest and then over the last set of mountains to the plains in between Denver and Boulder. It was at this point that it struck me to ask if he had called the fire department. He had not.

After another confused conversation, but this time with 911, the fire department was deployed. The dispatcher had no idea where El Dorado Canyon was and I had no idea what county I was in so it took us a minute to figure it out. It took them 15-20 minutes to get the first truck to us, during which most of the photos I have were taken. After arriving they banned from the area and preceded to set up for the next wave of firefighters. It took them 4 hours, but in the end they got it. As I was driving back to Denver, I spotted large tankers preparing for if the fire managed to hit the high plains, but it never did.

Photos of Gross Reservoir can be found here: flickr
Photos of the Fire can be found here: flickr

Wheeler Geologic Area

2010-02-22T20:38:00.000-08:00

Wheeler is a photographer's wet dream. The formation is large, convex, and south facing getting marvelous light at just about any time of day. Further Wheeler is a bugger to get to. The formation is located east of Creede Colorado in southern part of the state (west of the sand dunes). Off a particularly scenic highway you rather immediately get a tease of what you are going to find as you drive up a rather well maintained but steep in some areas cattle road. This drive takes progressively higher through cattle land and scenic aspen groves occasionally giving a scenic view of the valley bellow. The aspen groves are intermittent making it easy find area that you do not find yourself including the tops of the trees unattractively in the foreground. Eventually you come to the trail head and the start of a very primitive road near an old mill. Unfortunately the remnants of the mill are nothing more than impressive pile of saw dust and bits of twisted metal.

Here you have a choice of an 8 mile hike ( I have seen some people call it a 6 mile and others a 9 mile) or a 14 mile drive. While the drive is tempting, the sign at the entrance of this road forebodes what is ahead. A tow out at this area exceeds 400$ an hour and the road is closed when snow is present. I have been over both. The road is narrow moving in out of forests with numerable small hills at the base of which mud forms. In any kind of rain or snow making this road could become rather unfeasible. In good conditions I have seem 2 wheel drive cars with moderate clearance not have too much trouble with it. The trail is another story.

The tail is to be frank is gorgeous. You hike a long a trail that descends steeply into a canyon while intermittently flows of broken igneous rock cross the trail creating strange patterns. Eventually you reach a stream which you could follow further down into a more dynamic area of the canyon but is in the wrong direction to reach the formations. From there the trail becomes tedious, slowly climbing until meeting up with the road which had to circumnavigate the canyon. From there it goes up and then back down, but not dramatically or strenuously, until you reach the campsite at the base of the formation. Luckily for those of us backpacking there is a stream located within spitting distance of the campsite. I suspect that at times it could run dry, but when I was there in September it still had low but healthy flow. Gold dust is present in this stream. When I was there, an amateur gold panner was practicing her art for fun.

From the campsite, there is a mile and a quarter trail loop around the formation. A direct approach I imagine could be possible, but it would be difficult going, more so if you are carrying a tripod. The trail does provide many good vantage points for photographing the formation. In the morning and evening it can be particularly beneficial to exit the trail and hop around the formations. The strong side light can get trapped between the rocks creating strong warm glows. In the formation itself are coniferous trees, but prior to them is another patch of aspen trees.

Since Wheeler is located in a low populated area, is rather hard to get to, and is considered a Geologic area in a National Forest the area's number of visitors is small. This makes it ideal for photographers looking for a slightly more esoteric location than the national parks. The most common visitor to the park is climbers looking to practice on a nearby technical climb location.

The presences of the coveted aspen and lack of rain makes fall the best photographic time to visit this location. However the threat of the stream running dry makes me place a cavet before recommending this time of year. Make sure that stream is flowing before backpacking in without water.

Unfortunately I have had only one rather unproductive trip out to location, refer to: my flickr

Zapata Falls

2010-02-22T19:04:00.000-08:00

Near Great Sand Dunes National Park is a little gem worth visiting if you are heading to the dunes themselves. Before you reach the dunes once you have turned off of H160 you will see a sign on your right to drive up to the falls. It's a short but long in time 2 mile drive up a moderately rough gravel road. Most vehicles should not have any trouble with it. Then it is a short little hike, maybe a mile or so to the falls themselves. As you reach them you enter this charming tree shaded area next to a stream. You can see small little water fall and beyond it is a narrow chasm cut into the mountain. You then scramble up sharp moss covered stone and hop rocks across the stream to enter the chasm. Once inside the chasm you continue walking along a shallow rock covered stream bed to the falls themselves.

Zapata Falls is two part, the closest to you is a short little thing around 5-6" in height that feeds a pool at the base. Above it is another smaller pool that is fed is by a large 15" or so tall waterfall. this second pool be reached by taking a little risk and climbing up the rock face to the right of the shorter falls.
The falls get the best light during the dreaded hours of landscape and wildlife photography, so if you are back from a morning run out unto the dunes, it is a perfect time to come and photograph the falls. The light shines in around 11am, but this time will change depending on the time of year. The top of the falls has light on it the longest, while light will shine into the chasm itself briefly, shifting where it is hitting due to the shifts in the rock and winding nature of stream. You can extend the hike by following the trail that leads up to Zapata Lake (a nasty little hike if I may say so) but cutting off to down behind the falls. Again with a bit of unwise scrambling you can bring yourself onto a wide table up behind the falls.

I prefer to visit the falls in late summer or autumn, it makes them easier to navigate than during the spring thaw when the water can be rather high and very swift. They freeze completely over during the winter, but usually maintains a slow internal trickle. The first part before the chasm can be tricky during this time if someone has not cut footholds to get up them and you are without some sort of traction aid, but it can still be managed with some care. Sometimes the falls will get rather chewed up in the winter by ice climbers practicing their skills upon it, so earlier the better once they have frozen.

For more photos of the area, refer to: my flickr

Great Sand Dunes National Park

2010-02-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Nestled up against the western side of the San De Cristo range is a most unexpected place here in Colorado, the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The entire first time experience is vaguely surreal and disorienting. As you approach from the south passing some of Colorado 14' mountains you watch them grow. They seem small and diminutive at first, especially in comparison to the mountains behind them, but as you near them you realize just how massive of dunes they are. Two of the dunes, High and Star Dunes, are the tallest in North America, the latter reaching up some +700" up from the San Luis Valley. The second, while ranging around 600" is the closest to you and much easier to reach certainly seems to be taller.

Thankfully the trail head and parking lot are rather close to the dunes, on the eastern side. The cars tend to be obscured from view by a little rise in the ground and tall bushes keeping the sight of such things from being too bothersome when enjoying the views later. From the trail head to the dunes is a bit of flat plains area that floods with water from the Medano Creek during the spring and early summer. Adding to the surealness of area, this creek seems to have a tide as waves come strolling down it. These waves are caused by water building up and then breaking little sand walls in the stream. Unfortunately during the time of year when this is prevalent, the park tends to be busy making it hard to get purist shots of it.

Once you have crossed this you come to a dismaying wall of sand that is High Dune. The hike up this is a bit of work. You can either go plowing strait up as well you can or weave back and forth along the tops of smaller dunes until you reach the summit. The latter is advised if you choose to approach from the eastern side. A more scenic route can be found by following the creek bed to the south and then swinging west to head up the southern side of the dunes. This route is just littered with Prairie Sunflowers, which when I've ever come across them always face east (most frustrating). This way also provides excellent routes up ridges to the higher dunes. You can cut the walk short and head up for High Dune or can you continue on for a rather long hike to head up Star Dune. Continuing on Star Dune is a bit of day hike. It really is not all that far, but the constant up and down coupled with sand can be tiring. Complicating this is that during the summer the sand gets very very hot and like all mountain locations, storms are frequent in the afternoons. I remember on my first trip out here I went charging up the side of High Dune and about 3/4th of the way up I turned around and watched lighting strike just on the other side. Quite unsettling as you can imaging as you watch the storm front inch closer to you as you realize you are holding a large aluminum lightening rod that happens to double as a tripod. Of course in the winter none of these problems exist, but all the charming flowers are gone, as well as the insects.

The Dunes, especially in the lower areas, are filled with various insects. While I myself have yet to make any kind of real photographic study of them, they would be rather good subjects. Most are sizable for North American and rather slow moving. The light would be harsh, but considering the difficulties of getting enough light in macro, especially natural light, I think it could be forgiven. Unfortunately, the bane of all hiking, the mosquito, is present in late summer and fall in number. They can be easily avoided though, they stay near the creek bed and campground, and are practically non-existent on the dunes proper.

Something else to consider when planning for a trip out onto the dunes is wind. While you are the east side of the dunes you tend to have little to no wind. You are protected there by the dunes themselves, and the mountain range to the east. However once you near the summit of High Dune, the east blowing winds can really become trouble. They can kick up sand with such a ferocity as to make any exposed skin scream and leave it red and angry like a bad sun burn. Bring clothing that can you cover all of your skin with and goggles. The blowing sand is bad for lenses and even worse if it makes into any moving part. It takes weeks of use and cleaning to get my tripod free of the stuff. I have a friend Alex Burke (to whom this photo of me must be given credit for) who tends to shoot 4x5. He complains with vehemence the problems of the dunes and the large format gear. I can only imagine the trouble as I hear sand within my own. The photos always make it worth it. Do not let the thread of blowing sand deter you, it is not a constant. Of the four trips I have made down to the dunes, the wind has only been a real problem once and non-existent other times. It was calm enough one occasion to sit down and wait for better clouds while reading Asimov.

Good cloud formation can be problem. They form on the mountains all around the valley during the morning and then blow in for early afternoon. They tend to come from the west, northwest, but it depends on the wind. Two wind systems collide over the dunes, which is part how they are created, but this collision can paralyze the clouds over the mountains leaving much of the sky dull empty.

Something else to consider when planning a trip the dunes, is the access they give you to the mountain range, especially Zapata Falls. You can also use it as a stopping point for a trip out to Wheeler Geologic Area.

For complete set of my photos of the area refer to: my flickr

Photograph of me by Alex Burke: flickr

The Beginning

2010-02-08T19:38:00.001-08:00

The purpose of this blog will be to review hiking and camping locations along the Colorado front range in their relation to photography.