I recently got a chance to get out and use my newly infrared converted Canon 40D.  I gave it it’s trial run on HDR, of course, so naturally the next subject was waterfalls.  Well, I got to put it’s next subject to the test recently on a trip to Machine Falls near Tullahoma, Tennessee.  Machine Falls is one of my all time favorite waterfalls and I was itching at the change to shoot it in infrared.  It normally is covered in bright green moss, which I thought would come out well in infrared.  I really do like the final result and can’t wait to get this infrared camera more!

Details: 19mm, F/11, 2 seconds @ ISO 100

Although I was doing a lot of testing of my new Olympus Om-D EM-5, I also took my 5D MkII along on the caving trip.  This shot is not like most of the others, as it has no people in it.

It was taken before most everyone got setup.  My strategy was to fire off a few shots with the Canon and then put it away for testing out the Olympus.

This is actually 2 shots at different exposures that I blended together in Photoshop.  Othat than that, no real tricks.

Details: 17mm, F/8, 1.3 seconds (the longest exposure) @ ISO 400

Want to know how I do it?  Well, here you go…the raw, uncut video I made last week of me cleaning my stuff.

I’m sure there are other ways, and probably better ways, but this is how I’ve done it for years now.

Enjoy!

Following along with yesterday’s theme, these are all shots that I took with the new Olympus OM-D EM-5.

Recently a few friends came to visit and I took them around to see some of the area here.  The trip was going to be a waterfall trip, but since we were passing right by, and they might not get the chance to go again, we stopped into the Jack Daniels Distillery and took the tour.

Unlike yesterday’s post, most of these shots were taken at a low ISO and I was not pushing the camera in any way at all, just wanted to travel lighter than normal.

Our first stop, the distillery.  This is inside Jack’s old office.  This shot was the only one taken at a higher ISO.

Details: 15mm, F/5.6, 1/40th sec @ ISO 8000

As much of the distillery doesn’t allow photography, I didn’t take many photos there at all.  Afterwards we walked around downtown Lynchburg for a bit.  Here’s a shot I got of a few of the locals cooling their heels in front of a restaurant.  This is pretty much the image that pops into my head when I hear Lynchburg, TN.  Converted to black & white using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 4.

Details: 42mm, F/5.6, 1/500th sec @ ISO 400

Next we loaded back up and continued on to the first waterfall, Machine Falls, near Tullahoma, TN.  It ended up raining most of the morning and stopped just about the time we started our hike in, which worked out great!  You’ll notice a longer shutter speed on these shots in order to blur the water a bit.  This shot of Machine Falls is actually a vertical pano I did using the EM-5.  It is 5 shots stitched together.

Details: 14mm, F/22, 1.6 sec, ISO 200

Finally, on to the last fall, Rutledge Falls.  It is only about a 5 minute drive from Machine Falls.  This shot is actually a bit up from the main fall.  I like to get above the main fall and isolate a lot of the smaller cascades and falls.

Details: 25mm, F/11, 5 sec @ ISO 200

That’s it for today’s post.  If you can’t tell, I’ve fallen in love with my new Olympus OM-D EM-5!  I can’t wait to show you more of what it can do!

This post is going to be a bit of information about the Olympus OM-D EM-5.  I recently acquired one of these compact, micro 4/3rds cameras and have had a chance to take it through its’ paces a bit now.  One of the first questions I had emailed to me was “Is the ISO/noise performance as good as they say?”.  I thought I would focus on that and show you a bit of what I think in regards.

This past weekend I was invited to go on  a caving trip with a small group of photographers.  I have been on a few of these trips in the past and they are always photographically challenging, but a ton of fun! This particular trip was to more of an underground pit than a cave.  We were being led by a couple of the world’s finest cavers.  The plan was to shoot the light beams coming into the hole of the pit and then have the cavers drop in through the hole on a rope and capture some shots of that.  I have shot this same place and setup in the past, so I kind of knew what to expect going in.  However, this time I was taking a different approach.  In the past, I’ve always shot my Canon DSLR on a tripod at a very low ISO.  This, in turn, causes a longer shutter speed and can create a problem with movement.  Now, mind you, the cavers are also photographers and realize these challenges, so they do their very best to stop on the rope and sit as still as possible for a few moments at a time.  This helps a great deal when shooting at a slower shutter speed.

This time I had the OM-D EM-5 and I wanted to toy with it’s high ISO/low noise performance as requested in my email mentioned earlier.  Instead of shooting at a low ISO, I shot at a very high ISO.  Now, bear in mind, I’m mostly a landscape shooter, so getting much higher than say ISO 400 is pretty rare for me, but hey, we’re testing things out here.  With that in mind, I took my first set of shots at ISO 10,000…that’s right, 10,000…a long cry from 100.  This allowed me to hand hold my camera and shoot at a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action and get a nice, sharp shot.  Now, another thing I was doing here that I never do was shooting strictly JPG.  I normally shoot RAW and swear by it, however, I don’t have a software yet that will read the RAW files of this new camera, so I just choose to shoot in JPG only.  The images you are about to see below were processed in Adobe Lightroom and I only made slight adjustments and intentionally did no noise correction to these at all, as I wanted my original email-er to see how the camera performed.

Without further ado….

Details: 35mm, F/5.6, 1/200th @ ISO 10,000

This one is just a shot of a fellow photographer.  I was still playing around and testing the camera’s limits.  I thought the test was a success

Details: 14mm, F/4.0, 1/13th sec @ ISO 12,800

Another one of them dropping in.

Details: 32mm, F/5.6, 1/160th sec @ ISO 10,000

Here’s just a little wider shot to give you more of a sense of scale.

Details: 22mm, F/5.6, 1/160th sec @ ISO 10,000

Another thing I was super impressed with was the camera’s auto focus ability.  It never once failed, and in some spots in there it was pretty dang dark!  This camera will be in my bag wherever I go now!  I joked with a few friends and told them if I ever run across bigfoot I feel quite certain I can capture a high ISO image of him (or her) that the news can use.

Well, yesterday I had planned to go shoot a waterfall and wildflowers at sunrise, however a sick kid kept us most of the night, so that killed those plans.  So, instead I did yard work all day.  I thought I might be able to squeeze in the same trip at sunset, but alas, I was much too tired to go anywhere.  What’s a fella to do?  Look around his own yard!

I took the camera, tripod and macro lens out and strolled around to see what I could come up with.  I had just planted some daisies and tulips that morning, so I started there.  I got a few images I liked and wanted to share them with you on my blog.

This is a shot of one of the tulips in the freshly redesigned flower bed.

I shot the tulip at a relatively larger aperture (smaller number) to get a nice blurred background.  It was shot at f/8.  I also had to raise my ISO up a bit to get a little quicker shutter speed as the wind was picking up from time to time and any movement at all was killing the shot and overall sharpness.  My ISO was 400.  This yielded a shutter speed of 1/13th of a second.

This shot is the back side of one of the leaves on the same tulip plant.

For the leaf shot, I wanted to get as much detail as I could, so I shot at a very small aperture (big number).  This one was shot at f/25.  Once again my ISO was 400, however my shutter speed was 2 seconds.  I was able to pull this off because this particular leave was in a spot that was out of the wind.  It was also in a little darker spot, which called for a longer shutter speed, too.

Next time your planned shoot falls though, take a look around your house, or neighborhood.  You maybe pleasantly surprised.

It’s been a long time since I got to get out and did any real shooting.  It seems these babies require a lot of attention

Since it’s been so long since I’ve got to get out, I was digging through the archives tonight.  I came across this image I took a few years back at one of my favorite spots in all of The Great Smoky Mountains…Clingman’s Dome.  I’m not exactly sure what it is about this place, but I don’t think I could ever get enough of seeing the sun rise and set here.  Each one is very unique and amazing!

In the shot below, the sun was setting.  One of the best tips I can give you is be there early and be prepared.  This shot was taken several minutes before the actual sunset.  We thought it was going to be a wash as the clouds had rolled in and pretty much blocked everything.  Then after we had been there several minutes the clouds broke for only a few minutes.  Literally, the clouds broke open just enough for the sun to peek out for about 3 or 4 minutes, then the clouds rolled back in, blocking the sunset, and the shoot was pretty much over.  Most of the time Mother Nature only gives you a few short minutes of gorgeous before she gets tired of sharing it.  Be ready for it!

This is a single exposure…no HDR this time.  It was taken at a focal length of 17mm with a Canon 5d Mk II.  As almost always, I shot it at ISO 100.  I also shot in Aperture Priority mode at f/22 to gain the nice starburst effect on the sun.  This gave me a shutter speed of 0.4 seconds.  That slow shutter speed required that I have the camera mounted on my Vanguard Alta Pro 283 CT tripod to ensure rock solid stability.  I then did the post processing in Lightroom where I opened up the details in the foreground.  I then sent the image to Photoshop where I used the Nik Color Efex Pro plugin.  I applied the “Skylight” preset to the image and moved the strength slider up just a little and I was done.  I’m pretty pleased with the final result.  I just can’t believe I let it sit on my hard drive for so long before doing something with it.

I hope you enjoy!

Due to some good fortune, poor planning and other things, I have visited Old Car City in White, GA a few times over the last few weeks.  I got to shoot with some great, old friends and met several new ones, too.  One of the days I was there shooting, I was invited by my good friend, David Akoubian to go over and join Bill Fortney.  Bill was doing a weekend workshop over there and was a great host!  We only had a few hours to shoot with him and his crew, but they were two very good hours!  I love shooting at Old Car City for all the HDR opportunities it offers.  It also offers a lot of other great photo ops and I’m going to go over a few of what I did with you below…

…first, I did my HDR thing on a lot of different subjects.  These shots are not possible without a good sturdy tripod.  I rely on my Vanguard Alta Pro 283CT all the time to get HDR shots like these.

At one point, I knew I’d get tired of processing HDR shots, so I took a few photos with the intentions of processing them normally.  Here are a couple of my favs.

My good friend and photographer, Lou Raimondi arranged a few models for us to shoot while we were there one day.  This wasn’t something I normally do, but I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to shoot good looking girls and cars

Then, after I had shot the models for a while I went back on the search for more rusty car subjects.  I didn’t get very far until my battery had died in my 5D MkII.  No big deal, I’ll put my spare battery in, right?  Well, it was dead, too.  That is so unlike me to be that unprepared when out shooting.  Just when I was ready to pack it up, Lou offered to let me shoot with his Olympus PEN E-PL1 mirrorless camera.  I really enjoyed carrying around something so small and lightweight with such an incredible zoom range.  Here are a few I came away with with the PEN.

I know this post is pretty picture heavy, but I was there a lot and took a lot of photos!  I hope you’ve hung in there until the end and enjoyed viewing them as much as I did making them and enjoying the photo experience!

This past weekend I went out for an early morning hike to Sougahoagdee Falls in Bankhead National Forest with another photographer friend.  We got there before light and made the hike in the dark.  Once the light was getting right, we examined various vantage points and angles to get a composition we would like.  During the search for a unique composition, I passed behind the waterfall to get to the other side.  This fall happens to be one of a few in the forest you can walk behind.  I noticed that the sun would be coming up directly in front of the fall.  I immediately pre-visualized the shot in my head and knew what I wanted when the time was right.  I made a mental note and carefully watched as the sun rose.  The weather for the day called for bright sun and bluebird skies, however, as it would turn out there were a few clouds hanging around right at sunrise.  As I got setup for the shot I had already seen in my head, the sun came out, just as expected, but then quickly disappeared behind some clouds.  It would duck in and out of clouds for the next 5 or 10 minutes while I was waiting.  Eventually, it decided to stay behind the clouds until we left.  The point here is, I only had a few minutes to make this shot.

My initial plan was to HDR the final image, so that’s how I shot.  I shot 7 bracketed images at 1 stop apart.  I also shot at F/18 to gain the cool starburst effect on the rising sun.  Once back at the computer, I tried a few different HDR programs to merge the images.  I didn’t like the outcome of any of those, so I went with plan B.  I basically took “pieces” of the correct exposures from each of the 7 images and masked them in Photoshop until I had a properly exposed image throughout.  This is typically my strategy when going for a natural look.  It is a lot like using graduated neutral density filters at the point of capture only I’m applying the “neutral density” where I want in Photoshop.

Well, it took me some time to mask in different parts of the image.  I worked on it for a lot longer than I normally do an image.  I also removed some sun flare that was a result of shooting directly into the sun.  I worked on the image for so long, counting the time I tried running it through a few different HDR programs, that I started to question whether or not the image was worthy of the time I was putting into it.  What I did next was something I would encourage you do to if you find yourself in a similar situation.  I emailed a copy to a few of my close, photographer friends whose opinions I value and trust.  They all reassured me that my time was well spent.  Stepping back and getting opinions of other artists that you truley respect and trust is a great idea.  It was certainly needed for me, in this case.

Without further ado, Sougahoagdee Falls…

As the title of this post says, your panoramic shots don’t always have to be in the standard panoramic format you are used to seeing.  This past weekend a few other photographers and myself made a trip up to Rock Island State Park in Tennessee.  I had never been and had heard great things about it, so I was up for it.  It was a beautiful place and I plan to go back and get more shots in the spring or fall when there is more color.

While we were there the water in the river was very high.  Our area has had an incredible amount of rainfall this month and it is supposed to continue this week.  I’m sure you are thinking a lot of rain means better waterfall pictures, right?  Well, not always and this one of those cases in which it was not better.  The waterfall and river was full of run off and both had basically turned brown and muddy.  I am not a fan of muddy waterfall pictures, but I was there and I was going to be taking some photos.  Now the waterfall itself was roaring!

I decided to try something a bit different.  I took a set of shots to use as a square format panoramic shot.  When I say “a set of shots” it was way more than I had imagined.  I took 50 shots to make the panoramic shot below.  Putting it together almost killed my computer and my patience.

After I had the shot stitched together, I was able to combat the problem of the dirty colored water by converting the image to black and white.  I like the final image.  I’ll show you both images so you can see why I did not like the color one.

So, you’ve got two tips today…try shooting square format panoramics and if you encounter a dirty waterfall, convert to black and white

Here’s the color image.  The name of the falls is Twin Falls, but it may as well have been Diarrhea Falls on this day.

And here’s the final black and white image, which I much prefer.