Appreciating My Backyard

This is what I see right now when standing in my backyard.   It looks a little different from the March 25 view I posted earlier.  The field is full of yellow buttercups.   Cattle graze here and I wondered why they didn't eat the buttercups.   I've learned that buttercups are poisonous and the acrid taste and the blistering of the mouth caused by their poison means the buttercups are left alone to grow and spread across the hills. 

I've been watching for dramatic skies at sunset but it does not happen very often and when it does it's usually gone by the time I can get out there.  I'll keep watching and trying to get out there in time.

This photo reminds me just how blessed I am.   Sometimes I focus too much on the material things and miss the blessings God has placed right in front of me.   This view is just one of those blessings.   My photography has made me appreciate God's gifts of beauty all around us.   June and I both notice that we are stopping and looking at things we would have passed right by without noticing a few years ago.   Canada Violets are pretty common around here in the spring.  They're not something that you would stop and take time to appreciate, especially in the rain.  But this one was taken last weekend in the Smokies in between rain storms.   If we hadn't taken the time to stop and been willing to risk the rain, we would have missed this wildflower decorated with jewels of rain.

What else has God placed before us?   The grand panoramas and the little jewels are all around us and say "Look what God has done here!".  A friend sent me an email this week with this verse that says it better than I can.

"God's invisible qualities and divine nature have been clearly seen in all creation, so that men are without excuse."  -  Romans 1:20

Let's slow down and appreciate God's invisible qualities and divine nature all around us.

Springtime In The Smokies

Every season is special in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  Fall brings a blaze of color as the leaves change before falling to the ground.  New fallen snow in the Winter makes everything quiet and pure.  With all the different elevations in the mountains you can find wild flowers blooming in the summer and later in the summer you can find Elk and other wildlife out in force.

My favorite season is still Spring and Spring in the park brings an explosion of new growth.  The green of new growth on the trees is brilliant, the moss on the rocks and downed trees is almost electric, and wildflowers are everywhere you look.  Over 1,660 kinds of flowering plants can be found in the park, more than in any other North American national park!   Right now the park is changing almost daily as new varieties bloom and others fade away for another year.   Spring also brings rains that fill the creeks and waterfalls throughout the park.  

Last weekend June and I spent Friday afternoon, Saturday and part of Sunday hiking and enjoying the beauty of God's creation busting out everywhere we looked.  We went to some new areas of the park we had not visited before and a waterfall we had never seen because it's always  been too crowded (Laurel Falls - a little rain can drive people away).  As with most all our vacations, we got up at 4:30 AM Saturday morning to drive to one of the best spots for sunrise in the park.   When we got close the fog rolled in and we were creeping along at about 5 mph.  The fog cleared but the clouds blocked the sunrise.   The cars passing along the Newfound Gap Road allowed me to create some interesting long exposure photos.   I call this one "Close Encounters of the Smoky Mountain Kind".   If you are old enough to remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind you may remember the scene where the spaceships were flying through the mountains just above the road with nothing but their lights showing.  This reminds me of that scene.

If white is the color of winter, yellow/orange the color of fall, then green is the color of spring in the mountains.   The new growth on the brush and trees is that bright green that says Spring!  But it's not just leaves and grass that are green this time of year.  The moss on downed trees and rocks in the streams is beautiful.  It's a soft green blanket that covers the forest floor, banks of creeks, and rocks sticking up out of the creeks and rivers.   There are times that it looks like the moss is electric it's so bright. 

Because of the mild winter and the warmer that usual spring the wildflowers are blooming 2 - 3 weeks early this year.  Normally the third week of April is the peak wildflower time but this year we found an abundance of flowers blooming in the lower elevations of the park.   We saw multiple varieties of Trillium, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Phlox, Wild Geraniums, Wild Columbine, Bishops Caps, Fringed Phacelia , Bluets, Shooting Stars, Violets, Showy Orchis and even one Lady Slipper Orchid that had bloomed very early. 

My favorite wildflower spot of this trip was actually right on the Newfound Gap Road at a pull off.  We we heading back towards Townsend and it had started to rain.   We saw some Yellow Trillium on the side of the road and decided to pull off and check it out.  What a find!   There were beautiful large Yellow Trillium surrounded by Fringed Phacelia and Bishops Caps on a hillside.  It was raining enough that water was pooling in the large leaves of the Trillium and the overcast skies made the colors more intense.


We hope to get back to the park again before the end of the too short Spring wildflower season.  We'll hit some more places and hopefully see different varieties.


These three photos, plus 23 others are available in the Recent Outing Gallery on my website.  Check them out and let me know what you think.

View From Our Backyard

I was washing dishes Saturday afternoon and looked out the kitchen window to see this.

We get some awesome sunsets across that pasture and I've tried to capture them before.  Most of the time by the time I get my camera and tripod out, run outside, and set up the light is gone.   I've never been able to capture any of those light displays.  This time was different.  I had just gotten a new Canon 5D Mark ii the day before and it was sitting out where I could grab it on the way out the door.   I didn't bother with the tripod and decided to do the best I could without it.

The bright sky and relatively dark field was much to big of a dynamic range of light for the camera to capture.  Either the sky was going to be blown out bright white or the field and trees were going to be very dark.  I shot three exposures (-1 EV, 0, +1 EV) to capture the entire range of light.   I should have gone with a wider spread because the brightest part of the sky was blown out at -1.   After I made those shots I changed the settings and poof the light was gone!   Unlike the light in my last post, this time it only lasted a couple minutes.

I used ISO 800 and f/22 to try and get a star burst from the clouds.  At that setting I got shutter speeds of 1/20, 1/40 and 1/80.  I was hand holding with image stabilization on.  I had no idea if the three images would line up or if I had too much camera shake.

My workflow for this photo was longer than most:

1. Ran the three exposures through Nik Define to remove the digital noise due to the ISO of 800.
2. Combined them using Nik HDR Efex Pro using a Natural setting.  I used some control points to tone down the dramatic clouds that HDR processing created.  I used another control point to brighten up the tree on the right that had come out too dark.
3. Edited in Photoshop Elements to remove some severe lens flare created by shooting into the sun and some power lines in the distance.
4. Edited in Nik Color Efex 4 to fix the clouds (they came out light brown), make the rolling hills more distinct, and bring out the "God Beams" of sunlight.  Also added a little dark vignette  around the edges.

I am truly blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the country, have such a great view right outside my back door, and have a God that creates such beauty each and every day.  I'm also thankful for my wife June who first pointed out the light and offered to finish the dishes while I went out and played. My photography would be dull and uninteresting without her spotting the shots for me.

Of course, you can buy prints of this photo online 

The Sunrise That Goes On and On

June and I spent last weekend at Pine Mountain State Park in Kentucky.  June went with me for a photo workshop that the park puts on to bring people in during the winter.   I was hoping for a foot of snow because winter in the mountains without snow can be a bit blah.  What we got instead was a beautiful sunrise that just went on and on.

A good sunrise has enough clouds to pick up the reds, oranges, and yellows but not so many that you can't see the sunrise.  Many times we have gotten up long before the sunrise to drive to a spot and wait to see what God does with the break of day only to find the sky completely overcast or no clouds at all.  We never know what we will see when we head out.  

On Saturday morning we went to what I thought was the best spot for sunrise.  When we got there we found my friends Bill Harris and Roddy Addington from Wise VA already in place and set up waiting on the sunrise.  As time went on other photographers began to show up.   It was cold up on the mountain that morning but we all hung in there waiting.  We were not disappointed.

Before the sun rose above the mountains to the east the undersides of the clouds were brilliantly lit with oranges, reds and yellows.  There was even a sunbeam shining up from behind the mountains in the photo below.  The valley was still dark but the fog reflected the warm light from the sky contrasting with the cool purple of the shadows.

As the sun rose above the mountains a layer of clouds formed just above the ridge.  I was able to catch the sun shining between the two and radiating upward out in all directions.

As the sun rose above the cloud bank above the ridge the colors turned from red and orange to yellow.  I shot this picture just as the sun was peaking over the clouds.   A small aperture of f/22 produced the cool sunstar effect.

The cloud cover was moving and changing as the sun rose, constantly changing the scene.   When the sun was high enough to shine down on the fog in the valley it burst out radiating golden "God Beams" down across the valley.

We were blessed with thirty minutes from the first photo to this last one, which is a long time for a sunrise.   After this last shot the clouds closed in and the morning became overcast and rainy.  Saturday's sunrise was over and it was time for breakfast.

The next day we went back to the same spot.  This day the sunrise was completely different with no clouds and less fog in the valley.   The sky just got brighter as the sun came up with very little color.   The interesting subject this morning was the valley and the fog that was slowly burning off.   I used my 400mm telephoto lens to zoom in on this community and church in the valley while capturing the fog in the hills and valleys.  You couldn't see these buildings at all on Saturday morning because they were completely fogged in.

I hope you enjoy this series of sunrise shots from Pine Mountain Kentucky.  These photos are available for purchase in my Pine Mountain Gallery.

Great Landscape Photographers

If you're reading this on my blog site you may notice a list just to the right labeled

Be sure to check out some of my favorite websites

 

You'll find listed there a few photographers I admire.  Some I know personally, others I just know from their photography.   All are excellent and inspire me to improve my photography every time I go out.   At the bottom of that list is a link labeled The Worlds Greatest Landscape Photographers.   This is a larger list put together by David Herreman in Belgium.  If I attempted to make such a list it would be very similar to David's.  If you are a landscape shooter or just enjoy looking at outstanding landscape photographs, check out David's list.  If you click on the thumbnail picture you will go to that photographer's website.  

 

Many of these photographers are on Google+ and clicking the G+ will take you to their Google+ page.   I don't know what will happen if you're not a Google+ user.   Maybe you can see the pages, maybe not.   If you're a photographer and not on Google+ then you're missing out.   Go sign up and start adding other photographers to your circles.   It's an amazing online community.

 

 The photo is Laurel Run Falls in Hawkins County, TN.

Rediscovered, Revisited and Revised

Back in November 2009, June, her brother Jerry, and I went to Fall Creek Falls for a couple days.   We weren't there for photography but of course I had my camera and went out early one morning for sunrise over the lake.  There weren't many clouds in the sky that day but there was a nice fog around the lake which made for some nice soft scenes.  It took several photos, edited some when we got home, then didn't do any more with them.   They were forgotten until I was looking for something else and rediscovered these photos.

There was one photo I decided to see what I could do with over two years later.   Would it be better?  Worse?  Would it come out the same?   My experience tells me any of these outcomes were possible.  I've decided to share what I did and let you decide.

Here's the original "as shot" image, straight out of the camera.

You can click on any of these photos to get a larger view.

The sky was over exposed on the right side.  The cloudy white balance gave it a nice warm feel but the blues in the sky were almost unnoticeable.  The camera was slightly tilted to the right.  Other than that, not a bad shot.

Here's what I did back in 2009.

1. Changed the white balance to daylight, giving it a more bluish tint.
2. Dialed in +31 on the recovery slider, bringing back the blown out highlights on the right side.
3. Turned the brightness down from the default +50 to +18, darkening the photo.
4. Increased the clarity (+14) and vibrance (+12) making the orange clouds stand out a bit more against the blue sky.
5. Increased the contrast using the Tone Curve

This is a much more interesting photo than what came out of the camera.   That's where I left it back in 2009.

This time I decided to start back with the raw image as before and use some of the Nik software filters in addition to Lightroom.

I decided the right side was not the most interesting area of the photo and cropped it to a vertical format, removing most of the right side.  In addition to the tree there is an interesting curving path along the lake shore that you just don't see in the version above.  I want to bring that out to add the s-curve to the composition.   I could use the Lightroom tone curve or fill light slider to lighten the dark areas, but I've found the Detail Enhancer filter in Nik Color Efex pro to do a great job bringing the details out of dark areas.

Before editing in Color Efex 4, I first ran the image through the Nik Define 2.0 to remove any noise.  It's always a good idea to do this first because many adjustments can magnify noise (static) in a digital photo.  Here's the cropped photo after removing noise.

I then opened the photo in Nik Color Efex 4.   Applying the Detail Enhancer filter to the entire image really messed with the soft fog, water and skies.   I used control points (which is the coolest part of the Nik software) to only pull out the details in the shoreline and a little in the trees.   The Brilliance/Warmth filter and the Skylight filter added a little saturation to the orange clouds and blue sky bringing back the colors of sunrise that were lost in the original as-shot photo.

Another cool artistic Nik filter is Glamor Glow.  Sounds like something designed for portraits, but it can  be very effective at creating a moody feel in a landscape photo like this one to emphasize the fog on the lake.  Again I used some control points to not add glow to the shore line or the tree in the upper left so I wouldn't lose those details.

Finally, I used the Darken/Lighten Center to add a nice vignette around the outside, drawing the viewers attention to the tree in the center.  One thing this filter allows me to do that I can't do in Lightroom is place the center of that vignette.  By placing the center to the left side I was able to emphasize the shore line, leading the viewers eyes up to the tree.  Here's a side by side view of the photo before editing in Color Efex and after.

   When I brought the photo back in Lightroom I noticed a few dust spots in the sky that needed to be cloned out and some weeds at the bottom of the photo that were a little distracting.  I used Photoshop Elements to close out the dust spots and weeds.

Here's the final Rediscovered, Revisited and Revised Photo

 

 

Is this version better than what I did in 2009 or just different?  You'll have to decide for yourself.  I kind of like it.  In fact, I may print it to hang at home or at work.  This photo is available for purchase online here.

If you're not a photographer you may not find any of this of interest.  I hope you at least enjoy the photos.  If you found this of interest and want to learn more about Lightroom or Nik software let me know.

My Top 10 for 2011

It's kind of fun to look back over the past year and go through photos that I've taken.  It's like remembering a lot of great times with my favorite people.  I just went through all my 2011 photos that I had posted in my gallery and picked 10.   I didn't agonize over the selections so it only took about 15 minutes to create a new gallery called Top 10 of 2011.

Some things I found interesting and maybe a bit surprising when I got down to 10:

• There are no lake, stream, waterfall or reflection photos.  This has always been my favorite subject to photograph and there are a lot of them in my web site.  In fact, I've created a special gallery for those photos.
• Two out of ten were pictures of wildlife.  I've not taken many wildlife photos in the past but am getting to where I enjoy the challenge.
• Half of the top ten were taken on a photo workshop with Bill Fortney, Matt Kloskowski, and other great photographers.   A workshop is perhaps the best investment that can be made in your photography.
• Two were taken while on a family vacation to Hilton Head SC.  The beach is my least favorite place to visit but I always seem to come away with some nice photos.
• One was taken in my front yard.  Just goes to show you don't have to go far for inspiration and subjects.
• Every one of these photos was taken with someone along with me.  Either with other photographers in the workshop, with Harold Ross on a trip to the Smokies, or with my bride, who is my favorite person to have with me when photographing.

I hope you enjoy these ten.  Drop me a note and tell me what you think.