Fall

Firstsalt - looking good. Just a thought for you. When you find a cool subject and frame it, don't forget to look at your background (thru the camera of course). Often a little move to the left or the right can eliminate a distraction in the background and it really helps isolate the subject.

1st east..bingo..., second Alaska, third Alaska (so both west, wayyyy west, oh, and North quite a bit too!). The Moose is looking to the East actually.

I shouldn't speak for Doug (but I will add my thoughts about your question). I am sure he will chime in too. If you look at Doug's shots he used a longer shutter speed giving the moving water that mystical soft look to it. Probably an overcast day too. Maybe it was in the magic hours and he just keep the image framed low to keep the high light areas out of it thus reducing a severe contrast situation (though he does love those NG filters!)

Probably more importantly he is amazing with post processing. All us other neophytes (well at least me for sure) are probably way over sharpening our images. Sharpening is an art in and of itself. Using masking you can have a significant amount of control. I've tinkered with it, and do it to some extent with my prints, but not with a quick post online. Also using post processing to can significantly alter an image. I tend to prefer high contrast, and high sharpness. In fact both of the First images are old ones of mine shot on Velvia that is known for it's high contrast, color stauration, and sharpness :).

So what say you Doug? :)
 
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I love the fall....Love, Love, LOVE the fall. Squeters are gone, colors are blazing, animals have their nice winter coats going and wicked antlers. Nothing like it man.

reflection2.jpg
 
Yeah TS I saw the mock turtle pretty quickly but still looked for a live one. :wildone:

Louis I very much like your second shot in your previous posting with the snow on the mountains and the fall colors on the trees as well as the wide format. Beautiful.
 
lol

Louis, I love the shot of the lichen in the leaves. Great composition.

Louis touched on a big part of it. It's the light. If you never learn anything else about landscape shooting it should be that the light is far more important than the scene. You need to learn to see not just the amount of light but the color and feel of it.

Both of my shots were taken under completely overcast skies. The result is a "softbox" effect. Defined shadows go completely away. It's the shadows that make shot taken in bright sunlight to appear harsh and overly contrasty. No matter what the location if the light isn't right I generally leave my camera in the bag. There's really nothing that you can do to replace that quality.

As far as processing goes I don't do anything odd really. No blurred layers, no special effects. All I do, on nearly every image that you see me posts, is dodging/burning and sharpening. It's not nearly as straight forward as that in practice as I don't use the PS dodging/burning tools and and all of my sharpening is done on smart-objects and very precisely controlled by masks. I never just apply Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen to an entire image.

Cheers
 
oh man...nice. I hear the east had a pretty good year this year. There is something about an east coast folliage that is just plain impressive.
 
When I think of fall I don't just think of leaves. I missed my opportunity to take some leaf pics this fall, it's been raining a lot and now the majority of the leaves are brown :( These pics will have to suffice:

fallharvest1.jpg



fallharvest2.jpg
 
Glorious! Now, I'm guessing with the rainbow present, this wasn't shot on an overcast day. How great was the brightness contrast between the sky and the valley? I would normally speculate that to get the valley so nicely exposed, the sky would have been blown out, or at least required significant burning to get the fabulous image seen here. Am I seeing a slight halo / transition in burning between the tree in the upper left and the sky immediately to the right? If so, the mist below and to the right helps to conceal / diffuse it beautifully. There seems to be a slight transition in lighting around the valley rim on the upper right as well.
 
I actually shot this on the same day as the other two in this thread. It was raining where I was standing but there was a gap in the clouds on the horizon. The rainbow lasted less than 3 minutes.

The dynamic range is courtesy of a split graduated neutral density filter. There was about a 3 stop difference between the sky and the foreground. There was no way to get both without either a filter or a two exposure blend after the fact.

The halos are an artifact of my hasty "save for web" sharpening. You really can't see them in the print master.

Cheers
 
Ah, so you are not only very technically skilled, but a master of timing as well!

Very well done. Thanks for the education and the visual experience.

On a side note, do you do anything to protect your equipment from moisture while shooting in the rain, besides keeping your camera in your backpack until you're ready to shoot? Like you or the camera wearing one of those dorky umbrella hats? :lol:
 
My backpack stays in the car almost all of the time. I'm generally wearing a photo vest with lenses in front pockets. My camera and one lens stay on the tripod and I carry if over my shoulder. I do use one of these to keep the camera dry in the rain.

It was fortunate timing. One of the members of the group was handicapped so she was able to drive up the trail. When it started raining, and the group leader sprained his ankle, they started driving folks back down the hill 4 at a time. There were more bodies than room in the car so I headed down on foot. It was less than a mile and honestly there isn't a much more peaceful situation than walking through a forest in a light rain at sunset. One of the other group members thought the same thing so he jumped out of the car and walked with me. The downside was that he left his camera in the back of the car. I still had mine.

About halfway down the trail we reached this clearing, looked up and saw the rainbow over Half Dome. It lasted less than 3 minutes. I frantically looked around for a clear shot and the exposure was tough. I only managed to fire off 5 frames before it was gone. This one was the best of the bunch. The whole time, the guy with me was kicking himself for putting his camera in the car.

This shot was about 15 minutes before the rainbow:

yos_1924_1009-Edit.jpg
 
begins? LOL - it's over already at Denali National Park :). Though it is starting to kick pretty hard around town here. Strange year for us. Not sure if if was the insane amount of rain we had or what? Seems like some trees have peaked and lost the leaves, others are just browning out, and others are still green. Very strange in deed. I fear this year will not be a banner year for us (locally at least).
 
Blah, looking at everyone's photos here makes me need to go back and re-post-process my fall photos haha. Everyone's stuff looks great as usual!
 
Nice moose, (or is that mice??), Louis. On the first pic, did you timer it or is that other people???
 
Mice? Aren't those the little critters with whiskers and beady eyes? :). LOL, yes, Moose, and Yes, timer...the exgf and I up on a mtn side in the Igloo Canyon area of Denali NP. Just before we hiked up we had the good fortune of being down low as a small herd (?) of sheep crossed the valley floor.

edit - oh, my bad, this was from 2008! Thank goodness for watermarks :). WOW, okay, now I feel bad. I really need to get some recent pics up here!

Bahhh.jpg
 
Okay, 2010 - now I feel better :). Yes, it's fall, taken last week as a matter of fact. One of the few I did a quick processing on for someone.

Glacier.jpg
 
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