With the upcoming photography teaching event and photo walk I will be teaching at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve I decided to shoot a little before going over some of the presentation. I am without my wildlife lenses unfortunately as they are being serviced, so to landscapes it is! The skies were cloudy and a fresh painting of snow had touched the landscape. Before I even took the camera out of the car I knew I was going to shoot for HDR (High Dynamic Range.)

One thing I love about HDR is what it does to the clouds. It adds an incredible amount of drama. If you ever underexpose a shot heavily with stormy skies you will see what I mean. I am working on a tripod 90% of the time when working with HDR. You need to make sure all the images will easily overlay and line up to reduce any artifacts. The one problem too is wind. Zoomed in you can see a few branches that look like they are ghosting due to the wind. I could have not shot the image, but I felt it didn’t suffer because of it. Once I had my tripod I stopped down for a large depth of field and I usually start with no exposure compensation. In typical scenes like these a 5-stop range of light will cover my needs. I go into my cameras bracketing function and set it for a total of 5 images. A normal meter reading, -1 underexposed, -2 underexposed , +1 overexposed, +2 over exposed. Then from those images I will compile them all later in Photo Matrix Pro to get the image I desire. There are a ton of sliders in photomatrix and I push and pull them until the image feels just right. A tip I use to know when I shot a 5-image sequence when reviewing my images from the day is to go back to a single exposure shot and photograph my hand. It’s a signal to me that before that shot is my sequence. I took a total of 8 HDR sequences and trying to keep up amongst all the other photos can be a blur. I got the tip from Matt Kloskowski at DTownTV for shooting panoramas. I would take a lot of images and not knowing where one starts and one begins can drive you nuts!

Notice something in this image that wasn’t in the last? Same location, but there are no foot prints! I actually walked back in my own foot prints to keep this look going. The HDR technique really brought out the detail in the depth of the snow.

I was captivated by this one walkway. It is just across Sharrotts road near the park and I was the first one to step foot there. Well besides the wildlife at least. I ran this through Silver Efex Pro and choose the Dark Sepia filter. No adjustments beyond that. This is the same image as the first one posted.

I wanted to shoot some images that weren’t HDR. Although I enjoy HDR photographs I don’t like to fill a location with them. The advantage is I keep all 5 shots so I could pluck out an exposure I like. These non HDR images however were shot for the sole purpose of not using HDR. I used the Pro Contrast filter in Color eFex pro that made my whites bright and crisped up the edges.

I also ran it in B&W. Although I realize most of these images are  the same location/position there are subtle differences. We all too often walk by a scene as something we have seen before. Something that has been photographed and we have grown tired off. Don’t get me wrong I have done it too. I try and correct myself when I do so however. I try and remember that every moment in time is unique. Why was this last photo (color and B&W version) so unique? Well if you notice the shadows came out. The day being overcast left no shadows. I had MAYBE 15seconds to take this image. I panicked and shot it at f/8. Not the f/16 I had wanted, but we take what we can get.

The reason I was shooting at f/8 was I wanted to be ready for anything. Remember I alluded to wildlife before? Well if something walked in the frame he/she wasn’t going to stand still for an f/16 exposure. I have left my settings in bracketing or stopped down real hard before and payed for it with missed opportunities. So this is the flip side of trying to avoid that. Can’t win them all they say

My goal was to get to Sharrotts Pond. As you can see everything was untouched and just a beautiful sight. I kept the cooler tone that the HDR had created as I felt it told a batter story as to how the temperature felt.

The pond was perfect. Frozen just enough for a fantastic winter landscape. I wanted to bring you along for this one

I wanted to finish out the day with a portrait of the pond. Sometimes an image speaks to you and when it does don’t let it get away! Whether it is HDR or a quick snap the hesitation of holding off that photograph is not worth it. Just Click! (sorry Nike :-p)

So you may have noticed a change to the blog. With recent fantastic events coming up I wanted a blog theme that had two sidebars to provide more information more quickly. My good friend, awesome photographer, and book writer has put the time in to guide me through and even tweak the blog to see what you do today. I hope you find it familiar, but with a sharp edge.

On top of the blog changes the fantastic news is that I will be teaching photography technique with a photo walk soon once a month for at least three months. The dates, location and details can now be found in the right panel section marked “Events.” I will have the other two dates firmly very soon. The price of admission is free so you have nothing to lose and you may just learn a lot more then you thought you knew about your photography! Plus I am there to answer all sorts of Q&A in the field as we will shoot images all along our walk.) So what are you waiting for? check it out! Go ahead I’ll wait

Excited? I sure hope so. It’s going to be a great program and I am really looking forward to meeting my readers and to share our passion. If you have any questions please let me know. I am testing the waters with these classes and your input and experiences will help shape them for the future! If turn out is high and requests for more advanced learning grows then we might just do some classes on HDR, lighting, post production who knows… The possibilities are limitless.

To put the icing on the cake I also wanted to bring you a really cool technique I performed in Photoshop. I call it Image Overlay Sequencing. It is the process of taking many photos shot in a single sequence and overlaying them within the same scene. It is exactly like the sports sequences as multiple frames are displayed as a snowboarder flies across the half pipe. Our subject today? A young bighorn sheep that descends down a cliff-side fighting gravity. How they do it amazes me. I shot many frames, but it didn’t all come together until I used this technique. I hope it pushes your photography into new areas. Let me know if the quality of the video is an issue. In the meantime I will work on a higher quality video. Enjoy!

Updated; hope it’s better. Gotta work on making that mouse movement smoother.

I was going through a few images as I prepare for a future project and I came across one that reflects the current temperatures in the Northeast. I really want to get out there in this beautiful snowstorm, but it is very dangerous and I don’t feel like filing a police report and insurance claim if I were to get into an accident. I think I’ll just huddle like this ring-billed gull. If you go out have fun and be safe!

This was another fun image from the day. I thought it was comical as the gull looked like it was a bird of prey hunting for a mallard.

Common birds seem to be a theme in the past few days I have been out. This healthy male mute swan was standing near his almost fully grown young with his partner. As I walked toward the waters edge I came a bit close passing him by and he eyeballed us the whole way. His breast was a tad hot in the highlights, but not blown by histogram standards. He was a perfect specimen and I couldn’t refuse taking his portrait.

Mostly mallards were at Wolfe’s Pond, but there was some fantastic behavior to be witnessed. It may still be winter, but this male already is looking to pass on his genetics with this female.

This shot tells more a story then it being great all by itself. I was waiting for one of these geese to fly. The pond near Mount Loreto had thawed a bit and there were finally some birds taking advantage. As I approached one of the flock flew right over my head. I thought this would be a great opportunity so I waited to see if they would follow suit.

Unfortunately there was a lot going on in the background and a few dead trees within the pond got in the way as I panned. A big thing that I still practice is controlling yourself and keeping cool as the moment springs into action. If you are waiting on a subject to take flight more often then not things are tense. You may look/feel calm, but as soon as they burst for the sky you are either punching that shutter or panning before it fully takes off. Impulse control is a great thing to have and it will help vastly with situations like these. The more you practice the better you will become.

Before we got the oddly warm weather in the northeast I went looking for some subjects that would be forced closer due to ice. The waterfowl that come during the winter become nicely concentrated as the lakes and ponds freeze over.  The best result is the ice can force them closer to the edge where you will be waiting for them with your camera.

I was glad the weather had cleared and some great sunshine was making its way through to light up this American coot. Watching for the right light is really important. When I aimed my camera to the right I would get this great blue water, but when I aimed it left the water became a nasty green. It’s important to know how a scene can change with just an angle adjustment.

Mallards are typical in most of America, but it’s hard to pass up a great image no matter how common the bird can be.

Female mallards were not off limits either. Everything was going for this image. The color, the reflection, the composition with the waves. It just had to be taken. Don’t over look the bird that is always close or always easy to photograph. More often then not the common have some pretty awful photos of them due to lack of any care or effort.

The Canada geese became awfully active out of the blue while we were there. You need to be ready for anything. Keeping that trigger finger ready to pull the camera up to your eye and snap that shot. Also if you are stopping down from switching to a wide angle from before and remounted your telephoto keep that in mind. It would be pretty awful to find a fantastic moment to capture and your stuck at f/22 and by the time you readjust the scene is over.

I’ve always wanted to get an image with those red berries and a bird perched. I’ve seen some great ones and this is a step in the right direction to getting one of my own.