Category Archives: Landscape
Flashback Friday: 09/07/2009 – Sleeping Bear Dunes
Hey gang,
Today’s flashback is to September 7th, 2009.
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I never said that all the images in the flashback series were going to be good shots. I’d probably put this image as a ‘so-so’ type of category. This shot was from a little getaway up to Traverse City Michigan with some friends. We then went out to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National park.
This sand dune was huge and and a steep decline right into Lake Michigan. As you can see from the image people would run, fall, and roll down the dune to the waters edge and then make the hike back up the dune. I had too much camera gear to make the trip down to the water myself. 
Thanks for checking out this weeks flashback.
Flashback Friday! (First Edition)
Hi everyone,
I thought I’d start a new weekly posting called Flashback Friday. On Friday of each week I will randomly generate a date from the past 7 years or so. I’ll then look though my photo archive and will choose a picture from or close to the randomly generated date to share for my weekly post. The photo will be one that I haven’t previously shared online or done any work on. I thought this would be a fun way to revisit some of my older photos and give me the opportunity to share them once again.
With that said.. here is the first random date for Flashback Friday. July 1st, 2008.
This was taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is an HDR image of one of the many canals throughout the city. It was fun to look at these images and recall our trip to Amsterdam and Europe but also hard to believe so much time has already passed since we were there.
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Morning Grazing Before/After
Hi all,
It has been a while since I did a before/after of one of my pictures so I though I’d throw one up that I was working on last night. The image was taken last June but I stumbled across it this week when I was looking for some images to enter into a photo contest that had the theme “horses”. During a visit to Utah last summer we stayed in Park City. I woke up early one morning to get some sunrise pictures of Deer Creek Reservoir with Mount Timpanogos in the background. On the way back to Park City I drove though some of the farm lands of Heber Valley. I pulled off the side of the road as I saw these horses grazing in a field as the sun first was breaking though the clouds. The mist/fog was still pretty heavy as it was a cooler morning and had even been raining the night before. It looked so peaceful so I took the shot.
So here it is. A before/after of the morning grazing.
Here is just the final image
This shot is a HDR image which is comprised of 3 different shots that are then overlayed on each other to bring the exposures of each different image into a single shot. This more accurately displays the range of light in a scene then the camera is able to do on it’s own. The before picture is the image exposed to the setting the camera said would be the correct exposure. I then took two more pictures with exposures too bright and too dark to capture the full range of light. Below are the underexposed and over exposed images I took along with the correctly exposed shot.
Two stops overexposed:
And two stops underexposed:
After combining the images using a program called Photomatix I did further retouching work in Photoshop CS5.
Indiana Sunset Before/After
Hi again,
It’s been too long since I have posted a blog entry so I wanted to throw another before/after shot out there. I personally don’t think the picture is that great but it does help show what HDR photography can do for you.
This is another shot I took on my drive home from work when I was driving 2 1/2 hours to work and home. The drive gave me a lot of time to find different spots to shoot along the way. This was taken shortly after a fast moving rain storm had gone through the area and the sun was starting to peek back though the clouds. The warm ground was creating a nice mist over the rolling corn fields.
One thing I particularly like about this image is the white fence going down a side road. Well, at least from this spot it look like a nice fence. After I took this image I went down the road to get a better look at it and hopefully to get some other shots. Turned out to be a very ugly tin/sheet metal fence that had been crudely put together. Guess sometimes it’s better to capture things from a distance.
*sorry for the alignment being slightly off.
Before/After Oregon Coast
Hey all,
For this weeks post I’d like to show you a little before/after shot of one of the pictures I took while on the Oregon coast in August. You can use the slider bar in the middle of the photo to view the before and after versions of the photo.
(Best viewed in Firefox. Other browsers might not render correctly)
I’ll be the first to admit that my photos don’t always look the best and almost always need some further help in the post processing process. The final version of this image is actually made up from three different shots taken one after the other. The three images taken only differ in exposure which allows me to capture a larger range of light and detail than you could achieve with a single shot. The three images are then merged together to create a High Dynamic Range image also known as HDR. (I plan on creating a HDR tutorial at a future date)
After the images are merged together I open it up in Photoshop to make the final adjustments to blend and adjust it as needed.
The Photo itself was taken just outside of Pacific City. This Haystack rock is just outside of Cape Kiwanda as is sometimes referred to as “the other Haystack Rock”. (As opposed to the popular tourist destination on Cannon Beach.) This Haystack rock is one of the largest standing at 327 feet tall and is the world’s fourth largest sea stack or off-shore sea monolith in the world. (taken from Wikipedia)
The picture was taken on a overcast and gloomy morning after I had gotten up very early in hopes to capture a sunrise that never happened. It’s always hard to get Mother Nature to cooperate so you’ve got to take what you can get.
I plan to do more of these before/after type of post in the future with some of my other shots as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and if your interested in more posts like this.