While waiting to pick up my wife from work, I decided to get the photos I'd been aiming to get over the past few months. The photos of the City Hall with all the lights blazing. Still on-going construction of the building but it looks fantastic when the building is all lit up. Parked my Impala in the Preview Marketing building parking lot across from there and walked over to the corner to take some shots of the City Hall.
Just playing with the D300s/18-70mm and atempting some exposure photo-merges on Adobe PSE8. Did this one using 4 exposures, the two lightest ones were discarded due to the image blend making the total image blurry, so through a process of elimination, it came down to the merging of the two darkest exposures when combined provided a rich color layer which was then enhanced with a 0.6 Grad ND filter layer in post. The first photo is the photo without the dodge and burn tool and I noticed the problematic blowing out of the highlights in the very top part of the photo.
The second photo shows the burn effect tool on the top layer and how it gives the top part of the photo a bit more depth. This is in lieu of actually having the proper grad ND filters to compensate in camera. The one thing that you realize is that once you completely blow out the top of the image to white - it's very hard to bring back any sort of contrast with post - so it is so important to get it right in camera. Hopefully the interim Cokin filter once purchased will help me to do that.
Yes, I know the cars are "ghosts". It's because in the last photo the cars had gone on a green light down at King George and 100th Avenue and weren't there anymore as in the previous shot of the merge. I still think the transparency of the cars is still a cool effect of that too. Oh, well...
My New Year's Resolutions are few; however there are a few important ones this year.
1. This year I resolve to treat this "business" like a business and get out to photograph regularly without interruption from outside sources.
2. I created 29-30 new photos this past year in 2013 - this year I resolve to double the amount if not triple.
3. I also plan to "see more" - to be able to envision a photograph and create it instead of reacting to a photographic opportunity - envisioning landscape photographs is an idea that holds a lot of interest for me. To be able to create a landscape composition in my mind and then be able to convey that in a photograph is an achievement in itself.
4. After suffering a throat infection that cancelled out the last quarter of 2013, I resolve to take better care of myself - start eating healthier foods, to get out and walk more (which will help develop my photography eye looking at scenery) and stop relying on caffeine to get me through the day.
Photographs like this one from 2012 are my goal - to envision a wildlife or landscape in new ways - the image of the robin from 2012 looks a far lot better in a square crop than a rectangular crop - it's less busy and distracting and the large branch provides a guiding line to the subject. I could go further and start editing out branches, but I'd rather keep authenticity in the photo than start photoshop'ing the photo to death. Striving for a much higher standard in my photography is a lofty but attainable goal and I hope to achieve that as well as the previous resolutions in my New Year resolutions.
At a loss as to what do on a rainy afternoon when it's too dark to shoot anything worthwhile. I figured I'd experiment with light-trails and zoom effect. This pretty much is an experimentation if anything - they're not all that good. But at least it gives me an idea of what shutter speed to look at and what aperture. I've running around f/9 on the shots to get the photos to keep from over-exposing and giving me a foggy luminescence that I didn't want. What i wanted was a cool crisp light trail coming from the various points of illumination (including reflections of lights on the wet pavement
Last but not least, I did a light trail of some still-up Christmas lights. Let's just say they made an interesting impression on the photograph.
As I said, they aren't very good, but it gives me a rather quick formula to use when I start working on my Surrey North night light trails shots.
Starting off the New Year. Time to think about what needs to be accomplished this year.
1. Pay off the 600mm f/4 2 payments in 2014 will finish off the payment schedule for the 600mm f/4. And it will be firmly in my lens collection as 100% owned by me.
2. Purchase the Sigma 50-500mm F4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM. This will enable Heather to pull off some good wildlife shots at 500mm. Chris will have to borrow that lens until such time as we can pick him up the Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3
Also firmly on the September pickup list is making sure that a set of Lee Hard Grad ND filters is on the list of pick-up items. This way, when I pull out the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5, I'll be able to take some nice landscape photos.
Like 2013, the latter half of 2014 will see improvement in image quality as I can bring the Lee filters to bear on the other half of my photography inspirations - that being Landscape Photography.
Here's to a great 2014 starting now. Happy New Year!
