21. January 2010 by Friedhelm.

I wish my computer desk would be here. what a place to work!

I was photographing so I did not pay too much attention to our docents; however I caught the sentence that the people on the lighthouse had to be self-sustaining. Besides having animals on the rock, they also had a carpenter and blacksmith station since the gusty winds did all kinds of damage to the property.

Also, this is a classic example of the difference how our eyes see and how the camera sensor picks up the light. In order to come closer to how we see the image I had to use one over exposed, one underexposed and one normal exposed image and combine them into the final image. The experts call that HDR (high dynamic range) imaging. Here are the three images that I combined into the above final version. You can do this manually with combining several layers in an advanced photo editor or you can purchase a special HDR editing program.

Underexposed (the beach is visible)

Overexposed (the beach is not visible)

normal exposed (a little bit of everything)

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16. January 2010 by David.

Several months ago our photo club had a monthly theme of candles. My idea was to photograph candle smoke. Most candles don’t give off much smoke!

After recently seeing a u-tube video by Gavin Hoey I decided to give it another try. The key, use incense, and some lighting techniques. Nothing too difficult.  This isn’t a composite, I just dug a hole in the candle and put the incense inside.

Manual mode, handheld, 1/200sec, f11, ISO 200 with single strobe.

Keep clicking

Dave

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24. November 2009 by admin.

Yosemite Falls is full of water during late Spring. In late Summer it is sometimes totally dry. We were very happy that there was water coming down the mountain even it was a relatively small amount. I decided to use three shots of the fall to combine them in a triptych. A triptych image was used during medieval times in churches in Europe. I thought it would create a nice impression of the fall by combining different views of the fall.

Enjoy!

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20. November 2009 by David.

Isn’t it great how nature provided us with wonderful contrasts. This was taken along a fence, the darker leaves were growing against the fence while the lighter leaves had grown both through the fence and the darker bush. These were the only lighter colored leaves on this side of the fence maybe the fact that they were facing south had something to do with it. Don’t we all love the sun!

F4.5, 1/15sec, 50mm ISO 200. And yup I used that wonderful tool called a tripod.

Keep Clicking

Dave

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10. November 2009 by Friedhelm.

This is a pretty typical scene in the foothills for the month of October. You see lonely oak trees, rocks, dried-up grass and blue skies. In order to show the contrast between the blue skies and the red-brown tones in the grass and rocks I used a graduated neutral density filter. Such a filter is a great help “to get the image right” in the camera and it saves a lot of time editing later. Camera setting: f18, 1/8sec., ISO 100.

Enjoy!

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6. November 2009 by David.

Here is one of the many beautiful sunset images that Friedhelm and I were privileged  to witness on our way home from our backroad trip to Raymond a couple of weeks ago. Don’t know about Friedhelm but this sunset was unexpected. Enjoy!

Keep Clicking

Dave

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5. November 2009 by Friedhelm.

I wanted to create an image where the stem is in focus and the leave is somewhat out of focus but clearly identifiable.  I know my large format camera connected to my DSLR would be the right tool for the job. I was able to focus precisely on the stem and then I took a series of shots with changing f stops. At the end this shot (f8, 1/8sec., ISO 100) was my favorite.

In order to give the subject a more dramatic look I color selected the background, feathered the edge and inverted my selection.

Enjoy!

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1. October 2009 by Friedhelm.

I love photographing subjects with movement in them. It creates a certain dynamic that creates interest. In an image any kind of movement means that part of the picture is blurry and therefor it is extremely important that there are other parts of the compositions that are crystal clear.

Enjoy!

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5. September 2009 by David.

I decided to head up to Lake Yosemite last evening and try and get some moon shots. This photograph was not photoshopped, the color of the grass and sky are  the result of the orange sunset directly behind me.  I wish the sailboats that were on the lake a little earlier would have stayed a little longer, hmmm, do I hear a photoshop opportunity here. Nah, I like it as mother nature intended.

Also discovered I need a more sturdy tripod, Took some shots after the sun had set but the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t get a blur free shot.

Hope you enjoy, on one of my monitors this photo comes up somewhat dark, hope you have a better view.

Keep clicking

Dave

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19. August 2009 by David.

Over the weekend I made something called a light-table. It’s essentially a box with lights inside and an opaque surface on top. I used two 100w daylight bulbs. After seeing the result I think I’ll change it to four 60w bulbs. It will give me a more even toned, larger  background.

This is actually a stack of colored votive candle holders I’d purchased for another project.  There was enough light coming up from the light-table that I was able to hand hold this at 1/100 of a second f5.6. Being directly over the table I wasn’t able to use a tripod.

I think this could be fun!

Keep clicking

Dave

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