Another gem from the past...

I did not shoot today, but while I was combing through the archives I found this gem. It was taken in the early morning after a snowfall in Harriman State Park. I can still hear the crunch of snow underfoot while the first warm light of day made its way through the forest. Originally i had worked on the images of the fallen snow in the fields and the stark blue skies. this image was virtually ignored only for me to find it again today and spend some time coaxing the tones hidden in the original image. I normally edit each days shooting pretty harshly and delete what does not strike me as a winner that first day. I think from now on I may change my workflow and keep all images and move the winners out to a workflow folder to work on so I can review everything later. I hate to think of the strong images I may have thrown away over the years because i did not fall in love with them right away. Another reason to keep them is as I learn more uses of photoshop and new tools are developed I may be able to find magic in images i would have once thrown away. I found this lesson out the hardware recently when I got my HDR software and realized I had been tossing out my over and under bracketed shots.... How many amazing HDR shots I might have if I had not been editing so eagerly these past five years.... Food for thought.

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

Skylands Project - Top 5 B&W Images (ok... 10 images)

This morning I set out to pick my five favorite b&w images I photographed at Skylands in 2010. I really only started shooting b&w at Skylands after I got one of my cameras converted for infrared b&w in the middle of the year. After a late start I did a lot of b&w work there this year. The same subject can change dramatically based on the lighting conditions. Some of the subjects like the little cottage I probably photographed ten times and they all look very different. Whittling these images down to five favorites was a tough task. Somewhere around twenty two it really got tough. I ended up cutting some of my favorite images of the year to get it down to these ten.

Here is where I need your help. Which are your favorites and why? I am curious to see what you think.

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

Skylands Project - Top 5 Color Images

With most of 2010 in the rear view mirror I started looking at my photographs from this year. Much to my surprise I found that the Skylands Botanical garden in New Jersey was my most photographed spot. I first went there and shot once in 2008 and discovered how great a location it was with the scenery changing with what was blooming on an almost weekly basis. In 2009 I started to make frequent trips there shooting a total of six times that year. In 2010 I found I had been there more than fifteen times and took photos in both b&w and color. Last week I decided to go through all those images and find my five favorite color and five favorite b&w shots from 2010. This was a tough process to go through that many photos I had taken and liked to get down to 5 that I felt were my best for this year. I can tell I am growing and getting stronger as a photographer and artist, because shots that in 2009 would have made the top of the list were not even close. After much review here are the five images that I think best represent my color work at Skylands this year. I think I have more than enough to make a really nice calendar too. Hmmm that's an idea...

Tomorrow I will post my favorite b&w images from Skylands in 2010. That will be a lot of fun as I was able to get some really great infrared stuff there and next week I will really turn the looking glass on myself and talk about the goals I posted myself as an artist a year ago and talk about where I have done well and what goals I will need to carry forward to 2011.

Enjoy the photos!

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

Skylands Project Update

This project of picking my five favorite color and b&w images from 2010 at skylands has been tougher than I thought. Mostly that is because I took so many photos. It is taking time to go through them all.

I will post on Saturday my five favorite color shots and on Sunday my five favorite b&w shots.

Next week I will post a wrap up to 2010 including a review of my goals for 2010 and what I actually able to accomplish as well as my favorite photos from a great year with the camera. There is stuff from all over NY, there is Cape Cod, Italy and a bunch of other locations.

It has been a really good year for me with the camera and I have really enjoyed sharing the journey with all of you.

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

The Skylands Project

It totally snuck up on me in 2010. Skylands vaulted to the top of my photographed spots list. I had probably been to the Botanical Garden at Skylands five times in the years previous. This year it topped out at fourteen visits. I think I liked best that it is different each time you go there and it made for some wonderful b&w work as well. Over the next week I will compile the top five color and b&w shots from my ventures to Skylands and post the results at the end of the week.

Next week I will review the goals I set for myself as an artist in 2010 to see where I did well and where I missed the mark. This will lead to goals for 2011. I think it is good at years in to take a look inward and take stock of where you are and where you have been.

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

Peaceful Cape Cod Morning

All this cold this week has me wishing for the warmth of Cape Cod in August! Peaceful cool mornings on the beach and the best sunsets in the world. The days in between are lazy and idyllic...... My kind of place!

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

A little More on HDR

After I posted my two posts of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images on Sunday my good friend Carl Skiba wrote to me and said hey that's cool I'd like to see the three images that went into making the HDR photo side by side so I can better understand what the HDR software did for the image.

The image at the top of the post is the HDR image after it was run through the software. The image below shows the three images used to put the file together. The one in the middle is the normal image from the cameras meter and the ones on left and right are over exposed one and half stops and under exposed one and a half stops. All three images were taken on a tripod in the exact same position.

While I like the original image (the middle of the grouping of three) you can clearly see how much more detail there is when you can take the best parts of all three images. essentially this allows you to capture a much wider exposure latitude than the cameras sensor is capable of in a single frame. A word of warning it is very easy to go too far and make fake looking images. That is not my goal here. For me it is another tool to help me get over the limitations of the camera and allow me to bring you the image the way I saw it when I captured it.

I hope you enjoyed this and look for more HDR images soon!

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

HDR - Sunset on Cape Cod Bay 2009

This HDR Stuff is cool!

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

Watkins Glen Revisited - HDR

I shot these images of Watkins Glen back in the late spring of 2010. I was fairly happy with the original shots, but struggled with capturing the whole contrast range of the scene. I found I had shadows and highlights that were off of the scale even shooting long exposures in the early (5:30am) light of a rainy day. I was able to capture the scene really feels like using HDR or High Dynamic Range software. Essentially you take a normal shot and then one over exposed and one under exposed of the exact same scene and the software uses the best parts of each file to compress the scene into a tonal range you can work with. These images are much closer to the magic you feel wandering the trail along the falls in Watkins Glen. The only trick is to always setup on a tripod and bracket the scene with one normal and one under and over exposed shot. There are a tone of shots I could have done this with as I always bracket my images... Alas as part of my work flow afterwards I decide which image of the three is best and delete the other two so I don't have a lot of shots I can do this too. I will however keep this in mind as I shoot new images because this can help me produce breathtaking images. Like any tool the trick is to know when to stop so you do not take it too far.

You should give it a try you can get some amazing images. You can really open up the shadows and pull out detail this way while retaining the highlights.

On a technical note my HDR Software is HDR EFEX PRO from NIK Software and is available from the good folks at Digital Silver Imaging.

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl

NYC - Holidays

We spent the Day yesterday in NYC with friends from Upstate. I will post more of our big day in the big city later today. For now all I can say is OMG the crowds!

Keep Makin' Art

Carl