Mental Grabs

Posted by Mark on Nov 21, 2011 in nature photography | 24 comments

Bruce Peninsula Fall Color

Let me know if you have something similar happen to you.    Frequently when I am heading out to photograph, I will be driving along the highway and some quick details will catch my attention.  It may be something quite fleeting and subtle.   Whatever it is, I do this mental grab or snapshot and begin processing it in my head.  Since it is a highway, I find myself evaluating if it is worth turning around for or not.   I didn’t even get a careful look at it, it was just something that caught my attention for a moment.   Turning around could result in a significant diversion of time.

Such was the case with this group of trees along a highway going up into the Bruce Peninsula.   I am pretty sure the white trunks are what grabbed me.  They slashed through the foliage in a clean way that seemed to be different than most other sections along the road.   It is a like a running movie camera in your head and one particular frame of thousands stands out from the others, and I hadn’t even picked up the camera yet. (more…)

Fall Sunrise in Northern Michigan

Posted by Mark on Oct 17, 2010 in nature photography | 20 comments

Cedar Lake sunrise with fall colors, near Traverse City, Northern Michigan

This weekend my wife, our malamute Willow and I stayed with some friends at a cabin we rented near Traverse City, Michigan.   It is a truly beautiful area.   It wasn’t primarily a photography trip, but more about taking in some of the remaining fall color there, some relaxing site seeing along the coastline, and of course visiting some of the great Michigan wineries.

I did manage to get out this morning though for a quick fix of burning some pixels.  This image is from the property where we stayed on Cedar Lake, about 25 minutes west of Traverse City.

With the exposure blending options available today, I find myself much less reluctant to photograph into the sun – even after it crests the horizon.   I have always liked the way morning sun makes fall leaves glow when they are backlit.   This is an attempt to capture some of that.

I blended this one (7 images, 1 stop apart each) using my 15 day trial version of Nik HDR Efex Pro.   So far I like it.   It offers a nice alternative to Photomatix with excellent presets for very realistic looking blends.   Photomatix has dominated the market for so long (for good reason), it is interesting to see the approach another company takes with HDR.   I finished it up with minor additional tweaks in Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.

My Michigan Landscapes Gallery

My Fall Color gallery

Alaska fall colors

Posted by Mark on Aug 28, 2010 in nature photography | 17 comments

Alaska fall color panoramic

It is hard to believe nearly a year has passed since my trip to Alaska.   I still have quite a few images lingering around that I need to process and publish, and milk for a few posts.  :-)  I quite fondly remember the majestic landscapes with fall color drapery.   This scene was in Cantwell, Alaska just outside Denali National Park.   I don’t do panoramics very much, but this particular shot seemed well suited for the format.   I imagine these colors are just getting started about now.

Fall leaves

Posted by Mark on Jul 20, 2010 in nature photography | 7 comments

Fall leaves after rain on riverside slate

Despite being mid-Summer here, I am already yearning for the cooler temperatures and variety of color of fall.   I am not a big fan of the heat.  It saps my motivation more than I would like on a great many things – photograph – keep up with my blog, keep up with other blogs.  :-)

I have always been one to try to look at any particular scene for its very basic graphical elements.   Leaves certainly make for good candidates due to their very recognizable shape. This particular image I had sitting in my files for awhile, originally because it had some distortion in it from the wide angle lens I used to create it.   The distortion bothered me, so I put it aside to fix it later.  Well, my fellow photographers know how long the interval can turn into from putting something aside and then actually working on it.

As it typically happens, I am sorting through my files looking for something else – for a print order on another image or stock submission – and end up finding images I had forgotten about.   I originally uploaded this to my gallery as a horizontal, but the more I think about it, I think it looks better as a vertical.  So another one gets rescued from purgatory.

Thank you for visiting.

…more fall color leaf pictures …

Alaska fall color photos

Posted by Mark on Mar 28, 2010 in nature photography | 22 comments

Alaskan Range and fall colors

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever catch up on processing images.   It seems lately I am jumping around between a lot of images from my “unprocessed” folders – from leaves, to Michigan landscapes, to bears, to Alaska scenics.  Some of them many years old and nearly forgotten about.  Here is another from Alaska.    Given the dreary weather here in Michigan this weekend, it helped to be staring at a sunny day for awhile.

This image was captured using a Nikon D700 and Nikon 24-70 f2.8 AFS lens, processed in Adobe Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3.  More Alaska landscapes in my gallery.