marcadamus

These were the best lenticular clouds I have seen or captured in my

life. The sky color and texture comes from the RAW file and RAW

adjustments only. The trees are atop on lonely plateau in Montana.

This was a 3-shot blend for exposure and Depth of Field.

This is a 11-minute exposure at sunrise using 14 stops of ND

filtration. I felt the surreal treatment worked well with this

subject, a lone tree high on a barren plateau in Montana, lying flat

on the earth from the harsh climate and winds.

Oh, wow!  Look at those amazing layers and light!  What a dream shot this is! 

Daniel, thanks.  I don't think you mean "real" photography though.  You mean documentary photography. 

Thanks guys. It's funny how I spend my life chasing moments so rare they are barely believable to some who might never have seen something like them?  Sure, there is a lot of digital DOF blending that goes into something like this but every single tiny element you see in this pic was exactly here at the moment the capture was made.  My tent and campsite is just to the lower right of the frame here, and here I waited for four days to get the shot.  My only regret about this one was the fact I had to shoot at 28mm, excluding a LOT of great Aurora all around me for this point of view.  Thanks for your comments!

Hi Sam, thanks.  Processing was very easy on this one, actually!  All the color comes strait from the RAW file with no additional adjustments.  I did double-process the RAW though - once with a curves adjustment for fill light and once without so that I was able to pull a hint of detail out of the backlit trees.  After painting those two together I dodge/burned a little bit here and there.  About 10 minutes all told.

Death and fire? Like a beautiful version of hell.

Back from an amazing trip to the far north mountains shooting the

Aurora for a couple weeks. A good description of the trip and how the

images were made is on my first post. Note the difference in sky

color in this shot due to the added light from the half moon,

illuminating the scene!

For the past three weeks I have had the pleasure of leading a photo

trip to the far north high in the mountains of the Yukon. Along on

this mini-expedition to one of the continent's most impressive ranges

were two photographer friends of mine, James and Colin.

 

We had a tremendous time out there, with the best shows of northern

lights coming the first four nights of the trip and one more a little

later on. Weather was not terribly cold yet and we were very lucky to

have found open water along some of the lakes mixed with interesting

shapes in the ice.

 

All of our photography was focused on complicated renditions that

showed off this amazing landscape as much as it did the Aurora. I

personally have seven or eight Aurora shots from which I cannot pick a

favorite. This was one of them. Please read below:

 

 

Processing: This is a blend of more than 10 images aimed at solving a

variety of technical problems and getting the view I wanted. First I

took the landscape AND aurora you see here with THREE horizontal 14mm

stacked and stiched vertically, for a nearly 180-degree field of view

(that peak was way too close, and absolutely enormous). I took the

mid-ground and aurora sky one after another at 10 seconds, as I

couldn't afford loosing the faint reflections in the water. I then

proceeded to work the foreground ice, which was picking up a diffused

green glow from all around. I would have obviously preferred one

exposure here but that wasn't even close to within the technical

capacity of the camera. Instead, I used about 10 consecutive bracketed

shots for DOF throughout, all at f/5.6, ISO 1600, 45 seconds.....so it

took another 10 minutes to render the exposures needed for the

foreground. Fortunately, the aurora was going throughout all the

exposures so there weren't any major color or tonal variances

throughout my exposing for the foreground ice.

 

Once in PS, I blended all images for DOF first. After that, I stitched

the three 14mm images vertically, which overlapped about one third.

When this was complete, I dodge/burned here and there for the final

result.

 

All color everywhere in the image comes from RAW only, and it was all

GREEN! I thought about removing some green in the landscape itself but

it didn't look natural. I just have to consider the fact that

everything here (snow and ice) reflects light well, and the only light

source there was, was neon green! Therefore, I think the color

rendition is accurate enough.

I don't have any photos that were not enhanced in some way post-capture.  I would assume the photographer has done everything possible to fulfill their vision of the scene when looking at their photographs.  Saturation-wise, I'd have to say this is more blue than I remember it with my eyes and I think it makes a great color contrast and fits the snowy mountain scene well.  Thanks.

Hey Doug, thanks.  No.  This was taken just three days ago and I can tell you that saying this year is an anomaly is an understatement.  I have never before seen things even close to as late as they are this year.  Wildflowers have not even reached peak yet at Rainier as a write this!  In fact, fall colors are starting to show up now as small plants are still melting out of the winter's snow, which was not only one of the heaviest on record, but took longer to melt than any year in history according to some reports.  Wildflower season (spring in the mountains) is a full 6-8 weeks late a Rainier this year and 4-5 weeks late throughout the Cascades and Sierra.   There were still ample patches of snow around Reflection Lake here at only 4800ft in elevation.

Hey Stefan,

Thanks for the comment.  I just wanted to branch off on your comment and address something that comes up all the time, and that is that web sharpness is NOT REAL sharpness.  I could take an image from a disposable film camera and make it look sharper than an 80MP digital image if I wanted to for the purposes of online viewing.   The reason is that all images must be resized and resharpened when posted at such small resolution.  Interestingly, images that have more details to begin with actually end up looking LESS sharp than others do sometimes, particularly on sites with size restrictions because they eat up more KB in space when resharpened.  The only true measure of image sharpness is on print or viewed very large. 

14mm, 20 second exposure, f/11, dawn. Thanks for your comments.

Nope, just some very gentle mid-tone and highlight dodging there.  Now that you mention it...seems to be overdone slightly.  Thanks.

Waterfall inside a 30-ft high, 500ft long snow cave. Not something I

get to see every day.

Reflection Lake and Mount Rainier is one of the most photographed and

iconic landscapes in the world, which is the reason I have never shot

it despite passing by a hundred times or more. On this morning,

however, I just couldn't resist. The fact there were a dozen other

photographers there didn't diminish the fact it was strikingly beautiful.

Oh, you can see a higher resolution version of this at Naturephotographers.net in the Landscape gallery. You can also see commentary by other pros and excellent nature photographers there. It's a great site.

Ben, Thanks. This is my favorite mountain photo I have taken in a couple of years! It doesn't present very well at small size and against white. Artistically, I think it's not as simple as some people are expecting. This is as evocative for me of my experience there as any photo I've ever taken. Also though, all photos I ever post these days get at least several 3's and lower.

Thanks, guys.  I really appreciate you taking the time to have a look and comment.  You know Photo.net is my test-site.  Things often go up here before anywhere else.  I go strait from processing to posting here in minutes often times in order to get feedback.  I want honest opinions about anything at all that could be changed.  Coming back to this today I believe I burned the sky too much, particularly the upper left corner area. 

Anyway, thanks again.

This is a small portrait of Oregon's massive Proxy Falls taken with a 250mm focal length on a sunny day in the afternoon when light hits the brilliant green foliage to the side and reflects green-filtered light onto the mossy terraces and water.  Rainbows form in the light intermittently as spray from the higher falls keeps the whole scene misty and surreal.  Minor processing work was aimed at balancing the large range of light throughout the scene and dodge/burning.

I was camped on an unnamed glacier days from anyone in the BC Pacific

Range when this light began after a brief mid-summer snow. Using a

200mm took hundreds of shots all around me, rendering this one

intentionally very dark and allowing only hints of the enormous peaks

surrounding me to show through. It's a serious challenge to view a

shot like this in such small size on such a bright background, so do

the best you can :-)

This isn't one of those pictures you can fully enjoy when viewed

small, but hope it works for you anyway. I waited around here for

over a week trying to get the skies and light to align over this

remote mountain range in the Pacific Mountains of British Columbia.

I was dropped off by float plane on a remote lake in the central

Pacific Range of British Columbia, one of the most remote mountain

ranges on the Continent. As soon as the hum of the plane was out of

sight, I spent two and a half weeks completely alone (well, there were

Grizzlies, goats, marmots and a host of wildlife around at all times)

without any reminder of humanity. I backpacked every different

direction from my drop-off point every day I was out. I marveled at

the sweeping Glaciers, 5000-ft sheer mountain walls, waterfalls,

wildlife and some of the best mountain flowers I've ever seen. Above

all else though, this place amazed me the most. Donning crampons and

ice tools, I entered the interior of an enormous glacier where it was

cracking apart and had a rushing river flowing through it. The ice -

clear and blue as any I have ever seen, was hulled out in places

creating rooms up to 40ft high and 100ft across! I could hardly

believe my eyes inside this frigid fantasy world that had likely never

been seen by anyone in its entire existence. I spent half of two days

inside here getting drenched and cold, and managing to avoid the

occasional falling car-sized ice chunk :-)

 

I took many pictures and some provide you with a bit more sense of

scale than this, but this particular abstract caught my eye. For me it

looks like an alien world and the viewer is almost unsure where it

leads or what's going on. That's exactly how I felt here, although no

photo would ever do justice to the place.

While backpacking in some glaciated regions of Oregon's Three Sisters

wilderness we came across this moraine lake just beginning to melt out

for the summer. After a study of the ice and snow on the lake, I

walked out to this crack filled with the blue glacial water, carefully

watching where I stepped as to not sink through. After taking the long

way around to this viewpoint we decided it was worth the wait to camp

here all day and wait for the night sky, as clear conditions were

prevailing all week. Knowing the position of the milky way ahead of

time helped my process, as I was able to visualize the result you see

here. I photographed the landscape itself at 10pm using an exposure of

30 seconds at f/14, ISO 640 and then the Milky Way and night sky later

at 1:30am when it was in position to reflect in the pool (ISO 3200,

f/2.8, 30 seconds for sky and ISO 6400, f/2.8, 30 seconds for reflection).

The image here is actually more true to the eye and the scene than most of my work.  It was one of the great light shows I've ever witnessed and only minor adjustments were made.  A little burning, blue saturation, sharpening and tonal adjustment was it.  Maybe 5-10 minutes in PS.  Always surprising to hear people's interpretations of these things.