Reflections

For years, my inspiration came from diving the kelp forests of the Monterey Bay. But as the years passed, I was diving less and less and as a result, my time spent doing photography also declined.

Seascapes started a new fire inside and my creative energy led me to explore and photograph the beautiful coast near my home. This evolved into a desire to photography all types of landscapes. I found something new to keep me focused, excited, and most importantly, made me happy.

But recently, something inside me longed for a change. I was feeling that unfortunate sting of 'burn out' creep in. I can't really explain it, but I wasn't motivated to photograph the same beaches I have been to dozens of times. Not that new images can't be created at my familiar spots, but I wanted something new. I often was under the misconception that this meant I needed to photograph something different all together. A trip to the mountains or the desert would certainly do the trick. Or do I start diving more? Do I visit some of the iconic National Parks I have yet to visit?

The answer, however, can be much simpler.

Let me explain that part of my 'formula' for shooting seascapes was always to get in to where the action is: the surf zone. Capturing water motion in dynamic and interesting ways was my main approach. I looked for objects, mainly rocks, for this water movement to interact with.

But as a series of storms passed through my neck of the woods, a strong desire came to photograph some beaches further north than I usually visit. Ultimately, I settled on San Gregorio State Beach just south of Half Moon Bay and a few miles north of Pescadero. There were no rocks to fit my formula, but the large creek flowing out to sea was keeping the sand in a highly saturated state. The reflections were intense and captivating.

In my previous post, I focused on the unique ripples formed by the out flow. But the reflections just off to the right of that scene kept drawing me in. As the clouds split open, the arcing curve of the sky's reflection created a worthy lead-in.

I realize using reflections in an image is nothing new, but it was just enough to get me inspired again. And inspiration means spending less time inside and more time seeking new photographic opportunities. May you find your inspiration in whatever form it presents itself!

Golden Shores - San Gregorio State Beach, California

--The Shot--
The storms that have been hitting the western coast of the US brought some dramatic clouds and luckily the sunsets stayed dry. I have a few new images from this weekend that I will share in the days ahead. In fact my Facebook page already has a couple (hint, hint).

There are a few things in this image that I broke my normal pattern for. First, I used my Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer for a seascape. Usually the colors are too strong and I like reflected light coming off rocks and sand. But the ripples in this image were made from a huge outflow of a swollen creek due to all the rain. The sand and silt weren't reflecting much light and was pretty drab. The second thing I did was make a vertorama. The scene was just too much to capture with one shot, so I took a landscape oriented shot of mostly water and one with mostly sky and hand blended them in post processing. Finally, I relied on the ripples to form my foreground interest. There are no rocks on this beach, so I made due with what was there.

The fun part of this evening's shoot was that the ripples would come and go. The outflow would come and go. My best guess is that temporary sand bars would form and restrict the flow. The ripples would form these amazing patterns when that happened. Then the flow would increase, as if someone turned on the faucet...probably when the temporary sand bars broke down. It was a waiting game to get shots with patterns like these, but I think it was worth it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone!

--The Gear--
Nikon D300
Nikkor 12-24mm @ 12mm
1/4 sec, f11, ISO 100 (both shots for vertorama)
Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue Polarizer
Singh-Ray Daryl Benson 3-stop reverse graduated neutral density filter
Markins M20 ballhead with Really Right Stuff lever clamp and L-plate
Gitzo GT3531 carbon fiber tripod

--Software & Editing--
In ACR, custom white balance applied to RAW files and slight adjustment to brightness and exposure then imported as 16-bit TIF files
In Photoshop CS5, I leveled the horizons of both images and stacked the sky shot on top and used a layer mask to blend the two together. Layers included a Levels adjustment, Basic Mid-Tones luminosity mask for contrast. A Shadow Darks luminosity mask to rescue the darker areas of the image (this can be the case sometimes after the contrast adjustment).Vibrance (for intensifying) and Saturation (for rescuing) masks for color control. Burn and Dodge layer through various luminosity mask selections to adjust localized contrast in the sky. Sharpening was done using Nik Sharpener Pro with a standard setting applied to the bottom and another to the sky with the strength set to 0% but the structure and local contrast set to somewhere between 15-20% then selectively brushed in via layer mask. Slight crop to square and saved for web via custom action to downscale, sharpen, downscale again, convert to sRGB, reduce to 8-bit, and embed basic file info (my copyright, name, web, email, etc).

Appearances - Namena Marine Reserve, Fiji

One of the things I've realized about this blog is that I have never posted an underwater shot, and to be honest, that is where my passion for photography began. I always took snapshots back in college, mostly of nature and landscapes, but they were always just snapshots. No tripod, no filters, just point and shoot with 200 or 400 speed negative film.

It wasn't until I had 2+ years of diving experience that I realized I needed a camera to take underwater. Losing my old SLR off the top of a moving car and two friends investing into UW rigs motivated me to invest in one of my own in the year 2000.

Shooting film was challenging underwater as strobe lighting was new to me and the lack of instant feedback meant nice images were difficult to come by. I did improve, but ultimately my last roll of film was shot in the fall of 2005.

Fast forward to 2010, and I am much more familiar with the skills involved with underwater photography and my patience, admittedly short in the beginning, has grown. This is key for any style of photography, especially underwater.

This shot was one of many, as I battled the ocean's energy that was pushing both the two anemone fish and me all over the reef.

Passage of Time #2 - Sand Harbor, Lake Tahoe, Nevada

I realize I have neglected this blog for almost 9 months. For that I apologize, more to myself, for not motivating to write and share. I will eventually switch over to Word Press for my blog. It seems to have more flexibility with layouts and will hopefully one day be up and running.

I felt it appropriate to post another image from the same outing as my last post. The thing with long exposures is you never quite know what the clouds will do over the course of 1-2 minutes, the range of exposures I was using that day. Experimentation is crucial with these longer exposures. This image was almost twice as long as the previous and therefore is a little less definition in the sky.

When using the strong ND filters, such as B+W's ND110 along with Singh-Ray's Gold-N-Blue polarizer, color casts can be a problem. I use a custom white balance (WB), typically in ACR, before importing into Photoshop. I will use the eye dropper selection tool and try several different points in the preview image. I pay close attention to how my selections alter the WB *and* the tint. If no one selection looks how I think it should, I will adjust the WB and tint to a more personal setting using the information I just gathered as a baseline.

Once in Photoshop, I selectively improve the contrast and colors from the flat RAW file. Nondestructive burning and dodging (see Tony Kuyper's tutorials) and selective sharpening finish off my processing.

Until next time!

Math and Photography

Some of the most common questions I get on the flickr photography forum are related to filter use.

I plan on creating multiple filter tutorials over the winter and will blog and post them to my website. In the meantime, I will briefly touch on using the B+W ND 3.0 10 stop neutral density filter.

Using neutral density filters as strong as the B+W 10 stop requires a few steps and a little math.

First, the filter is so dark, it is next to impossible to compose an image with the filter in place. Therefore, it is important to compose your frame, focus, and calculate a proper exposure prior to adding the 10 stop filter. For the image above, I also was using a Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue polarizer and a Lee .75 Soft GND (graduated neutral density filter). The polarizer helped create the intense gold and blue tones in the image, and the GND helped reduce the light in the sky to better balance the image's dynamic range.

Like I mentioned before, I composed, focused, and fired off some test shots with all my filters attached but without the 10 stop filter. This is where the creative and visual approach I choose for my photography comes in...and a little math.

Depending on the look I am going for, and how fast the clouds are moving, I may choose to expose a scene between 30 seconds and several minutes. On this day I tried shots between 30 seconds and 2.5 minutes, with around a minute being the length of shutter speed giving me the cloud movement I wanted.

Now, onto the math. I typically shoot my landscapes at the base ISO of my camera for quality purposes, in this case ISO 100. I also often start my calculations for shutter speed with my aperture set to give me a good depth of field, typically f16. For this photo, I came up with a shutter speed of 1/4 second.

Adding in 10 stops of light reduction, meant that I needed to increase my shutter speed by 10 stops as well. A halving (or doubling) of a shutter speed is one stop of light. Therefore:

1/4" > 1/2" = 1 stop
1/2" > 1" = 2 stops
1" > 2" = 3 stops
2" > 4" = 4 stops
4" > 8" = 5 stops
8" > 15" = 6 stops
15" > 30" = 7 stops
30" > 1' = 8 stops
1' > 2' = 9 stops
2' > 4' = 10 stops

This would mean a 4 minute exposure would be needed! This is much longer than I wanted to shoot as the clouds would have lost all detail. Not to mention hand holding my GND for that long is tiresome.

So what can I do to need less light, and therefore less time for a shorter exposure? First, I changed my camera's ISO to 200. This gave me a full stop back. Now I could shoot for 2 minutes. I also knew that by changing my aperture to allow more light would help.

Aperture settings (f-stops) in full stops.
1 – 1.4 – 2 – 2.8 – 4 – 5.6 – 8 – 11 – 16 – 22 – 32

From my days of shooting film, my lenses had most of these settings, especially f2.8 - f22. Now, with digital, most cameras can electronically change the aperture in 1/3 stop increments. For example, between f8 and f11, I now have f9 and f10 as options. And between f11 and f16, I now have f13 and f14.

For this image, I opened my aperture to f13, knowing I would retain a good depth of field and gain a 2/3 stop of light (compared to f16) at the same time. Since a full stop (at f11) would have meant shooting at 1 minute even, 2/3 stop (at f13) equates to 40 seconds, or 2/3 of a minute. My calculated shutter speed for ISO 200, f13 and all my filters was 1 minute, 20 seconds by opening my aperture from f16 to f13.

As is often the case, I forgot my stop watch and phone in the car, so I just counted in my head. I was 10 seconds short, but in the end, that is not much of a difference.

By changing both my ISO and aperture to settings within reason for good image quality, I was able to get a long shutter speed, but not too long. Like I mentioned previously, how long is based on variables that I evaluate in the field.

I encourage you to ask any questions here on the blog, and if any of my math is incorrect, please let me know, and I will correct it.