Photographing the California Central Coast – Day 3

Tag a long on a scouting expedition of the California Central Coast.

I’m on a three-day scouting trip to photograph the central coast of California from the Sonoma Coast north of San Francisco down to Santa Cruz to the south.  I am preparing for the 2018 Central Coast and Napa photography workshop.  The first two days covered the coast north of Frisco. Today would continue south, picking up the coast at Half Moon Bay.  You can read about the first to days here:

Unlike the prior day where I didn’t roll out of my sleeping bag until 8:00, this day the alarm was set for 5:00.  That’s more consistent with what I’m used to when photographing.  I arose in the dark, took a quick hot shower and broke camp as silently as possible.  When I left the campground it was still dark.

Gleason Beach, which I had photographed the day before, grabbed my attention in the morning light and I had to stop for it again.

Gleason Beach Morning

These two sea stacks that hadn’t impressed me in the afternoon stood out in the soft morning light.  As with the first two days, there were occasional splashes of large waves.  But, from this distance what impressed the eye didn’t impress the camera.  So I was more intent on photographing the patterns made by the surf after the waves broke.

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Photographing the California Central Coast – Day 2

Tag a long on a scouting expedition of the California Central Coast.

I’m continuing a three-day photography scouting trip along California’s Central Coast.  I’m preparing to lead a group here in November for the 2018 Central Coast and Napa Valley workshop.  In the previous post (Photographing the California Central Coast – Day 1), I was joined by a friend and we covered the north end of the Sonoma Coast.

Today is the second day and I’m on my own.  I enjoyed the company yesterday but today will be a more typical experience.

I started out by sleeping in.  It was almost 8:00 when I finally rolled out of my sleeping bag and emerged from my tent to a blue sky.   After yesterday’s overcast and foggy start, this was good news.   A quick breakfast and a hot shower and I was ready to go.  This day was going to cover more mileage than the day before but with fewer stops.

Gleason Beach was the first.

Gleason Beach

There were some sea stacks at this stop but they didn’t stand out.  The severe gash in the cliff that led down to the cluster of sea stacks just off shore, however, was far more interesting. I timed the shot to get two concentric rings of surf which added the grace of curved lines to an overall rugged composition.

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Photographing the California Central Coast – Day 1

Tag a long on a scouting expedition of the California Central Coast.

It wasn’t long ago that I spend three days along the California Central Coast, scouting good shooting locations for the upcoming Central Coast and Napa Valley workshop.   I’m very familiar with the Big Sur coast but this was my first real exposure to the Central Coast north of San Francisco.  And I am excited with what I found.

My base of operations was the Schoolhouse Canyon Campground, a privately owned campground just east of Guerneville on the Russian River.  Clean, quite – I couldn’t have been more pleased.  But on with the photography….

The plan was to start to the north and work south over the next three day’s.  I was joined by a friend the first day which started out overcast and foggy along the coast.  That’s not a huge surprise as this area is still susceptible to the marine layer in September.  But, in this line of business, you work with what you got.  The first destination was Salt Point.  It’s hard to find because there are no marked turn-offs, just a sign saying you’re entering and another sign a few miles up the road saying you’re leaving.  So we overshot it.  And I’m glad we did because we came upon a creepy house that was falling apart.

Creeph House

My friend suggested framing the house with moss hanging from the tree.  That was the perfect touch to give it the macabre feeling we were feeling,  And the overcast sky provided the perfect light.

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Why Do I Need an HDR App when Lightroom Has It?

Lightroom is good for basic HDR but for full creative control, HDR applications have an important role to play.

I was recently in the redwoods of Northern California.  One of the groves I love is the Lady Bird Johnson Grove in Prairie Creek State Park.  In it is a Western hemlock growing next to a massive redwood.  The hemlock’s roots spread out across the ground, making an interesting and photo-worthy pattern.  I’ve photographed it a number of times in the past but never liked what I got.

This year was different.  I finally saw a composition that excited me.  The sky was overcast and a bright mist hung in the forest.  I knew I was going to have a dynamic range problem so I shot HDR – 5 shots bracketed 1 1/3 stops.

I knew I was going to have a dynamic range problem so I shot HDR….

I was eager to see what it looked like so when I got back to my hotel room I ran it through the Lightroom HDR.  One thing about the Lightroom HDR feature is that it is convenient, quick and creates a DNG file.  But its drawback is that you don’t have a lot of control.  Besides alignment and de-ghosting, you have the Auto function, the same Auto found in the Basic group in Lightroom.  That’s it.

I ran my five files through Lightroom HDR, but the results were disappointing.  The foreground was rendered well but the forest in the background was blown out.   I tried my best to recover what I could, but it was too far gone.  Another year gone by and I still don’t have this photograph.

Redwoods 180522 SM37414 HDR

It wasn’t until sometime later that I was browsing my redwood images and came across this shot.  I decided to have another go at it but this time using my tried and true Photomatix Pro 6.0.  I’ve been using Photomatix Pro since version 1 and it has always produced for me.  Photomatix Pro is extremely versatile, giving the photographer a wide range of expressions from natural to surreal.  And with over 40 presets, it’s easy to find one that is very close to what you’re looking for.  I always prefer the more natural look.

An image that I thought was lost came back to life with Photomatix Pro.

I imported the five files, selected one of the more natural presents and what a difference.  An image that I thought was lost came back to life with Photomatix Pro.  Not only was the foreground beautifully rendered but so was the background.  A few small tweaks and the photograph was ready for the rest of the workflow.

Redwoods 180522 SM37414 5 6 7 8 Enhancer

I finished my normal workflow by completing the Lightroom adjustments once Photomatix Pro had imported the TIFF file back into the Lightroom catalog.  That was followed by the fine tuning I always do in Photoshop.

I thought you might like to see the HDR outputs from Lightroom and Photomatix Pro along with the finished photograph side-by-side.

Redwoods hdr comparison

Lightroom HDR still has a role to play for me.  When I’ve just uploaded my files from a shoot and am browsing through them to select the ones I want to work on, I find the Lightroom HDR very handy to get a sense of if I’ve captured the dynamic range or not.  But if I later decide I want to print the image and add it to my portfolio I’ll redo the HDR blending in Photomatix Pro where I have so much more control.  Lightroom HDR doesn’t come close to providing the artistic control that I need.  Photomatix Pro continues to fill that gap and remains an essential tool in my HDR workflow.

You can see for yourself and give Photomatix Pro a spin by downloading a trial version from their website.

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What Would Happen if Your Hard Drive Failed?

Explore the various ways to back up your important data from a simple solution to a comprehensive one.

Have you ever asked yourself what would happen to your picture files if your hard drive failed?  I ask this question because a week ago, I lost a hard drive.

When I was just getting started, I would have lost everything.  I had a desktop computer with a single internal hard drive and everything was on it.

Backup 1

So what did I do?  I went out and invested in an external drive.  Now I could at least back up my important files.  That would include more than just the photo files but it definitely included them.  The advantage was that now I had two copies of my important files and it was unlikely that both the desktop hard drive and the external drive would fail at the same time.  But there was a downside….

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Photography Class on Mt San Jacinto

I recently taught a photography class for the Mt San Jacinto Natural History Association.  At an elevation of 10,834 feet, San Jacinto is the second highest peak in Southern California.  The Natural History Association operates in conjunction with the Mt San Jacinto State Park and has a rich program of mountain activities.  I was fortunate to be invited to teach the first-ever photography class for the association.

The class would consist of lectures and demonstrations, and be conducted in one of the meeting rooms in the mountain station of the Palm Springs Ariel Tram.  We would have a morning and afternoon shoot in nearby Long Valley,

In preparing for the class, I anticipated that there would be a large cross-section of experience and abilities, with gear ranging from smart photos to high-end digital cameras,  And that proved to be true.  So rather than getting into the technical aspects of photography, the emphasis was on the creative.  This normally consists of talking about light and composition which we took a bit of time to cover.  But the main emphasis was On Seeing.

I wasn’t sure what there was to actually See in Long Valley.  It was always something to pass through on the way to more exciting places like Round Valley or the summit,  So, to find worthwhile things to photograph, our quest became to find and capture the essence, the soul of Long Valley.

And here’s what we found…

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The 2018 Gems of Oregon Workshop

Join me as we relive the experiences, challenges and excitement of the 2018 Gems of Oregon photography workshop.

The Gems of Oregon workshop was different this year.  I was feeling apprehensive as the date approached.  With eight major wild fires burning in the area, the conditions were going to be challenging to say the least.  Smoke-filled air not only makes photography difficult but poses a health risk.  I was paying particularly close attention to air quality warnings in the areas we would be traveling through and photographing in.  Some areas looked fine but others posed a problem, especially for the workshop’s final days.

We met Wednesday afternoon as planned in Crescent City on the Northern California coast.  The air was clear and fresh.  With a very productive orientation and instructional session, we were off to a good start.  Thursday we were to journey up the spectacular southern Oregon coast and we were ready.  The weather forecast was favorable and there were no air quality warnings.

It was still overcast when we made our first stop at Harris Beach in Blanding, OR.  The overcast made black and white photography especially fitting.

Harris Beach, Brookings, OR

Figure 1: The thing that stopped me for this photograph was the stream running into the ocean.  I would have prefered the stream to be more prominent but that put the rest of the image out of balance.  So this is what I ended up with.

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Making a Photograph – Fort Point

Not long ago I was in San Francisco for some photography. I was interested in photographing Fort Point because it would be a good opportunity to emphasize design elements and abstractions. Fort Point is part of the National Park system and situated at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay. Its intent was to protect the bay from attack. Construction was completed in 1861. It never fired a shot.

If you’re interested in learning more about the fort, here are a couple of interesting links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Point,_San_Francisco

https://www.nps.gov/fopo/learn/historyculture/index.htm

These “Making a Photograph” articles generally take a single, successful photograph and walk through the process of its creation from the moment of inspiration in the field to the finished product. What that doesn’t show is the scores of rejects that ended up in my memory card, what I was trying to do with them and how and why it didn’t work. I think there’s as much to be learned from the rejects as there is from the keepers.

So in this post I want to ‘air my dirty laundry’ so to speak and share with you not only the keepers but the rejects. I also want to take you through the process of looking deeper into the rejects in an effort to learn from my mistakes.

So come along with me as I share my flubs and successes at Fort Point. Continue reading “Making a Photograph – Fort Point”

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Making a Photograph – Witch’s Hat

It’s no surprise that Bandon Beach in Oregon is a powerful attraction for photographers. It has one of the largest concentrations of sea stacks on the entire Oregon coast. This makes it a prime sunset destination. Read the story behind the making of a sunset photograph on one special afternoon.

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The Pacific coast at Bandon, Oregon is graced with a generous collection of sea stacks of various shapes and sizes. It has the potential for dramatic sunsets and is on many photographers’ bucket lists. Some go so far as to crown it the best stretch of shore on the entire Oregon coast.

The day began about 80 miles to the south and we made our way north, stopping along the way in the Samuel H. Bordman Scenic Corridor and other locations that demanded our attention. It was overcast as we moved up the coast. But that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the many wonderful places to shoot. As the day continued, the clouds gave away to hazy sun. But by the time we got to Bandon Beach, the marine layer with its bank of clouds was again encroaching on to the shore.

Still, our motto is, ‘You work with what you got.’ So we gathered our gear and descended the long stairway leading from the overlook to the beach below.

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Images with Impact – Contrast in Nature

Explore how haze affects the contrast in distant objects, how humans respond and how that knowledge can be used in your photographs.

Last year I started a series of articles under the general theme of Images with Impact. In it we are discussing things you can do with your images in Lightroom and Photoshop to enhance their impact. When I got to the topic of contrast I came to an abrupt halt. The more I thought about contrast, the more I wanted to begin that discussion with some real examples from nature. But to do that, I needed some photographs that illustrated what I wanted to share with you. And in Southern California, the types of photographs I wanted are only possible in winter. But it’s winter now. And I’ve been able to capture the photographs that I want, so now we’re picking up the series again.

What distinguishes a photograph created by the serious student of photography from one taken by a casual photographer? Many things to be sure. But one thing that stands out is a sense of clarity, a clear quality. The casual photographers’ photographs are just what the camera captures and are often like looking through a bit of haze and I don’t mean that they are out of focus. It’s the light. The effect may be subtle but it is very real. A more accomplished photographers’ photographs have a special quality to them, a quality that engages us, that draws us in and holds our attention. You might describe it as a crisp quality.  (You can click on the photographs to enlarge them.)

CRW_9603

(My daughter some years ago as we hiked out of a late spring backpacking trip in the local mountains.)

The serious student of photography skillfully applies contrast in the digital darkroom to achieve this look. But before getting in to how this is done, let’s step back and take a look at how we respond to contrast not only in photographs but also in nature.

In the following discussion I will use examples from nature to illustrate the affect contrast has on us. The idea is to understand how it works so that we can more effectively apply this knowledge to our photographs.

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