Upcoming Photo Safaris

                        2011 Safari Calendar

May 21 , 2011 - Longwood Gardens - Kennet Sq, Pa.

Jun 11, 2011- Old Car Museum, Culpeper, Va.

July 9, 2011 - Summit Point Raceway, Charlestown, WV

Sep 3, 2011 - Pax River Air Show -Blue Angles - NAS Patuxent River, Md.

Oct 14-16, 2011 - Chincoteague NWR, Chincoteague, Va.

Brookside Gardens

Went to Brookside gardens with friend Steve Vogel today with mid day sun shining on us.  Not only was the lighting not good, but the traffic for some reason was terrible at 10am.  Not the best lighting conditions, so the plan was shoot when the clouds hid the sun or when the flowers were in full sun, shoot in Infrared.  Best pix are on FB.  The attached photo is a three shot IR stitched photo.

NIK HDR Efex Pro

                                     before

                                        after

These are before and after shots of an old train car at Wycombe train station in Pa.  Since I am now a NIK affiliate I thought I would show a nice comparison of before and after using NIK HDR Efex Pro.

You can see in the first photo that the windows are blown out and there isn't much detail in the interior of the train car.  But after taking just three shots with the Canon 5DMKII,  and using the NIK HDR program, you can see that the detail just pops out and the windows have nice detail as well.  This process is very easy and intuitive and also fun to use.  I highly recommend it.

bluebells and other wildflowers

There is no doubt about it, photographing very small wildflowers is a challenge. After doing some research on the web and FBing Jim Clark, I headed out to Turkey Run Park in N. Va. Its on GW parkway.

I took long time friend Stephen Vogel with me, because you never know what might happen in a park around here.

Luckily my tripod goes down pretty flat because I like to photograph these little flowers from the ground up, so to speak. So we had to get "low down".

Jim Clark had told me that the Dutchman's Breeches, the white flowers that look like pants, were out but didn't last very long. That is exactly what we found, only a few plants were in good, photographic, condition. Next came the bluebells which were down by the Potomac River. An easy walk down, but for two old guys in their 60's it was a trek to get back to the parking lot.

Finally we decided to check out the Stone Bridge in Manassas. My friend Lorrie Herman was there with some other artists and thought it would be fun to shoot them painting.

Much to my surprise they were painting the trees and not the huge field of bluebells. Lorrie let me take her photo painting and then we left for lunch. Great day and great weather, so nice to be retired and able to escape on a weekday.

Although most of my images from Charleston and the Magnolia gardens were HDR. This one is not. I like the clean look and the fallen azalea blossoms. This may become one of my favorite photos.

Charleston Rookery at the Magnolia Gardens

This white egret was building a nest and kept going back and forth through the same area, so after two trips I got the idea and tried to include the reflection. We stayed in this spot for over a half hour.

Once he got to the nest the other egret helped him place the stick and then he would take off and get another one.

Azaleas and Spanish Moss at the Magnolia Gardens plantation in N. Charleston, SC. We were there last weekend and the azaleas were in full bloom. It was so beautiful. This shot is an HDR photograph, using 3 exposures and blending them in NIK HDR Efx Pro. There is also a rookery there and I will have a photo on my next post.

The Making of a Lighthouse Photograph

This image was photographed at Folly Beach near Charleston, SC, Friday evening. I had taken several photos with a couple of filters and liked parts of each one.

I loved the waves at 1/25 of a second, the water at 8 seconds and the clouds with a polarizer. So.....I layered all three images and masked in the parts I wanted and masked out the parts I didn't like. So this image is three in one, the clouds with a Circular Polarizer, the waves and rocks at 1/25th and the water utilizing the Singh-Ray Variable Neutral Density filter. The Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter is expensive but can decrease the light by 8 stops, which is very good for smoothing out water movements, like creeks and waterfalls. My only concern now it that the horizon is too centered. It's not really centered, pretty close, but I don't want to lose the clouds by cropping the top or lose the sand by cropping the bottom. So I think it's finished.

Magnolia Gardens and Plantation

Had a great couple days with photo friend Mike Crosby at the Magnolia Gardens in Charleston, SC. Here is just one of many images that are now on FB.