Squirrel!
March 22, 2011 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
“Hi There. My Name is Doug. My master made me this collar so I may…SQUIRREL!!!!”
Just a Simple Sunset
October 5, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
So much time, so little to do…wait…strike that, reverse it. I have some interesting photos coming up, but now, it’s time to work on this amicus brief.
Quiet Night at the Clubhouse
August 21, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
It was a quiet one night when I was walking by the Brier Creek clubhouse, and since there was still a decent amount of light out, I set down my tripod and took an HDR. They say photography is about compromises, and this is a perfect example. Photomatix handles lights in these kind of HDR shots better than any other program I’ve tried, but the Photomatix Aperture plugin’s ghosting correct is not up to par with Photoshop’s HDR Pro. So do I go for the cool lights with the ghosty flag or get the flag right and have slightly less than ideal lights? I decided the lights were more important in this shot.
The Sky is on Fire
August 10, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
Last night was one of those nights where I went out to take a certain picture (which I did end up getting, though I’m not as blown away by it as I thought I would be) but ended up getting a whole bunch of other photos to go through. I use Nik plugins on almost all of my images, but sometimes I forget that I have the full suite of Topaz Labs plugins as well. One plugin that gives some particularly interesting results is Topaz Simplify. It allows you to give a painterly look to your photos. I used it to create the image of the Old Well that now hangs above my television and also used it on this photo. I was interested to see what would happen with the red sky contrasted against the green foliage in the foreground and I ended up really liking the result.
Storm is Brewing
August 8, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I need to work on fixing ghosting more in HDR images (especially in the trees), however, in this case, I wouldn’t have done anything with the clouds anyway…maybe a little touch-up work if I was going to print this photo, but I like the motion of clouds in HDR, especially in black & white.
I wonder if Photomatix 4 (which I still don’t believe has an Aperture plug-in for its beta) or Nik’s new HDR offering (whenever it’s released in “late summer”) will be able to handle selective ghosting correction
Where’s my Fountain?
August 6, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I was watching a Nik Software webinar today that was put on by Lesa Snider. She was discussing how to prepare images for iStockphoto and, even though I’m not a stock photographer, some of her trips were pretty interesting. One of the tips I particularly liked was how to use the “Ink” filter inside of Color Efex Pro to make a photo look faded and “old timey” (technical term). I think I have one or two photos from my walk around the Brier Creek golf course that the effect will good on, but I was looking for another photo to give it a shot on first. I decided to use this pano I took of the gazebo / fountain location that I photograph fairly often. Sadly, the water in the lake is fairly low and the fountain was not going when I took my picture.
From a technical perspective, this photo was stitched together using Photoshop. Additionally, I’m starting to experiment more with brushing in highlight / shadow adjustments instead of doing global versions of them. I think this allows me to bring out some areas (in this case, the trees and bushes bordering the lake on the side I’m standing) without effecting other areas (the sky looked a little funky when I did a global shadows adjustment).
Hitting the Back
August 4, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
Taking a break from writing a couple of different things for the site. Here’s a look from the tee box on 10 at Brier Creek just before the sun goes down.
Night and Day
July 30, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
With Brier Creek golf course closed, I had a few ideas for shots that I wanted to take in different parts of the course. I ended up running into a couple of problems though, including some storm clouds blocking the sun and me bumping up against the technological limitations of my Nikon P6000. So what am I to do with a bunch of shots taken for HDRs that don’t quite come together correctly? I decided to try tand do some “concept” images. This one is an experiment where I tried to get both the silhouette of the trees, in almost pure black, against the clouds in the sky, while keeping the green and the sand traps lit. In other words, I wanted to see if I could get the picture to look like I actually lit the green at dusk.
I’m not quite sure I managed to get that look without the picture looking too over proceed, but it was a good experiment for working with Photomatix, Aperture sliders (black point especially), and Aperture brushes (especially a shadows adjustment). Even if this image isn’t something that I’ll put in my portfolio, I hope the skills I used to create it help me become a better photographer.
Going off One
July 27, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I arrived at Brier Creek yesterday, figuring I’d take a light walk just to get out of the house for a bit. I went past the first hole and saw a sign that said “Course Closed”. Man, if I had known that, I would have showed up much, much earlier in order to photograph some things. Sadly, I got there pretty much right at sundown and only got a few shots. This is from the first tee.
Skylight, Skybright
July 9, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I tend to get into “mini ruts” where I want to take a certain type of photo, and I end up taking only that kind of photo. Recently, I’ve been taking a lot of HDR images, even some images that you probably wouldn’t be able to tell are HDR were in fact done as HDR to make sure I got the full spectrum of light. As a result, I decided to go out and take some shots at sunset without bringing my tripod. I ended up dialing my exposure compensation way down so that I only got the sky exposed with the horizon blacked out. This was my favorite shot from that night.
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