Adventureographer » Traveling Photojournalist

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04-12-2012

Remastered Photo: Spring Break Sunrise 2009

I’ll be first to admit it, I’m always learning when it comes to photography. I don’t know everything. I don’t pretend I do know everything. And I certainly don’t think there is only one way to do something or there are rules you absolutely must have to follow. My photography is constantly changing. I like to think that I am improving each and every day. With that said, I decided that since my skills and technology is constantly changing in the photography world.

I would take older photos just sitting on my hard drive and re edit them using new and improve techniques and software. I am now the proud owner of the Nik Software Complete collection. This software has completely changed my editing process and I love the results. Every week I will be  finding an older photograph I have collecting digital dust on my HD and re edit it with this software and new techniques I am constantly learning.

Canon 40D 28mm f/3.5 ISO 100 WB: Cloudy

In the spring of 2009, I took a spring break trip to Daytona Beach, Florida. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and headed to the beach. I remember it was chilly that morning and only a few people were out jogging on the beach. This was my first sunset, but I was completely blown away. I made a few technical mistakes with the camera as I had no idea how to shoot a sunrise. First, my composition is off. I shouldn’t have centered the rising sun. Now that could be more more me being picky, but I think it would have been more visually pleasing using the rules of third on this. Second I was shooting at f/3.5. This isn’t a huge mistake, but for landscapes you don’t really want a shallow depth of field. Thirdly, my focus was more on the horizon and should have been on these waves or the beach in the foreground. But lucky me, you can’t really tell as Nik Software was a great Sharping program that I was able to use to fix that rookie mistake.

What I love about what I did on that day was shoot in ISO 100 on a tripod, I mean I wasn’t a complete photography idiot back then and I shot with my White Balance set to cloudy giving the image a more warm feeling. I then used Color Effects pro 4 by Nik Software to enhance those warm colors, giving you the look you see now. Working on this image makes me want to go back and shoot this again.

 


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04-07-2012

Good Friday Sunrise

They say if you want to make amazing landscape photos, you have to wake up before dawn or wait until dusk. Any other time and your just wasting time. Well I have to agree. Waking up at 4:30 a.m. just to drive down to the beach for a sunrise had me a little hesitant. Around 15 minutes into my drive from Carriere, Miss had me cursing myself and wish for the comforts of my bed. But something inside of me knew that I wasn’t going to be disappointed.

I’d like to give a shout out to my friend and fellow photographer Amy Marquar for waking up and dragging herself down to Bay St. Louis, Miss with me.

For future reference I would like to get to a sunrise location about 45 minutes before sunrise. We arrived about 15 minutes before the sun started to peak out, so we missed out on some interesting colors peaking out on the horizon. The above photo is a slightly underexposed photo of the scene we drove in on when we got down to the beach.

As I was shooting I quickly took note of a bird walking around in the water and strapped on a 70-200 mm telephoto lens. I’m not 100% happy with the photo, but it still a nice image with a living thing as the subject. So I’m not going to hate too much.

Well I wouldn’t be me if I did compose an HDR photo, now would I? haha I took several exposures that could possibly become an HDR photo, but they seem to lack an interesting quality. Something I find more and more needed in landscape photography. For me I found the beautiful sky and the small pool of water sitting neatly on the beach to be far more interesting than just a pretty sky.

Something I’ve always wanted was a beautiful pier shot. Something I noticed during my sunset session last week at this same location. So I did just that and got to working on the pier. I will be the first to admit I have some focusing issues, something I need to work on, that caused a few shots of this subject to be unusual. But this is why i practice as much as possible, to improve in some weak areas.

So I end my sunrise session with this, “With each sunrise, we start anew”


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04-02-2012

Trinity Church HDR

I shot a wedding over the weekend at Trinity Church in Pass Christian, Mississippi.  Durring the down time I played around with some different angles from the church and settled on this low shot down the isle.

As for post process, I played around with the settings from Nik Software HDR Pro 2 and did a vintage grainy look. I really liked the effects. Thoughts?


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03-29-2012

Photo Walk: Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Today was a great day for walking the beach and making some photographs. The weather was absolutely perfect. The sun was out, the sky was clear and their was a nice coastal breeze flowing. And to top it all off, I had amazing company with me.

Bay St. Louis is under going some massive construction so most of the area we where at was tapped off. But I was able to avoid most  of the construction. I did get some photos of workers working, but nothing too special jumped out at me to post.

The photography above is an HDR photo of the beautiful sky at sunset by the Coleman Ave pier. I kept with a more realistic look this HDR photo as I wanted to just enhance the sky and bring out some the texture in the sand and rocks. I’m happy with the results.

I noticed that throughout my walk, nothing really jumped out at me screaming take my picture. But was still able to find the beauty that was around. I’m thinking that once the construction is done I might try another walk.

I’m not 100% pleased with this photo, but the color is awesome! I know I could take better photos in this area, but for some reason didn’t! Maybe a sunrise would be a better time to shoot!

 


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03-28-2012

HDR: Port Allen, Louisiana

Recently I’ve been working on three different websites and about to start on a forth, but I wanted to get back to posting photos and showing off my work. This site will feature photographs from my travels.

Old Sugar Mill during a sunset

So here is a photo I took at my cousins house in the Port Allen area during a sunset. As my sister and I were leaving their house, the sky was this beautiful orange tint and I had my camera and tripod handy as we just finished a newborn photo shoot. I ran out and saw this old sugar mill in the distances and began my setup for a a few HDR exposers.

As I was editing this, I didn’t want to take away from the beauty that the sunset was giving, so I kept my processing to enhancing the colors and bringing out more details in the sugar mill. Overall I am pleased with the photograph, but would love to get back out there again and try some new angles or get closer.


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