A bridge on New York state route 59 out of Suffern, NY over the Norfolk Southern railway. The bridge itself is no more than a 100 feet across but the geometric patterns of the metal structure distributes weight beautifully.
Processed in Silver Efex Pro. Photographed with a Nikon D7000 camera.
I don’t intend to flood my blog and bore you with HDRs of punting pictures from Cambridge, but I had to share this with you. The following two pictures were taken immediately after my last post and so they are slightly different in composition. However, they’ve been processed using two different software (NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Photomatix).
I liked the output from Photomatix as it was more intuitive to use and seem to allow a greater range of adjustments without making the images look grungy.
The three original images that went into making these HDRs are below (bracketed at -1, 0 and +1), and merged in either HDR Efex Pro or Photomatix.
All images taken in Nikon RAW mode – Nikon D7000, Tamron 18-250mm Lens at 23mm f/4.0 1/640, 1/1250, 1/320 exposures.
I know this is the middle of winter!! Just to cheer us up and to look forward to the lazy days of spring and summer, here’s a lovely daffodil on a black background.
Technical Details:
Nikon D80 Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens SB600 Speedlight External flash f/4.6 1/2500 ISO200 Processed in Adobe Lightroom4.1
Do photographs look better when selectively colored? Selective coloring involves painfully desaturating a picture to leave only the portions that need highlighting. There are many ways to desaturate a photograph, and I use Adobe Lightroom adjustment brush to remove colour from portions of a picture. The pictures below show both the original picture and my selectively colored version. Which one do you prefer?
One method of removing colors from a picture is by desaturating color groups. In the picture below, I removed all the greens, blues and yellow. This has the desired effect of making all the leaves and sky become monochrome while leaving just the flowers with color.
The above makes the picture look a little artificial due to removal of the yellow-green components from the petals too, as well as with other flowers in the background showing through the foliage. I then attempted to use the adjustment brush to remove all color from the picture except for the two flowers in the foreground (as below).
Personally I’m pleased with my selective desaturation as this brought out the vibrant colors of the flower, which were otherwise lost in the bright greens of the leaves and the blue of the sky.
Technical Details: Nikon D80 with Tamron 18-250mm f3.5/6.3 Lens 1/640 f/8.0 55mm Location: Araku Valley, Visakhapatnam Processed with Adobe Lightroom 4.1
October gets over today, and cold rain and winds lash Cambridge. The nights come early. In the midst of all this, a single rose valiantly blooms for the last time in 2012.
Technical Details:
Nikon D80 with external Speedlight SB-600 flash Tamron 18-250 f/3.6-6.3 Lens 1/60 at f/6.0 130mm ISO200 Post-processed using Adobe Lightroom 4.1
Autumn mornings offer a great chance to see myriad spider webs drenched in the early morning dew making a million natural necklaces of tiny pearly dew drops. I took these pictures on just one such day. The industrious spider had built this web on the clothesline overnight.
I am constantly amazed at the persistence of the spider to continually attempt to make a web in the most unlikely of places, day after day. Maybe there is a lesson in it for us all….
Technical details
Nikon D80 Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens Nikon Speedlight SB-600 flash Processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.1
Last week I had this really nice bunch of gold-coloured roses and I wanted to try out my photography skills using a remote flash on commander mode. I placed the flash on the tripod and right angles to the photograph with some interesting results. One of two of these are with the flash on the camera, but can you tell the difference?
The main advantage I found to having an external remote flash was to be able to play with the colours and backgrounds. No post-processing carried out for any of these pictures. The roses too look different depending on the light source.
What do you think? Click on any image to see a full-size view.
Technical Details:
Nikon D-80 with remote SB-600 speedlight flash in commander mode 105mm f/2.8 Sigma macro lens
As autumn draws ever closer here in the United Kingdom, the last of the summer roses go out in a blaze of colour for a final time in 2012. The following pictures are of one such rose in my garden. I would be interested in knowing which one of the four you like best, or none as well!
Please click on each picture to view a full size version. In order to achieve a dark background, I have used a flash and post-processed to cut darks and shadows.
Technical Details:
Nikon D80 SB600 Speedlight Flash 1/125 to 1/40 f/7.1 ISO200 Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens Post-processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.1
Gazania‘s are native to south africa and are commonly grown in the UK as an annual. The lovely flowers light up any border with their profuse blooms and long flowering season. These gazania’s are from my garden in Cambridge.
Technical details:
Nikon D80 Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro Lens 1/100 f/18 with flash. post-processed with Adobe Lightroom 4.1
A beautiful pair of Tulips. Keukenhof, Lisse, Holland. May 2012.
Nikon D80, 1/3000 f/7.1 with SB-600 flash at 1/16. 105mm f/2.8 Macro Lens. I used a high shutter speed with flash to keep the background underexposed and give a studio effect to the object in the foreground. No post-processing or increase in blacks.
Juridicious 