#25 Trees of Alpental

This was taken on the Edelweiss Chair looking at Gunmont run. Alpental Ski Resort, Snoqualmie Pass, Washington.

See post #16 Alpental Skier, picture taken from same place about a year apart.

Lots of Processing on this file. From the bottom.

1. Original shot, background layer.
2. Apply a pretty radical gaussian blur to the background for layer 2. Opacity at 38%
3. Over sharpen BG layer. Mask out the trees except for the foreground tree. Therefore the snow, center tree and sky show through and are super sharp.
4. Monochrome Channel Mixer adjustment layer, use gradient mask to show only bottom third of image. Makes tree trunks go black.
5. Curves adjustment layer.
6. Curves adjustment layer with mask to apply to sky only. Pop the blue in the sky.

#24 Sea Lion Cave - HDR - actually tone mapped.

Semi - HDR version: I took this at Sea Lion Cave on the Oregon coast just up from Florence OR. This my first attempt at using Photomatix on one RAW file as input. I think it is a significant improvement. Note that I layered the original under the HDR image from Photomatix. I masked the HDR water out, it looked too brown. Pulled down the opacity of the HDR layer to 78%.

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 IS at 55mm for 1/15 seconds @ f/2.8, iso=800.

Below is the original shot.

#23 Chelan Thunderheads (updated)

Thunderheads develop to the east of Chelan Washington.

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EF 70-200 f/4 L at 126mm for 1/640 seconds @ f/9, iso=100.

I took the original RAW file and ran through Photomatix to tonemap the image. I then placed it on top of the original file and lowered the opacity down to 24%. I like the result.

#22 Storms of Lake Michigan

A perfect day on the beach. Holland State Park in Holland Michigan, on Lake Michigan. Thunderstorms developing to the south and moving on to land. I just love the clear warm waters of Lake Michigan. Earlier that day I was wearing my sunglasses and a wave knocked them off my head. I was standing in about 5 feet of water - no problem I looked down and could see them sitting on the sand. The water is so clear and wonderful.

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 17mm for 1/800 seconds @ f/7.1, iso=100.

#21 Seattle Skyline version 2.

Here is a second shot, taken at the same time as but shot with a different composition. Note that the water dominates this shot, the sky dominates in #12. Which one is better?

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 18mm for 1/500 seconds @ f/6.3, iso=100.

#20 Heavenly Seagull

Photoshop: Cropped, slight curves to darken the sky very slightly. Smart Sharpen That's it.

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 55mm for 1/1250 seconds @ f/4.5, iso=100.

#19 Seagull

Photoshop: Duplicated layer, changed blending mode of new layer to soft light - this added some punch to the sky. That's it.

Photograph EXIF info:
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 55mm for 1/2500 seconds @ f/4.5, iso=100.

#18 Canada!

The Canadian lights of White Rock, British Columbia, Canada - shot from the Semiahmoo Resort in Blaine, Washington.

Photoshop: Cropped and slight curves adjustment.

Photograph EXIF info
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 48mm for 90 seconds @ f/8, iso=100.

#17 B-17 Bottom Turet

My daughter was reading a World War II novel at school. It was about a B-17 bomber and its crew. She wanted to see a real B-17 and it just happened that one was visiting Seattle. So we went down to take a look. This is the bottom machine gun turret on the plane. I really can not believe someone would actually sit in there. Interestingly, my daughter commented how small the plane was - just 60 years ago this was one of the largest planes flying.

I really like this shot. The gun turet looks other-worldly, alien and evil. I think it is emphasized by the fact that it pops out of the bottom of such a beautiful and streamlined airplane.

I shot this through a chain link fence, the blur to the left side is the fence. As an aside. I know we all get pretty upset about marks or dirt on our lens. But if I am shooting through a chain link fence and it only slightly mars the shot - notice the end of the top machine gun, then a little dirt or scratch on our lens is not going to make any difference at all. I have heard some professional photographers make this same point but it is always nice to prove it.

Photoshop: Cropped about 50%, Very slight curves adjustment to increase contrast. I used the channel mixer in monochrome to convert to black and white (the line on tarmack was annoyingly yellow), Used standard PS sharpening.

Photograph EXIF info
Canon 20D using EF 70-200 f/4L at 200 mm for 1/250s @ f/6.3, iso=100.

#16 High Key Alpental Skier

Alpental, Summit at Snoqulamie, Washington, USA.

I took this picture from Edelweiss Chair as the skier was coming down Gunmont. It was snowing really hard. I photoshoped the picture to bring out more detail than the original. The trees in the background were not really that visible.

Photoshop: Heavy curves and channel mixer in monotone. Original picture was very dark. Basically used channel mixer in monotone mode as a highlight/shadow adjustment to bring out the trees which were almost invisible - that is why the sky is blown out. Maybe I need to go back and do a gradient filter to tone the sky down... But I like it.

Update: I thought I would post the original shot. Here it is...

#15 Ferry pulling into Mukilteo

#14 Ferry to Bremerton

#13 Horse Heaven Sunrise

I got up at 6:00 and went up to the Horse Heaven Ridge that overlooked Prosser, WA to get a good shot of the sunrise. It was about 30 degrees F and the wind was blowing about 25 mph. Ruined my UV filter on my 17-55 lens with the sand blowing around. Got out of there and drove down through the city and found this. I really liked the color. There is nothing like the gold color of fresh hay

Photograph EXIF info: Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 17mm for 1/100s @ f/5.0, iso=400.

Location and date: 7th and Stacy Ave, Prosser, Washington at 7:37am on 11/2/2007.

#12 The Cloud that Ate Seattle. August 15, 2007

I really like this shot. I took it on the ferry last weekend and I hope to show how to turn a flat uninteresting shot into something with a little more punch. First I have to tell you that this is the shot that I saw even when looking through the viewfinder. I love clouds and really like how they can add drama to a shot. The second point I would like to make is that I was wearing my polarized sunglasses so the clouds looked more dramatic to me but not to my camera since I do not have a polarized filter for this lens. Note to self: need to buy a polarized filter for this lens. (expensive!) So knowing how the clouds looked, I set out to make the shot from the camera more like the picture I saw in my mind's eye.

OK here is the original shot:

As you can see this is really flat and uninteresting. By just applying curves and some sharpening we get the finished shot in about 5 minutes. OK first, we apply curves and get this.

From here, we do a lot of smart sharpening and we get the original - simple. There are other things I could do with the shot. There is some vignetting at the top and the space needle on the far left bottom seems to be suffering from some pincushion effect. Those could be easily fixed.

Photograph EXIF info
Canon 20D using EFS 17-55 f/2.8 IS at 18mm for 1/800s @ f/6.3, iso=100.

One last thing. As I was looking at the shot I noticed a flaw right above the center of the city in the sky. (Above the white topped building in the center of the city about a 1/4 of the way to the top of the sky.) I thought at first I had a dead pixel but it moved with the page. So I went to the original and this is what I found.

I think that's pretty cool. It really shows the resolving power of a good digital camera and good lens. It also shows how good image stabilization works. I shot this handheld on the deck on a vibrating ferry.

p.s. There is a black dot to the right of the plane above the tallest black tower, right between two clouds - that's a twin rotor helicopter.

#11 Detail of Lookin' for a handout.

This is detail shot of one of two gulls in a larger original shot, which can been seen here

This looks like a fairly old seagull. Looks like this guy as seen a lot. I don't believe that I over-sharpened the shot, this guy is just kind of beat up...

A favorite family activity is to take a ferry ride. This weekend we took the ferry from Seattle to Bremerton. My kids started to feed the gulls then other people started also. Late in the evening the sun was setting in back of the ship, we were standing in the front and these gulls where coming in and out of the sunlight as it was blocked by the boat - made for a dramatic shot.

Photoshop: Actually not a lot was done to this shot. I applied very slight shadow/highlight, curves and smart sharpen. That's it. It really does not look that much different from the raw capture, just a little more punch.