Here’s another image from my trip to the big island of Hawaii with Jon Cornforth in December, 2009.  It was taken at the Kapoho Tidepools near Hilo, Hawaii.  We spent most of the week on the less rainy southern side of the island but got choked out by volcanic fog most of the week and didn’t get a ton of great pictures.  When we went to Hilo, the overnight rains broke just long enough to give us one absolutely majestic sunrise over the tidepools.

A quick aside:

I never fully appreciated how dangerous landscape photography really is – both to myself and my gear.  This picture was taken about 50 yards off-shore and it took a very treacherous scramble over really slick lava to get to this spot.  Here’s the irony – not only is lava slick as ice, it’s as dangerous as broken glass.  If you slip and fall on this stuff, you’d get cut to ribbons.  The photo gear would likely tumble into salt water – and that would be the end of that gear.  On top of all that, being in position at either dawn or dusk requires a scramble over this treacherous terrain in darkness.

Fortunately no photographers or cameras were harmed in the making of this image.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 24mm.  ISO 100, f/22, 3.2 sec.

Zion National Park is one of the most spectacular National Parks in the nation – everything is gigantic and dramatic.  This makes photography difficult – since the dynamic range is all over the place.  The lights are very light, the darks are very dark.  Even at dawn or dusk, there are parts of the park deep in the Virgin River canyon that the sun never really lights up.

This bend in the river is near Big Bend on the road to the Temple of Sinawava.  I exposed three pictures to create this three-shot HDR image so that I could control the extreme range of light and dark between the sun on the top of the canyon and the rocks in the river.  Most pictures in this location are taken in the fall when the trees are covered with colorful leaves.. but this makes a nice image since the river becomes the subject of the picture.

Go Somewhere Special!

Today’s shot is one that I took on the Big Island of Hawaii back in December of 2009.  I had just completed making the “One Last Evening in Paradise” image (featured earlier this year) and was waiting for Jon Cornforth to finish his shoot.  While I was waiting, I framed up some rocks in the foreground to make an HDR of the setting sun.  I bracketed nine shots and made the above image.

The major problem with this picture is that it was a mile and a half from our car over very rough lava.   As you can see from the sun, there isn’t much light left in the day.  A good chunk of the hike was made well after the sun went down and at one point we relied on the light from our iPhones to pick our way over the rocks.  It was a pretty treacherous hike – but we had a few cairns of white rocks to guide our way back to the trail to the car.  Afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with a traditional Hawaiian porkchop dinner at an old hotel near Kona.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 30mm.  ISO 200, f/22.

It’s a rainy day in Minneapolis today – waves of heavy rain broken up by humid sunshine.  It’s a great day for ducks, not such a great day for photographers.  Subconsciously, I kept thinking of a day last month where I spent virtually the entire day avoiding rain while trying to do some landscape photography.  I was in Zion National Park – and it was a great day for ducks.

Today’s photo was taken on that day in Zion.  About a minute after this image was made, it started to hail and I bolted for the car.  The radar showed some very heavy weather coming in, so I decided to call it a day.   Since it was already midday and the driving rain, hail, and 50+ mph gusts weren’t going to allow me to shoot, I started my 40-minute trek back to my hotel.  Of course, the weather broke right as the sun was going down and I watched a magnificent sunset from my hotel.  Note to self: ride out the weather.

I’m going to sidetrack for a second to discuss my personal photography ethics.  Everyone has a different take on this, and all are fine.. but these are mine.   I’m a photographic artist.. not a documentarian or journalist.  This gives me a lot of latitude in post-processing to make the image how I want it to look.  I can summarize it in one short statement coined by Fredrick Van Johnson (from This Week in Photography) – the pixels are there to be abused.  This means that I’ll change cropping, color, composition, use HDR, selectively color, and so forth.  I’m totally okay with removing something from a picture – but I don’t add things in.

My giveback is that I am very open about sharing what I did to an image.  If I say I used HDR.. I used HDR.  If I say it’s straight from the camera unedited – it’s unedited.  It’s only fair and somebody may learn something from it.

Why the diatribe about editing ethics?  There’s a good reason.  Today’s image has some abused pixels.  I wanted a guinea pig image to test Photoshop CS5′s brand new Content-Aware Fill.  It allows you to select an intrusive object, and it makes the object go away.  Full disclosure – I used content-aware fill to remove three twigs and a rock.  From my initial tests – there are images where it works great and others where it doesn’t work at all.  This was nearly a perfect test case – all edits were done in seconds.  I’ve also used it to remove people in the background of a wedding shot – and that worked great as well.  It’s pretty cool – and I can’t wait to use it more.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 24-105 f/4L @60mm  ISO 50, f/22, 4 sec.

… cool wind in my hair.. warm smell of colitas.. rising up through the air…

No, this isn’t California.. and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to stay at whatever the closest hotel is to this spot, though there is a pretty nice campground at the Valley of Fire.

The obvious question would be:

“If you are in a place like the Valley of Fire that is famous for the bright reddish orange rocks, why would you do a black and white picture?”

There a a couple of good reasons.  First, the subject of the picture is the road – not the rocks.  Second, this picture was taken at midday when there light was very contrasty and there was a fair amount of dust/haze in the air.  High Contrast + Black and White = worth a shot!

This highway is near the famous Elephant Rock.  In fact, I’m pretty sure Elephant Rock is about 10 paces to my right as I’m taking this picture.  Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of Elephant Rock because I didn’t realize that it is apparently okay to scramble onto the rocks for a better picture.  I was erring on the side of caution and stayed down on the road.

Don’t miss a fun side trip to a unique area the next time you are in Vegas – Valley of Fire is only 45 minutes away!

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L @ 70mm  ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/160 sec.

This shot was taken early in the morning just below the Court of the Patriarchs at Zion National Park.  Most people when photographing this mountain range do it from the comfort of their car.  This is a nice view if you want the same picture as every tourist.  I found nicer views a hundred or so yards into the woods near the Virgin River.

Once the light hit the mountain range, I hiked down to the river hoping to get a nice strong reflection off the water of the mountains and I was not disappointed.  Zion is a very tough place to photograph if you try to get anything but the standard shots – the tight canyons make for extreme differences in dynamic range.

Here is one of the crazy rock formations that makes up the Valley of Fire.  The Valley of Fire is an amazing place – and it’s only an hour or so out of Sin City.  After spending a few days attending the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Professionals International) conference, I scheduled a few days of landscape photography in the desert.  My first stop on my way to Zion National Park was here at Valley of Fire.  I arrived unfortunately right at the Golden Hour – so I had to get to work quickly.  I only got to stay for about an hour before it got dark and I made the most of it.  I really could have spent several more hours – but I’ll get a chance to shoot more on Sunday on my way back to the Las Vegas airport.

Here’s another image from the beautiful frosty morning that I spent at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum a couple of weeks ago.  I love bringing this barn into my images – it’s as if they positioned it on the hill above the meadow to make a perfect background to lead your eye into the image.  Yes, it’s not a mountain range – but it’s what we have to live with here in Minnesnowta.

This is actually a pretty severe crop into what was originally a horizontal picture.  I had too sweeping of a vista in the original shot, and the subject got lost.  I like this one much better – it’s a much simpler composition.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 70-200 f/4L @ 140mm  ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.

I love winter.  That’s probably good because I live in a state where we get lots of it.  Sometimes I get in a rut like everyone else and think I can’t get out to shoot in the winter because it’s too snowy or cold or drab or whatever.   Frankly, it often is.  On Saturday I was reminded again about why I love winter – everything looked Heavenly with fresh snow and fresh hoarfrost.  There was a saintly white wonderland in every direction – so bright and white I wore sunglasses even though it was fully overcast.

Shooting on days like this is a challenge too – there is no detail in the sky or the ground.  Do you emphasize the negative space or minimize it?  The last post maximized it – this one minimizes it to focus detail on the frosty trees.  Another gotcha is the light meter in the camera.  It is important to set the meter to +1EV since everything is white.  If you don’t, the camera will try to make everything 18% grey – and this will mean an image that is way too dark.  One final winter shooting tip?  Bring spare batteries and keep ‘em warm!  Battery life is shortened by a huge amount when it’s below freezing.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 40mm  ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.

Today marked a milestone of sorts – it’s the first time in two years that we had a heavy hoarfrost and I didn’t have a prior commitment that kept me from going out to shoot it.  I anticipated we’d get some last night since a pea-soup fog rolled in last evening.  When I woke up this morning and saw the crystalline world outdoors, I bundled up and headed out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

The tough part about shooting there in the winter is that they close off the 3-mile drive to motor vehicles.  That means a hike in the snow to get anywhere.  Framing up a shot without the snowbank along the road meant trudging through 2 feet of snow with a full load of camera gear.  The conditions were perfect – the sun didn’t burn off the frost and the fog rolled out leaving it nice and clear.

Strangely, this picture is not black and white.  With a white sky, lots of snow, and dark tree bark there’s almost no color in the picture.  A slight blue cast to the snow is about the only giveaway that it’s not black and white.

Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @26mm  ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.