Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day: A Path Through Glenorchy, New Zealand

We walked along this path in Glenorchy, New Zealand the other night when there was barely any light left. One false move and you were off in the swamp. There was a breathtaking tranquility about this place. 

I initially thought this would be an HDR situation so I shot just three bracketed photos: -1, 0, and +1 exposures. But when I got back to processing it wasn't very good or interesting. In fact it was downright bad. This whole walk had a black and white feeling to me with this zen-like pathway.

 

 

Glenorchy, New Zealand

Shooting Baby Portrait Photographs

It's that time again, time to shoot another round of baby photos for my family. I always find baby portraits to be difficult because my daughter likes to bob and weave all over the place. And I have a minimal amount of time before she needs milk or a nap!

One answer I've found is to shoot in Manual Mode and really amp up the shutter speed without going too high on the ISO. The more ISO the more noise but noise reduction software is so good these days that I don't really mind it. The hard part is keeping the blur to a minimum and that's where the shutter speed comes into play. I usually start around 1/160, that gives me a nice clean shot with minimal blurring. 

I also shot this series with a few different lenses. On my Sony NEX-7 I used my new 50mm prime lens. It's a cropped sensor which means I had to sit further back from my daughter than I would normally like but it takes great pictures. The other lens I used on my Nikon D800 is the 70-300mm, this is a great piece of glass for getting just the shot you want with a nice bokeh (or blurring of background). 

I did some minimal post processing on these. A few I just ran through Lightroom and a few I used Color Effects Pro. Tell  me your thoughts!

 

 

Baby Portrait

Photo of the Day: Sunrise over Lake Wakatipu

This is the first sunrise I got to witness in New Zealand. It happened while on my photo adventure with Trey. As I began to look at the 3,500 photos I took in Kiwi land I noticed something interesting, a marked improvement of my skills over the long week. Initially I shot this with HDR in mind but I ended up processing just a single RAW file because it just felt right. I'm learning to better trust my instincts. 

Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand
Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand

Photo of the Day: A Hike Up Mission Peak

I had a rare weekend day off and my wife and I decided to hike up Mission Peak in Fremont California. We got up at 5:30 in the morning to get to the peak by sunrise. It was a 2.5 mile hike straight up.  

There weren't too many great shots because the sunrise happened from behind. But I managed to get pretty low to the ground for this shot. Not bad. It was a series of five exposures on my Sony NEX-7.

Sunrise at Mission Peak, California

Photo of the Day: A Lake in Germany

If you ever get a chance to visit Germany you must head to the southern part of the country. The little town of Füssen sits at the base of mountains on the border next to Austria. I ran down the hill to get to this amazing lake just as the sun was setting. 

I took three exposures and I really should have lowered the ISO and kept the shutter open for much longer than I did. This was my first real photo trip and I'm somewhat happy with the photos I took there. For many of my landscape shots I wish that I had set my aperture to a higher f-stop to really bring out the clarity in the distant trees. Live and learn!

 

Sunset at a lake in Füssen, Germany.