For the fun of it

I wanted to post something here, for the fun of it! I noticed that I spent very little time in August 'blogging" and it is my husband that HIGHLY recommends I keep up a schedule with blogging. He suggest that if I do not post something "regularly" then I have a chance of people not wanting to check me out! I really do think that this blog is my next step to moving forward with my photography, so no neglecting! And because I like to "teach" something, I am posting something with a new technique I have learned!

The photo above, I used LightRoom3 for the post processing. A gift from my husband, I had been using LR2 for a while now and realize how much I LOVE LR3 vs 2! Its a big difference! Any way, the one new feature that I really do like, which is available in LR2 and LR3, is the graduate filter! All of you have seen, if you visit my flickr account, what I can do with a hard grad filter, which I use all the time with my sunset images. The in LR filter does the same thing, but with an image that is already taken! Now, don't worry, I still believe in getting things "right" in camera! I am not much for post processing. But there are times when I can "save" an image due to the abilities of post processing.

For the image above, I did use, on the lens, a hard grad filter, made by Cokin. Its a nice filter and what I love about it is that it sure can add some colors to a nice, sometimes colorless, sunset. The sunset above, was not colorless! But I guess this phase was. Usually color is not a part of a sunset until after the sun has set! So before the sunsets, I still like to capture images, knowing they may or may not be usable! And once in a while, I actually take an image OF the sun! And this is one such as that. As you can see! SO after I put the image on the computer, I realized, I can use the LR3 grad filter on it! So, for this image, I set up the grad filter, from right to left, instead of top to bottom! At the end of the day, I was able to make the sun a little less bright, and lower the exposure ONLY on the side of the sun! I have another image that I did the same thing to, and it turned out good, but I want to re do the image, I KNOW I can do better! But for now, I hope you enjoy this image. In camera, I used the B+W ND106 as well as the Cokin hard grad filter.

Please, enjoy!

A Beautiful La Jolla Sunset!

I am not really sure I have any information to share right now. I just want to share this photo! I know there is no use having a blog if you don't blog often. And so I knew I had to add something SOON! I did go on vacation last week, and that was all quite nice! But it put me into a place in life where I found myself too busy to do anything dealing with photography! I took photos, but I did not spend any time on the computer with post processing or any extra time on Flickr. Only enough time to post and run! Which I hate to do!

Any way, on this particular evening at La Jolla, I managed to capture a sunset that was one of the top 5 sunsets I have ever seen! It was amazing and stunning! Full of color and details! The water and the rocks at La Jolla Cove only added to the beauty that God had put before me. Its funny, because I was going to go to La Jolla the day before to catch the sunset. But I could not leave my house until 7:00, and my son and I still had to get dinner! That put us at heading down the hill exactly at sunset! And, after looking west, I realized that there was not that much color in the sky any way.

And then, the next day. There were clouds all around, from the intense heat. I knew that meant a special sunset! So, I took my son down the hill and we enjoyed the sunset, just a day late! As I was shooting, a surfer came up to me and said, "Is that the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen?" It was close, but not the most beautiful, But as you can see above, I was quite lucky to be where I was and at the end of the day, I am glad my son and I wend down the hill to catch this very beautiful sunset! And now, I hope you enjoy my sunset!

For this image, I did use the B+W ND106 filter, 6 stops. And I also used the Cokin hard grad filter. Please enjoy! And tell me what you think! Or if you have any comments! Or become a fan! Anything! :)

Our recent sunsets!

For those of you who live in San Diego, you know that our sunsets of late have been beautiful! Simply beautiful. And no matter if you are up in the hills or down at the water, every where you go there has been color and amazingly beautiful details. Last night, I had the joy and honor of capturing such a sunset at La Jolla Cove.

Now, I have to say, this has been a gripe of mine, head off to the beach and get NO clouds or overcast with too many clouds. Now, I don't mean to sound like I am complaining! But the truth is, the most beautiful sunset, sense going out and taking photos of them, was January 1st, of 2010. That sunset, well, it set the bar! And, over the past eight months, I have seen some beautiful sunsets, but none worthy of a standing O! Until last night. Now, I am sure there have been some outstanding sunsets over the past 8 months, I just have not seen them due to my rugged outdoors, up the hill, location. When I say capturing the sunset, I mean at my favorite location, the beach!

Now, a sunset like last night reminds me why I do what I do. Drive to the beach, an hour one way, and get there just in time to be disappointed. For weeks, upon weeks, I make it to the beach, and especially during the summer, I have no color at all when the sky is as grey as it has been. I keep thinking to myself, why! Why do I do this? And last night gave me the answer. It was a reminder, that I do what I do for the off chance that the sunset is a killer one like last night. The color was outstanding and the movement in the water was just enough to make it work. I say just enough because the surf as of late has been rather small. No biggie, as long as its moving, I can make something of it! And hey, if the water is not moving, the I get some other opportunities, like shooting the clouds reflections in the water. It really is rare to have that chance. Having low tide AND a very colorful sunset like last night. Any way, moving on.

I hope you enjoy this image, it was from last night and it was full of color and fire. And for this image, I used the B+W ND106, 6 stop filter, along with the Cokin hard grad filter. Which did add a bit of pink to the image, but there was already so much color in the sky, it really did not alter the image so much. I did need it though because the sky was bright enough to where with out it, the sky would have been very much over exposed.

No longer one filter at a time, EXTREME stacking

Ya, I said it, EXTREME stacking! Thats what I call it when I take my two largest stoppers and put them together. Thats right, the B+W ND110 AND the B+W ND106. That is a total blockage of 16 stops of light! I have tried it twice now and one time worked out for me. However, I believe I know where I went wrong the second time, so I know what to try next time.

So, why in the world would I want to take away that much light? For starters, so that I can learn even more! Crazy, I know. But I have spent the past 7 months learning and repeating the act of long exposures. I know my filters like the back of my hands. I know how to allow light and take away light. I know how to capture the stars. The entire reason why I even committed to a 365 project was to set a goal for me, so that I can learn something. I wanted to master long exposures, so my topic is LONG exposures! If I do a project in 2011, it will be a topic that I want to master, for example, shooting 100% of the time in manual mode. So any way, back to my point. 7 months later, I realized that I know what I am doing. I get to the beach, I put my filters on and I pretty much know what I want my aperture to be for what filter for what time. I don't want to sound like I know everything, because I don't, but its not really a challenge for me any more! Its just another day shooting. So, a few days ago, while out, I thought about taking the longer exposure to the next level. To have SO much stops of light blocked, that it would require minutes instead of seconds. I was inspired by one of my flickr contacts. So, thats what I did. I put on my two DARK filters and this is what I came up with.

The image here, is a total of 300 seconds long. That is a grand total of 5 minutes long! In the middle of the day at an f/8 aperture. Oh, and of course, because its me, I used ISO 100. When I took the image home and processed it, converting it to black and white, I knew I had to play around with more of these. I love the effect and I have to say, when I took the image, I KNEW it would be the most perfect black and white. And let me tell you, I am not huge on black and white, but I am for this type of work.

I hope you enjoy and I also hope you take the time to view my other images on my 365 day project on Flickr, they are all long exposures and pretty much, in a package, my style of photography.

No longer one filter at a time, stacking the ND!

So, I spent quite a bit of time talking about each filter, one at a time. But that is not all to life! I have two combos that I like to use, because sometimes I am up for a touch more then what one filter has to offer. The two combos I use are:

B+W ND106 + Tiffen ND8 = A total of 9 stops of light

B+W ND110 + Tiffen ND8 = A total of 13 stops of light.

So, why would I want to go through the trouble of stacking two filters to get 9 stops instead of using my 10 stop? Because some times, I do not want to spend time in the post processing phase for the color correction that I often times find my self doing with the B+W ND110. Now, the ND110 does alter the color tones, it makes the image warmer. It really is not a huge deal, but it can make a difference. And believe it or not, 10 stop is a big deal compared to 9 stops. I can push the 10 stops past 30 seconds, easily. If I make the aperture really small, I can get 40 or more seconds and still not be over exposed. But with the 9 stops, 30 seconds really is my max. Clouds out and covering the sun can extend that, a bit.

So, once again, why would I want to make 13 stops by stacking the two filters over just sticking with the 10 stops of the ND110? Because with 13 stops at my fingertips, I can really push it! In the sun, a 2 minute exposure is still VERY easy! And with a 2 minute day time exposure, a regular beach location can look like a place out of this world! For example, the image above is a 60 second exposure taken with the B+W ND110 and the Tiffen ND8. Middle of the day! The great thing about this 1 minute exposure is that the aperture is f/11. With any other filter or combo of filter, that would not be possible with out going to f/22 or smaller! And keeping it at f/11 is important to me, so the filters are perfect in play. I use to shoot these type of images at f/22 just to get the longer exposure, thanks to filters, never again! :) Ok, perhaps on occasion!

I hope you enjoy the image and I sure do hope you have a chance to check out my flicker account. I have a lot more photos there! :)

One Filter At A Time ~ hard grad, soft grad

Ok, so I spent time talking about my screw in Neutral Density (ND) filters, now it's time to talk about the square filters that are graduate filters. Grad as I call them. The grad filter simply means that the top is shaded, like the ND filters and the bottom is light. That makes it so that when you have a bright scene on top of the horizon like a sunset, the bright can be correctly exposure as the bottom. Basically, you still get details on the bottom and not over expose the sky.

There are two basic type of grad filters. A hard grad filter has a line in the middle, the top is dark and the bottom is light. And the other type is a soft grad where it goes from dark on the top and fades to light on the bottom. The hard grad is perfect for a wonderful ocean sunset! What makes it perfect is the line in the middle. Match that line up with the horizon and take your best shot! The soft grad is really more practical though. I say that because the hard grad is not good for mountain ranges or any horizon with details with highs and lows.

Other then that, there is not much to it! Now they are square, so they don't screw in like the other ND filters. The filters I have are made by Cokin and and they have a holder that screws on to your lens and you simply drop the filters into the holder. With the one I have, I can stack up to 3 filter. Which I use to do back in the day before I discovered B+W! :) I still use it for the sunsets though. Nothing can replace my grads.

One thing about Cokin, which I to this day have a love/hate relationship with, is the color! And sometimes I cannot correct the color cast in post. The Cokin filters adds a bit of a pink color cast and the more I stack the more the colors. And when the color gets on my nerve, I process in black and white! Takes away all of my color issues!

With the image above, the addition of a pink hue really works! I was able to correctly expose the sky and the ground and despite the brightness of the sky, I was able to get a long enough exposure to have movement in the water. Hey, it works! :) And the exposure on this, to be exact, is 10 seconds.

Thank you for stopping by! Enjoy my blog and feel free to leave comments or suggestions, for other blog topics? I sure hope you enjoy!

My OH NO star trail!

I wanted to take a small break from the topic of filters, to talk about my OH NO! star trail last night! Tomorrow, I should continue with the filter topic, moving on to the Cokin filters.

What in the world do I mean by OH NO? I was SO happy when I went outside at 3 am this morning and saw that the camera was still standing and the glass was not fogged over. And after reviewing the data on my computer, I had gathered a total of 5 hours worth of star trails! HOW AWESOME IS THAT! And then, this afternoon, I went to my star stacking program and saw the OH NO! during the beginning of the process, I saw right away my first OH NO. The first 3 exposures went well, then I realized there were gaps! 4.5 minute gaps! The camera chose 3 exposures, only three out of 62, to do the in camera noise reduction (NR) processing. What is that? If the exposure is 4.5 minutes, 270 seconds, then the camera will take that same amount of time to process. So, the image was 270 seconds and the post processing, in camera, was 270 seconds making one image the time to take and process a total of 9 minutes! For one image! And that happened only in the beginning.

The second OH NO! moment of the night/morning. Right around exposure number 27, the camera shifted some how! Shifted by a large amount! More so then my earthquake picture. So, my flickr image is only the last 36 images and this one here is a total of 62 images, with the shifting and all. The good news is, the one good image I created to share on Flickr is still a whopping 9720 seconds long! THATS a lot of time! Each exposure is 4.5 minutes long for a total of 36 exposures. Now, the one you are looking at here, is the full version. From 10pm to 3am! The whole 5 hours. Exposure time total, 16,740 seconds. This time does not include the three gaps for the in camera NR and the one second gap between each exposure.

Not much more to say really. Except I plan on trying this again! And soon. This for me is all about trial and error, next shot I will use a lower ISO and that should take away the issue of the NR processing. And for less gaps in the exposure in all, I might try at 7 minute exposures. Now that I have a timer cable, I can program it to do what I want it to do! YA! :)

For the record, for those who might want to give this a "GO" the cable I use, Opteka, OP.C3 Timer remote cord. I got it on Amazon.com for about $50. Which is a great prices considering the Canon Exposure lock is $60 and the only thing it does is open the shutter and lock the exposure! :)

I encourage you to visit my Flickr site to view the smaller version, it looks more perfect, but this one, it has charter! :)

Thank you for stoping by and taking time time to view and read my blog.