Thursday, October 22, 2009

Wild Flowers

I have had several people ask about what I do in post processing and why it is important. For me what you do with your image after the shutter has been opened is just as important as taking the initial image. Here is an image that I took in the southern part of the Bandlands in South Dakota. The first image is the straight Raw image without any conversion or enhancements. The next picture is the same image after Raw conversion and other Photoshop enhancements. I had to take the first image the way it was to guarantee that I had enough info to work with in the bright sky and in the darker flowers. If I exposed for the sky I would lose details in the flowers and if I exposed for the flowers the sky would be washed out. To solve the problem I metered for an exposure in between the sky and flowers, knowing that I could do a few adjustments in Photoshop. Keep in mind that I do not use Photoshop to fix bad images but rather I use my camera and Photoshop together to produced the image I pre-visualized before I opened the shutter.


Sunday, October 4, 2009

Well Saturday the family and I went to the Pedestrian Bridge connecting Omaha and Council Bluffs. I was hoping to get some images of the bridge and the river together with maybe the cityscape in the background. When we got to the bridge I found that the lighting was not the best for the image I had in my head. Instead of gong after a scenic landscape I decided to concentrate on the form of the bridge. While walking across it I found myself intrigued by the strong lines of the cables on the structure. I spent my whole time there looking up at these cables. These are some of the images I got.