From imagination to image
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Taken with that amazing Canon 500mm f/4.0L lens on the 5DMII. ISO was set to 1250. The only editing done was to use Nik Dfine to clear up the noise. I’m amazed at the bokeh along with the sharpness. Now if I could only hire a sherpa to carry the beastie for me I’d be even happier.
Tags: Avian, Birds, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Juvenile Tree Sparrow, Lincoln, RI
A 500mm f/4.0L lens. It arrived today, a day early, and it is a BEAST. It weighs 9.5 lbs and comes in a hard case (which is apparently a good thing because the box from Canon that was inside the intact box from B&H was all crumpled on one end with the Styrofoam crunched up good inside). The Wimberly head for the tripod comes tomorrow so I hand held it, well, not really hand held it, I’m not up to that – yet – I sat in a chair in the backyard and balanced my elbow on my knee or on the arm of the chair. The birds and squirrels were very cooperative after an initial fly off. This is one of my favorites, just for the color and sharpness, it’s a bit busy for me with that branch in the foreground but he didn’t stay still very long. 50% crop, Dfine and Pro Contrast Nik filters.
Male Cardinal on Branch
Tags: Avian, Backyard, Birds, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Handheld, Lincoln, Northern Cardinal, RI
The Lotuses are blooming down in Wickford and although it was a bit windy and the sun was too high in the sky I was able to get some nice images of the new buds.
I thought I’d try something different so I dug out my old Canon 300L f/4.0 and my 1.4X tele. It gives me a bit more reach than my 100-400 and I think it’s a bit sharper.
Tags: "Canon 1.4X teleconverter", "Canon 300L f/4", "Egyptian Lotus Flowers", Canon 5DMII, RI, Wickford
Unlike the browns of it’s upper body the Willets wings are strongly banded and quite striking.
Another shot I took whilst out with Terry on our long hike through the streets of Boston. You can see that “party yacht” better in this shot, it’s a bit of an eyesore against the brick and glass buildings, I wish I got lower to hide it better. I like the way the light illuminates the redish gold leaf on the cobblestones and the seagull waiting for a handout. Another HDR processed in Photomatix then finished with Nik Plugins and Tony Kuypers web sharpening action
Canon 5DMII, Canon 16-35mm F/2.8
Tags: Boston, Canon 16-35L f/2.8, Canon 5DMII, Financial District, MA, Moakley Courthouse, Nik Plugins, TKRPhoto, Tony Kuyper Actions
Taken while standing in the ocean in front of the Hilton Kaua’i where we stayed all 4 nights on Kaua’i. It wasn’t good for my tripod, I know that but it was hard to resist wading into the incredibly clear water in the warm pre-dawn hour instead of shooting from the beach. And the angle was so much better. I’m paying for it now, I should replace all the hardware on the tripod since it’s begining to rust.
This is a Pano HDR composed of 4 HDR images each of which was composed of 5 images taken at 1EV. The HDR was done in Photomatix and the pano was stiched in Photoshop CS4 (which rocks!). Adjustments were made with Nik plugins and Luminosity painting with Tony Kuypers luminosity mask actions. Canon 5DMII, Canon 16-35L f/2.8.
Tags: Canon 16-35L f/2.8, Canon 5DMII, Hawai'i, HDR, Hilton Kaua'i, Kaua'i, Panoramic, Sunrise, Vacation
Our first day in Kona we took a snorkel tour with Sea Quest Adventures, our captain Liam and his assistant Abby. It was an awesome 5 hour tour he took us to snorkel in 3 spots, the last being the Captain Cook Monument. We went out in an inflatable which allowed Liam to take us to places we couldn’t otherwise if we took one of the bigger boats – in and out of the little sea arch formations and close to the beaches. At the monument the water was clear 100 feet down making me wish I dove (perhaps my next “thing”!), but this was a very shallow area of the reef right near the monument itself and there was more live coral and colorful fish than we’ve ever seen snorkeling in the Caribbean Sea.
The image was taken with my 50D on SRAW2, 24-105L f/4.0 lens in the Ewa-Marine Housing. Post processing in photoshop included color correction, using Nik Plugins and Tony Kuypers luminosity masks and sharpening.
We should have gotten an earlier start to go up to Waimea Canyon, but we were on vacation and I wasn’t going to treat it as a purely photo trip so we took things a bit easy. Of course that meant by the time we got up to the lookouts over Waimea Canyon the clouds had started to settle down into the canyon and the sun was begining to disappear. Still, it afford this image which is an HDR of 3 exposures blended and tonemapped in Photomatix and then finished in Photoshop with Nik plugins and the use of luminosity and saturation masks (the tutorials and masks by Tony Kuyper). And yes the greens were pretty much really this color – a very odd color green to my eyes.
The day after Hurricaine Danny blew through we went down to Matunuck Beach, me to shoot, Mike to surf. It was too misty to do much shooting of him and Jas (and the 200 or so other surfers out there) so I squeezed myself up against a wall and shot the waves as they washed in and out. A quite hazardous job since the current was fierce and I was wearing jeans, boots and was carrying the 5DMII with the 16-35 and had a pack on with the other camera and my 100-400 and various sundries. It would have been sink long before swim. The cameras got a little spray on them and I got soaked up to my waist but was rewarded with some interesting images.
Mike having some fun
Storm Surge:
Storm Surge2 B&W:
Tags: B&W, Canon 16-35L f/2.8, Canon 5DMII, Hurricaine, Matunuck Beach, Mike, Monochrome, Ocean, RI, surfing
It’s unusual for it to be still the day after a hurricane comes through, but then again it’s unusual for it to be sunny with awesome clouds the day it does like it was last Saturday and Sunday when Hurricane Bill so why should I have been surprised when it was nearly dead calm after Hurricane Danny passed? But still it was after we got back from the beach and it gave me a chance to play a bit with some later season flowers.
This is a 13 image composite taken at tiny little increments of focus point on the pink flower. There are a few ways to process this but I chose to do it all in CS4. I imported them all from LR2 as layers in one document then used auto-align. After about 5 minutes it finished and I did a rough crop and went for auto-blend using the stack images command. 10 hours later (it felt like) I got pretty much this result. The only other tweaks were further croping and a pro-contrast layer from Nik Software’s Color efex pro and then a run of the “make it glow” action by Tony Kuyper and an adjustment of the opacity of the two layers.
Tags: Auto Align, Auto Blend, Composite Image, Flower, Hurricane, Photoshop