Another shot from the D7000. I’m just throwing this up quickly so I have something to share today. I have “homework” to do. Best Buy wants me to write some tips for their mobile blog for taking better photos with your iPhone and I want to finish this app review for Aquarella today.
If you follow me on facebook, you’ve seen these photos. If you don’t follow me, you should change that because I’ve been really bad about blogging. Here’s my fb page.
This shoot with Monica and her horse, Troy, was a lot of fun. I’ve never taken photos of horses before, so this was totally new to me. We worked out a sweet deal where she said she will give me riding lessons in exchange for this shoot.
Since we got to the beach almost 2 hours before sunset, there was plenty of time to shoot and relax. While we waited for the light to get a little better, Monica talked me into climbing up on Troy and she walked me along the beach for a while. If you ever want to feel like a celebrity, ride a horse on the beach. Everyone stares at you and takes your picture!
I didn’t tweak the colors in these shots. It was just a magical sunset.
They went way out into the waves. I saw the water go over the horse’s back at one point. As you can imagine, Monica was drenched from head to toe by the end of our shoot.
I’m back in California for a while. I still have health issues to take care of before I can really get my life started in Oregon. I caught the sunset at the beach last night and I wasn’t expecting much because there was some thick fog rolling in. Luckily, it stayed away from the pier.
The first 2 images were shot and edited with camera+. The last 3 were shot with TrueHDR. I’ve had TrueHDR on my iphone for almost a year, but never used it because I liked ProHDR better. Well, apparently, TrueHDR’s updates have finally turned it into an amazing app because the results are pretty fantastic. I may have a new favorite HDR app.
Enjoy…
I used Shock My Pic and Snapseed for this painterly look.
See the even better version from my D7000 here.
This is the mountain that I used in the Superimposer pic yesterday. I was driving from one beach to McWay falls when I noticed the way the light was hitting the mountain. It looked so good that I had to pull over and turn around. In my experience, its always a good idea to turn around when you see something cool. Or, if you don’t turn around, make note of the time of day so you can return when the light might be similar.
I couldn’t really decide how to edit this one. I sort of like the grunge look, but its a little dark. The one below is more true to what I saw, but its not as impressive as the real thing. Sometimes the iPhone isn’t the easiest device to edit with. If I used photoshop, I could probably get this looking the way I want in a couple of minutes, at most. Its a little more complicated when you have to bounce around between apps and hope they don’t crash (i’m looking at you filterstorm.)
Yesterday was a challenging day and by the time the golden hour started I decided I needed to just jump in my car and catch the sunset somewhere. The problem was I didn’t know where I was going. Normally thats how I operate, but not at sunset because there is only so much time before the light is gone.
I cruised by the beaches, but didn’t feel like shooting there AGAIN (trust me, it does get old.) I headed inland to San Luis Obispo with an idea in my mind that I’d find a rural spot with a field against the mountains. It was a little tougher than I expected to find something like that in good light.
As I was driving, that little voice in my head said “Turn around!” So I flipped a u-turn and pulled off on some random road and drove back a little ways to find an open field just before the sun went down. This would be a great spot for a portrait session if it wasn’t on private property.
Both images were shot with ProHDR and I made only minimal edits in Snapseed. In the second image, the sun had stopped shining on the field, which meant a slightly slower shutter speed was used. Thats why the wind through the grass gave it a cool painterly effect that you can see better if you click on the image and zoom in.
Even as I look at this serene picture from last night’s sunset, I’m feeling STRESSED. I just got called for an interview for a teaching position in Oregon. Now I have a long list of things to get done before the weekend and the 10 hour drive ahead of me. So if I’m MIA for a few days its because I’m exhausted.
The good news is I went out shooting 3 times yesterday. The cool clouds from a passing storm motivated me to go out to a few different places. The show during the golden hour was surreal. It definitely made up for clouds blocking out the sun as it dipped below the horizon. I definitely have plenty of pictures to share over the next few days if I have the time.
This particular image was taken with ProHDR, edited with PhotoForge2, reduced the noise and added a subtle vignette in Filterstorm, and did some selective adjustments in Snapseed. I was tempted to use TouchRetouch to remove a couple things too, but my time is probably better spent taking care of things on my long to do list now.
The light was to die for during the golden hour last night. There was almost no need for a diffuser in most of the shots.
Bear with me for a sec while I praise a photographer who helped jump start my career, taught me so much, and gave me some incredible opportunities. I was happy to be his pack mule yesterday for his photography workshop and again in the evening for a photoshoot. I snuck a few shots with my iphone while he was doing his thing. I really wanna show you the original image, but its a big no no to poach another man’s shot. So what I’ll do is use TouchRetouch to remove the family from the scene. You’ll just have to trust me it was super cute the way they were holding hands and holding their two little ones off in the distance. It was perfectly composed with them near the horizon where the rule of thirds grid would intersect.
Go have a look at the work of Kenneth Morgan, the man who’s really helped me become a professional.
