Lake Panorama Fireworks over the Lake

After capturing fireworks at Yale on Thursday, it was time for the fireworks at Lake Panorama on the weekend. I got to the marina at dusk to set up my camera equipment and watched the boats travel out to the Shady Beach area.

I set up on the shoreline with the lighthouse directly in front of me. Once again, I had the D90 and 24-120 lense on my tripod. Getting to my shooting location before dark, allowed me to manually focus on the lighthouse to make sure that was in focus. In manual mode, I switched to bulb which allowed me to hold the shutter down between 5 – 20 seconds for these images. An aperture of f9 – f14 was also used. Standard settings of RAW and ISO 200 were used along with the Hahnel remote.

The RAW files were processed in ViewNX first with minor adjustments. The exposure compensation was increased to help brighten the fireworks and sky. On the majority of the images, white balance setting was not touched but on a few, I did change it to direct sunlight. The fireworks picture control was used as well to help brighten the images.

To finalize the images, I used PSE11 to blend a better exposed lighthouse into the firework burst image. By using a combination of blending modes, layer masks and the brush tool, I was able to smoothly blend the lighthouse. My final step involved sharpening the firework burst area with the sharpen tool.

Before the fireworks started, I happened to notice a new flag pole that had the stars and stripes blowing in the light wind. Seeing a great opportunity to get the flag pole and light house in with the fireworks in one image, I moved my camera to this location and took a couple test shots. Unfortunately, the wind died so I decided to go back to my original location. However, I look forward to going back and getting a great firework photograph with those items in the background.  Luckily, with PSE11 I was able to see what the photograph would potential look like and I can’t wait to try to capture the image in one click of the shutter.

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#9. HDR image created in EasyHDR.

 
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Yale's 4th of July Firework Celebration

On the 4^th of July, Yale had its annual fireworks show at dusk so I drove west of town on highway 4 and parked my truck along the road.  With the FC-Coop behind the location of the fireworks, I set up my camera view to get the coop in the background.

 

From the bed of my truck, I had my D90 on the Slik tripod and used the Nikon 24-120 lense to capture the bursts of fireworks. I turned off VR and autofocus on the lense because I was on a tripod. I shot in RAW, base ISO of 200 and manual mode. With the aperture between 6.3 – 7.1, I ranged my exposures between 10-20 seconds using the bulb setting in manual mode. To keep the camera from shaking, the Hahnel remote was attached to the camera to keep the shutter open.

 

I first worked on the files in ViewNX by adjusting the exposure compensation. To help increase the exposure on the FC-Coop, I increased the exposure compensation from .3 – 1.0. Since the D90 did a good job on the white balance, I didn’t change that setting. However, I changed the picture control to a custom fireworks curve that I created last year. This curve helps brighten the fireworks and also the background.

 

The images were finished off in PSE11 with level adjustments and layer masks. Levels were shifted to the right on the slider which increased the contrast of the fireworks against the dark sky. Because this also affected the light on the Coop, I created a layer mask for the level adjustments and used a gradient to slowly blend them together.  The final step on the images was done with the sharpen brush by sharpening the firework bursts.

 

For the first time, I also experimented with HDR on a firework photograph. I created five different exposed images using ViewNX and created 16 bit Tiff files which were then blended together in EasyHDR. Overall, I was pleased with the results so will continue to experiment with this technique.



 

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Hollyhock's underneath the SB-700 Speed Light

Right after the tiger lilies were blooming, the hollyhocks started to bloom as well so I traveled over with my camera gear and captured their unique color and petals as well. I decided to get real close to these flowers so I used larger extension tubes on my camera and lense set up.

The D90 was fitted with the extension tube followed by the 20-120f4 lense with VR off and Live View to manual focus on the middle of the hollyhock. I shot the below images in either manual or aperture priority mode with an f11 to f22 setting. ISO setting was 200-400 and exposure compensation was -2 to -4. The Speed Light was on remote and I moved it around the flower along with changing the flash power from 1/64 to 1/128.

On the computer with ViewNX, I changed the white balance to direct sunlight and the picture control to Nature-Landscape. The exposure compensation and highlight/shadow protection sliders were adjusted if needed on the RAW files.  I created one HDR image of the holly hawks by merging different exposed images into one with EasyHDR software.

Once again in PSE 11, I used the clone brush to get rid of unwanted objects/imperfections on the flower pedals. To selectively sharpen the images, I used just the sharpening tool on this set of images to just sharpen the middle part of the flower.

My favorite photograph from this batch is the HDR processed image that I created that really brightened and saturated the colors of the hollyhock and helped make the water droplets stand out as well.

 

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Tiger Lilies underneath the SB-700

The bright colored lilies started to bloom this summer and on a calm night, I was out with my camera, its accessories and a spray bottle to capture neat designs of these beautiful flowers.

To capture close up’s of flowers, I used the following equipment: tripod, extension tubes and speedlight. I put the extension tubes on the 20-120ft lense and turned off the VR and manual focused because I was using the D90 on the tripod. I also used Live View to zoom in to get better focus. The SB-700 was used to place light on the subject at different angles by hand holding it. To create the water droplets, I used a spray bottle that I had filled with water.

The camera was put into manual mode with a shutter speed of 1/200 and an aperture of f11 with an ISO of 500. The exposure compensation was the setting I adjusted often and it ranged from 0 to -5. I wanted to create a dark background to make the lily stand out and using the speed light with these settings, allowed me to do that. The RAW files from the camera were imported into ViewNX.

Once in ViewNX, I adjusted the white balance to either flash or left it has standard. The picture control was changed to Nature-Landscape and I also adjusted highlight/shadow protection sliders. To fine tune the exposure, I tweaked the exposure compensation as well.

PS Elements 11 was used to clone out unwanted imperfections on the flower petals that show up in close up photography. To create different backgrounds, I used texture files that I have downloaded in the past. I used texture’s that had nice bokeh and adjusted the blend mode on the texture layer to get a look that I liked. I then used the brush tool on the layer to paint over areas that I didn’t want the texture showing through. I used the sharpening tool to adjust sharpness on certain parts of the flower and then used the high pass sharpen filter as well as my last step of post processing.

My favorite image of the tiger lilies is where I took a dark texture with nice bokeh that also has a darker border and put it behind the lily that had water drop lets placed on it. The angle of the speed light on the lily really makes this image stand out.

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Summertime Farm Scenes

With the crazy spring weather and late planting season, the corn plants are shorter than usual and the soybeans just got planted. I took advantage of the conditions by taking out the D90 and getting some images of corn fields overlooking the FC Coop. I also experimented taking images of a pile of soybean sacks that I started on fire as the last field was being planted.

I fitted the D90 with the 20-120f4 lense along with using the SB-700 Speed Light. The Speed Light allowed me to get proper exposures for the foreground but yet get the background dark enough to showcase the cloud formations. As always, I was shooting in RAW and had the ISO between 400-500. I choice an aperture of f10 and adjusted the exposure compensation to -2 to -4 depending on the scene. The SB-700 was set to manual and remote.

The RAW files were transferred into ViewNX were I adjusted the exposure, white balance, picture control, and highlight/shadow parameters if needed. For the corn field images, I had a white balance of shade and for the fire images, I choice direct sunlight. Nature-Landscape was my desired picture control.

A few of the images I processed using HDR software, so I used ViewNX to change the exposure’s on those to be able to have multiple exposed images. EasyHDR was used to blend 3 to 5 images into one image.

Tiff files were imported into PS Elements 11 to do the final adjustments. I cloned out unwanted objects on the corn plants and sharpened to taste. I also created layer masks and used the gradient tool to merge a few different exposed images into one. Over the last few months of editing, I have grown to like the slow transition of merging different images that gradient maps allow me to do.

My favorite image from this group would be the close up of the corn plant with the beautiful colored cloud formations in the background. This was processed as an HDR and it really made the clouds pop in color.

 

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