Summer Storm Clouds over Farm Country

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 DI VC G2 lense, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

It sure didn’t happen very often this summer but there were storm clouds rolling through the country side that produced dramatic skies. I happened to be getting off work when two of these storms passed through so I got my camera out to capture the scene.

The D750 was fitted with the new Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 G2 to shoot landscapes for the first time on these two nights. The VR was kept on as I was shooting handheld with shutter speeds as low as 1/80 sec. RAW format with an ISO of 400-640 and aperture of f7.1 to f9. Matrix metering was used as well and a -1.0 to +.3 exposure compensation adjustment.

Lightroom CC did the majority of the post processing with adjustments to a number of sliders. I first changed the white balance to shade followed by adjustments to exposure, contrast, shadows, whites, clarity, vibrance and saturation. A slight S was put into the tone curve and dehaze was increased as well. Once the above adjustments were done, I created a preset to be able to post process the other images much quicker.

In Photoshop CC, I first cloned out the unwanted spots from a dirty camera using the clone brush tool and straightened the image based off of the corn crib or other buildings I wanted straight. I then made a selection on the corn crib to be able to apply an exposure mask to just the crib.  Because of the red, yellow and white paint on the north side of the crib, I increased the exposure to make it more visible using that selection mask. The final step was to hit F12 to apply the sharpening action I had created previously.

With fall fast approaching, the harvest of corn and soybeans will begin soon so I look forward to getting out in the fields and capturing the farmer’s scenes with the Nikon and Tamron. 

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Summer Sunflowers 17

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Nikon 24-120mm f4, Nikon 35mm f1.8, Nikon 70-300mm, Zeikos Extension Tubes, SB-700 Speedlight, VanGuard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

The sunflower plot at Bays Branch was full of big headed sunflowers which was a great opportunity to capture the large flower on two different trips. I wish I would of gone sooner to the plot has the sunflowers on the second trip were very much past their prime. The first trip was pretty close to having them look their best.

I carried in my camera bag loaded with the above equipment and used the different lense combo’s to get the perspective of the sunflower I was looking for. With my tripod set up, I always turned off VR and AF and used LiveView to focus on the sunflower. Aperture ranged from f11 to f16 and ISO from 100-200. Both matrix and center weighted exposure metering was used along with adjustments to the exposure compensation. If I wanted a darker background, I turned down the exposure compensation and used the SB-700 flash to expose the head of the sunflower. I used either Manual or TTL on the speedlight.

Using Lightroom CC to adjust these images, I first adjusted the white balance followed by adjustments to the other common sliders. Once I had one of the images looking great, I created a preset to help speed up the processing of the other images. I used the radial filter to further improve the look of the sunflower head while leaving the background unadjusted.

In Photoshop CC, I first had to clone out a number of dust spots from a dirty lense and also a spot that is on the sensor of my D750 (Side Note: Will be sending the D750 in for a recall because of shutter issues that Nikon released a month ago. I haven’t had any issues with my body but figure it would be a good time to have the sensor cleaned as well. Now I just got to figure out the best time to not have my camera). I then sharpened the images using the high pass filter and adjusting the blend mode to overlay and opacity down to 15%. To speed up the sharpening step, I created an action in PS that will automatically do the steps needed to sharpen the image all by pressing the F12 button.

Hopefully next year I’ll be able to capture the sunflowers at their peak and also use the Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 G2 lense that I’m now using on the D750. 

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