Lake Panorama Main Basin with the new Tamron 70-200mm G2

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 G2 lense, Vanguard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

With blue skies dotted with puffy white clouds, I headed to the main basin of Lake Panorama a few weeks ago to try out the new Tamron 70-200mm G2 lense that I acquired. After purchasing three different lenses of this same lense, I kept this one after testing it on lense charts. I was excited to see how it would perform.

I put the lense on the D750 and used my VanGuard tripod as well since I used liveview on my camera to zoom in to focus on the lighthouse. I then turned off autofocus and VR on the lense. I shot in aperture priority mode with apertures at f7. 1, f9 or f16 while ISO was 100 or 200. I turned the shooting mode dial on the D750 to self timer so I could have my hands off the camera when the shutter clicked to help improve sharpness.

I shot a series of images that I could turn into panoramic images using Lightroom and panned my camera on the tripod to be able to create those images. Later in LR, I took these images which ranged from 3 to 7 images and let the program combine them together into a panoramic.

Once imported into Lightroom, I used my custom presets to edit these images and then fine tuned the sliders under the basic editing tap. LR has now updated their lense data base to include the new Tamron G2’ s so I could remove chromatic aberration and enable profile corrections by finding the 70-200 G2 lense under lens correction tap.

In Photoshop, I first cloned out unwanted objects or blemishes in the image. From there, I used a levels layer to increase saturation in the sky, a cooling photo filter to increase the blueness of the water and then improved the look of the lighthouse as well. To do that, I created a mask of just the lighthouse and then linked a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to just that mask.

The new Tamron performed well on this shoot and captured some sharp images and colors that I was able to fine tune in post processing. The panoramics turned out well and are some large files, with some of them being over seventy two inches wide. I’m looking forward to shooting more panoramic and getting them put on metal prints for clients. 

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2018 DU Member Photo Contest - Overall Winner

Each year, Ducks Unlimited has their member photo contest and this year, I submitted a nightscape shot that I captured after I set up my decoy spread for a morning duck hunt in the dark. After all the entries were in from across the country, I was selected as overall winner.

View the article and the details on how I captured the shot on DU"s webpage below:

 Ducks Unlimited Photo Contest

Below is the image:

Winter Farm Landscapes in February

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 G2 lense, Vanguard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

With a blanket of snow back in February covering the ground, I ventured out to a few of my favorite scenes to photograph while the sun was setting.

The D750 and the Tamron 24-70mm was used to capture the scene that was shot in RAW. ISO was 100 and I had the aperture set at f7.1 and f16. I used f16 to get the sun rays on the last two images while shooting from the VanGuard tripod because the shutter speed was slow at that aperture.

Using Lightroom Classic, I first changed the white balance to shade and then started making adjustments to the basic sliders to boost the colors of the sky. I then used the graduated filter tool to improve the color of the snow has I wanted to keep it a bright white. Clarity, sharpness, saturation, and lens correction tools were also used in LR.

                                                                                                                    

In Photoshop CC, unwanted objects were first cloned out using the clone tool or content aware fill tool. These objects included dust spots in the sky from my dirty sensor along with power lines between the barn and corn crib. I straightened the image and cropped if needed in PS.

The snow didn’t last long once the warm up occurred but I was pleased with what I was able to capture on my two trips out into the cold and snow.

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Lake Panorama National G.C. - Summer/Fall 2017

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 G2 lense, Vanguard Abeo Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

Once again, Lake Panorama National Golf Course was in great condition during the golf season last year and I was able to get out to capture the beauty of it. Late August and the middle of October was when I was able to get out with the Nikon.

The D750 was used to capture the LPN and I had the Tamron 24-70mm on it. Shooting in RAW, ISO was 200 or 400. I shot handheld or put my camera on the Vanguard tripod. My aperture was f9 or f11.

Using Lightroom Classic, I started making adjustments to the basic sliders in hopes of creating a preset that I could use for all my golf course images. Some of the adjustments that I kept included reducing highlights and blacks while increasing shadows and whites. Clarity and vibrance was bumped up to +15 and +10. Under saturation, yellow were decreased while green and blue were increased. Under luminance, green and blue colors were decreased as well. I saved the preset and used it on all of these images.

In Photoshop CC, unwanted objects were first cloned out using the clone tool or content aware fill tool. These objects included dust spots in the sky, geese in the fairway and yardage/water stakes. I rotated and cropped the image to help get the flag stick on the green has straight has possible. A new step that I implemented on these images was using a color lookup layer mask and using the tension green color under the 3DLUT File. I reduced the opacity on this layer til I liked the look of the green for the putting surface. I then used the brush tool to mask out the color for the fairway and sky area of these images.

With snow currently covering the golf course, I’m looking forward to the spring, the Masters and the golf season to capture the golf course once again.

My favorite from this collection is #24 of Hole #5. The sunrise provided a color filled sky while the dew on the green added another element to the image. 

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2017/2018 Waterfowl Season

Equipment Used: Nikon D750 & D90, Nikon 24-120mm f4 lense, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

Captured these images during the 2017/2018 waterfowl season in Iowa and South Dakota chasing ducks and geese in fields and marshes.

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