Aluminized Metal Prints - Spring Time Special

With spring just around the corner, now is the time to add a beautiful image to your home or office and Michael Kleinwolterink’s Photography has you covered with aluminized metal prints. Now until the Masters Golf tournament, I’m going to offer 20% OFF on my current stock of metal prints or 10% OFF on orders that are placed for metal prints.

What’s so special about these metal prints? Well my images are infused right into a sheet of aluminum for a look that provides rich iridescent sheen, bright vivid colors and depth that regular paper prints can’t match. The metal prints are waterproof, weather proof and scratch resistant plus they can be cleaned with glass cleaner. It’s simply a great photograph product!

The aluminized prints come either ready to be placed on a desk or shelve or hung on the wall.

Sizes Available & Standard Price (before sale):

8” x 10”               $50.00

8” x 12”               $60.00

11” x 14”             $85.00
16” x 20”             $165.00
12” x 36”             $200.00
20” x 30”             $275.00

Additional sizes available too but the above is what’s in my current stock.

A quick rundown of metal prints currently available are golf course, farming, hunting, winter, fireworks and Iowa football scenes. Below is a image of what’s in my current stock:

 

 

Email me at mklein@lakepanorama.org for more information or to place an order. Hope to hear from you in the coming weeks on aluminized metal prints.

Published in Mid-American Waterfowler Magazine

Over the years, I've been lucky to be published in different magazines and I have added another one to the list. Mid-American Waterfowler magazine has published two images of mine in their article about snow goose hunting in the January/February issue.

The front photograph was taken last year duirng set up of decoy spread while it was still dark. Resting my camera on the front of the Ranger and with the Ranger lights shining up the spread, I turned on the vortex units and my buddies continued to get the spread ready. I used a slow shutter spread to blur their movement along with the vortex movement.

The second photography published was from a few years ago on the best snow goose hunt I've ever been on. For 45 minutes, the snow's got off the roost and flew over the top of our spread, banked and came in feet down with out hesitation. It was a remarkable experience and I snapped the image published on the last flock that came in.

Click Waterfowler Mag to view the magazine and article featuring photographs from me.

Blue Spectrum of Feathers on Mallards

Even with the duck season being over for a few months, I got access to a wing from a big drake mallard and took advantage of it by taking close up photographs. For waterfowl hunters, the blue spectrum on the wings of mallards ranks up there second only to the green of the drake’s head.

For this shooting session, I was in my basement with the lights off and the D90 mounted on my Slik tripod to make sure I could get the sharpest image possible. To be able to focus closer on the wing, I put a 20mm extension tube on the 18-105mm. Camera settings included an aperture of f11, f13 or f36, ISO 200, RAW format and self timer. The VR was turned off on the lense and I focused manual using the live view feature on the D90. To light the wing tip, I handheld the SB-700 SpeedLight at different angles along with changing the flash power output from 1/1 to 1/64.

Once in ViewNX, I made adjustments to the RAW files by adjusting the following: white balance, picture control and highlight/shadows. I changed the white balance to direct sunlight while the picture control was adjusted to the custom nature/landscape. To help control the whites and the blacks, I adjusted the highlight and shadow sliders if necessary.

I also created HDR images with some of the images so when doing that, I created five different exposed images by ranging the exposure compensation on the RAW files from -1.5 to 1.5. I then outputted those files into 16 bit Tiff’s and worked on them in EasyHDR 2.0. I used the standard settings of black and white, night and dramatic in their drop down list of effects.

The final step was using PhotoShop Elments 11 to crop, sharpen and enhance the images using special effects. I used layer masks and the brush tool to create new images by brushing out the areas that I wanted to be seen through the background image. With the water droplets, I used a small brush tool to allow the blue of the mallard wings to shine through the rest of the wing which was black and white; It took me roughly an hour to brush out all the droplets. I also used the VirtualPhotographer plugin to change the black and white images into a world war II type b/w. Lastly, I duplicated the main layer for the image and sharpened that layer using the high pass sharpen filter and changed the blend mode to overlay and adjusted the opacity to around 20%.

Up next I hope will be scenes from snow goose hunting and I hopefully will be testing out a new Nikon lense. I’ve sent my Sigma 50-150 in on a trade and looking at a Nikon 24-120 f4 instead. When reviewing the lenses, the new Nikon D7100 body was announced which made me think about spending money on a new body too. But I then looked at the specs and the RAW buffer size on the D7100 is alittle slow for me shooting RAW all the time. I'll await the hopefully release of a D300s replacement in the coming months or years.

 

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#18. WWII B/W from Virtual Photographer with Layer Mask for water droplets.

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#22. Cross between b/w and color processing with layer mask for water droplets & call.

 

It's a Bit Parched Out - 2012 Waterfowl Season

After a summer of record heat and dry conditions, the 2012 waterfowl season arrived with area marshes being almost dry which made for an interesting season. With a couple late rains and some hard work scouting, the season turned out to be a success. The D90 was in the blind with me for almost every hunt and captured the scenes of the waterfowl hunter.

My camera was either in the blind with me or set up behind me on a tripod so the 18 – 105mm and 12-24mm lenses got the work for this season. The camera was always in RAW format and aperture priority mode with adjustments to exposure compensation and flash output if needed. The Hahnel wireless remote control allowed me to sit in my blind and capture the birds coming into the decoys while still being able to handle my shotgun.

Throughout the season, I uploaded the files off my camera onto my computer and into ViewNX to post process them. If needed, I adjusted the main settings that I do on all my RAW files: exposure compensation, white balance, picture control & highlight/shadow slider. The white balance was set to either shade, direct sunlight or cloudy while the picture control was set to custom settings of sport, nature-landscape and monochr. The sliders for highlight and shadows were changed to save highlights or lighten the images.

To finalize the images, I used my new software, Photoshop Elements 11 to do the final adjustments on these images. I used levels along with a layer masks, clone brush tool and straighten/crop to put the final touches on the waterfowl images. I also created multiply exposed files in ViewNX and then merged them together in EasyHDR to create HDR images.

It is hard to believe another season is in the books but once again, it was a great time spent with family and friends along with being behind the camera. I look forward to getting some rest the next month and getting ready for snow goose season.

 
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