Sunny Florida at f/11 project #01 - Kapok Park Pond HDR

I broke my own rule and made this HDR image without a tripod.

I bet when most people imagine Florida in their minds, the image is of a white sandy beach with palm trees.  However, such places make up only a very small part of Florida's land mass.  In fact, most of Florida looks like the above landscape -- flat countryside with a mix of trees scattered about.  Spanish Moss hanging from live oak trees should be as iconic a Florida image as the coconut palm tree.  

I assigned myself a personal photography project for 2010 -- "Sunny Florida at f/11" and the above photograph is my first official shot in that series.  If you have no ongoing, personal photo project yet for yourself, I highly recommend it as both a means of having a photography goal for the year and to make a number of images in the same theme that could potentially be used for a gallery exhibition!  

On this particular day my goal was first to photograph birds, but when I realized my Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens was not going to get me nearly close enough, I thought I would have to change the day's shooting goal to landscapes.  Then a friend let me borrow a Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm VR f/2.8G lens and Nikon 2x Teleconverter for the day so I was able to photograph birds after all.  Still, I could not resist breaking my own rules when I saw this landscape scene and photographed something outside of my theme for the day and even worse handheld an HDR shot!

If you have a personal photography project for 2010 describe and link to it in the comments below. 

Trial-ing out Topaz Adjust

A sample candid portrait I processed in Topaz Adjust which took some fiddling about to produce (original below)

I am a strong supporter of Nik's suite of apps, especially Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro.  However, I have been coming across more and more mentions of Topaz Labs' Topaz Adjust app, which is actually a plug-in for Photoshop.  The before and after photos on the Topaz Adjust product page are impressive.  Several totally blah photographs are miraculously transformed into strikingly colorful portfolio shots.  

The above photograph is my first attempt at adding some of that Topaz style pop to one of my images.  I was teaching a DSLR photography lesson to student Danielle in Sunken Gardens, actually practicing flash outdoor portraits, when this woman (visiting Florida from Michigan) and her friends passed by and said hello.  I already had my Nikon D300 in hand and my SB-600 Speedlight raised as this woman let out a big smile.  I quickly asked her, "may I take your photo," she did not protest so I pushed the shutter.  Personally, this is my favorite kind of photo to make and I do not often get a chance in public to make one of these in Saint Petersburg, as it is sparsely populated.

So using one of the softer presets in Topaz Adjust I added a little bit of skin smoothing and then adjusted the color sliders to make the image more vivid.  There are quite a few presets and they did not immediately produce an image I liked, so it took quite a bit of playing with several of the presets and adjusting them to produce results that I liked for the photo.  Some may find any results with Topaz Adjust look too unreal or too HDR-ish.  However, for adding color pop and pulling details out of shadows, I found Topaz Adjust to be a very useful tool.

I will continue to experiment with Topaz Adjust as there is a learning curve involved.  Topaz Labs offers a free trial of Topaz Adjust.

The original image with only Aperture's basic RAW file processing.

Street Photography - Tokyo Skateboarder

2008, Shinjuku Tokyo Japan - Nikon D80 with Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens

I did a lot of street photography when I lived in Tokyo.  Since I lived within a short walking distance of Shinjuku station, literally millions of people walked through my neighborhood every day.  On such street photography occasions I would seek out a spot out of the way of the flow of sidewalk traffic, preferably with my back against something (railing, subway entrance wall, etc), but with a clear view of the passing people.  There are other techniques I use to make my street photography images, but I will not reveal all of those here.  

Anyone carrying a skateboard would automatically grab my attention, but throw in a manilla envelope with BUGS in a large font across the front of it, and you have exactly the type of person my eyes comb through the masses for.  The bonus was I had a clear shot of him long enough to also make a detail shot of his skateboard.  

I would like to do a photo series of skateboard deck customizations some day.

How Saint Petersburg area dogs might think

This Australian Sheperd is a great listener

Last Sunday I found myself in several pet photography situations, all with dogs.  It got me to thinking, "what do dogs really think when they meet, play with, and wrestle with each other?"  The above and the following is my attempt at reading their minds.  The black & white Border Collie mix, by the way, is my crazy puppy, Kiki.

"I am not opposed at all to public displays of affection."

"Who in the world could ever pick on me, a cuddly 4-month old pug puppy?"

Apparently dogs are immune to the cuddliness of their own kind and play rough with one and all!

"If they will not play nice then I will just take my ball and go home!"

"Is a single blade of grass enough to hide me?"

Please feel free to put in the comments below what you think these dogs might be thinking.  

• Find out more about candid pet photography packages

New Personal Photography Project: Sunny Florida at f/11

A view of Tampa Bay from Vinoy Park on a sunny Florida afternoon

I had been trying to think of a photography project for myself for awhile now.  During yesterday's photography lesson I was shooting at f/11 to make the portrait of Danielle using my Nikon SB-600 strobe in strong sunlight.  I found myself really liking the detail in that image.  I was also thinking that I have virtually no sunny Florida landscape photographs at all, despite being nearly a year back in Florida by now.  Thus I got the idea to combine those two things, f/11 and sunny Florida landscapes, and make it an ongoing photography project just for fun (or more?).  

Now I thought I had shot the above image at f/11, but in actuality it was made at f/5.6.  Why did I use it in this post then??  Well, it at least fulfills one of the project requirements, that of a sunny Florida landscape.  

The loose goal I have set for myself it to produce one sunny Florida landscape at f/11 per week.  However, the weather has been extremely poor this winter in the Tampa Bay area, really a never before seen amount of rain, clouds and cold.  Of course this happens the first winter I am back in a decade, of course.  

If anyone would like to join me in this project I would enjoy the company, and please post links to your photos in the comments.  Even if you are not in Florida, I would enjoy seeing sunny landscapes of where you live.

Corkscrew Clouds over Smacks Bayou Snell Isle HDR

It is hard to beat Florida's flatness for producing big sky photographs right from your back yard.

It seems every time I take Kiki out for an evening walk in our neighborhood, the sky and sunset are always fairly dramatic.  Tonight was no exception.  And almost always, by the time I get back from walking her the best light and clouds are already gone.  I noticed the corkscrew clouds (bottom center of image) right away while walking Kiki.  I cannot say I have ever seen that particular formation before.  When I first saw them they were large and more pronounced.  When I finally had a chance to make a photograph of them, they had drifted further away and their curliness had become less defined.  Still, I was glad to be able to catch a bit of orange in the horizon before the fading sunlight all disappeared.

How I made this image:

• Nikon D300 with Tamron XR Di II 17-50mm lens tripod mounted
• f/11  ISO 200  white balance "sunny"
• 9-bracket jpg HDR image processed in Photomatix Pro 3
• Color correction in Nik Color Efex Pro 3
• Noise reduction in Nik Dfine 2
• Sharpening in Photoshop CS4 using unsharp mask

X Marks the Clouds

Saw this sign (?) from my back patio in Snell Isle Florida

I often walk Kiki around 5:15pm these days, which happens to coincide with the current magic hour for this area of Florida.  Often I am thinking, "I really hope Kiki appreciates this walk because I am missing out on some great chances to photograph some beautiful clouds," as clouds are one of my more favorite subject matters.  Well, I got back in time from the walk on this particular day to make some photographs.  The clouds I saw and wanted to photograph just before walking in the door were gone by the time I got back outside with the Nikon D300, Tamron 17-50mm lens and tripod.  However, I went around back and saw this "X" up in the sky, so I was just pleased to finally be able to catch some magic hour clouds.

The image is a 9-bracket HDR processed in Photomatix then in Color Efex Pro 3.