Seagull in Sunburst

Seagull in Sunburst

I was still trying out the Nikon F6 (with Portra 400 film) … when I buy a used film camera, I try to get a roll or two of images shot fairly quickly, so I can determine if the camera is working well. This image shows the high contrast that results in the shadow areas going completely black. Digital images give you a lot more ability to recover some of the details in those areas …

What I like about this image is there was a seagull flying over that got ‘caught’ in the sunburst caused by the lens diaphragm. I didn’t even notice the gull at the time.

Sunset over Capitol Lake

Sunset over Capitol Lake

Capitol Lake is a man-made lake in Olympia, Washington, designed to reflect the state capitol building on the hillside to the left of this image. I used to frequently walk around the lake and watch nature and people. I was always amazed at the number of people that would be walking and totally oblivious to the incredible skies and cloudscapes.

After the Rain

After the Rain

This is a section of the Larry Scott trail outside of Port Townsend, Washington. There had been rain in the morning, but by the time I went out for my walk, it was clear and sunny. The reflection of the sun on the wet trail was brilliant. It was a good time to use some HDR technique. (HDR = High Dynamic Range)

If I had set the exposure to capture the detail on the trail, the shadows would have been totally dark. On the other hand, if I had exposed to capture the details in the shadows, the trail would have been totally blown out and over-exposed. The solution is to take multiple photos with variation in exposure and combine them. I did this in Lightroom, although there are other software options.

Sun Dogs (aka parhelia)

Sun Dog 1

I was asked the difference (visual) between sun bars and sun dogs. My last post showed a sun bar, here are a couple of images of sun dogs. Note that (besides the difference in location) the sun dogs typically show some ‘rainbow’ colors. Both of these are sunsets.

Backlit Marina

Backlit Marina 1

After I took the previous post’s shots of the rainbows, I turned and walked over to the marina. I was looking directly into the sun and took these images of the boats in the marina. I used slightly different post-processing settings and the top image is more contrasty. I like it better than the one below… but when I increased the contrast on that one, it just didn’t work as well.

Backlit Marina 2

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