Archive for 2012

Another Dallas Divide Sunset

Friday, October 12th, 2012

The rainy conditions continued throughout most of the rest of our fall color trip. The afternoons were stormy and, toward nightfall, the storms tended to break up. Last week’s post was from our first night at Dallas Divide. On the second night, the sun set into clouds and didn’t produce much color.  But, on the third night, the clouds parted again and we had another spectacular sunset. This is my favorite from that evening.

This is another HDR made by combining five exposures (separated by 1 ev) in Photoshop’s HDR Pro to produce a 32-bit file and then finishing the image in Lightroom and Photoshop.

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Fall Color

Friday, October 5th, 2012

Fall color in Colorado was early this year – and it was spectacular! We drove to Crested Butte on Monday, September 24, and found the colors there at their peak. We also found rain and, while the moisture was badly needed, it made photography difficult. On Wednesday, we moved on to Ouray and headed up to Dallas Divide to meet Stan Burman for sunset. We arrived amid low clouds from the afternoon storms. Just as the sun was setting, some breaks appeared in the clouds and they lit up. This is my favorite from the series I shot that evening. Then, it was off to dinner at the True Grit in Ridgeway.

For those who like technical details, this is an HDR image. I merged 5 exposures (separated by 1 ev) to a 32-bit image in Photoshop’s HDR Pro. I then saved that image as a 32-bit tiff file and imported it back into Lightroom. I used Lightroom for most of the adjustments and then took the image back into Photoshop as a Smart Object for some finishing. This is a powerful technique that is rapidly becoming my go-to workflow for producing natural-looking HDR images.

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Aspen Impressions

Friday, September 7th, 2012

Last weekend we took a quick trip to Steamboat Springs. We spent Sunday exploring the area around Steamboat Lake. Some of the aspens were showing signs of turning color already – mostly those that were diseased or stressed in some way. By the time we headed home on Monday, the willows in Rabbit Ears Pass were a gold color. Reports from southwest Colorado also indicate that the fall color is happening early this year.

I made several images of aspen groves by slowly panning the camera using a slow (0.5 sec) shutter speed; looking for an impressionistic feel. This was one of my favorites. I added some texture from a photograph of a granite block to give it a sense of depth and a more painterly quality.

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