Category: Landscape

A Storm Was Brewing on the Horizon

Posted on by Nick Roberts

When the destination for my ride requires me to be on a tight schedule the Interstate Highway System is my only choice. While I prefer to use the older US Highway system to travel across the country, the pace is different and I don’t mind slowing down as I pass through small towns, I sometimes need to cover a lot of distance in a day.

I often hear from people that the Interstate Highways are boring roads but I don’t always find them that boring. For one thing these highways often pass through beautiful country and since the right of way is so wide there are sections where the only sign of man’s hand is the highway itself.

This is a photo of one such stretch of interstate. I don’t recall where I was when I took this photo but I do remember vividly how quickly the rain moved in my direction! I saw this storm on the horizon and pulled to the side of the road to put on my rain gear. Before donning my rain gear I grabbed my camera from my saddlebag and took a few shots of the approaching rain storm. I love seeing the rain falling as a storm moves in the distance and the way the rain makes patterns uniting the clouds and the earth. In a matter of minutes the storm was on top of me and I stashed my camera back in the saddlebag.

I grabbed my rain gear and was just getting it unrolled when the wind and rain were upon me; the wind was blowing full force and the rain drops were as big as grapes. I was standing there in the middle of nowhere trying to put on my rain jacket as the wind was doing it’s best to tun it into a sail! I had only managed to get one arm in the jacket when the storm got to me. As I stood there in the pouring rain, battling the wind and trying to get the rain pants and jacket fastened I was drenched with rain. Once I finished I was almost as wet as I would have been had I simply left the rain gear in the saddlebag.

I climbed back on the bike and headed into the storm fully expecting to ride the rest of the afternoon in rain but less that five miles down the road the storm was gone and the sky was clear again. I was still wet and cold but I had another great experience to remember and savor for years to come. These types of things are among the reasons I love motorcycling and exploring America by motorcycle; if I had been in a car that afternoon I wouldn’t have tasted and felt the the forces of nature that form our world.

As for the composition, once again the highway leads the viewer’s eye into the scene, dominates the foreground and reinforces the rule of thirds as it moves into the frame.  The colors and textures of the clouds add interest to the upper part of the image while the horizon gives a sense of depth. I used Topaz Adjust on this image which accounts for the enhanced contrast of the road surface and the saturation of the colors.

 

The Road Goes On Forever

Posted on by Nick Roberts

For me riding a motorcycle and taking photographs is really about the journey not the destination. I want to experience the vistas that unfold around the next bend in the road; I want to feel and smell the country I’m travelling through; then, hopefully, I’ll be able to convey the essence of those sensory experiences in my photos. I’m constantly struck by the beauty of the highway as it ribbons across the landscape and try to share that vision in my images. When I am riding out in the west I often pull over to the side of the road and photograph the scene that the highway has just revealed to me.

I find that by using the roads I’m travelling as compositional elements I can create very evocative images that show the allure of motorcycling and the grandeur of the terrain.  This photo of Devils Tower in Wyoming shows how using the highway as a key element can really direct the viewer’s eye into the frame. Many people, when they are going to see a monument such as Devil’s Tower, let images slip by that would give a better sense of the place in their quest to get to and photograph the land form or feature that they seek.

This shot was enhanced in an older version of Topaz Adjust 3, the current version is version 5, and at that time the presets were pretty heavy handed. The later versions of Topaz Adjust are much more finessed in their effects and do a better job of enhancing photos than the earlier ones. I learned a lot from using those early versions and I am still a huge fan of presets as a way to get inspired by an image and the potential ways that I can process it to express my vision for the final product.

Floyds Fork in Winter

Posted on by Nick Roberts

This photo was taken last winter along Floyd’s Fork Creek which is a tributary of the Ohio River. Due to the bright morning sunshine and the direction I was shooting the sky was pretty well blown out in the image before I edited the RAW file in Aperture 3 and then finished processing it in Topaz Adjust using the Spicify preset. I was able to bring some color into the sky by adjusting the strength of the preset while still keeping the image from becoming cartoonish.

This second image from this shoot is a macro shot of the ice along the edge of the stream. Once again using Topaz adjust I was able to intensify the colors in the scene while maintaining a sense of reality.

Texture Is Where You Find It.

Posted on by Nick Roberts

Following up with yesterday’s post I wanted to share a few more images where texture is the dominant element. This first shot was taken in Arches National Park while hiking to a point to shoot some red rock vistas. The texture of the lizard’s skin against the sandstone combined with the visual texture of the shadows across the scene reinforce the feeling of the arid desert. I’m drawn to the sparkle of the individual grains of sand that make up his perch and the way that the light reflects under the ledge. Topaz Adjust was used to intensify the monochromatic tones in the scene while highlighting the overall contrast.

This image is a macro shot of the desert floor of the same trail that the previous image was taken on. The repetition of the same forms that make up the landscape are visible here in an area that is likely less than two inches across. The way that the shadows fall across the scene enhance the contrast and definition of the surface. Using Topaz to process this shot was a simple choice because of the ability of the Spicify preset to bring out the details while preserving the color and texture of the rock.

This final image is once again a macro shot of the desert floor. This was taken in Monument Valley and shows us how even at the smallest point the forces that formed monument valley’s huge buttes and mesas are at work carving away the layers of sandstone and creating new forms. On a grand scale geologic areas like this are referred to as “slick rock” and the tiny mesa in the middle of the scene could just as easily be seen in a landscape shot encompassing miles and miles of the valley. The Spicify preset in Topaz Adjust brings out the texture and color while allowing the scene to stand on the merits of it’s color and composition.

I Love Making Panoramas

Posted on by Nick Roberts

I really like shooting panoramas. I’m President of the Louisville Photographic Society which has been in existence since 1941. One of the reasons for the club’s longevity is that each month there is a member competition which fosters a level of commitment to continual improvement by the members. Each year the board meets and decides on the categories for each year’s competition. We try to evenly split the categories between camera skills and subject matter so that our members learn new skills or explore areas that they may have never tried before.

For me the competition category of Panoramas was one of those areas that I hadn’t pursued until challenged by the club competition. I started studying how to shoot them and in so doing I fell in love with the process.

For the shots in this post I shot 5 frames at approximately 30 degrees apart. I also shot 5 frames at each position so that I could produce HDR frames before merging them in Photoshop CS5. I liked the process so much that it has become second nature to me when I see a scene that would benefit from being shot in panorama.

Though both of these final panoramas were shot on the same evening they have completely different overall feels. I shot the top one just after the sun had slipped below the horizon which captured the warmth and fantastic color of sunset. When composing this shot I wanted to get as many of the Ohio River bridges in the frame as possible.

The second image was taken a few minutes later after the sky had begun to cool down and the sun was much further below the horizon which made for a much cooler overall feel to the scene. I use a free iPhone app “Darkness” which tells me when sunset occurs as well as when dusk occurs. Since using this app I’ve learned that there is nearly a full hour after sunset when there is still enough light in the sky to produce good images.

It goes without saying that I use a tripod since I’m shooting HDR as well as Panorama but another key factor in getting these images to work is that I shoot at a low ISO. On my Nikon D90; ISO 200 is the setting I use. I always shoot in RAW because the amount of data in the image is so much larger than is possible with Jpeg.

My processing for these images was to merge them in Photoshop CS5 and save them as TIFF files. After that I took them into NIK HDR Efex Pro for Tone Mapping etc. Then they went back to Aperture 3 for final sharpening and output.