10 years ago you would not have seen this, however out here where its like 80% sunshine you do not have to be a rocket scientist to realise that solar energy is the way to go now that its available and compared to initial uptake prices…dirt cheap.
Exif love:
5 horizontal frames taken in the searing heat..
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 40mm Aperture: f10 and Shutter Speed: 1/125s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and one lonely shed and silo
Never to be put off by a bit of rain, a nice bushwalk in the local reserve with Chaos, Tickles and the boss was a great way to spend Good Friday.
Happy Easter ya'all 🙂 and be a responsible easter egg giver (and eater 😉 )
Just a little re-incarnation from one of the recent images with Buck and Bear (http://www.buckandbear.com/). Its also a follow on from the previously posted image, which did not quite capture my initial vision for the scene…
I made the first crucial mistake of seeing something in my head with this shot that was outside my Photoshop skills, the second mistake I made was trying to learn how to achieve it 🙂 – I think, when it comes to Photoshop, the more you know, the less the restrictions become and the more you can get out of your comfort zone, as difficult as that can be.
To create the image and the effect is relatively straightforward with the hardest bit being the way the flames / disintegration is brushed in, this is the most time consuming part and requires a lot of patience and trial error to get the right profile, the use of a tablet and pressure sensitivity would make things alot easier too i reckon.
The image is a single shot with multiple layers created in PS , the easiest way to explain would just be to show the screenie of the layers 🙂 Basically there is one layer with the subject which is distorted, this is then brushed over with different types of brushes (different sizes and different orientations) to create a coherent (or consistent) pattern of the flames/disintegration. This layer is also blended the original image and then processed in LR to get the BW conversion and other bits..
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 52mm Aperture: f2.8 and Shutter Speed: 1/1600s
ISO 100
under the moon
It's like you can see the end and you know the road is crumbling, but there is nowhere else to go..
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 68.9 seconds
ISO 100
Out front – LEE GND (0.6x)
Hole.
Hole – (c) Gerard Blacklock
All this talk about compositing images and dropping skies in has done only two things for me 🙂 1) made me try it, and 2) convinced me it ain’t that hard 🙂
I guess its for some – but the wholesale dropping in of the sky – as I have done here, opens a new door to image creation but also another level of complexity of trying to create and capture images..
Anyway, for complete disclosure, which it what seems to be the key outcome of most discussions, this image is made from two completely separate images from completely different locations.
The processing was as simple as 4 layers in PS, a graduated mask and a duplicate mask to cleanup a few spots on the hill.
@ figure 8 pools
The impossible light
Sometimes I see a shot and think that would be awesome, but achieving it from a technical stand point can be a bit of barrier, i suppose more correctly its probably a effort barrier now more than technical, i think this image sums that comment up nicely.
Its a 3 frame wide panorama and as you can probably imagine with the sun on one side and detail trees in the middle its a pretty high dynamic range scene, one that the human eyes sees and goes, 'wow sweet' 🙂 well mine do any way 🙂 but the poor old camera (even with its whizz bang technology) goes 'arrghh too much light and shadow whatcha doing to me? ' 🙂
So to help out the poor camera and in all honesty I did not really expect this shot to work out (to a level worth pursuing), I bracketed each shot, this left me with a 9 shot picture (3 frames bracketed (-3ev, 0, +3ev). I stitched up the panorama with the brackets as separate layers and then manually masked the bright and dark areas to increase the dynamic range, by this stage i was thinking the amount of effort is not quite proportional to the outcome, especially when comparing to the long exposure shot I took a few minutes afterwards (see here: https://plus.google.com/+GerardBlacklock/posts/dUNKtPoh1Ay) the actually effort at the scene and also at the computer was significantly less for the linked image 🙂
anyway, it did all work to a level that at the very least deserved to be posted here on gplus 🙂
Exif love:
3 shot panorama (each frame bracketed)
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 24mm Aperture: f18 and Shutter Speed: 18s (over exp) 5s (normal exp) 1s (under exp)
ISO 100
Out front – LEE GND (0.6x)
Into the unknown – (c) Gerard Blacklock
11 vertical frames taken on a pano head
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 13s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and one tunnel
a bit like each day for me:)
Well truth be told it’s not really that unknown.. its a dark, damp and wet tunnel, great place for the glow worms…
Its a popular spot and this particular view is pretty cliche, however I have tried and smash my own take on it by making a panorama from a silly amount of vertical frames so I got that sense of enclosure from the heavy carved out rocks on each side, couple this with the accentuation of the soft warm light spilling over the edge in the afternoon sun and I think I am happy with it… for now 🙂
I took the same approach as I did with the tunnel on the other side of the road, which you can see here : https://plus.google.com/+GerardBlacklock/posts/BBPm5LgJjjU
Another view of this tunnel from further back can be seen here, this gives a bit more perspective on the area.
https://plus.google.com/+GerardBlacklock/posts/9jXWanonyXT
ya gotta view it large, its about 8,000px wide, which has been reduced from the original of over 19,000 px wide
Exif love:
11 vertical frames taken on a pano head
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 13s
ISO 100
Out front – Hoya CPL and one tunnel
and yep, no dudes with umbrella's cloned in here 🙂
It is however a blend of two exposures, i basically had a short exposure to freeze any movement in the two umbrella dudes and a second exposure of long shutter speed to enable the detail in teh sky and the little gully to be brought out.
fyi the record that little patch of rock right at the bottom of the frame.. is slippery.. slippery like bum over head slippery 😉
Exif love ('cause I know your just hanging for it 🙂 )
2 shots, one for the dudes and one for the shadow details…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 4s (for the dudes) and 10s for the foreground
ISO 100
Welcome to the spray, where it is micro-fibre cloth vs nature 🙂
Exif love:
6 frames stitched together
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35m f4 @ 70mm Aperture: f16 and Shutter Speed: 1s
ISO 400
Out front – CPL only
I had to really beat this one over the head to get it to stitch properly, its 5 shots with quite a lot of overlap, but no matter i did the road lines would just not line up in the stitch, so I had to resort to some clone sorcery to bring them back together 🙂
Exif love:
5 landscape orientation images stitched in +Adobe Photoshop
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm Aperture: f13 and Shutter Speed: 1/160s
ISO 100
Out front – a long ass road 🙂
so clouds.. you guys hang around here much?
A different take on a new favourite tree of mine, it did start off as quite a large vertical panorama, however crop at the very bottom of the frame just did not quite sit well with me. Hence rather than a horizon at the middle it ended up as a classic 1/3rd composition…
ya gotta view it large too 🙂
Exif love:
a whole bunch of vertical frames stitched together…
D750 coupled with Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 @ 50mm Aperture: f11 and Shutter Speed: 1/180s
ISO 100
Out front – CPL only and a lonely tree.
sometimes, if you just wait long enough, all the noise just disappears into a sea of stillness.
on another equally depressing note, I just finished watching that 4 Corners report on hunting in South Africa, irrespective of whether you agree with it, think that its a good way to fund the increase in rhinos populations or whatever, i just cannot get it around my head the fact that people get enjoyment out of shooting an animal. Whether its a canned hunt, a ex-petting cub, or even just the cow you gonna eat, i just cannot see how one would get enjoyment out of killing an animal.
Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 16-35 mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f14and Shutter Speed: 245.9 seconds
ISO 100
Out front – LEE GND (0.6x) and the LEE fat stopper
me: "hey chaos?"
chaos: "yeah what"
me: "there is a dog driving a car"
chaos: "what?"
me: "a dog driving a car, look out your window"
chaos: " oh my gosh its a dog driving a car, can a dog really drive a car?"
me:" sure looks like it"
tickles: "doggy cant drive car, doggy cant drive car, doggy cant drive car…… doggy driving car!.."
as if kids concept of reality needed any more altering 😉 chaos and tickles had their minds blown 🙂 for the rest of the trip tickles was like " doggy cant drive car?" in a very confused voice 🙂