Foureye Butterflyfish around small pirece of Brain Coral with some Christmass Tree Worms and Sponge
The shooting metadata for this image is:
D200 with 12-24 @20mm
1/30 sec @ f/6.3 ISO 100 Ex Comp 0
Matrix, Aperture Priority, 2 strobes normal sync
Archive for March, 2010
Underwater Wednesday
Wildflower–High Key Dutchman’s Britches
This high key version of Dutchman’s Britches is from Shrenk’s Ferry Wildflower Preserve.
All the previous wildflower images in this series have been from Ridley Creek State Park. Ridley is a big place but I have found a few clusters of wildflowers.
By comparison Shrenk’s Ferry is a narrow glen along Grub Run that is less than a mile long. And the density of wildflowers is unbelievable…dare I say, the ground is completely covered with wildflowers. The show starts in late March to early April and goes to the middle of May. And the blanket of flowers changes from week to week as early bloomers give way to new arrivals. So the show is different every time you go.
Even though the walk up the gl Read the rest of this entry »
Underwater Wednesday
Orange Crinoid and Barrel Sponge
The shooting metadata for this image is:
D200 with 12-24 @12mm
1/30 sec @ f/5.6 ISO 100 Ex Comp 0
Matrix, Aperture Priority, 2 strobes normal sync
Wildflower–Snow Drop
Spring is finally here!
This was shot last Sunday after the rain had almost stopped.
The metadata for this image is:
D200 with 105 macro
1/5 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +2/3
Underwater Wednesday
Feather Duster on Brain Coral
Positioning the camera close to the brain coral allowed me isolate this feather duster against the background. The color contrast really allows it to stand out. I wish I had been able to get lower so that the top of the feather duster didn’t merge with the top of the coral head. Read the rest of this entry »
Lightroom Sharpening–Creative Sharpening
As I mentioned in the Overview post, creative sharpening is sharpening applied to selective areas of an image for creative or artistic purposes. During this step we will be concentrating on individual aspects of the image. Creative sharpening can be applied any time during the workflow between Capture Sharpening and Output Sharpening. In Lightroom 2 the Adjustment Brush tool can be used to add some creative sharpening.
The image on the left is the finished image–after Capture, Creative and Output Sharpening. Below I show how I added a little extra punch to the subject’s eyes so that they “grab” the viewer.
The screen capture below shows a portion of this image at 1:1 with the Adjustment Brush’s Overlay Mask turned on. showing areas being affect are highlighted in red. (Use “O” for Overlay to toggle the mask visibility on and off and use Shift+”‘O” to toggle through choices the overlay’s color.) Read the rest of this entry »
Wildflower–Spring Beauty and Friend
This is an example of just being lucky; although some might call it serendipity. I was down shooting the blossom next to this one when this wasp landed. I swung the camera around on the ball head, without moving the tripod, focused and shot. I got one other shot, more head on and not as sharp. The whole thing lasted about three to four seconds and the wasp was never still. I certainly wish I had framed this a little differently, at least getting the rest of that last stamen in the frame, and stepped the apreture down a bit to get more DOF. But given the circumstances, I’m quite pleased with this.
The metadata for this image is:
D200 with 105 macro
1/80 sec @ f/5, ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +1/3
Underwater Wednesday
Here are a couple pictures of a French Angel fish from St. Lucia. The diver in the background is Evie Dudas, the owner of Dudas’ Diving Duds. She is also an inductee into the Woman Diver’s Hall of Fame.
These images illustrate one of the biggest challenges facing underwater photographers–water quickly filters out the longer wavelengths of light (the reds and yellows). Without the use of underwater strobes all underwater images would appear very BLUE. And they also face another issue with the use of strobes, that their terrestrial counterparts are familiar with, the rapid fall off of the light. That is, light intensity falls of with the square of the distance–while the angel fish, being 1 foot from the light source, receives sufficient light the diver, three feet from the light, only receive 1/9 of the light that fell on the fish! And as a result the background is rendered very blue.
