23 Aug 13. With at least 5 major fires burning in our formerly evergreen state, it is rather easy to shoot some very dramatic sunsets, such as the ones I've sent earlier this month. Here is another that is not perhaps as dramatic but much more varied in its presentation. While it was taken last year while haying one evening, it is of the nature I would expect to be seeing with all the burn material circulating in the air. This is basically straight from the camera, the only enhancement being a very slight texture enhancement on the darker clouds for effect. For those of you who look at the exif data I include with all these images, you will observe that it was underexposed by a 1/3 stop, but as my D300s overexposes by 1/3 stop, I have the camera set to compensate for that with the 1/3 stop underexposure set as the default. On the other side of those clouds are the Olympic mountains, but they are not visible with this type of weather pattern. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f /11.
26 Aug 13. With an open mind, and a little attention to detail, even the most mundane things can display an amazing amount of beauty. Walking around in our local hardware store's garden area a few weeks back, I was intrigued by a rain barrel that contained a volume of water and a fountain splashing that water about inside of it. I thought it would be fun to try and stop some of the bubbling water in mid stream (spurt?) and shot a few frames hoping to get at least one I would find interesting. I did, actually more than one, but this is my favorite of the group. The part that caught my eye the most was the amount of air trapped in the water and how that resonated with the light from the flash. The interior of the barrel was sufficiently dark that a burst of light was required to stop the motion of the water, and this type of shot can't be done, as far as I'm aware, without a form of light occupying a very short duration of time. The intense rusty color of the barrel is from the flash, and the fine detail was achieved by applying a bit of detail enhancement. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 8 with full flash.
27 Aug 13. Having spent a portion of the past two afternoons converting perhaps 3 cords of logs into splits for firewood, 2/3 of the way done, my brain kinda has trees as a theme, so I've selected a shot taken on our last trip to Craters of the Moon National Monument that I've had ready to go for quite a long time but which just never quite clicked. After contemplating it for a while, I realized that the reason it hadn't resonated prior was that it was just a bit too flat, having been converted to B&W from the original color. While it had nice contrast, it just didn't have sufficient detail. So, with the application of a couple of different detail enhancements, plus a bit of reworking of the B&W look, I came up with what I'm sharing for today. This was taken a day after a significant snowstorm had closed off most of the park, primarily because one particular ranger didn't know how to drive in snow, in the only area that was still accessible. I was walking around what was nothing more than a flat circular trail, when I came upon a section that offered some gradual sloping terrain covered in rocks, sage brush like plants, and drifts and pockets of wind blown snow, and some very interesting old trees. The sky was a dark blue, almost Navy blue, and accented with rows of white and gray clouds. It made for some nice color, but the B&W version gives you, I hope, a better "feel" for the temps and wind. A week prior it was in the 80s and very sunny, equally nice in its own way, but the snowy environment was much more to my liking. Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /16.
