Daily Image - Dec 2013 Archive

All the Daily Image mailings for the month of December 2013.

02 Dec 13. Looking at the map for the Mammoth Hot Springs Trail the image for today was shot at the juncture of the first dogleg to the immediate right of the "You are here" marker. At the 3 o'clock position in the image is the area of Grassy Spring which was the Nov 22 image. You are looking roughly SSW with the subjects of the shot being the newly killed trees and the surrounding terrain showing that the mineral and heat do not do the trees any good but as long as the vegetation is a short distance away things seem to be O.K. I'm thinking that the heat provided by the springs isn't totally bad in the winter and that it likely helps the young vegetation some during the freezing periods. I'm just guessing as I've yet to see Yellowstone in winter, hopefully changing that next winter, but it would seem likely. You'll notice a few two legged animals in the shot left in for perspective although the boardwalk may well serve the same purpose. I've cheated a bit on this image in that I changed the color of the dead trees from a not so interesting orange to a slight reddish tint. Probably it would go unnoticed but the change has a very drastic effect on the overall feel, one from being a somewhat uninteresting photo to one which has some appeal. Not knowing, you might even mistake the dead trees for living ones in full fall color. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 9.
03 Dec 13. Taking the West entrance in to the park your first option is to travel either south or north at Madison Junction. If you head north, the first major attraction you encounter is Gibbon Falls. We take a look at the falls in a few days. The next point of interest is the Monument Geyser Basin with its most easily reached attraction being Beryl Spring which we will also visit soon. The Beryl Geyser area has several interesting sights between Beryl Spring and Artist Paintpots, although I'm not sure every visitor will agree on which are which. At the "T" in the road which takes you to the paint pots is a small wetland area that is populated by what I believe to be a population of "low" temperature thermophiles based on the color of the water and the stream bed, both of which are very rusty looking. The couple of times we've visited I have yet to see anyone but me stop and photograph this area, but I found it and the areas surrounding it to be of great interest and I shot many images of this kind of landscape. Beauty, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder. I've taken one of these shots and converted it to B&W, but again trying for a simulated infrared look. I wasn't able to fully get there, the trees at the top of the frame should be significantly whiter, but I couldn't find any way to do it without completely rendering the lower two thirds totally white, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /10.
05 Dec13. My apologies for the break in the mailings. Tue evening we attended the annual SPU Sacred Sounds of Christmas presentation that in the past has always been a 10 on a scale of 10 performance; sadly, this year it was a 4 at best and we didn't get back home until 0030 on Wednesday, only to learn that I had to report for jury duty at 0845. So no time to send anything out Tue evening or Wed morning. The first day in court was so demoralizing to see just how corrupt our legal system has become from the top down, that I was too depressed to write last night. I was excused from the trial today by the defense, so I had a bit of time to recuperate this afternoon. So this image will replace what should have gone out last night and I'll get another out in the morning. We left off talking about the drive from Madison Junction ad traveling north. Gibbon Falls is the first major roadside attraction which enjoys a rather large parking lot with lots of information displayed about it.At the time we visited, 0900 sun time, the lighting was such that one half of the falls was in very bright sunlight and the other half in fairly deep shadow. That was an odd situation leading me to believe that this is a high noon shooting location, something one doesn't often encounter. As it was not going to be possible to capture the falls in this lighting situation with one shot, I took a 5 shot HDR series in hopes that such would easily solve the lighting problem. As it turned out, much to my surprise, it didn't! So I made two HDR images, one whose strength was the shadow, and the other whose strength was the highlights. I then layered them, one atop the other, and painted out 1/2 of one such that the resultant composite had the best of both images. I still didn't like the way it looked, so I applied a global lightening layer, then a layer to accentuate the texture, and finally a contrast/color adjustment layer. That resulted in a reasonably nice looking falls, but as this was supposed to be a creative mailing, I then added one more adjustment to convert it into a watercolor. And that's what I'm sharing for this Thursday. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f /10 on a tripod.
06 Dec 13. If you enter Yellowstone National Park from the east, you actually have two choices. One brings you in at the center of the park and is known as the East Entrance, the other at the top of the eastern side of the park and is known as the Northeast Entrance. Taking the northern option brings you into the Lamar Valley, the home of the Pronghorn Antelope, the Gray Wolves, the majority of the Grizzly Bears, and smaller herds of North American Bison. I've seen the antelopes and bison up close, and the wolves and bears at GREAT distances. As I've mentioned prior, the Lamar Valley is one of my three favorite parts of the park! For the most part it is a valley of rolling plains and small rivers, and in the autumn, spectacularly beautiful if for no other reason than the Quaking Aspen. But there is much more than that. The shot for today was taken at almost 6 p.m., on a day that had been suggesting rain was not far off. Just beyond this location were two small herds of bison, but I wanted to start the Lamar Valley images with something simple that had no distractions to illustrate just how beautiful this plains area is even without the aspens. Once you've taken a good gander of what is there, try to imagine it with a stand of absolute golden trees shimmering in the evening breezes. If ever you have the opportunity to see such, you'll make another trip or two to see it again! And then, with a few critters to add to the view, you'll likely be hooked for life. Niko D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 6.3.
09 Dec 13. We take a break from the Colorado Plateau and return to Fisherman's Terminal in Ballard and a goose whom you've seen prior. I thought I'd try something a bit different for today and reverse a process (contrast manipulation) that I've used in the past to separate a subject from its background and give it some 3-D qualities. As you all know, light precedes and dark recedes, sharp precedes and soft recedes, as well as other combination pairs, but since in this image my subject and background shared similar attributes, intentionally chosen for this example, these normal techniques were not going to work. So to get around this problem, my approach was to give everything, excluding the subject, the goose, great detail. Now I'm rather certain you are thinking this seems counter intuitive, because now the greatest detail is not with the subject, and it should become of lesser importance. But it sets up an immediate contrast between the two, sufficiently so, that the goose literally pops out from the background. Now to really see this work, you should zoom out to at least 50%, more being even better, but the 50% will get you there. When you do you will be immediately aware that the goose seems to be forward of the water, the very effect I wanted. I wasn't sure if this could be done, but it appears to work effectively. To do this was very simple as it turned out, although I had to try a few different things to get the simple answer. It was done by taking the initial background layer, duping it and applying a strong detail enhancement and then masking it off (protecting) the goose. I then added a dodge and burn layer to brighten the eye of the goose just a tiny bit, but enough to really make the eye stand out. Then I ran a noise reduction filter on the image but kept it from touching the goose, again, employing the same mask as before. The result is what you are seeing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.