Daily Image - Oct 2014 Archive

01 Oct 14. Conversing with the native residents who live here year round I've heard over and over again how unusually wet this year has been and how it is responsible for the wonderful colors displayed by all the ground cover. If the last four days is any indication of the weather this past summer, it must have been something of a record setter. The weather today was cold, in the mid 40s, winds into the 20 mph range, wet, with the humidity hovering in the low 90%. Not a nice day for outside work, so we spent time in town ans well as just hanging out in the condo reading, especially material dealing with the area. More about the reading in another missive. On Saturday we made a trip to Bozeman which I should have cancelled and just shot as the afternoon light was simply beautiful. We didn't, and so Sunday I went out hoping for another day of similar light. It didn't happen and although the light was nice, it didn't hold a candle to what I had available on Saturday. Still, it offered an opportunity to share with you some of the wonderful colors of what I'm calling ground cover even though strictly speaking it is not what one would normally think of when using that term. I call it such as it relatively low in stature and provides for some lovely viewing. As far as I understand, - much to learn in this area, - it is comprised of small willows and other small shrubs and lots of sage brush. This was taken along HWY-191 where it exits the far NW edge of the park in moderately overcast afternoon light. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

02 Oct 14. Theatrical Thursday should not be hampered by location, so today's image is just such of a small grove of aspens that we found on our trip around the local area Saturday almost two weeks ago when we encountered the silly check engine light courtesy I believe of an O2 sensor that doesn't like mud. Guess it shouldn't have gotten itself installed on a SUV! This stand is on a hillside adjacent to a road which winds around and over some beautiful mountain scenery eventually dead ending in a marshy area alongside the Madison Arm of Lake Hebgen, an area in front of the condo which you can't reach any other way. It's a bit of a fun ride except when you are expecting it to eventually take you out to the main highway which you frequently see but never reach. Likely a good place to go and watch the submarine races if you are a teenager, or running away from home but don't really want to go too far if you are a youngster. Irrespective of your motive, it is a beautiful drive and one I'd like to take in the winter on a snowmobile which would not be difficult as the area has many miles of groomed paths for snowmobiling. I was fortunate with this shot in that this grove was in prime plumage and standing in light which really displayed it to the fullest. Nikon D300s; 10 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

03 Oct 14. The "hill" that sits directly south of us at 7077 feet is called Horse Butte and it provides a beautiful view of a portion of Lake Hebgen named for the engineer behind the development of Hebgen Dam which dams up the Madison river to form the lake. It is a very large bi-lobed body of water with an arm, the Madison Arm, which provides much of the view seen from atop Horse Butte. At the base of this butte is a road that travels along side the lake for the most part but occasionally meanders inland for portions of the drive. The appearance of the road suggests that it is actually going somewhere, but that somewhere is a dead end after about 5 miles of travel. Dead end or not, the drive is a beautiful one, especially when either storm clouds are hanging around or the trees are in fall color, even more so with a combination of both. Near the beginning of the road it makes a "Y" with the right hand leg taking you to the top of the butte for the overlook of the lake. Everywhere along both legs of the drive you see fallen trees that are now in various stages of decay. Many of them will no doubt catch your eye as they provide for some very interesting perspectives on their former lives. This pine was leaning away from the road at an angle that left one wondering what had caused it's demise. It's coloration and abundance of cones readily caught my eye as we bumped and jostled along the muddy pothole filled road at it's base. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.6.

06 Oct 14. Roughly a 2.5 hour drive from the condo, assuming you maintain highway speeds and don't make any stops (which I don't), will get you to Swan Valley, ID. IF you go in the fall, and IF you time it right - I've come close twice but never perfectly on target - you will get to see some of the reddest fall color anywhere! We were a few days late in 2007 and likely at least a week late this time around, but the colors were still well worth the drive! The shots I got were quite different from those in 2007 as much change has occurred since then. Some of the change made for better shooting, and some didn't, such as houses now being smack dab in the middle of the hillside forests. Nonetheless, I was able to get some shots with which I was pleased, all things being considered. The shot of those marvelous trees I'm sharing today has been modified somewhat color-wise. What the camera captured is not what I'm sharing. Instead, I looked at several images on the web of how the trees look at peak color and used that hue as the basis for shifting the red color of the leaves. Once I had those colors matching, I let everything else fall as it would. So the only real difference is that I've used a "base" red to color shift the captured image. You can go out to the web to see what other folks have posted to advertize the area for fall color tourist trade to compare. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /10.

07 Oct 14. Driving around looking for elk that were not here we encountered many other delightful things including some very photogenic trees. The image for today is part of a stand of what I believe are aspen, but they could be birch instead. I've forgotten all my Boy Scout knowledge as to which tree is which, but they both have white bark and leaves in the yellow hue. IF the leaves were still on the trees I could identify them, but alas, we were too late for the most part to get the trees with the leaves. As the trees are white, I thought they would be a great candidate for a monochromatic image, and that's what you get. To really make this a complete composition I needed a goodly amount of snow, but that aspect of fall didn't make its presence known for us so we'll just have to be satisfied with the grasses at the base of the trunks vice that nice fluffy white stuff. These tree were right alongside the road so they were an easy subject to shoot, plus they didn't try to either run away or move in the breezes. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 9.

08 Oct 14. Driving around the western edge of Yellowstone National Park a couple weeks ago during our 4 day rainy period, I was struck by the large variety of yellows in the grasses that in visits past have been primarily dull grays. This pano consisting of 11 frames was taken along the edge of Hwy-191 where it runs through and parallel to the far western edge of the park. The weather was stormy and quite overcast, but still sufficiently bright enough, while not open sunlight harsh, as you can likely tell when looking at the image, to paint the ground with lovely color. Take a moment and study the image looking carefully at the number of shades of yellow; there are far more than you might have originally thought. We saw lots of this type of color wherever we went on this trip including the grassy areas near the condo, apparently the result of a wet summer. While I wouldn't want to put a damper on the neighbor's summer, if this type of color is the result of lots of summer rain, I'll vote for it especially since I get the benefits of it without having to experience it. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /10.

11 Oct 14. Back home safely late Wed evening but to a badly damaged computer. Somehow winderz decided to destroy my user profile so I was faced with reconstructing all of it. As none of the web prescribed methods worked, nor did my commercial back up software, nor any of the set-points that were supposed to be automatically created and weren't, I had to figure out a manual method of re-creating all that info. That took all day today as well as Thursday; yesterday we went on a photo shoot. So this is the catch up for the week. This tome is primarily directed at all of those in the PNW and is a strong recommendation for those out in these parts of the woods to take a one day trip to Leavenworth via Highway 2 E which will take you over Stevens Pass and down through the Tumwater Canyon. Although the canyon was part of the summer fires, 95%+ of it survived quite well, although it will shock you to see how close it came to burning the town of Leavenworth. Each year we visit the area in the fall for color and in hopes of seeing the salmon spawn. Yesterday's visit provided both with the colors as brilliant or more so than I can ever remember. It was simply spectacular, and the fish spawning just the icing on the bear claw (much tastier than cake). If you can find the time to make the trip, I highly recommend it to you. The colors were simply right in your face, and as lovely as they were in the late morning - early afternoon light, they were far more so in the late afternoon (1600 - 1700) light! So much for the break in the Yellowstone saga, we'll return to it for Monday's submission. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.

13 Oct 14. Our first venture into the park, one of only five visits in the entire 3 weeks, found us initially stopping at a small parking area that held but 4 vehicles and several more bikers riding the kind you pedal. One biker was speaking with the driver of one of the vehicles talking about how far the group had ridden, how tired he was, and that he was seriously considering riding in a vehicle to return to the town of West Yellowstone. The driver of the vehicle, who was sitting on a folding chair commented that he had started his day from the Madison Junction campground just up the road, and had made it all this way since breakfast, about 6 miles. His point being that taking one's time and actually enjoying what the park had to offer was likely a better use of time than seeing how far one could pedal into and out of the park. I must admit I had to agree. We were of course driving around but spent less than 4 hours traveling due to my constant stopping to press the shutter. This shot is one from the first set of images I took in the park and is looking across the Madison River from the parking lot to the opposite side, where a few years back, maybe even a decade ago, it burnt. The result is a nutrient rich hillside with lots of new growth, some of which is rather colorful. At this juncture in the river I saw no fish, but there was a solo angler and several Mallards. A perfect place for a folding chair and natural heart meds, such as babbling water and birds singing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/500sec @ f / 8.

14 Oct 14 . Wherever you go in the forests making up the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem if you look carefully you will find an abundance of fallen trees. If you take some time to look at them critically you may find them appearing as figures as seen in cartoons of tree people, or as various different "creatures." It's all a matter of how creative your imagination wants to be at the time. This decaying log caught my eye because of all the branches sticking out of it. My initial contact with it was broadside, and I took several snaps of it. But they didn't fully convey the log's character as I sensed it, so I did a walk around and discovered that the aspect best conveying its charms was from a position low down at the base but taken with a wide angle lens. So I switched from the 18 - 200mm to my 12 -24mm wide angle zoom and tried to capture the full dynamics of this once majestic tree. This particular capture is my favorite of the series and I feel like it conveys the impressive nature of the former resident of the mountain top conifers. The slanting of the trees at the edges of the frame is do to the wide angle lens being slightly tilted to get the capture I wanted which both emphasized a portion of the log I felt important and to slightly play down the storm in the background. There were several different cloud types present which you may note it you study the background. I've added a bit of micro contrast enhancement to bring out the texture of the bark as well as add a little interest in the clouds which the camera didn't adequately capture and of course it being B&W Tuesday converted it to B&W. Nikon D300s; 12 - 24; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

15 Oct 14 . Traveling along Hwy-191 you primarily follow a set of rivers that by PNW standards might be considered more stream-like than river-like. Likely the nomenclature has something to do with relative sizes and most of these rivers are either quite shallow, quite narrow, and often times both. From what I could tell, they all are apparently good trout fishing locations, and based on what my neighbors told and showed me, produce trout in the 18" and on up sizes. In the Visitors Center in downtown West Yellowstone there is a mounted Brown Trout that weighed in just over 10 POUNDS! The fishermen tell me that 24" trout are not at all uncommon. As you drive along the highway you often see the fisherman before you see the water, and often you won't even see the water unless you park the vehicle and get out and walk a bit with your eyes open. There are more than fish and fishermen in the water, and if you are careful to move very quietly, you never know what you might see. I made many such excursions hoping to spot some of the bigger critters, but the most I ever came across was a group of otters which I shared earlier, and many groups of ducks. The largest number of ducks we saw at any time was likely 10,000 one morning stretched across Lake Hebgen. I worked up a 26 frame pano of the sight but the resultant file was way too big to share at almost 20MB and a file size that was sharable rendered the ducks like the proverbial mustard seeds. More often the groups were two to a dozen at most, and on this particular day while I was softly talking to myself working my way along a small stream hidden from the road, I noticed a group of three Mallards. As I raised the camera to take their portraits, they made a hasty launch from the shallows in which they were feeding significantly disturbing the muddy bottom of the stream. The camera caught them just as they cleared the stream's surface with water still dripping off them and the mud clouding the water. I was panning with them with the shutter speed slow enough to show the wing movement. As a result the Mallards are not real sharp, but the overall combined action of birds flying, water dripping, and mud swirling I believe makes for a generally interesting photo. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /6.3.

16 Oct 14. We leave Friday morning for our bi-annual trip to the end of the Mt Baker Scenic Highway where the local camera council has a two day retreat spread over three days, Fri afternoon, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning in a large church owned lodge. On the past three trips we've had two days of rain and one-half day of sunshine (2008); one day of overcast, one day of sunshine, and one-half day of torrential rain (2010); two days of fog and one-half day of sunshine (2012); and this weekend is currently slated for one day of rain, one day of what could be snow, and one-half day of partial sun. Last week of course the weather was PERFECT, as were the colors we go to photograph according to individuals who were there. On Monday's mailing I'll report what we actually experienced. Each year presented it own challenges and opportunities, and the 2012 trip with all the fog provided for some of the best photos I've taken there. For several days at the condo the OAT (outside air temp for you non-aviators) was MUCH lower than the water temp in Lake Hebgen so we awoke to some wonderfully foggy scenes. This creative shot is from one of those mornings as the fog was lifting sufficiently to begin seeing the terrain around us. I'll share another later, non-creative, with the fog streaming across the land much like the scarves trailing behind Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f / 8.

17 Oct 14. Last fall we took a day trip from West Yellowstone to the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in neighboring ID, about 25 minutes to the east. We had been told about the huge number of waterfowl that were to be found in the refuge and what wonderful photographic opportunities would await us. We saw no birds within any photographic distance, and those we saw we could count on both hands. But we did see three deer and hundreds of cattle! Not exactly what we had bargained for and on top of which we had a 20+ mile drive in each direction on some terrible roads. This year we went back there but stopped short of our goal at about the 5 mile point as it was clear that we likely weren't going to fare any better than last year. This time however we did encounter some areas of nice color and realized that had we made the trip on the first couple of days after our arrival we would have seen some fantastic color. So we've made a note that next time we go there directly and access the color situation, then plan accordingly. As we were making the return portion of our drive and going down a serious hill into some on again off again glaring sunlight, I noticed something that I thought was moving across the road directly in front of the car. I hit the brakes, Jan immediately asking what I thought I was doing, and stopped just inches in front of this critter. I got out and noticed it was having difficulty making its way across the road, so I gently picked it up and moved it into the leaves on the other side of the road. As I did so it tried to squeeze firmly against my hand as if to say don't leave me, but I did. I watched it in the leaves rest motionless and based on the weakness of its squeeze, I was left with the sad feeling that it wouldn't last but a few more days. I felt badly about its condition but couldn't do much about it. Some of you I suppose will say good while others may share my feelings for it. However you feel, this is likely its first and last portrait which I share for Friday macro/close-up as a close-up image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f /10 with full flash.

20 Oct 14 . Our three days at Mt Baked proved to be rain and high winds on Friday, rain and higher winds on Saturday with sun in the far distance, and a clearing on Saturday night bringing out the stars and moon and high hopes for Sunday which arrived with a falling barometer, even higher winds, a thick layer of low clouds with the sun intermittently breaking out, so we stayed out in the weather until departing for home around 1500. The result of that three days of adventure had me exhausted by the time we got home which also incorporated a delayed wait on our totally mis-managed govt run ferry system. Overall the trip photographically was quite rewarding, even though the two things I went to shoot were not available, the fall colors on the hill sides surrounding Picture Lake and the reflection of Mt Shuksan on the lake's surface. The mountain was there to be sure, but on Friday and Saturday none of it was to be seen and on Sunday the top 20% never made it out of the soup. As for the reflection of what was available, the winds from 5 - 24 knots made certain that the surface was anything but glassy. And the brilliant reds of the ground cover peaked last week and were now reddish browns. But there was much to photograph none the less, and the yellows were simply out of this world as were scattered plants of red here and there. That, combined with God's soft light box made by the fully overcast skies on Friday and Sunday, made for some absolutely saturated colors! It couldn't have been better conditions as long as you were willing to WORK with what was there. I made a cursory review this morning before starting to write this of the 1,000+ images I shot and I couldn't be more pleased with what I got. I thought the Yellowstone trip was pretty good; this was an order of magnitude better. Since I haven't had time to work up anything yet, I thought I'd go with a shot from Glacier National Park I shot last fall that will give you a sense of what we had weather wise. While this image is showing conditions that pale in comparison to what we had over the weekend, it will give you some idea of the weather that made for the wonderful colors and contrasts. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 9.

22 Oct 14. One of the nicer animal displays in the country is the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. This is an educational center and they have a lot to share with you concerning both wolves and grizzlies. They are currently expanding their facilities and plan by 2020 to be fully developed with several new displays. I'll write more about this place in the coming days, but for today will concentrate on just the wolves. They currently have three different displays of them with two adjoining each other and one removed. The photo for today was taken of the three wolves in the isolated display which also houses an info center and glass viewing area. This shot was taken from outside and through a tall cyclone fence. Prior to visiting the center we spent some time talking with individuals in both the downtown visitor's center and with a retired park employee in a local historical museum. In both locations the topic of elk / wolf interaction came up and it was shocking to hear what the local population was saying vs what the parks department was putting out. While the parks dept is 100% the wolves have saved the park, the locals tell a different story. So does a series of studies done by the University of Montana, Bozeman Campus. One of the things we noticed this trip was the scarcity of elk. The U of M has been taking annual surveys of the herbivores via aerial counting since the reintroduction of the wolves. Outside the park the elk count is well over 30K. The official U of M count of elk in the park in 2007 was just over 7K; the in-park count in 2013 was just over 900. I was given links to download the reports and I did; they were quite an interesting read. I also read a newspaper report about the park service telling the University to get in line, report their story, or they would no longer be allowed to fly over and make the counts. When initially released in 1995, it is my understanding that the wolf population was hoped to stabilize at c100 animals. It is now at roughly 500 and they are decimating the elk and moose. This is not to say that the wolves have done only harm; such is not the case. They have greatly helped to re-balance the animals in the park; but at the moment there are far too many of them!! Outside the park they are being hunted and their numbers kept in check. Over the weekend at the retreat at Mt Baker I was discussing this with another photographer when I noticed yet another photographer sitting next to us shaking his head back and forth. I asked him his opinion and he told me he was a recently retired park ranger from Yellowstone and that the only reason we are seeing the current decline in the elk (remember we are talking about the 2007 -2013 time frame) is that after the five big fires in 1988 the surviving large bulls left the park and were shot by hunters. Their loss in 1988 is the reason for the drop in elk numbers over the past 6 years. Always good to know we are employing America's brightest and best in the National Park Service! The wolves in today's image have been in captivity since they were pups. I couldn't quite see exactly what the squabble centered around, but I think it was a chunk of bone with perhaps a few scraps of meat still remaining. It was a short squabble, no one apparently hurt, and it was fun to watch. Before it began, and shortly after it was over, these two guys and the gal were performing a lengthy cantata in three voices for us that was most enjoyable. IF you get to Yellowstone, do give serious consideration to visiting the center. Nikon 300s, 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /5.6.

23 Oct 14 . We'll take a look at a creative image today for Theatrical Thursday that gave us big hopes for getting LOTS of big game shots. Traveling north on Hwy-191 to shop in Bozeman on our second day in Yellowstone we were driving along at a speed a bit slower than some might have preferred when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something large and brown moving parallel to the road in a large field that is apparently is used for some agricultural purpose as the grasses were uniform in height and evenly distributed across the field. The color of the grasses, red and yellows, alone would have been enough to make me want to stop and take a few shots, but having a fairly good sized bull moose making his way, with some degree of timeliness, across the length of the field didn't hurt. As soon as I stopped a number of vehicles began to bunch up along the fence line wherever they could find sufficient clearance to get off the road, and we all enjoyed photographing the critter for perhaps 5 minutes as he made his way into the trees at the far end of the acreage. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f /10.

24 Oct 14. Today's macro shot will not suffer from the distractions of yesterday's creative image and will focus on a variation of a portion of "My Favorite Things" made a household song in our children's youth by Julie Andrews. Since I'm somewhat allergic to roses, we don't tend to grow them around here, but flora of similar color are more than welcome, especially in the 9 months of our rainy season. This shot was taken under our rear deck during one of those 9 months earlier this year and is one of a series shot attempting to get the rain to cooperate with me. While it did to some extent, I never could get the exact shot I wanted, that of me being reflected in the water droplets. So I went with what I could accomplish at the time which was lots of different "poses" of the water with some serving as mini magnifying glasses. The softness of the image is intentional so as to force your eyes to the edge of the petal with the main water drops; and I've used full frontal flash, normally a no-no, to get even lighting across the entire flower, but used a somewhat small f stop to effectively blunt (underexpose) the impact of using flash in this manner. The f stop of 9 would suppose somewhat greater depth of field, but with the lens just inches from the subject I can achieve the softer focus. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f / 9 with full flash.

27 Oct 14. Our directly above deck neighbor in the condo complex is an avid outdoors man, and we've had many fun chats about the things that go on in and around the complex with respect to wildlife. Taking a drive one day to shoot what we hoped would be LOTS of elk based on the info provided by yet another condo resident - we didn't see a single elk -, we encountered a group of five Big Horn Sheep rams walking down the middle of highway 287 about 10 miles from the condo. We drove slowly up close to them and then followed them parallel to a pullout where they decided they would recover some of the highway salt that had been laid down a few days prior. I shot them for several minutes while other photographers - mostly just snap shooters - stopped to join in the fun. Eventually one of the snap shooters spooked a couple of them who then ran across the road and started up the side of the mountain out of which the road was carved. I kept shooting as they moved from pavement to hillside and this is one of the shots of a single ram on that hillside. I was sharing these photos with our neighbor who made several comments, one of which was to name this image from the perspective of the ram - you talkin' to ME - and the other that the group of 5 rams was the total bag limit for the entire county for an entire year. So I'm think'n I did O.K. with respect to bagging over my limit in a single shoot. The late morning light was rich and bathed the animals on the hillside in a lovely warm color which I've elected not to "correct." This image is one of several I'm printing for him and I'll be sharing others during the week. Nikon D300s; 18 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500sec @ f / 10.

28 Oct 14. One morning we got up around 0430 to take a drive into the Lamar Valley to look for both color and animals; I wanted to be there for sunrise. We did fairly well on the color and quite well on bison, but not much else save for a few pronghorn and three wolves about 1.5 miles distant. Watching the wolves through a 1200+ mm lens they were about the size of a grain of rice, but I can claim that we did see wolves in the wild. I even grabbed a couple of shots for proof. The main event of that day, the bison coming in at number two, were the stars! We awoke to and started driving with every star in the northern hemisphere out to lighten our way, and it was truly a memorable experience. It felt as though we could reach up and grab either dipper and ladle out a cup of light! The stars were with us until sunrise which was almost as nice, just not quite. We drove to the easterly end of the Lamar valley, then turned around a few miles short of the park boundary and drove slowly back towards Roosevelt Towers. As we neared the junction we came across several herds of bison leisurely enjoying their morning meal. Foul weather was forecast for later in the day and for the next several days, and the activity in the sky suggested that the forecast was accurate. Thus I had some wonderful light to play with along with lots of clouds to make things interesting. This is another of the prints I made for my neighbor and in this image I took the color and converted it to B&W as I usually do, but this time I did something different and applied a micro contrast enhancing filter twice, once early on in the editing of the image, and then a second time as the final step after having converted it to B&W. The result of the second application was to add emphasis to the god rays and some unexpected slight bluing in portions of the clouds, something I think shouldn't have occurred but something I really liked, so I left it in for effect. You can decided for yourself how you feel about the artifact. Zoom in to 100% to count the bison. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/500 sec @ f /9.

29 Oct 14. We'll harken back to the days of yore when you were required to actually put out in class to earn that "C" grade. When that was what 70% of the class actually earned and it took some effort to do so. Back in the days when you thought you really had mastered something only to have the instructor say something along the lines of " . . . . have you ever thought of doing . . . ." I think those days followed me all the way through graduate school and are still around to haunt me. After working many months trying to achieve what I felt was a fairly decent approach to working up these images, I was confronted earlier this week with yet a different way, and I might suggest simpler way, of achieving the same or even better result. So for today I'm providing a stacked image showing the results of doing things two ways, the new way above and my old way below. Your job is to tell me which you like better. I've worked very carefully to keep the images basically the same, but the means of achieving such were very different. The top image is comprised of three layers total while the bottom one has 6; the first three layers in each version are identical. Now here is what I did. My "tried and true" approach has been to start with the background layer (the original image), add a gradient map in black in white, and then a curves layer which is used to set both the black and white points to maximize contrast. That is the first three layers. Then I run a color zone routine to adjust each color individually, followed by a clarity enhancement layer of my choosing, then a layer, if needed, to adjust overall contrast. [ I make the b&w + creative versions from this, but they don't count for this discussion. ] The new approach uses just the first three steps, but sets the blending mode of the third layer to luminosity. The second and third layers in this approach could be joined into a single layer and the result would be the same. Look carefully at the two images as the differences are subtle, but the work required is more than doubled between the two. Much more can be easily accomplished in the new approach, giving even more control for the outcome, and it can be done in two steps by incorporating third party plug-ins such as Black ad White Effects 2 or Silver Efex Pro 2. But for today, to keep the playing field level, I've not used either of those plug-in even though I have them available. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200;1/320 sec @ f /14.

30 Oct 14 . Those of you who have been on this mailing list for a period of time know that my favorite creative plug-in for any of several graphics editing programs is from Redfield and called Fractalius. It has been around for quite a while, just keeps getting better and better, now at ver 2.x with 64 bit support, but isn't available for the mac platform. This has seemingly been a big disappointment for all the mac users on this list as well as for those in several different photo clubs. A couple months back I wrote about a new plug-in I was beta testing and shared an image I had made with it before I could tell you fully about it. That plugin - Impressions - was just updated and if you bought it previously, you should get the free update to it that was released yesterday. You can find it here. I am now working on another product that is in beta stage which will work under both windows and mac platforms that will provide all the effects of Fractalius and literally dozens more. My guess is that it will hit the streets by turkey day and for an initial period of time, likely a month but I'm just guessing, and probably be under $50 for that period of time. Again, that's just a guess, but a somewhat educated one. The image for today's Theatrical Thursday has been created using this piece of beta software. I've selected an effect to mimic one of those from Fractalius for comparison. Both of these two programs, Fractalius and the new piece in beta test, offer literally unlimited variations of their effects, so incorporating the use of either plugin in your work can lead to very long image rendering times, simply because it is hard to decide exactly which effect you like the best! I will keep you updated on the product and let you know the day it is released, where to get it, and the cost. I will share today's image of one of Jan's many blooming orchids again tomorrow for Macro Friday in a pure form, so hold onto it for one day so you can make comparisons. Nikon D300s, 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/20 sec @ f / 6.3 on a tripod in the studio.

Halloween. Today we look at the original from which came yesterday's creative venue. This is one of the many orchids presently blooming in Jan's plant room, a 200 sq ft enclosed and heated section of the wrap around deck that surrounds two sides of the house. I would happily tell you the name of this particular orchid but the totality of info on the card that came with it says "orchid instructions"; at least it is a pretty card. All of her orchids are cast offs that she either picks up on the cast off sale stands or are given to her by a friend who gets them as part of a weekly didn't sell give away from a local merchant. Her collection exceeds 25 of these castaways. We have a half dozen or so of them blooming almost year round so I can shoot them almost any time I want, but as I don't feel like I do them justice, I seldom even try. This was just a lucky shot I made a couple of days back. I took the plant up into the studio and shot it against a black velvet drop under room light. The sun had been intermittently showing and I was hoping for some nice filtered sun light, but all I got was the light coming in from an overcast sky plus my overhead LED room lights, hence the slight warming you can see in the petals. The mixed light is what gives the petals the different colors albeit it a subtle difference, but now that I've brought it to your attention I'm rather certain you will notice it. I've done two things to this image, neither of which should be apparent, but they were to clone out a few very faint but distracting branches and ever so slightly increased the yellow of the petals. Otherwise, this is right out of camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/20 sec @ f / 6.3 on a tripod.