Daily Image - Mar 2015 Archive

02 Mar 15. Picking up where we left off with the initial presentation of the birches, we travel back in time to an earlier hour where we were visiting in Brinnon, WA wherein resides one of our favorite nurseries. Close to it, walking distance in fact, is the local visitors center. We generally stop in to see what these local store houses of information have to offer and on this particular day Jan noticed on the bulletin board a photo of a rather nice waterfall. We inquired as to how far away it was and the directions as well. Just about 3 miles distant up a incline we found the location of the falls which, sans the info we received at the visitors center, we would have likely never found since there is absolutely nothing to give the location away let alone a parking lot. But we did locate it and made our way up the approximate 6 block trail as directed. BIG surprise, it wasn't even a 2 block walk, and the entire walk was absolutely beautiful. While the falls is not huge, you can walk right to the base of it from which vantage point it seems quite large, that is, IF you don't mind your equipment getting a bit damp! As the water spills over the rocks it creates its own rainfall, and even at a decent distance the lens was being pelted with water. No mater, there are ways around that little problem, and even if there weren't any, the trip is well worth it! This is the first of a few shots from the shoot that I'll be sharing. To get this particular view you have to walk off the trail and out into the rocks and water at the base of the falls. On the day of our visit there was a fair amount of water spilling over the top, but "our" host at the visitor center suggested we come again after a heavy rain to really appreciate it. I do believe we shall do just that. The base image was adjusted for max tonality, given a couple of curves adjustments with masking to even out the exposure, then masked for painting in a blue sky to remove the ugly gray that we had that day, and then given a tiny bit of contrast adjustment. Finally I ran it through a filter to give it some dynamic contrast. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/100 sec @ f / 8 on a tripod.

03 Mar 15. The weather looking enticing after church yesterday, Jan thought it would be nice to take a trip to Gig Harbor for a bit of sight seeing. As we arrived Mt Rainier was fully visible and showing off in some truly beautiful light. I tried to get off the freeway at the right exit but managed to totally mangle that effort and when we finally got to where we could get a good shot of the mountain the light I wanted had long since disappeared. Nonetheless it was a good days outing and NOW we know where we should get off the freeway to get the views I want. In the process we did a bit of exploring and at one juncture walking around the water front area we came upon a park allowing for some nice views of a few of the fishing boats. This shot I took to show off the reflections, but with all the surrounding homes and piers it was far too busy. So I blurred the image, then removed the blur from the part I wanted emphasized, and then converted it to B&W. Now it almost looks like a toy model setup. The base image was adjusted for max tonality, as usual, then I boosted the red and blue hues, blurred the entire image, painted out the portion I wanted to keep sharp using a mask, and converted it all to B&W. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

04 Mar 15. Just down a few feet from the base of Rocky Brook Falls (Monday's image) the water starts flowing in a shallow bed with an abundance of rocks providing channels and obstructions over and around which the water must flow. I took several shots from the base of the falls all the way to the mouth with each exposure being a set of two, one crisp, stopping the water, and the other making it look cottony. For today's submission I've taken one pair and sandwiched them together selecting part of each such that some of the water is very cottony while adjoining portions are not so much so while the rocks remain sharp. This is anything but natural, but I think it makes for a nice composition showing two phases of the water's flow. I took the two exposures and placed one atop the other as a layered stack, masked the top image and painted out the portions that I wanted hidden so the bottom layer could show through. Then I made a stamp of the two as a new layer. That I adjusted for tonality, and then added a small amount of detail enhancement. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/3 sec @ f / 25 for the smooth image and 1/125 sec @ f / 4.5 for the crisp image.

05 Mar 15. Since one could imply that the last two mailings were of creative type images, all of course depending on your perspective, I thought I'd go with a very straight image for today. The Olympic Peninsula has a rather large grouping of majestic waterfalls, 26 to be exact, and that excludes the literally hundreds of smaller ones to be found in the same location but not significant in the eyes of the tourist industry, meaning the State. We set out on Tuesday to take in 3 of them, one which required a 1.6 mile round trip hike which proved to be somewhat of a challenge for both of us, and two others to which we simply drove, over some often less than wonderful roadway, got out of the car, and observed from a bridge. I'll write about all of the waterfalls one at a time as we check them off the brochure, titled A Magical Misty Tour, listing them. The first waterfall we visited was the one requiring the 1.6 mile trek with a 200 foot rise in elevation although walking it we would have bet it was more. This is named Murhut Falls. It is a two tiered fall that feeds the Duckabush River and while it is not obvious in the photo, it drops roughly 130 feet. To say that it is worth the trek would be one of the understatements of the year. The location was in very dense shade while we were visiting, so the photos all came out on the bluish side, but that was easily correctable with the RAW capture mode. If you ever get over on this side and drive along the west bank of Hood Canal, this is a must see in my opinion. The RAW capture was adjusted in Camera Raw to correct for the bluish cast, then given a slight amount of texture enhancement for the water, and cropped to what you are seeing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/2 @ f /13

06 Mar 15. With our unusually warm winter, all the spring flowers are about a month early, and that includes the tulips that we shoot each year in the Skagit Valley. Things are so early that the Skagit Tulip Festival has been rescheduled for the end of March, which means that we are just a couple weeks away from our annual visit to the La Conner area to shoot these lovely fields of color. With that in mind, I thought a shot of some tulips might be in order, and Jan selected this one of a grouping of 6 brilliant red back lit blossoms for today. This is from the shoot we did last spring and among the set I worked up last year and never shared. I added a little pizazz to the original just for fun to emulate a bit of the challenge in shooting these beautiful flowers on the end of a 18 - 16 inch stalk "occasionally" dancing in the breeze. The base image as adjusted for tonality, experienced a wee bit of micro contrast enhancement, and then had a creative filter applied but whose effects were substantially held back to give it just a hint of being in a strongly back lit field. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/500 sec @ f /13.

09 Mar 15. With West Yellowstone, and therefore all the low land areas of Yellowstone National Park, if you can think of any part of that area being low lands, not experiencing the winter enjoyed this season on the right coast, there has been a big lack of winter time activities this year. Many of the outdoor recreation companies recorded record cancellations from their east coast patrons as the patronage had more snow at home than that which fell in the greater Yellowstone area. Thus my hopes of repeating what we experienced last May when we visited, that of finding lots of big game down low in the still snow covered valleys, seems rather like nothing more than wishful thinking for this year's visit. So I decided I'd look through last year's shoots to see what I might find that would do a satisfactory job of at least putting me in that mental state. I actually found many, many images that would have sufficed, but this one in particular brought back to mind a rather delightful evening we shared following a business meeting that wasn't on par with what we were viewing. This was taken around 7:30 in the evening and was shot in-between several little squalls of snowfall. The combination of light, storm, snowfall, and animals made for a wonderful end of that business oriented day. The original was first adjusted in camera, the given a bit of micro contrast adjustment, and finally run through a noise filter to pull back the enhancement somewhat in the clouds. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/640 sec @ f / 9.

10 Mar 15. Today's submission is one I shared with you in color the 3rd week of January; if you are keeping the images you may want to view them side by side. The blog, for lack of a better description, that parallels these mailings, provides me with a set of statistics on how many views each image receives. On average the images get between 100 and 500 hits daily, but every once in awhile a specific image will get between 4000 - 9000 hits. I've looked over those images that get the huge number of views and for the life of me I can't imagine why, as I'd rate them in the bottom 10%, quality-wise, of the images I'm sharing. One specific image I shared back about a month ago which garnered little comment from the Daily Image mailings was submitted to a national competition site and has received over a dozen awards so far. I liked the image a lot, but do not consider it to be anything great. Yet it keeps stacking up awards. All this to say I apparently have no idea about what constitutes a good image. Or perhaps the audience has an even lesser idea than do I. A very good friend who is a VERY accomplished photographer and one who has won MANY international awards states regularly "What do the judges know?" This of course translates quite easily into "what do the viewers know?" All of which leads me to believe that a good photograph is nothing more that one the connects with the viewer, whomever that viewer may be. Of course one could argue all the fine points of art, and there are MANY, but in the end, regardless of the value or quality of the image, if it doesn't connect (tell a story) with you chances are you will not see it as something worthwhile. Which brings me back to where I began. The B&W version of the trees and god rays may strike you quite differently than did the color version. I made several versions of this shot, I like them all, obviously, or I wouldn't have made them, but this version is by far, to me, the most expressive of the scene I saw (in color) and provides for me a real moment of inspiration. Perhaps it will for you also. As I stated in the earlier mailing, the creation of this began with five shots which I combined together. Using that output as my base image, I first did a perspective alteration to straighten the trees, making them all as close to parallel as they were naturally. I then added an inch of blank canvas to the top of the frame where I added in the missing sky and tree top and then blended in the skyline to give it a seamless appearance. Then I added a B&W gradient layer and curves layer on top of that to insure I had the full dynamic range I wanted. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec (middle of 5 frames) @ f /10.

11 Mar 15 . Last Tuesday I shared a B&W version of a group of fishing boats in one of the marinas in Gig Harbor, WA. As you recall, out goal was to get a nice shot of Mt Rainier but I messed up in getting off the freeway and by the time we did the shot I was seeking was no longer available. So we walked around a bit, found a very friendly resident sitting on her stoop where we had parked the vehicle, who had overheard us talking about what we were trying to find and gave us exact directions. My failure to fully appreciate what she told us resulted in my getting the image I shared Tuesday, after which we realized we hadn't gone as far as she indicated and we proceeded to so do. That final leg got us to our desired destination, Donkey Bridge. Parking next to Donkey Bridge Park, we walked across the street to get this shot. I got the idea from the cover of the 2014 - 15 Official Visitors Guide to Gig Harbor, but took a very different approach to that of the photographer who did the cover shot. He used a long telephoto lens and vertical composition to emphasize the boats and shore with people, whereas I went with a short telephoto, horizontal composition, and wanted the mountain as my main subject. Two very different photos of the same subject taken from the same location. Fun! I took the raw capture, cropped it to get the perspective I wanted, increased the micro contrast overall and added a very slight vignette to pull your eyes away from the edges. You should be totally unaware of all these adjustments, but without them the mountain would hold no interest. However, what I did was to create the image I saw while driving and which had escaped me, the lighting having changed, by the time we eventually got to Donkey Bridge. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

12 Mar 15. It being Theatrical Thursday, this submission is a total creative effort. On a recent trip to Sequim to get some grains for grinding and making bread, we took a short side trip to take Madam Maggie down to the beach to stretch her legs and anything else she might have in mind. While Jan escorted her highness along the shore, I took some pot shots at a couple of seagulls. This one elected to pose for me for several minutes before becoming bored with the whole thing. The latest update to my graphics software included some new creative filters, so I thought I'd try out one of them for today's offering. The one I chose is called path blur, and it effectively is a Gaussian blur that you can orient along a path, which in this case I employed as a semi-circle. The effect I was looking to achieve, was that of the wind or water flowing over and around the bird. Adjusting the raw image for the best results, I next cropped for the best composition, adjusted the colors for best display, ran a creative filter on it to give the bird the distinctive characteristics, then masked out the bird and applied the path blur. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.

13 Mar 15. We're gonna go with a very simple and plain image for today's close up, this time of a pinkish tulip. This is a shot depicting not only the blossom, but the entire plant in its environment. This does two things, one positive and the other negative. The negative aspect is that the image is both cluttered and contains some distracting elements; the positive aspect being that you get to see it in perspective. Generally as photographers we like really to isolate our subject(s), but in doing so we very often provide an image devoid of all the information that tells a story about it. In this image you will have no difficulty in putting together a story to go with it, and, to get it started, I took it in a local nursery where it was clustered among several other flowers. The base image was merely given a slight micro contrast adjustment and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f /11.

16 Mar 15. During a visit to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks back 2007, we spent the better part of 3 days in Grand Tetons with rain as an almost constant companion. It did dampen things a bit to be sure, but we went out every day in spite of the weather to shoot, sometimes with one of us holding a large umbrella over both of us. At times it was really depressing to have the rain washing out everything, but every so often the rains would break, the clouds would dissipate, and the lighting would be the kind that makes for dramatic images. One afternoon were we slowly driving along one of the main roads and watching a large herd of bison moving parallel with us along a ridge top perhaps 300 yards to our right. As we drove along we noticed that the herd was moving not only parallel to us but angling down towards us. Not having much traffic on the road with us at the time, we decided to stop on the edge of the road and watch. As we did, the entire herd directed its attention to us and moved closer and closer to the vehicle, all several hundred of them. By this time a "few" more vehicles had stopped behind us to watch the activity. After perhaps 30 minutes the entire herd was mingling near the edge of the roadway when the commander-in-chief decided it was time for the entire herd to leisurely meander across the road. That 90 minute traffic jam was the best one we ever experienced and I got a lot of photos from the group traversing the hill side to standing right next to the SUV, on all sides. They didn't mind me standing right alongside the vehicle so I was able to take what you might call some nice close up, real close! This shot is one I made while they were amassing on the filed before transiting. I've cropped off the bottom to give it more of a African plains perspective, except these are bison and not gnus. The original image was adjusted for best overall color, the clouds given a bit of contrast enhancement to emphasize the storm we had just encountered, and then the yellows adjusted to look like the aspens did in full sunlight. D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 6.3.

17 Mar 15. We'll look at another image today taken on that 2007 trip, this time in B&W. I've made a few adjustments to give it an almost infrared look, although any of you dabbling in IR will immediately recognize that it is not an IR photo. I like the IR look a lot but Jan doesn't. I think it a very individual thing with folks either really liking it or not liking it at all. This was taken near the peak of the fall color the year we were there, about mid way through as there were trees with no leaves, trees at all stages of fall color, and some just getting started. We had mostly rain as I mentioned so we got mixed results: deeply saturated color but not very bright (lacking direct sunlight.) So I've had to adjust all my captures from those rainy days to compensate from the lack of sunlight. At the time I was sorta bummed out because of the weather, but now I'm rather delighted as the current software programs let you work with images like that to create some very pleasing works of art. The base image was given a hue and saturation adjustment, then adjusted to give it max tonality, then run through a color zone system to individually tweak each color. Finally I gave it a tiny amount of micro contrast boost to replace that lost in the digital capture. D200; ISO 125; Aperture Priority; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

18 Mar 15. Referring back to Monday's mailing, you will recall I mentioned that we were detained for roughly 90 minutes while a large herd of bison leisurely meandered across the roadway. Some made it straight across, some weren't sure if they really wanted to cross and spent some time deciding, while blocking the road, which way to go, while others simply were in no hurry to cross regardless. Meanwhile, the herd boss was standing to the right of our vehicle bellowing out instructions without getting much cooperation. Overall, it was a rather interesting operation and reminded me somewhat of trying to get a herd of cattle to go where YOU wanted them to go when such location wasn't exactly where THEY wanted to go. So a 90 minute exercise in moving a herd of several hundred animals wasn't all that long a time to wait and we enjoyed every minute of it. Today you get to see the boss and I'll let you decide what was being communicated. The base image was cropped for best composition, adjusted for best color via the color zone system I frequently employ, and given a little micro contrast enhancement. Nikon D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 6.3.

19 Mar 15. Today's creative image is of a different kind. Those of you who are familiar with the area, meaning Grand Tetons National Park, will immediately recognize Mt Moran and the surrounding landscape. Just as Tuesday's submission was a shot taken from likely the most singularly photographed spot in the park, that being Ox Bow Bend of the Snake River, where you can go and virtually find the holes labeled for placing your tripod legs, today's is of a similar situation. The challenge then is to create the image of Mt Moran, or the group of mountains, that hasn't been done before. To accomplish that with this view, I elected to isolate the mountain to a significant degree, making it dominant both by height and snow cover when I took the shot. But the lighting that provided for that composition was inappropriate for the trees, leaving them in deep shadow due primarily to my choice of location in taking the shot. But I knew I could "adjust" that in the digital darkroom. So to achieve the "look" I wanted, I used software to selectively brighten just the aspens (like the dodging & burning techniques used in the wet darkroom) to let them appear in their full autumn coloration as they would had they been bathed with full sunlight striking them.. The shot then is a creative simply because you can't get this combination of lighting on the mountains and the trees simultaneously. The base image was adjusted for max tonality, given a brightness adjustment with a mask to limit it to just the trees, and then a small amount of micro contrast enhancement was added to finish the work.D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 7.1.

20 Mar 15. Today's close up is a little different from what I've sent before. Jan has been purchasing bouquets of unopened daffodils which I've been shooting from the closed bud stage through fully opened. This shot is of a mixed grouping, from closed to fully open. With the bouquet standing in a vase sitting against a black backdrop and positioned in a shaft of overhead sunlight, I used a spot metering approach so as to get only the very brightest petals fully exposed allowing everything else to fall off as did the light. That resulted in the biggest portion of the frame being black, with just some of the flowers brightly lit. Taking this capture into digital editing software, I then removed a lot of the dimmest flowers by painting them out with black. All that remains is a small grouping of the flowers running diagonally across the frame. The base image was cropped, and portions painted out with black. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 7.1.

23 Mar 14. Our only trip so far to Grand Tetons National Park had us drive down WA to OR, then drive across OR to ID, and finally cut across ID to WY. The ID to WY portion of the drive took us along ID Hwy 26 where we encountered the Bear Tooth Maples for the first time. I was so fixed on photographing them that I missed a lot of beautiful country side as we made our way to where they were located. Last fall we made a trip from Yellowstone to try and shoot them again, and I believe I shared one photo from that shoot with you. Although we took a very different route this time to get to the trees, that last leg of it was once again on Hwy 26. I didn't recognize it when we initially turned onto it, but it wasn't long before I did and this time made an effort to see everything there was to see. Along the way I noticed a small grouping of what I believe to be sagebrush; a group of somewhat larger plants than I'm accustomed to seeing. The lighting wasn't good, but the group of plants was most inviting and I took a few frames thinking that they would make for some nice B&W compositions. Indeed they did, or at least the one I worked up did, but the color version came out even better than the B&W, at least on the graphics box, and I decided I'd share it rather than the B&W version. This was shot in early afternoon light in Sept so the golden color of the grasses shouldn't be too surprising. The base image was adjusted for max tonality, and then given a slight micro contrast adjustment. And that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

24 Mar 14. I was watching a couple of videos from a group of such on B&W photography today made by an individual from France who is attempting to recreate the work of Ansel Adams and whose work is quite close to that of the master. His material is a graduated set of training material on how he is accomplishing in the digital darkroom what Ansel did in the wet darkroom. With a little luck some of it may rub off on me. A couple weeks back you will recall that we set out one day to shoot three of the waterfalls in our area. You will likely also remember that I was satisfied with the results from only one of them. This shot was taken on the return leg from one of the unsuccessful attempts. The sunlight in the forest was VERY contrasty and for the most part it was a hit and miss situation, but every so often it would do a nice job of lighting something nice and in this case it was a branch heavy laden with moss. The color version turned out O.K., but not as well as I would have desired even though I approached it in several different ways. The B&W approach gave me something I liked the most, in that it did a respectful job of emphasizing the results of the light coming through the subject from behind while still allowing me to show the texture of the individual strands of moss. That did require a bit of image manipulation such as dodging and burning as in days of yore, but I also had the advantage of the digital darkroom techniques not available in the wet darkroom. This shot was taken on the dirt road that dead ends at Hamma Hamma Falls. The base image was first adjusted for max color, then given a slight amount o micro contrast boost, and then given a global contrast adjustment. Then it was converted to B&W, and the black and whites individually adjusted to give the final look. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 7.1.

25 Mar 15. The three days we spent in Grand Tetons Nation Park back in 2007 were primarily days of rain interrupted by brilliant sunlight poking down through the clouds. The combination of the sunlight punching through the dark clouds made for some amazing images with colors that were hard to believe while we were watching and likely even harder to believe when seen in a photo taken in that light when you weren't there to observe firsthand. Today's submission is just one such image. Some of the aspen groves were in full yellow while we were there and when seen in that harsh lighting were almost unbelievable, but we did see it and likely will never forget it. What makes it real is that the grass and trees are green in the image and although it may be hard to believe if you are not one of us who work with digital images, the color "green" in most photos is primarily made up of yellow. Thus, if the yellow of the leaves had been manipulated to look like they do, the greens in the image would have shifted to yellow also. This was one of those "you had to be there at the right moment" shots as this intense golden color lasted for less than 5 minutes. Then the clouds moved, and everything got dull and ugly with the rain commencing once again. But at least we got the 5 minutes!! The base image was adjusted for max tonal range, and then given a wee bit of micro contrast adjustment. Nikon D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

26 Mar 15. Today's Theatrical Thursday's submission is another shot of Ludlow Falls, but this time as an oil painting. This was taken on our second visit to the falls and to my surprise there was more water flowing this time - March vs January - than there had been on the previous trip but without the area having received a greater amount of precipitation. I'm thinking this could be a great area to visit year round. Nothing much more to say about these falls that I haven't said previously. The base image was adjusted for max tonal range, given a tiny amount of micro contrast adjustment, and then run against a oil painting filter. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1 sec @ f / 29 on a tripod.

27 Mar 15. Heading out the other morning early I encountered a bit of fog which also meant that I was seeing lots of little drops of water hanging onto just about anything possible along with a slight breeze moving everything of a small nature. A tree in a local parking lot provided an opportunity to shoot some drops of dew hanging from a red branch and also reflecting the tiny limbs nearby. I took a few shots at different angles trying to compensate for the movement which although not much, was magnified by the closeness of the subject to the lens. This was my favorite of the group. It isn't as sharp as I would have liked, but if you move back about 36 inches from the screen it will be acceptable sharp, sorta like looking at a billboard from the road. I took the base image, cropped it for best composition, did a bit of detail extraction on the dew drops, then added a tiny bit of micro contrast boost. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 7.1.

30 Mar15. Traveling along La Push Road (WA Hwy 110) you come to Mora Road where you turn off to drive to Rialto Beach, one of WA State's must see locations. If it isn't on your WA State bucket list put it there; you won't be disappointed. As you travel along Mora Road you encounter several rivers all of which eventually join to become the Quillayute River which empties into the Pacific Ocean at Rialto Beach. Be warned however that you could find yourself not making it to the beach simply due to the beauty on both sides of Mora Road. Where the road crosses over the Dickey River there is a small bridge from which you can get some very nice images. There isn't a lot of free room on the bridge, but as the traffic is very light, at least in the off season, it is easy to shoot from the bridge with the possibility of getting some lovely photos. This shot was taken as we were going to the beach and I pulled over after crossing the bridge to shoot the confluence of the Dickey and Quillayute Rivers partially shrouded in fog. The lighting was very contrasty so I shot for what I thought was the best compromise with the idea that I could adjust it as required in the digital darkroom. Keep this for another day as Tuesday's B&W sharing will be this same image. Place them next to each other and cycle back and forth between them; I think you'll enjoy the comparison. The base image was first given a small amount of detail enhancement, then adjusted for color balance, and then given a global contrast adjustment but with masking to control its application. Following that I applied a small amount of micro contrast adjustment, again controlled with a mask. Then I added a custom creative effect which was applied using a multiply mode and held to a 42% application. Finally I burned in some of the highlights in the LLH corner that were just too bright and pulling the eye out of the frame. They might still be just a wee bit too bright, but I'm of the opinion that the fog will pull your eye back into the frame. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 6.3.

31 Mar 15. Here is the promised B&W version of what I shared for Monday. There isn't much more story to share for this image as everything I said yesterday applies, although I might suggest you consider the weather for your trip. Stormy weather normally equates to fantastic waves and quite dramatic skies while calm weather more to playing in the surf and picnicking on the beaches. Either way you win but just different prizes. The color image from Monday was taken into a B&W plug-in and adjusted to get the most I could out of that filter including adding a bit of grain for the film look, then brought back into the graphics editor where I added a dodge & burn layer on which I did a significant amount of burning and a small amount of dodging and finally, completed with a levels correction layer to tweak the extremes of black (zone 0) and white (zone 10). Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 6.3.