Ice fishing is not as popular in Iowa as it is in Minnesota. But there are some fans, and several weekends ago when we were hiking around Coralville Lake and Lake Macbride, we saw some of the tents. When we were coming back towards the end of the day, the fisherman were preparing to leave their positions as well. I found the spot and was waiting for those to to position themselves against the sunset sun for this image.

Something new on a post today. It is not a guest post per say, but featured image was not taken by me. I decided to take part in Digital Photography School Monthly Edits challenge, and instead of just posting a comment on the web page with the final image, I decided to write a post on my blog about how I achieved the final effect.
I basically like the image and how it was post-processed. I love the colors, and I though I will try to make them pop up as well. What I wanted to tackle is how the mountains disappear in the distance. I want to see their shape distinct rather then bare suggestion they are there, and it is a main reason I decided to take part in the challenge. Overall, the image lacks contrast in the top part.
I spent three evenings trying to make it “my way”. I started from basic black and white conversion, which was not interesting at all. Then I tried a single image HDR to recover some of the mountains and maintain detail in the bird, but I created just too much noise and overall did not like the result. I tried to add a split-neutral density filter on top part, and I wasn’t able to recover as much as I wanted before the noise set in, but it felt like I was onto something.
In this moment, I created several virtual copies and was just going through sliders, and I had hard time recreating what I did when I had a final image. So I had to go back and start from the beginning, writing down each step.
First I took the image to Photoshop as Smart Object, made a copy of a smart object, and using Camera Raw, adjusted top copy to +1 and the bottom copy to -2. The top layer blending mode I chose to set to Overlay, by trial and error. It worked, I had enough detail in the mountains. I actually just saw the trick on Photoshop User TV episode 211. I made another copy of the smart object with Exposure as it was originally, created a layer mask of the shape of the bird, and with Normal blending mode, lowered the opacity to 37% to lighten the bird without it being to obvious. Uff, it was complicated.
Back in Lightroom, I added some Clarity and Vibrance and placed a graduated filter on the sky. I made it -0.6 stop and added an orange color, picked from the sky itself. Another graduated filter, light blue, I added to the bottom part. I cleaned few spots (probably post-processing artifacts) and added +0.5 in exposure to the whole image. I also cropped the image so the bird was in one of nodal points of rule of thirds grid. To finish off, I added some post-crop vignette and sharpened a bit.
It would be it, if I didn’t try to turn it black and white again, and discovered that the color in my graduated filters was preserved in the conversion.
You can see the original image, the final full color version, and my favorite, colored black and white.

This picture was taken early one morning while we waited for our tour bus to pick us up. As we were waiting I looked over at Lake McDonald and noticed this single boat floating on the lake. It was very quiet and the water was like glass. I then noticed the reflection of the clouds on the water, so I grabbed my camera and went down to the shoreline. It was a breathtaking site. If you have never been to Glacier National Park, I highly recommend visiting it. It truly is one of the most beautiful places on Earth!

This place is not far from my house. On the beautiful lake. The spot with a bench where you can sit down, relax and enjoy the view. So calm, and although there is a lot of hikers, especially on the evenings and weekends, you can still have some solitude.
I really enjoy this image, I took one evening with my Fisheye. I wanted to use this particular lens to show what is around the bench, the trees, as well as the sunset and the colors of the sky.

I am coming back to this image. I cannot pinpoint what it is that draws me to it. I would wish the boat was closer, bigger, more in focus. But as it is, you still know it is there, and your eye goes there. And I like how the trees frame the part of the lake around the boat. And all this lush green- it was wet, thus really green summer on Midwest this year! Bye, bye summer. I am up for some autumn photographs.

I don’t think I already announced, that Friday is supposed to be a B&W and other effects day, but I certainly made a note to myself about several weeks ago. At least this time, finding an appropriate effect and a photo was not an issue. Photo found itself, when I looked for something for yesterday post. And I am recently (for w while, in fact) under influence of cross-processed look. I downloaded some Lightroom presets, but have not been impressed by them so far. I guess- wrong photos, wrong presets. This one worked like charm. And stripping this image out of all irrelevant color information made is simpler, and I like it better.

One night this weekend, inspired by Jeff Revell and (almost) full moon, we went out to the lake (short drive from our house) to photograph nightscape. A lot of fun, but surely more in picture taking and coming up with ideas, then later selecting keepers… I tried this scene as HDR, tried exposure blending, nothing seemed to work as I envisioned it. Finally, regular, single exposure, few saturation adjustments, graduated filter, and borrowing a piece form another exposure, and I got my winner.

I have busy time at work. I am coming home so exhausted, that after catching up on home chores, last thing I want to do is to sit in from of computer, again. After very systematic blogging last week, this week I have hardly time and feeling for it. But today’s photo, from our last vacation in Four Corners area, was just something I wanted to put up for a while. It was taken on Glen Canyon Dam, a glimpse of Lake Powell, surrounded by Navajo sandstone.

Click here for photograph location.

It seems like “Hot shoe diaries” fuss calmed a bit. Probably because now everybody is reading “Within the frame” by David duChemin. Since my purchase request in local library got approved this time, with a processing time about a week and a half or so, I have the book on my desk as of yesterday. I want to finish whatever I am reading right now, not photography related, BTW, I just flipped through pages to see what’s awaiting me. And I got captivated by the split-tone images from India.  I have seen different combinations of colors for split tone, but yellow and violet just looked so … original? I decided to try it on some of my images. In the process I discovered that the right photo makes all the difference. This one was by far the best. Mind you, I did not use the original hues, I just went with something matching the photo the best.

This seems like totally abstract image. Like late paining of Monet. In fact, if you look closer and more carefully, you start realizing what it really is. A surface of a lake. It is covered with old and fresh leaves. But you can still catch a glimpse of reflection of trees around. It is a cautiously cropped view.
I took this photo at Oak Openings Preserve, while picnicking on Evergreen Lake. I took broader views, but this one is my favorite.

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