This image was taken previous weekend, on the same day I took the sunset photo. For the abstract image of water at sunset, I composed so there is nothing but water in the frame. And I started to play with white balance. That day, I was for the first time shooting without Auto White Balance setting on the camera, I picked the Sunny setting (I am shooting RAW, so whatever I chose, I can change, but at least I have some consistency among pictures). But I thought, let’s see how it would look like at different white balance settings. In fact, I liked the bluish setting the most. I still decided to add to the atmosphere of the image by introducing split toning. I added a bit of yellow to highlights, and just a little of blue to shadows.

I took a short, unannounced break from blogging last week. I spend the extended weekend with my family, enjoying finally summer weather. Luckily, there was many photographic opportunities along the way, so there is stuff to pick up for blog today. One evening, my husband and I went to photograph sunset on the lake. There probably would be nothing unusual about it, except it was the first time there was actually sun, no clouds or rain, a real possibility of capturing something interesting. We went about an hour before actual sunset, which gave plenty of time to explore the surroundings of Poraj lake. It was a Friday evening, in a middle of long, 4 day weekend, so there was a lot of people picnicking, walking, fishing. I think this image shows well the atmosphere on the lake this evening, the symbiosis of nature and human, the gulls and fisherman. And the calmness of the moment.
For this shoot, I also took another step into going full manual, and set White Balance from Auto to Daylight, and achieved those beautiful warm colors, rich red sunset feeling.

Disclaimer for locals- yes, I removed the power line. It was double and single line, right in the middle of the sky. I was struggling if I should do it or not, and decided to brush it out. It was distracting.

Found it in “old” files, from several weekends ago, when we were spending time in the beautiful lake region in North-Western Poland. Somehow I ignored that image then, now it drew my attention because the green color of the boat is just perfectly matching the green feel of the whole scene.

I looked at the series of images I took of this old boat on the lake critically, and they looked so boring at first. But there was some potential. I increases Clarity and Vibrance, as I usually do, but it didn’t fix it yet. And then I noticed, that the water behind the boat had a bluish color, but in front of it, shallow water revealed the yellow sand below. It gave me an idea of using two colored neutral density filters in Lightroom. I have to admit that I was impressed by the result of the quick fix.

I am spending this weekend in one of Polish lake regions. In South-Western part of Poland, there is locally popular but not widely known Slawa Lake, around which there is a number of smaller lake, creating very pleasant vacation area. We went for a ride yesterday in the evening. We were looking for a access spots to the lake and interesting views. The low hanging, dark clouds also added to this particular landscape. I used HDR to retain detail in those clouds, and at the same make all the trees well visible.

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.