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.

I had exactly one evening to catch some photographs on my last stay in Salt Lake City a couple of weeks ago. The weather was not exactly perfect (it was so cold and windy!), but at least was not soaking rain like an evening before that. We were even able to catch some sunset on top of LDS Conference Center.

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.

I took this image a couple of weekends ago. We were walking along the lake not far from our home. We wanted to take some photographs of small waterfalls where the lake meets another reservoir, but it was frozen and not impressive at all. In the meantime, it was getting close to sunset, and I saw not only the amazing clouds on the sky, but also the sunset colors showing through the trees. I snapped several images, I loved what I saw, but it turned out to be a challenge to achieve the same effect on the photograph.

I found several show-worthy images in my Konica Minolta collection from Vancouver, 3 years ago. This one was improved using the Contrast Layer Mask, as shown in this great video tutorial. Photographing sunset in Vancouver is not an easy task, because…. It is not positioned on the open Ocean. There are mountains, islands and bunch of other stuff, obstructing the view. So, you need to be creative.

I am still not convinced to video over static images, but I am more and more serious consider slide shows and movies made of static images. Since I read about it on Digital ProTalk blog, I was flirting with the idea of slide shows in Animoto style. Then I installed the app for iPhone, and was thinking on the photo project to make the 30 sec movie. And then on Saturday, when we drove home, there was this incredible sky. It was not a sunset yet, but the sun was rather low, behind the clouds, coloring the horizon orange. I was taking pictures along the way with the iPhone, and put this 30 sec movie together.

Park Farm winery is one of nine wineries in Eastern Iowa, part of the Iowa Wine Trail. It is a fun way to spend weekend during semi-annual even on the trail, but I can tell you, photographing gets more and more difficult with every glass . Although, I was posing more thread to the gear, then art, really. Anyway, I shot this image with both zoom lens and Lensbaby, and I am not sure which result I like more. In either way, it shows sunset over Iowa late fall. The rusty brown colors are here to stay until in April everything will turn green again. I like for a short period of time, but soon I will get tired of it everywhere and be happy to welcome snow which will changes the color scheme for a bit.

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 was out on a party yesterday. Believe it or not, on a farm. Very cool place for a party, both for a photographer or just a regular person . I always liked it, anyway. Now I have additional fun, as they have horses, cattle, chickens- all of those are fun to photograph during a “cocktail hour”. Trust it to cow not to move for just below a second altogether .