Foggy Morning

Friday night the weather alerts were going off: "Heavy Fog Watch". Which to me meant a photo opportunity !

Saturday morning opened with some mist before dawn, and the fog grew deeper as dawn approached. I headed to a hillside meadow area that I had not visited before. The hillside faced the rising sun and I was hoping for a low lying mist filling the valley.

The fog was much more than that. At the peak it filled the valley and covered the hilltop to well above my head. It also drenched the grasses in a heavy dew.

The light changed and shifted as the morning went along. From a few peeks at color near dawn to a glow when the yellow sun started burning the fog away.

Pope's Creek

We are out exploring Southern Maryland this week. Thank you very much to Paula Marquis for showing and suggesting so many great places!

One that we've explored is a landing called Pope's Creek. The calling card is Cap't Billy's Crab Shack, but the photographic possibilities are grand too.

These images are from a morning visit that started foggy and broke open with some soft light as the sun rose. Enjoy!

All the images are taken with the D7000 and Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8. The first was processed in ACR and converted to B&W using Silver eFx Pro/CS6. The other images were done in ACR/CS6.

Early - Washington, D.C.

We're in the Washington, D.C. area this week visiting family and exploring the region.

We rose early and made the drive to the Lincoln Memorial, arriving about 45 minutes before sunrise. First benefit of leaving early is that you can park within blocks of the monument at this time of day this time of year! We were fortunate to have a very nice sunrise. But not a great one, as I will explain in a bit.

The major monuments and iconic buildings are well lit at night. You have to experiment with your focus and exposure, because the white marble objects are so reflective that if you use matrix metering your camera may overexpose the highlights trying to 'average' the very dark surroundings with the very bright building.

Here are some of my favorite images from the morning

The first two images are as shot, with a little help from ACR 7.2 and Photoshop CS6. The image of the Lincoln statue is a composite image to bring up the visibility of the exterior of the building without blowing out exposure due to the spotlights on the statue.

All were shot at ISO 100 with a Nikon D7000 and the 35-70mm f/2.8 at various exposure times.

Oh, the rest of the story... My plan for the shoot was a morning light image of the Lincoln Memorial. And it was developing nicely. I have a great image of the upper two-thirds of the building bathed in golden light... At which point the advancing shelf of clouds cut off the sunrise light. Oh, well ! Photography is a lot like fishing... Getting shut out on a photo outing is still a lot better than a day at work ! Enjoy the images !!

The New Icon

Earlier this year Kansas City opened a major new public building. The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts features a very modernistic architectural design. The building contains a 1,600 seat music hall and a 1,800 seat theatre, each under their own curved roof. This building will be one of the iconic images for Kansas City.

And every photographer in town will make their way there to take their own images. I made my way down there (with photography in mind) for the first time this morning. Went for the sunrise. The sun is now rising far enough north to illuminate the concrete and aluminum ribbed "backside" of the building. The morning provided some nice golden light for a few minutes.

These images are one from each dome. Enjoy!

Nikon D7000, 35-70mm f/2.8, Post in ACR, CFX

Monterey Bay Sunrise

One of my first photo outings of this trip was a trip to the shoreline to witness the sunrise over Monterey Bay. The morning was cool. The sunrise was "windowed" by a band of cloud that hovered above the horizon.

Enjoy the images !

Images processed with ACR/CS5 and Color eFx Pro

Yosemite - Final Morning

Our last day in California I drove back up into Yosemite Valley. It was a nice day with some lingering mist in the lower levels.

I returned to shoot some sunrise images at a location that we had originally visited on the first morning that stayed grey and cloudy.

I was much more fortunate on this visit. The location is a bend on the Merced River. El Capitan is to the west and the Three Brothers are to the east.

Being down in the shadows of the valley with the brightening sky made for a very wide contrast range. So we shot bracketed images with the plan to process as HDR images. Here are a couple of my favorite results.

Light on the Peaks - Three Brothers above the Merced

Morning Light on El Cap - Merced Reflection

The camera: Nikon D7000 with Tamron 11-16mm f/2.8. The processing: HDR processing in Photomatix, final processing in CS5

Sunrise - Sedona Day 3

This morning I rose early to greet the sun. Sedona is usually known for sunset images.

I call this image "Fire on the Horizon"

35mm, f/8, 1/125s, -1.0 EV

December Sunrise

This weekend was yucky, grey days that weren't great for photography. So I spent my photography time sorting and clearing old images. This one is from December 2009. An early morning sunrise on an absolutely clear morning following a snowfall. Shot near Weston Bend north of Kansas City.

For extra credit look for the strings of ducks returning from their overnight feeding. Enjoy!

Spider Among Jewels

Here is another image from my morning meadow shoot. When we arrived the grass was filled with hundreds of spider webs jeweled by the fog. Enjoy!

Windmill

Our last morning in Nebraska we had some great sunrise skies. This image is "pushed" in post-process to bring out the drama of the sky and clouds

Image taken with Nikon D90 & 18-105mm VR. PP with CS5

Spring Break - Arizona

We are in Arizona for a spring break get-away. There have been many photo opportunities and images taken. Just no time to post any!

As an appetizer here are three images from our time in Phoenix and Sedona.



There will be more images to come, including baseball from the Cactus League.

I've been shooting with nearly all my gear. Very little PP on these first images except to re-size and sharpen.