10 sec, f/11 iso 100
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L II @ 30mm
w/ 3 stop reverse graduated neutral density

I promised myself I was staying in on Tuesday night to do some office work… a storm came through in the early evening and it looked like there was some clearing to the west. Out I went!

I’m really battling some demons with my filter setup. I’m having a lot of trouble with infrared radiation sensitivity with my 5D Mark II and Singh Ray filters when shooting into the sunset like this with heavy filtration. About 15 minutes before the shot above, I was dealing with an extreme “muddy” color cast. This is mostly correctable in post, but really defeats the purpose of using graduated neutral density filters. Very frustrating.

I did something I rarely do… I stayed in one place and didn’t move for an entire sunset on Thursday night. In full disclosure, I did walk around for about 45 minutes before I picked my spot – but once I chose it, I stuck with it for another 45 minutes. This was a little exercise for me. Usually, I’ll scout a number of spots in a given area and then move throughout them during the course of sunset and twilight.

Often when I’m shooting landscapes some impatience creeps in. I’ll continue to scout and search out compositions as the light gets better constantly thinking that what I’ve found isn’t good enough and that something great is just around the next corner. This leads to a feeling like I’m often “out of position” or I’ve missed the shot that would have been better somewhere else that I found earlier.

One of the things I need to continue to work on as a photographer is my patience… and continuing to trust myself and my compositions. Sometimes it’s best to stick with an idea and make a commitment!

Which photograph do you like better? The sunset or the twilight? I’d appreciate your thoughts in the comments below. There’s also two easily identifiable difference between these two photographs. Would love to know what you think about them as well.

One little technical tidbit – in both of these I used a 2 stop soft graduated neutral density filter… but held it from right to left instead of up and down.

Amazing night last night shooting from Roanoke Island. I was originally pretty discouraged about going out. Skies looked very blah around 6PM when I was deciding, but went for it anyway. I’m so glad I did. Very productive night… got several things that I like and even found a couple of things I want to go back for.

I decided to drive home via Mann’s Harbor to see if there was a backside to the storm. That wasn’t the case, but there was perfect light on the Mt. Carmel Church… jumped out and quickly took 2 shots in the drizzle. Turned on my headlights to pop the driveway a bit which worked out nicely.

I’d appreciate any of your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for visiting!

1/6, f11 iso 100
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35 f/2.8L II @ 27mm
focus bracketed, w/ 3 stop reverse graduated neutral density

1 sec, f/8 iso 400
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35 f/2.8L II @ 31mm

Still cranking through a backlog of processing. Here are a few photographs from last Friday night on Pea Island. Not shooting much this week so far… evenings have been very blah with overcast skies and no sunsets. I hope to get that turned around tonight or tomorrow morning.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had hoped some weather came and cleaned up Pea Island. It wasn’t drastic, but a little overnight rain on Thursday helped smooth things out… Friday night found things damp and still. Just me and mosquitos!

A quick funny – I thought I dropped my filter wallet on this outing. For the life of me, I couldn’t find it when I got home after shooting. I searched the car and my pack for a few minutes… nothing. I had a loose filter in my pocket and another on a lens that were looking for a home. I then remembered that after I was done shooting I was rushing around trying to get to the car as I was being eaten alive and thought that it must have fallen out of my pocket. Saturday morning, I made a plan to drive back to this same spot and shoot sunrise and look for the filters. I arrived about 90 minutes before sunrise with a flashlight in hand and proceeded to search the beach. Sunrise was completely clouded out… so I just continued walking and looking. I was able to clearly find my tracks from the evening before, but didn’t see my filters. After 2 hours, I gave up and drove home thinking that I’d lost them to the surf and I’d just have to replace them. When I got home, I looked through the car one last time – and found them under the passenger seat! No moral to the story… just someone’s way of making me get some good exercise!

30 sec, f/16 iso 100
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L II @ 27mm

4 sec, f/22 iso 100
Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L II @ 16mm
w/ polarizer + 3 stop soft graduated neutral density

A lot of the shooting I’ve been doing since I moved has been very literal – I’ve been working to develop a quick body of work that can be marketed to folks visiting that would simply want a keepsake of their trips… to be reminded of their vacations and to help them look forward to the next. I often view that work as separate from the work that really fires me up… but feel things are often best executed when the lines between the two are blurred.

I thought it would be fun to share some experimental personal work from Thursday night over near Mann’s Harbor. In the first image, I’m continually thinking about the idea of numbers and math as leading ideas through a composition. 1, 2, 3… here, there doesn’t seem to be much of a payoff. You may ask yourself where the “1″ comes from…

In the second piece, I’m starting to work on “elemental” compositions for a project. In this case earth+air. I really wanted these sea oats to be yearning for rain from the clouds… waving around as if to get attention. Introducing a 3rd element (water) is left up to the viewer and that specific interpretation. I want to revisit this idea a bit more, even perhaps reworking the treatment on this photograph. The sea oats appear a bit lush here and not exactly what I’m after.

I’d appreciate any thoughts or comments. I still have a ton of work to process from the last few weeks and (of course) didn’t get as much done over the weekend as I had wanted!

1/10 @ f/11 iso 400
Canon 5D Mark II, Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 ZE
w/ 3 Stop Soft Graduated Neutral Density

30 sec @ f/2.8 iso 200
Canon 5D Mark II, Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 ZE

It’s been a crazy week and I’ve been a bad blogger! I’ve been cranking on things in the office, working on a few different projects, and have been shooting a ton. I’ve got a lot of processing to catch up on over the weekend and hopefully I’ll plant myself in front of the computer for a few hours of editing.

Today’s scenes are from Tuesday evening. I’ve been shooting sunset almost exclusively on Pea Island for over a month and I’m feeling a little burnt out on a few of my locations. I really need a good windy storm to come clean things up for me there. Laura suggested that I try somewhere new and with that in mind, I drove a bit further south to try my luck shooting the soundside marsh near Salvo. I worked in an area that I hadn’t visited and had a little trouble finding some inspiring foregrounds. After about 45 minutes of scouting, I decided to work some of the clumps of sea wrack and marsh grasses. Great ball of a sunset and the twilight was pretty good. After I worked the sound for a while, I decided to motor over to Rodanthe Pier to see what was happening. I setup under the pier and worked some long exposures for a few minutes before calling it a night.

Even though I mentioned my SoFoBoMo project in my last post…. I hate to say, but I think I’m going to abandon it again this year. I have just not had a chance to put time into that project like I want. I spent several hours working on some video tutorials this week and definitely feel that I should make some of these teaching projects a higher priority. There are only so many hours in the day… and in this case, I think SoFoBoMo gets cut in lieu of teaching work and my primary shooting suffering. Perhaps this just means that I wasn’t inspired by my own project?

I think I’ve finally recovered from multiple trips to Delaware over the past few weeks. I’m definitely glad to have about 4 weeks at home before I need to to travel again. There are lots of projects I’m trying to finish up… and even more that I’m trying to get off the ground. I registered to participate in SoFoBoMo again this year and my “fuzzy month” is scheduled to begin on July 1st. Sadly, last year I didn’t complete my book and I’d like to make up for it this year. Unless something changes in the next few hours, I’m going to resurrect my idea of shooting a project of Polaroids, but will not be manipulating them like I did last year.

I’m still trying to decide what I want to do with this blog. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not very interested in posting mediocre work from every shooting session… but at the same time, the blog is motivation to make sure that I push myself to shoot as much as possible and process work in a somewhat speedy fashion. I’m still searching for a good balance and I plan to spend sometime over the holiday weekend working on msg.com a bit.

When I was testing the Canon 17mm TS-E, one of the subjects I was most excited about shooting was the Nags Head Pier. I’ve mentioned this subject before as being my standby location when I’m feeling unmotivated, running late, or otherwise don’t have a plan for a shoot. I have yet to really nail something that I’m excited about. I have a couple of detail / abstractions that I’m very happy with… but I haven’t captured the big scenic that I’m after.

I was definitely impressed with the 17TSE while shooting the pier. It solved a ton of problems I have with this subject, mainly with issues of converging vertical lines with all of the pilings and the pier house. Now I just need to permanently get my hands on one of these amazing lenses and wait for some epic surf and storm light.

It’s been a rough couple of days photography wise. I’ve been processing some work and that’s going well… but I haven’t had much success shooting this week. The few times I’ve been out have yielded nothing sharable. I’m definitely having some trouble concentrating in the field with mosquitos and flies really distracting me. I ordered a Thermacell to see if that helps and I just need to resort to wearing long sleeves and pants which isn’t pleasant in 90 degree temps and 80+ percent humidity. I try to avoid bug spray because of the issues with plastic, but I might need to break down and use some.

I’m scouting an art show on Wednesday morning and then I’m driving back to Delaware for a few days. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to share through early next week, but will do my best to post some of the work I’ve been processing. I’m hoping this time I can get to and from Delaware without a speeding ticket… had a little issue on the trip last weekend! Thankfully this is the last Delaware trip until the end of July and I’m definitely looking forward to 4 uninterrupted weeks of shooting on the Outer Banks.

I traveled back to Delaware again late last night… the 2nd of the 3 trips I need to take this month. These 6 hour drives every few days are really taking a toll on me and I’ll be glad when they are over next week. It’s a pretty boring stretch of road and a good portion of it is stop and go with a ton of red lights. I originally planned to spend an entire week in Delaware, but some commitments in North Carolina keep me driving back and forth. For a number of reasons, I didn’t get out to shoot landscapes at all this week and I’m pretty disappointed about that. I’m still quite a bit behind in processing work and didn’t really use the bad weather this week to get caught up. Time management and I need to become better friends. Since I’m on the road and without a proper display, I grabbed a couple of images from the archives to post for the weekend.

Both of these are from a January sunrise shoot… and I consider both compositions a little experimental. That being the case, I thought I’d post them here to see what each of you think. Please post some comments with your thoughts. I’d really appreciate it!

After a quick trip home to Delaware over the weekend, I finally sat down to finish processing work from the Whalehead Club in Corolla from over a week ago. This week, I’ve been reading the interesting HDR dialog on Scott Kelby’s blog. I try to read all that I can on this subject as I formulate my own opinion, work on my own creativity, and prepare workshops for OBXPS in 2011. It’s definitely a polarizing topic amongst many photographers.

1/3, 2/3, & 1.5 sec @ f/16 iso 100
Canon 5D Mark II, 17mm TS-E f/4L

Although I really liked the symmetry of this composition, there were a couple of things that made me consider throwing it away while editing. While I was there, I immediately realized that some of the up-lights weren’t working… but decided to frame this up anyway and move on quickly to something else. With this shot headed for the trash bin and my recent HDR reading in mind… I popped some files into Photomatix and developed the scene above. Nothing spectacular, but a fun exercise nonetheless.

I think the most important thing about HDR technique is to put it together with a vision and limit it’s use as a gimmick. If you are crafting a particular style or aesthetic and use these techniques to show the world how you see and relate to it… I believe there is nothing wrong with using these tools. If anything else, it’s allowing photographers to think and create in new ways which is exciting.

I definitely want to come back to this composition someday… hopefully at twilight when the lights are working.

After shooting the front of the Club, I moved to the back where I knew there were some very broad lights that lit up the entire building. I setup a simple composition… and I waited… and waited. For this image, I wanted to balance the light on the building with the sky and capture everything in one exposure.

15 sec @ f/11 iso 400
Canon 5D Mark II, 17mm TS-E f/4L

I had to wait about 30 minutes for things to balance out and it happened right at the end of civil twilight… and oh boy were the mosquitos bad while I waited. In this case the technique worked pretty well, but you’ll notice that I did need to bump up my iso and use a longer exposure, which wasn’t a problem with this particular camera.

Just to give you an idea of the progression of twilight and using this technique:

This moment won’t always be exactly at the end of civil twilight… it’s totally dependent on the weather, atmosphere, amount of diffuse clouds, your light and how it changes the exposure value on the building, etc. In this case I was using existing lights that were pretty far away from the building. Ideally, I would have been using my own lights where I would have had control over the brightness and the how close they were placed to the building so that the Inverse Square Law wasn’t causing me to excessively extend my exposure. At 15 seconds, I was loosing a lot of texture in the sky as the clouds moved through. With my own lights, I might have been able to capture this a few minutes earlier and with a more ideal shutter speed.

I still have a bit more 17TSE work to process, but sadly, the lens has gone back. I’m working to get my own as quickly as possible. I’m simply pumped about this lens and can’t believe I waited so long to give it a try. More to come this week… thanks for visiting!