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Sunset Olympic National Park

Olympic National PArk Sunset
Olympic National Park Sunset

I enjoy photographing in Olympic National Park a lot.  There is so much to shoot there.  This image was made at the 2nd Beach location.  It’s a short walk through the woods that dumps you onto this wonderful beach.  Hang around for sunset and you’ll be treated to something special.  This is an image made with a Phase One IQ160 with an ALPA camera.  I did one exposure then processed it out at 2 stops over and under plus normal.  It was the taken into PhotoMatix and tone mapped.  What this does is recover the detail in highlights and shadows and then blends them together.  A bit surreal and real at the same time.

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Back To Trains

Front Of The Monon Diesel Locomotive
Front Of The Monon Diesel Locomotive

After a few Canadian picture days I decided it was time to come back to the good ole USA and to my train project. Here is another from the Noblesville, IN train yard. Shot with a Nikon d800 and 70-200mm lens I compressed the image and then used a single image tone map in NIK software to get the look I wanted.

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Old Gas Station

Yellow Gas Station, Ontario, Canada
Yellow Gas Station, Ontario, Canada

Once more we were driving around and we stopped for gas. We are out in the real rural area of Ontario Canada. The gas station is a gift shop, garage, ice cream store and a general place to meet for the locals. I loved the color and was attracted by the colored chairs out front. So, I grabbed the camera and did some images. All shot in 5 exposure bracket mode. I knew I wanted to really punch and exaggerate the colors. I processed the image in Capture One and then used NIK HDR to blend the images together until I found a combination that I liked.  I am not a super big fan of HDR especially when you can tell it was an HDR but in this case it works.  What do you think? Shot with a Nikon D800E and 24-70mm lens in 5 image 1 stop bracket mode. One final noteI used a cool feature in Capture One to correct perspective so the building didn’t look like it was falling backwards.

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Rusty Lady

Rusty Lady, near Cremore, Ontario, Canada
Rusty Lady, near Cremore, Ontario, Canada

Like in my previous post this image was made on one of our daily excursions to see what we could see. So much possibility for images is close to home. You just need to keep your eyes open. This shot was made at an old abandoned garage. On the wall of the building was an old Goodyear Tire sign. It was rusted badly and since I love rusty things so much I was attracted to it immediately. And, rather than just shoot the whole sign I looked for an image in the image and played around to I came out with this composition. This was not a crop but made while looking through the viewfinder. Shot with a Nikon D800e and 24-70mm lens. Processed in Capture One and then into NIK HDR single image tone mapped.

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Second Beach

2nd Beach, Olympic National Park

Along the Washington and Oregon coast lines there are some classic places to take magnificent images of the coast and stacks and crashing surf.  One of the more iconic places is Second Beach in Olympic National Park.  A little bit of a hike through a well marked trail deposits you at this super location.  Sunset being the best time to be there.  I wanted my images to be different than others I saw before of this location. This was shot with an IQ180 and then processed out with one exposure to six levels at one stop increments.  So I had a 3 stop over and under and one normal from one shot.  The Phase One camera takes an incredible image with 12 plus stops dynamic range.  So in one image I was able to hold all details in highlights and shadows.  It’s quite the moment when you look at the histogram of an image like this expecting clipping on highlights and shadows and the Phase One back shows a very nice histogram with toes at both ends.  This allowed me to know I had the information to produce an image like this.  Then using Photomatix I processed them together to make an HDR.  I made adjustments so it didn’t appear to grungy or fake.  I retained enough detail in the rocks but didn’t overdue it.  I decided on a gold tone cast as that is how I remembered this image.  After the image was processed and saved I opened it using NIK Viveza and did some desaturation in the clouds and darkened some corners.  Finally I saved it, flattened it and then did a JPEG at a smaller dimension so I could post it on my blog and FaceBook.  There were number of images from this one nights shoot that were keepers and this was one.  I like the rock in the foreground and texture the water makes.  Hope you enjoy it.  This weekend I will make a 30×40 inch print.

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Cool Scooter

Scooter In Antique Store

A few weeks ago I enjoyed one of my outing with companion photographer Debra.  We try once a month to take a Sunday and go somewhere and just shoot pictures of what we find.  We come across abandoned buildings, funky stores and all sorts of other interesting things.  This shot was in a very cool antique store in a town we never heard of.  They had all sorts of cool stuff in a eerie of stores.  We spent nearly two hours there shooting.  I have published a shot previously of a bank safe hinge shot in one of the stores.  This is a cool scooter type bike on a shelf. I have a bunch more you’ll see soon.

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Stormy Palladium

The Palladium, Carmel, IN

Everyone knows the Palladium in Carmel, In.  It’s part of the Perfroming Arts Center complex.  The other day we had these magnificent clouds and I decided to give it a shot.  Came up with this BW and a few good color images.  I’ll publish some color images later this week.  I like the look of the sturdy building with the storm clouds behind it.  It was done with five exposures blended together on PhotoMatix and HDR program used to blend different exposures together.  Fun stuff but can be too overused.  I n a case like this it works great.

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On The Way To Olympic National Park

Bainbridge Ferry, Seattle, WA

It has been a rainy free days in Seattle. Typical. So, early Saturday morning I am in line to catch a ferry to Bainbridge Island and start my two day trip through ONP. I see the fireboat and ferry coming in with the pink in the clouds, hinting at sin some sun. Bam, got the shot. Color, composition, everything just worked for that one moment. The ONP is going to make a great location for an upcoming PODAS workshop this fall. Hard to take any photos yesterday as it rained the whole time and I mean heavy rain. I am about to head out the door with the Phase One IQ180 and ALPA set up and hopefully today get some decent images. Let’s see what I come back with.