Black Creek Greenway, Cary, North Carolina | Canon 5D Mark III and 24mm f/3.5L TS-E | Multiple exposures at f/11, ISO 200
Recently I began working more with landscape photography and, in turn, my old habit of making multiple photographs of a scene and stitching them together. Related to that, I recently began to explore what would happen if I made multiple versions of the multiple pictures to be stitched together: that is, what if you bracket for High Dynamic Range photography with each “view” in a panorama or other stitched image. The results can be pretty amazing, but so is the amount of work that can be required to pull it off! I’ll be writing more on this topic after Thanksgiving!
Fallen Leaf on the grill, Cary, North Carolina | Olympus E-PL1 and 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 14mm | Exposed 1/30 sec. @ f/8, ISO 1600
Found this image on a recent morning. The leaves have been falling in abundance! I made this image using my partner’s Olympus E-Pl1 (shooting RAW). The noise was handled well by Nik Dfine!
Red Leaf, Price Lake, Blue Ridge Highway. | Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm | Exposed 1/60 sec. @ f/4, ISO 100
Since it was launched in 2007, I have been an avid user of Adobe’s Lightroom. One of the things that I have loved about the strengths of the “Develop” module (also called Camera RAW in Photoshop, as they share the same engine) is that I have felt progressively less need to port an image into Photoshop for further enhancement. This has been especially true since version three onward, as the local enhancements offered by the brush and gradient tool have made selections very easy. Need to brighten the bride’s face but keep the dress the same value? No problem, just use the brush. Photoshop? Why bother.
I realize I’m likely the last person to get on board the Nik Software bandwagon (especially since even Google decided that it was a good one to hop onto….or guide into its garage, if we continue that metaphor). Because we don’t really know what that acquisition means, re-sellers are steeply discounting the existing lineup of products. I tried their demo of HDR Efex a while back and was impressed, and decided to roll the dice and pick up their entire collection for Lightroom. The disadvantage for some people is that this product cannot be launched from inside of Photoshop: instead, you create a copy of the image as a TIFF file and port it into whichever Nik program you’ve selected. Since I’m avoiding Photoshop for the most part, this approach doesn’t phase me.
For making color images, Viveza 2 and Color Efex 4 are a pretty amazing combination. Over the last few days I’ve developed a workflow of adjusting my images globally in Lightroom, and then working on local contrast in Viveza. If I want the foliage of the trees to be more subdued to make the bare branches of the foreground trees to stand out, it’s easy to do. No more near-impossible layer masks in Photoshop!
Colors along the highway, Blue Ridge Highway near the Linn Cove Viaduct on October 14, 2012. | Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 97mm | Exposed 1/15 sec. @ f/11, ISO 100
I have posted this image before; while it is similar to the original, the trees stand out more. And going forward, I can only see advantages to using Nik software whenever my goal is to make tonal changes to ranges of color. No, I would not suggest using these programs for every image. But for those that have commercial value, I can see only advantages. Below is a series of three panoramas. The first was the result of stitching in Photoshop, but all of the toning had taken place as global adjustments on the RAW files within Photoshop. Beneath that is the result of toning the image in Viveza 2, and the final photo is the finished product from Color Efex 4. Each round of processing builds on the previous.
Price Lake, Lightroom OnlyPrice Lake, toned in Lightroom and VivezaPrice Lake, toned in Lightroom, Viveza, and Color Efex 4
To my eyes, the key differences in these images can be found in the quality of the clouds and the colors and details of the reflection, especially in the treeline. I don’t think that this software is for everyone, and some may wish to hold off on purchase until Google makes some sort of announcement to detail what kind of support will be extended to current users as they go forward. For me, this is a worthwhile process for anything I rank three stars or higher, as well as some of my two star photographs.
More thoughts to come, as well as mini reviews of the 5D Mark III and LensAlign’s new software, Focus Tune!
Fall color along the Blue Ridge Highway near the Linn Cove Viaduct on October 14, 2012. | Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 85mm | Exposed 1/13 sec. @ f/11, ISO 100
Earlier this month we moved a scheduled trip to the mountains up by one week–changing colors in the mountains decided not to follow what we thought were the demands of our own work calendars! For four days, Summer and I traveled south from Boone, NC and worked out way to Asheville. The daily changes in the weather seemed to have a direct effect on the colors we were seeing. They would intensify with each passing night…even the morning after an epic rainstorm that tested the abilities of the rain fly on my ten year old tent. A couple drips on my head did substitute the alarm I had set on my phone!
Colors along the highway, Blue Ridge Highway near the Linn Cove Viaduct on October 14, 2012. | Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 97mm | Exposed 1/15 sec. @ f/11, ISO 100
The two lenses I found myself using most were my 70-200mm for isolating subjects, and my 24mm TS-E for the lens movements that it enables me to make for maximum sharpness and distortion-free framing. My only regret several days into the trip was that the majority of my panorama photography equipment had been left at home. For the most part, my move to the 5D Mark II in 2009 changed the way I approached landscape photography; I began to make fewer panoramas as the larger mexapigel count of the camera enabled to me to make large prints from a single file. However, the wide and short panoramic format is befitting much of the scenery in the area. Given that my preference for the Blue Ridge Highway and the Smokies in general is car camping, the panorama rails will be sure to make the cut for the next adventure!
