Winter's Call - Owens River Valley, Bishop, California
The Shot: From Christmas through New Year's weekend, Kendra and I visited the Eastern Sierra mountains and Death Valley National Park. We had a great time exploring new places along Highway 395 including the Alabama Hills and Manzanar National Historic Site near Lone Pine, Klondike Lake near Big Pine, and the Owens River Valley near Bishop. At the end of our trip, when the cold front was coming through, we retreated to Death Valley in order to camp without freezing our butts off like the one night in Owens Valley. Reports also showed that the Badwater Basin was flooded again, and we definitely wanted to see this phenomenon.
This image was a result of scouting a lot of the Owens River the day before. Many images are made along the edge of the river, and I definitely have quite a few of those, but when I found this horseshoe shaped pool, I immediately knew I wanted to use it as a foreground element and leading line. In the evening, they also provided reflections, but the cold temperatures created a thin sheet of ice in the morning. there was still some color reflecting, but probably not as much.
I hope to get through a lot of your photos in the coming weeks. I realize I cannot comment and see everyone's images, so I thank you for all the support and visits. I hope everyone had an amazing 2010 and an even better 2011!
The Gear:
Nikon D300
Nikkor 12-24mm @ 13mm
Nikon MC-36 cable release
8sec, f13, ISO 125 (was shooting 200 earlier and meant to change it to 100 but my brain and fingers were frozen)
Singh-Ray 3-stop Daryl Denson reverse graduated neutral density filter (handheld)
Markins M20 ballhead
Really Right Stuff lever clamp and L-plate
Induro CT213 carbon fiber tripod
Software & Processing: Converted RAW file twice for WB, and once for brightness / fill light values using ACR's Smart Objects function and hand blended the 16-bit TIFFs in PS CS5.
In CS5, layers included:
-Basic Mid-Tones luminosity mask with Curves adjustment for contrast
-Vibrance mask for slight saturation increase
-Saturation mask for saturation decrease to rescue over saturated areas
-Burn/Dodge layer with 50% gray and layer mode Soft Light using luminosity mask selections to even out the light a little more in the sky and foreground
-Noise reduction selectively masked with Noise Ninja
-Sharpening selectivel masked with Nik Sharpener Pro
-Custom action for web (resize, sharpen, resize again, convert to 8-bit, sRGB, and embed personal exif
Winter's Call - Owens River Valley, Bishop, California
The Shot: From Christmas through New Year's weekend, Kendra and I visited the Eastern Sierra mountains and Death Valley National Park. We had a great time exploring new places along Highway 395 including the Alabama Hills and Manzanar National Historic Site near Lone Pine, Klondike Lake near Big Pine, and the Owens River Valley near Bishop. At the end of our trip, when the cold front was coming through, we retreated to Death Valley in order to camp without freezing our butts off like the one night in Owens Valley. Reports also showed that the Badwater Basin was flooded again, and we definitely wanted to see this phenomenon.
This image was a result of scouting a lot of the Owens River the day before. Many images are made along the edge of the river, and I definitely have quite a few of those, but when I found this horseshoe shaped pool, I immediately knew I wanted to use it as a foreground element and leading line. In the evening, they also provided reflections, but the cold temperatures created a thin sheet of ice in the morning. there was still some color reflecting, but probably not as much.
I hope to get through a lot of your photos in the coming weeks. I realize I cannot comment and see everyone's images, so I thank you for all the support and visits. I hope everyone had an amazing 2010 and an even better 2011!
The Gear:
Nikon D300
Nikkor 12-24mm @ 13mm
Nikon MC-36 cable release
8sec, f13, ISO 125 (was shooting 200 earlier and meant to change it to 100 but my brain and fingers were frozen)
Singh-Ray 3-stop Daryl Denson reverse graduated neutral density filter (handheld)
Markins M20 ballhead
Really Right Stuff lever clamp and L-plate
Induro CT213 carbon fiber tripod
Software & Processing: Converted RAW file twice for WB, and once for brightness / fill light values using ACR's Smart Objects function and hand blended the 16-bit TIFFs in PS CS5.
In CS5, layers included:
-Basic Mid-Tones luminosity mask with Curves adjustment for contrast
-Vibrance mask for slight saturation increase
-Saturation mask for saturation decrease to rescue over saturated areas
-Burn/Dodge layer with 50% gray and layer mode Soft Light using luminosity mask selections to even out the light a little more in the sky and foreground
-Noise reduction selectively masked with Noise Ninja
-Sharpening selectivel masked with Nik Sharpener Pro
-Custom action for web (resize, sharpen, resize again, convert to 8-bit, sRGB, and embed personal exif