Burleigh heads

Burleigh heads, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

Damn, those boulders make settling the tripod a challenge.

Canon EOS 40D, Sigma 10-20mm, Lee 0.9 hard grad

I've just opened this photo in IE using my work laptop and it looks terrible. Oversaturated and bands of colour in the sky. Let me know if you experience similar.

Arthur the Squirrel

Arthur the Squirrel, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

A classic shot :)

Disneyland 17/09/2010

Disneyland 17/09/2010, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

After seeing how pointless it was to arrive late on Friday night I endeavored to get to this spot in plenty of time yesterday night. As soon as the parade was over I pounced on my spot and defended it for three hours. I was quite surprised (annoyed) that although the area in front of the castle is out of bounds for safety reasons, people can still walk past between that area and where everyone was waiting patiently for the fireworks to begin. Consequently I have a LOT of shots with ghostly looking people wandering across the image.

My final image here is a manual blend of two shots. One taken during the display and the other for the foreground that I took AFTER the show when I was able to get a bit closer and avoid all the passersby.

Canon EOS 40D, Sigma 10-20mm.

The engagement of Lauren and Jeff

First strobist upload, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

I did some engagement photos for a friend at work.

Canon EOS 40D, Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Strobist: Canon 430EX II camera left, half power. Triggered with Cactus remote.

J.C. Slaughter Falls

J.C. Slaughter Falls, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

After all the rain last night and this morning I headed up to Mt Coot Tha (as I have the day off) for some waterfall shooting :)

Canon EOS 40D, sigma 10-20mm lens, el-cheapo polarizer.

Whoooosh!

I had a client shoot on King's Beach today on Queensland's Sunshine Coast so I decided to drive up early for a chance to shoot a sunrise at Dicky Beach.

It was a high-ish tide, though still not coming in over the whole wreck, only the lower half and It's a shame the sunrise didn't put on a better display for me but still, I'm quite happy with the streaky wave action. These streaks are actually from a receding wave and you can see the next wave starting to come in at the tip of the old iron hull. I recently made the leap to Lee filters and am really glad I did. The holder has a great build quality and the filters themselves offer beautiful clarity to your image.

After a good hour here I still had two hours until the client shoot so I trekked off to Buderim Forest Park to grab some shots of Serenity Falls. The overcast sky would be perfect for some waterfall photography. I don't have a neutral density filter to fit my Lee holder yet (or a polarizer ) but I could slide my grad all the way over the lens to give the same effect. When I moved under this rock overhang I slid the grad back out partway and turned it on its side to darken the right side of the frame. A soft grad would have been better but the hard grad has worked well enough :)




I would have liked to spend more time at the falls but it started to rain and I had to get back to the beach for the shoot.

Taken with a Canon EOS 40D, Sigma 10-20mm lens and Lee 0.9 hard grad.

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Firey skies

Firey skies, originally uploaded by greenplasticdave.

Very low tide this morning. Taken on a Canon EOS 40D and Sigma 10-20mm. HDR [-2,0,+2]

To answer any post processing questions, here's what I do. I've gathered this workflow after reading what other do and trying some things of my own.

1 - Open one of the three bracketed exposures in Canon DPP and adjust for white balance. I usually bring the contrast right down as well, sharpen and apply the landscape preset.

2 - Copy that 'recipe' then apply it to the other two bracketed images then run a batch process to output three TIFF files.

3 - Open these TIFF files in Dynamic Photo HDR and play around with the settings to get something I like. On this one I used the 'eyecatching' preset and fiddled around with the options a bit there. Be careful to avoid the 'haloing' effect common to HDR (unless you are aiming for that) by being easy on the radius/light strength options. Save to a TIFF file.

4 - Open the new TIFF file in Photohsop. I'm using CS2 at the moment. I apply an s-curve layer set to 'multiply', 'soft' or 'hard' and then I adjust the opacity till I get something I like. Flatten image.

5 - If parts of the image are still not dark or light or saturated enough I open another layer and adjust the levels accordingly then apply a layer mask to reveal the adjusted sections. Flatten image.

6 - Noise Ninja if necessary. Sharpen. Save to JPEG.

I'm no Photoshop expert. There may be redundant steps. This is what works for me at my stage of learning.

Cheers

-Dave-