Time to Welcome Spring!Posted by drfl on April 14th, 2011

While I enjoy photographing all the seasons (and many, many people cannot understand why I love photographing winter in Nebraska), Spring is a special time of year.  A time of renewal, when the brown and gray earthy tones give way verdant greens appear and colorful flowers.  While the official start of spring was a couple of weeks ago, we are just beginning to have buds on the trees and flowers popping.  This image was taken last week at Schramm State Recreation Area, it is the stem and leaves wild lily that grows on the forest floor that has not yet bloomed.  It should be blossoming in the next week or so. 

Welcome Spring!

View More Spring Photos on Journey Of Light

Technical Details:
Canon 50D, 50mm f/2.5 CM, f/3.5, .4 seconds
Schramm State Recreation Area, Nebraska

Photo Friday: Soaring Sandhill CranesPosted by drfl on April 8th, 2011

In the evenings during their migration through Nebraska, Sandhill Cranes come back from the fields to the Platte River to rest. Hundreds to thousands can be visible for miles around during this time as they land during the sunset hours.

Technical Details:
Canon 50D, 300 f/4l + 1.4tc, f/6.3, 1/2000 sec.
Hall County, Nebraska

Art Show Thank You (And A Red-Winged Blackbird)Posted by drfl on April 4th, 2011

I wanted to thank everyone who made it to the Mahoney Art Show this past weekend.  I really enjoyed talking with everyone who came through.  I’m planning on doing the fall show in October, so if you couldn’t make it to this one, I hope to see you there!

Technical Details:
Canon 50D, 300 f/4l + 1.4tc, f/6.3, 1/1000 sec.
Hall County, Nebraska

Photo Friday: The Dance (and Art Fair Reminder)Posted by drfl on April 1st, 2011

One of the things I like best about photographing Nebraska is the ability to find beauty and have no one else around. I mean, Nebraska isn’t exactly on most photographers lists of must-go places. I had previously mentioned that I have only been out one other time when I came across another random photographer. There is one place and experience in this state, however, that you will find yourself shoulder to shoulder with others, fighting over tripod space and that would be the great crane migration every spring. A huge event that draws thousands of people every year, I have only witnessed the migration of 500,000 Sandhill Cranes one other time. This year I vowed to end that and participate. Perhaps it was the multitude of people that kept me from the multitude of cranes previously, but I decided I should really photograph this experience. I have several images to share from my one day whirlwind photo session which I will do over the next week or so.

Also, I wanted to remind everyone that I will be at the Platte River Art Show at Mahoney State Park this weekend. It looks like Saturday is shaping up to be a fine day so I encourage anyone in the area to come down and see several featured artists from Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, and of course Nebraska at the Lodge. Hope to see you there!

Technical Details:
Canon 50D, 300 f/4l + 1.4tc, f/7.1, 1/2500 sec.
Hall County, Nebraska

Photo Friday: Sand Dune StormPosted by drfl on March 25th, 2011

In keeping with my recent black and white theme, today I present an image from 2008 that I converted to monochrome. It didn’t work well as a color image, but the patterns and contrasts seem to really work in black and white.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D, 17-40 f/4l @ 17mm, f/13, .6 seconds, 2-stop Singh-Ray grad filter
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Photo Friday: A Look at Silver Efex Pro 2 (Mini-Review)Posted by drfl on March 18th, 2011

In addition to my normal Photo Friday image, today I’m going to do a mini-review of Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software.  Having used Silver Efex in the past, I became quite a fan of the engine and options behind the filter.  Besides giving me some granular control over the image, I was able to modify items such as film grain, structure, color filters, and contrast with ease which helped take my black and white conversions to the next level.  Silver Efex Pro 2 takes all of this and adds even more.  All the same stuff is there, but now they have added fine structure, soft contrast, image borders, the ability to amplify both the whites and blacks, and a feature for selective color.  The normal presets are still there with the ability to set your own and export and import them.  This is great because if you develop a “look” and want a team of people to have access, it can be readily available.  One last item to note, the software seems faster to me than the previous version.  While version 1 wasn’t a slouch, I am impressed by how quickly it rendered the output.  The only nit I found was that when changing presents, sometimes I had to click on the image to get it to update.  Not a huge problem, but it was somewhat annoying, initially.

Last week I photographed a duck feather I found with my daughter and I thought it the perfect opportunity to put the software through a test.  Below are some of the looks I created with Silver Efex Pro 2.  Mind you, this is only scratching the surface, but it can create some wildly varied output. See the examples after the jump.

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