Photo Friday – Wary WitnessesPosted by drfl on January 20th, 2012

Badlands National Park is a playground of shapes and forms, patterns and colors. Whenever I visit I explore these rock formations with a longer lens to capture a more intimate view of the park. The light was especially nice on this morning giving a warm pre-sunrise glow. To see what this area looks like from a wide-angle lens check out Morning Illumination taken 2 years previously. On the right side of that image you can see the area on which I chose to focus for today’s post. I also decided on the panoramic view because I felt the wide horizontal lent itself well to exploration of the shapes and colors in this image.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/4l @ 127mm, f/9, .6s
Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Photo Friday: Morning Over MorainePosted by drfl on January 13th, 2012

Since the winter hasn’t really come yet, I feel the need to go back to my Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado photographs I captured in May just to get something wintry. Yes, May for a winter feel photo and 50s for January in Nebraska. Different for sure.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 24mm f/3.5L TS-E Lens, f/11, 1/3 sec., 2-stop Singh-Ray Soft Grad
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Photo Friday: I’ve Dreamed 1,000 DreamsPosted by drfl on November 25th, 2011

On an early November day I went to the Lincoln, Nebraska area to get some late fall shots. Today’s post is an image I captured about 10 minutes prior to sunrise on Branched Oak Lake on a windy and cool day.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40 f/4l @ 17mm, f/11, 10 sec., 3-stop Hard Singh-Ray ND Grad, 2-stop Hard Singh-Ray ND Grad
Branched Oak Lake, Nebraska

Photo Friday: Quiet DawnPosted by drfl on October 28th, 2011

In the sandhills of Nebraska there are several permanent and temporary lakes that are formed from water from the Ogalala Aquifer. There are protests and meetings happening right now because of the TransCanada XL pipeline that is currently planned to cross over the region containing this large underground body of water. The primary contention of the protesters is that the pipe will break and oil will leak into the water tainting it for the region’s drinking supply and agricultural uses. Since going through Nebraska is in the path of the shortest distance between Alberta, where the oil resides in the oil sands, and Texas, where it will be processed, this is a key element of the current plan. In today’s post I present an image of the North Marsh Lake at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge one such lake created by the Aquifer, reflecting the morning sunrise.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 24mm TS-E 3.5 II, .6 sec, f/9, 3-stop Hard ND Grad, 3 images stitched and cropped to 2×3
Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, Nebraska

Photo Friday: In The Light Of A New DayPosted by drfl on August 5th, 2011

In January and February I reported that I had acquired a new lens – the Canon 24 TS-E II f/3.5L. I made a complete report regarding the capabilities of this lens in my post Photo Friday: Winter Prairie Sunset. On my May trip to Colorado I was very excited to try out the capabilities of the lens. I’ve mentioned using the tilt feature on some images from Colorado, but in today’s post I utilized both the Tilt (for DOF) and the Shift (for stitching). To capture this scenic winter landscape, I knew I had to place the lens horizontal as a panoramic created by using a vertical shift might be distorted by the moving water as panoramic stitching often has issues with movement. Horizontally, the water and movement would be in one frame and the sky in another. I started with the lens centered on my image – that is the mountains were placed exactly center on my composition. I then tilted the plane of the lens until everything was in focus. It was at this point that I placed my filters and shifted the lens down. I captured the first image and then shifted the lens up, careful to make sure there was some overlap in the image and then capturing the second image.

Back in Photoshop I merged the two into one big 36 megapixel image. This makes an astounding large print due to the ability to tilt, the sharpness of the lens, and the added megapixels. While I would love every image to be like this one, the right conditions definitely presented themselves for this capture. I must say, this is one of my favorites of the trip, not just for the beautiful scene that nature gave me, but also for everything falling into place technically. Really, I recommend this lens to anyone wanting to capture grand landscapes, but it takes time and patience to understand all the nuances of the lens.

One added bonus – people are sometimes looking for a horizontal or vertical representation of a scene for a particular use. This image has the benefit of being a 24 megapixel vertical (2:3 ratio) photograph

or a 20.5 megapixel (2:3 ratio) horizontal.

Not bad for offering choices!

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 24 TS-E II f/3.5L, f/14, .5 s, 3-stop ND-Soft Grad, 2 images stitched
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Photo Friday: Giants ObscuredPosted by drfl on July 1st, 2011

As I mentioned last week, this post is an image of the area near Dream Lake after a night of heavy snowfall received in mid-May in Rocky Mountain National Park. This location is not far from the previous image, maybe normally a 10 minute walk, but in the deep snow, it took about a half hour. While I did make it all the way to the lake itself, it was nearly completely covered in snow and the conditions prevented me from setting up my tripod. By walking back a little bit, I found this enclave which allowed me to grab some images of the fierce weather conditions and the peaks of Hallet and Flattop as they appear, slightly obscured from the blowing snow.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40 f/4l @ 40mm, f/9, 1/320 sec.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado