A few photos from antelope island. This is from a quick little trip I took with Scott Smith. The link takes you back to his photos. It is interesting to see that even though we were shooting right next to each other we saw the light just a little bit differently.

Living so close to such a beautiful place, well I think I need to take better advantage of the beauty just down the street from my home.

The Great Salt Lake

A few days ago, I and Scott Smith took to the early morning, to photowalk at the Great Salt Lake. In the spirit of changing my blogging ways and trying to be a little more current with my photography blogging, I thought I would share one quick sample.

photo info: 1/80s, f/9.0, ISO 100 at 27mm(40mm in 35mm), Nikon D200

Even added a little photo info. The morning light was gorgeous, and it was a shear joy being in such a beautiful location at such a beautiful time. Having my camera in hand to capture some of the beauty was icing on the cake. As always hanging out with fellow photo geek Scott Smith was great (I suggest hitting the embedded link to see Scotts work!).

Fall, the hunt, and why I love it all

Every fall there is a ritual that my family performs called deer hunting. For me it is a time to get away from the city, and be with my dad, brothers, cousins etc.

Our hunting grounds are the same used by my grandfather whom I never had a chance to know. I do feel that I know him a little from the stories I hear when we are hunting in the mountains he loved. The country is gorgeous during the fall, leaves are turning, the wild hills seem wilder. Winter is coming and you can feel its bite, you can see the land changing with the change in the season.

This year, my cousin Bob brought his little boy Aaron along for the hunt. Will next year be the year I take Clayton for his first hunt?



Aaron had a blast, hanging with the guys.

The hills we usually hunt were a bit dry this year. Here is Troy (brother in law) over looking from the same point that was a favorite of my Grandfather.



See those mountains in the distance, well it isn't exactly where we ended up but close.



Mountain hunting is different from the hills, but the views are spectacular. We sat in this valley watching the sun rise up lighting the hillsides around us.



If anything the terrain is even more rugged, but all the more magnificent for it.



A stand of quaking aspen.



OK, I couldn't help being a little artsy fartsy, adding a little motion blurr...



Here is part of our group heading back to the top...



This was the view at our backs, you gotta love the wild places in Utah.

Photowalking Utah June Great Salt Lake

The Photowalking Utah event for the month of June was held at the Great Salt Lake. Everyone met at Saltair at 6:00 o’clock that evening. There were some who were late (myself being one of them). I was sooo excited to meet with the group that evening but when I got there late (almost didn’t go as I have been feeling under the weather), it was one of those moments where I had to decide to make the best of it. I couldn’t find the group; I searched frantically for a short time then I wanted to cry like a lost little girl. I ended stopping near an old abandoned building. I started by hanging around the building hoping I would see the group drive by.

Inside the building, a couple of kids were spray painting the walls. I was actually very impressed by the artistic value of the graffiti they were creating. I had to get a photo of someone in the building; it was just too neat of a location to pass up. If you don’t know by now, my favorite photographic subjects are people. I didn’t dare ask the kids to pose for the photo as I thought that their activity was likely illegal and they might want to keep their anonymity, so I used myself as a model holding a spray can like I was the master painter. At least I got my best side…

Exposed using Manual 1/400sec ISO 200 at F11 (used sunny 16 rule to determine exposure for outside the building), WB set to sunlight. Used three strobes to light up the walls and myself (to bring up the exposure inside the building to match outside). Camera left I set up a strobe with a ½ CTO filter, the strobe to the right used no filter. The two strobes were set at a cross lighting type of style. A third strobe was placed in the broken wall with a red filter. I know the model is not the haut man what you are used too; ever since I stopped using buns of steel…

Then I decided to start the walk down toward the lake (much further than I thought). I found several interesting photo opportunities along the way. I don’t think of myself as a landscape photographer type, I hardly ever go out and shoot landscapes, but I had a lot of fun. When shooting landscape photography one of the difficulties is capture the dynamic range of the scene. The sky often turns out too bright and the ground too dark. This is because of the limited dynamic range of digital cameras (film cameras suffer the same problem, they can only capture so much of the contrast that exists in a real scene). This especially becomes true as you hit twilight (think how the human eye has problems seeing at the time of the day). My solution was to put the camera on a tripod and bracket. I then combined the photos later using Photoshop Elements. Photographers who do a lot of this type of photography often use graduated neutral density filters (this is a filter that is half dark and half clear, you place the dark portion over the bright sky to allow the camera sensor to read the scene more like our eyes are able to), I don’t have graduated ND filter so I used a digital darkroom equivalent.

Single exposure, I used a flash (gelled with a CTO filter camera right) to bring up the light on the stump in the foreground. Without flash the stump would have been black. I set the WB to sunlight and shot around F14 at 1/100 of a second (aperature priority) at ISO 200 and +0.7 exposure compensation.

Two exposures used one exposed for the foreground and one for the sky. Additionally I used a flash (gelled with CTO filter camera left) to bring up the light on the piers. I set the WB to sunlight and shot around F13 shutter speed varied by bracketing.

A different technique was used on this old wreck which begged for its photo to be taken. I used a single strobe fired once for each of the multiple exposures used to light up the old vehicle. I walked around the vehicle and lit up the vehicle from different angles using one CTO gelled strobe. I then combined the exposures in Photoshop elements. Following is one of the photos I combined in Photoshop.



You can see my strobe on the right side of the frame. I moved around the old wreck lighting it up as I went.



After seeing the Photowalking group photos, I have decided that I need to visit the spot where the group met. I plan on making a trip down to the Great Salt Lake soon and I am taking the whole family. Stay tuned for some awesome slick family photos!