I made a mistake during the shooting of the eclipse. An embarrassingly HUGE mistake, actually. However, I think it turned out in my favor as I haven't seen many photos quite like this one.The pressure was high, I practiced days on end leading up to the event, but nothing prepared me for the pressure of a huge moment like this. I think I know a little about what Mahomes feels in those critical final 13 seconds of the big game.... okay maybe not THAT much pressure 😉I'll explain it all in my live event on April 25th, during which I'll discuss my solar eclipse experience and my travels in and around Hot Springs National Park. (Link in the comments)Why am I waiting till then? Well, I have spent nearly 4 hours trying to come up with the best editing workflow to get the most out of the raw files of the eclipse. 4 hours staring at white, black, and the same 50 sliders over and over and over... but I'm getting there.I'll discuss the eclipse and show you my editing process for these seemingly simple yet incredibly tricky images. Of course, I'll have some artist's representations, too. In my opinion, they are so much more fun than the normal Eclipse photos. ... See MoreSee Less
How was your eclipse experience? Mine was great, but I haven't seen my images yet. So this is my favorite image of an eclipse so far... Taken at lunch with my new friend, Tim in Mt. Ida 😁Seriously though, I'll be sharing my eclipse experience during my live event on April 25th. I'm holding all pics until then 😉 ... See MoreSee Less
Does the amount of raw data in an image ever amaze you? I know it amazes me! This image right here was a great lesson for me in the exploration of my artistic vision and the exploitation of data from the raw file.Don't settle for what the camera gives you. It has NO idea what you saw. The camera can only capture one stop of dynamic range at any given time, and it doesn't have night vision. Yes, you have natural night vision, also known as Scotopic Vision.It takes your eyes about 10-30 minutes to adjust at night for scotopic vision mode to kick in. As long as there is some moonlight or even the light of brightly lit stars, you can see at night and even distinguish colors in the landscape. Our camera, regardless of how long it's out there, can't see like us. Sure, a long exposure can expose for the light and show you the scene, but because low-light images require much higher ISOs, we lose dynamic range and color dynamic range in the file. That's one reason why our nightscape images don't appear as colorful as our day images. It is then up to us to show the viewer what we saw, what it felt like to be on the scene, and give them an experience that is built by our vision, both artistic and physical.This night scene was actually an early morning shot just before sunrise at Crystal Lake just outside of Ouray, Colorado. The sunrise images didn't inspire me as much as this one did. I'm quite happy with how it turned out. It's calm and peaceful and feels just like the cool, crisp air that forced me to bundle up that morning. ... See MoreSee Less
Hello there Australia! Thanks for sharing my recent video 🙂 f.64 Academy made it down under!Did you know you can make Google alerts? They are helpful if you want to know where your stuff is being shared when Google crawls the internet or if you want updates on your favorite things. You'll get an email when an article or blog is published about an alert you made. It basically scrapes the internet for you, think smarter, not harder 😉If you want to be like Aerosmith and you "Don't Want to Miss a Thing" here are some Google Alerts you may want to make:1. Your favorite YouTube channel2. Your favorite camera manufacturer's new releases and/or camera firmware i.e. "Sony A1 Firmware Update"3. Aurora Borealis forecast4. Best landscape photography lenses 20245. National Park Service announcements6. Superbloom California7. Toilet Paper Shortages (that is so 2020 I should probably delete that one) ... See MoreSee Less
I'm working on the image for my upcoming event on the 21st and am just AMAZED at how far image processing has come in such a short time.Have you ever stopped to think about it?These are just two very simple screen captures, not even exported properly for Facebook, but look at the incredible difference. The data we can recover from a highlight, the range we can pull out of a color, and the extent we can push and pull shadows perplexes me.How did we get here, and when did this happen?I know it's happened over time, but with all these advancements happening month after month, I'm finding it hard to remember when we didn't have such capabilities. Ten years ago, this after image would have been impossible from the data in the Raw file. Today, I pulled it out with ease.This was an incredibly challenging scene to photograph, not to mention dangerous. My tripod was resting on a piece of land that didn't look safe for me to spend much time on, so I'd put the tripod down and compose as best as I could, shoot, then pick everything up and bring it toward me (where I stood was much safer) to check the screen again, just to repeat the process until I got it right. The rainbow would come and go and was difficult to get right.I had a lot of challenges on location with this scene, all of which I will discuss during the live event on March 21st at 2PM Central. If you want to see how I edited this image from start to finish, you can register with the link in the comments 🙂 ... See MoreSee Less
