A FOGGY MORNING

HDR SPOTTING
So I finally got invited into HDRSpotting.com, keep an eye out for some my work that may be floating around on there. The main idea of the site is for HDR photographers to get together and share their shots in an easy, friendly environment. It's free to set up an account but you have to be "invited" to the site first. This can be accomplished by finding an invite code on their Twitter page, Facebook page, or through someone who already has an account. This keeps other clueless photographers from posting their non-HDR photos. Even if you don't have an account though, you can still visit and get some inspiration — there are some really amazing shots on there.

DAILY PHOTO - A FOGGY MORNING
When I got up that morning and looked out towards the lake, I saw a giant cloud of fog just hovering in place. I knew I simply had to abandon my coffee and fellow campers to try and capture the incredible feeling of being out there in the middle of the Everglades on a chilly January morning while the sun rose up into the bright blue sky. To put it in Trey's words: "This is a time when I am not thinking of coffee."

Again, click on the photo above to view it large size. HDR photos have so many different light levels that to see them all properly, without the eye skipping over them, you have to view it at a large size. And who doesn't like a nice photo blown up to a huge size? Why do you think that Apple's desktop screens keep getting larger?

LAKE APOPKA

DAILY PHOTO - LAKE APOPKA

While taking a walk around the massive Lake Apopka, I decided I wanted to try to capture an image of the lake in a new and unique way. Here you can see only a small peek of the lake through the trees adding more intrigue to it rather than a sense of it's large scale.

This panorama, processed, tone-mapped, and stitched together with eighteen RAWs, later converted to JPEG and then saved as a TIFF file, ended up as a massive file so large and unwieldy, that it took much longer than usual to perform the most menial of tasks. And yet this doesn't even compare to some other HDR photographers' work, some of which have been made with an incredible NINETY photos, tone-mapped into thirty photos and then stitched together into an enormous file that took a whole day to complete. Definitely takes a LOT of ram. That's my aspiration for the future but first, I'll need a faster computer and a larger hard drive. Not to mention an ideal subject that lends itself to the technique.

By the way, you should be able to click on this photo to enlarge it. It's not nearly large enough here to appreciate.

REFLECTION POND

DAILY PHOTO - REFLECTION POND
A few minutes after capturing this shot, the storm clouds started dropping fat raindrops which gradually started escalating in intensity. I rushed inside shortly afterwards, hoping that I was able to capture the emotion in the sky; the calm before the storm. 


I played around a little bit with Topaz Adjust later in the digital darkroom, it really brought the detail out in the clouds, as well as the trees. Speaking of Topaz, last night, as another early christmas gift, my incredibly awesome and technologically-savvy uncle loaded up my computer with several new programs that I'll be able to use to my advantage. It's always nice to have a few tools at my disposal. I've spent half the day moving my photos over from iPhoto to Lightroom, creating a couple HDRs in Photomatix, and post-processing in Photoshop and Topaz. You could say I'm excited.

MORNING CYCAD

A CORNUCOPIA OF POSSIBILITIES
I'm happy to announce, as an early present, I've gotten a wonderfully sturdy tripod. My old tripod was a beat-up video camera tripod that my dad had lying around and I've been using that for the past few years. But once I switched to my DSLR, it couldn't support the extra weight for any longer than a couple seconds. The Manfrotto 190XProB is ten times stronger and has a lot more capacity for different positions without motion. Paired with the Giottos MH1302-655 head, I can finally start photographing more night scenes, macro photos, scenes requiring telephoto lenses, wildlife scenes, ect. The list goes on. As professional tripods go, they definitely aren't at the top but for my uses, it certainly fits the requirements.


DAILY PHOTO - MORNING CYCAD
Testing my tripod out early in the morning, I found a bright green cycas revoluta (I probably misspelled that), a Sago cycad. It was still wet with dew and I got thoroughly creative (probably too much) contorting the tripod legs in excessive positions around the plant.

A HUMID NIGHT

DAILY PHOTO - A HUMID NIGHT

This trip to Orlando proved to be very interesting and exciting, full of surprises. On my first day there, the sky was completely washed out in gray, like someone had thrown a giant amorphous glob of paint over us. It was looking to be a disappointing day for shooting with there being so little contrast to work with. Right before sunset, (not that you could really tell, with the gargantuan cloud above) a quick shower passed by, setting a layer of water down, and as soon as night fell, the temperature dropped, lifting all the warm rainwater off the ground. I was excited by the prospect of being able to shoot in a fog bank for the first time!

Maybe an hour later, the street lamps were shining wonderfully through the fog and a fluctuating breeze kept blowing fresh fog in, keeping it thick. At one point, visibility was less than 500 feet! I definitely would've looked a bit mad to anyone who happened to come by, what with my scurrying back and forth around the street, trying to make haste and get as many photos as possible with my sluggish memory cards, all the while carting my tripod and camera bag everywhere. (This whole time I was supposed to be inside at a Christmas party, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.) 

THE REFLECTIVE FESTIVITIES

DAILY PHOTO - THE REFLECTIVE FESTIVITIES

While wandering around the city of Fort Lauderdale I found myself in the bay and this bright ship called to me because of its festival christmas decorations. I had to set up my tripod on the very narrow sidewalk on the side of the road and try to hold my camera steady while passing cars buffeted me with strong winds. It turned out to be very worthwhile though. 

EMOTION IN ST. PETERSBURG

DAILY PHOTO - EMOTION IN ST. PETERSBURG

I was about to go into the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, (the old one, they are building a new one across the street which you can find out about here) when I realized that the sky was incredibly forbidding with rolling clouds and a strong, chilly breeze that carried the smell of humidity. Definitely a storm. I quickly set up my camera, snapped off a few shots, and hurried into the museum as I could feel large drops of water starting to fall. Luckily, those few shots worked and I came away with an image of the raw, forbidding emotion in thunderclouds. 

Here is when it really paid off that I had my camera with me, instead of leaving it in the car. You never know when nature will present you with a beautiful gem. This is why, and I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, it really pays to have a light, carbon-fiber tripod. Eventually, no matter how much you love your tripod, if it's too heavy, you won't want to carry it around. Although I have a heavy brick that weighs in at about six pounds without the camera attached, do as I say and not as I do. If you can afford it, go with the lighter models. I got lucky that there was a nice place to settle my camera here but that won't always happen. I learned my lesson and I make sure to take my tripod around everywhere now, just in case...