Nature Light Photo

Photo of the Day – Mission San Antonio de Padua in HDR

Mission San Antonio de Padua

Mission San Antonio de Padua is located north of Paso Robles in the central coast region of California. It is largely restored to it’s original condition. This is the inside of the chapel from the back.

I had just seen an HDR of Trey Radcliff’s and was inspired to try to recreate it inside the chapel. Using five images each taken with a one stop difference, I put them together in Photomatix. I tried to get the look to be more real and not the surreal, painted affect that you see in most HDR images.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and  a Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6 lens at 16mm. The exposure varied in duration, but the aperture was at f8 and the ISO was at 800.

Moving Forward – Finding Inspiration

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus recently. I haven’t posted as much as I’d like and I haven’t been out shooting much either. I sat down a few nights ago and asked myself why. The answers that came back were the same as most of us have when we find ourselves not working up to our expectations; personal issues, family problems, lack of funds, lack of inspiration and motivation, and no organized plan.

I decided that personal issues and family problems will always exist and everyone has them. They make a weak excuse for not doing what I like to do. I find it hard to believe that every photographer except me has a perfect life. As a matter of fact, if you really pay attention to Twitter, you will find that everyone has these issues. Nope, that I can’t fix, so I’ll just have to get over it. I can do that.

I’ve always known that lack of funds is an invalid reason for not shooting or posting. Yes, I could say that I can’t afford to travel to the places I want to shoot and, as a matter of fact, a four week trip that looped the western United States was cancelled/postponed this summer due to the funding issue. But there are still great shots and opportunities to shoot without leaving my home town. This week’s photo of the week is one of those. I walked out my back door and into the shot.

That brings us to the lack of inspiration. I thought that by staying home, I would find some way to be inspired. Nope, that didn’t happen. I had to go look for the inspiration. I found it in two places. Google+ and 500px. Both are great sites to find some awesome images from amazing photographers. I recommend that you visit 500px just for the images alone.

After looking at the images on G+ and 500px, I have found a lot of new things I want to try photographically. Macro, lighting, different points of view, etc. and I’ve started pursuing those challenges.

I’ve also started going back and looking at my images from the past and reevaluate images that I didn’t think were good enough. I’m trying to use the photographic eye that I’ve learned from  looking at G. Dan Mitchell’s work, things I’ve learned in LightRoom, and Photoshop to find images that are good. Not just good enough, but good.

As for the  organized plan I am reevaluating my websites, their purpose and what I want to do with my photography. I have already started formulating some of the changes that I want to make in both my photography and on my sites.

When I was coaching, someone once told me that there are only two directions in life. You are either moving forward or you are moving backward. Nobody ever stands still.

There are changes in the future.

Photo of the Week – Spider with Web

Spider with Web

I walked out of my back door and almost into this spider web. I grabbed my camera, set up the flash, and started playing with the light. Finally, I came up with this image.

It took some time to get the lighting right so that the spider was illuminated and the web was visible, but not prominent.

The image was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 105 f2.8 micro lens. The exposure was for 1/60 of a second at f8 and an ISO of 1000.

Photo of the Week – Poppies and Grass

Poppies and Grass

While we had a lot of rain in SoCal during the past winter, the wildflower season was a bit of a disappointment. Even in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, there were not a lot of poppies. I found these about a mile south of the reserve and liked the composition of the grass and the poppies together.

I looked for an angle that eliminatied anything in the background and had a nice mix of the grass and the poppies. There were lots of clouds and the light was changing constantly, so I waited until the light was behind a cloud. I also had to wait for the breeze to die down.

The picture was taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 18-70 f.5-4.5 lens at 70mm. The exposure was 1/50 of a second at f16 and an ISO of 400.