I took this shot at sunset as a rain storm was rolling across the prairies of Montana.
I use Zenfolio to host my photographic website. It provide photographers a completely functional website from the ability to display photographs, a cart system for sales and delivery of prints and other products. They have now added a Blog feature to the site. I have imported the last ten blogs I have posted here, and will continue to post my blogs here and on my Zenfolio site. At some time in the future I will stop posting here and just use my Zenfolio site for my blog. The address for that site is http://www.randywilliamsphotography.com/blog. I hope you will follow me there. As always I will do my best to keep my posts interesting and valuable to photographers.
This is an image of Sheepeaters Cliff in Yellowstone National Park. This cliff consists of columnar basalt and was deposited about 500,000 years ago during one of the periodic basaltic floods in Yellowstone Caldera, and later exposed by the Gardner River. The cliff was named after a sub-band of Western Shoshone known as “Tukuaduka” (sheep eaters), due to their extensive use of sheep. I used high dynamic range photographic technique—in this case 9 exposures with varying shutter speeds—combined them with Photomatix Pro software, and used onOne software for stylization and Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5.5 for final edits.
I have wanted to take an indoor HDR photograph and we have a little gift shop in our town that I thought would be a good subject. I thought is would be a good subject because there is lots of stuff and lots of color. I have seen other HDR images of indoor shots and I have liked them so I wanted to try one. Also, I wanted examples of indoor photography to display on my website. I used my Nikon D3 camera body (full frame sensor) with a 14mm f/2.8 Sigma wide-angle lens. You can see the distortion produced by the lens in the image. You can also see how HDR increases the depth of field of the image.
I took 9 images varying the exposure time for each image to get one image with the correct exposure, 4 overexposed images and 4 underexposed images. The D3 is great for taking these images as it can be programmed to take them automatically. I used Photomatix Pro software to combine the images into one and then used Lightroom 4 to make some global adjustments and Topaz Adjust to add a little grunge effect. There were 3 different types of light sources (fluorescent, incandescent and indirect sunlight) which resulted in different color casts in the image. I used the automatic white balance setting on my camera and let the camera sort out the differences. If you would like to look at more photos from this shoot go to my web page at http://www.randywilliamsphotography.com/p27542949.
These images are variations of an image of rock formations in the Ernst Tenaja Canyon area of Big Bend National Park, Texas. There are many intriguing rock formations in this canyon. I used various digital processing methods to change the original look of the image to an artistic abstract image. As you can see by my last two postings I am mining all of my images to see if I can find some gems I missed in the past. I would appreciate your feedback.
Sometimes taking a different perspective on a photo subject will make for a more interesting composition. This image is the windmill at Dugout Wells in Big Bend National Park. I took it with a 14mm wide angle lens looking up at the bottom of the platform where the windmill sits. From this angle the image becomes about the lines of the support beams and the pole that is attached to the windmill blades and the water pump. I used NIK software’s Silver Effects Pro 2 to add the antique look and vignette to the image.
This image started out as a shot of a riverbed that was cracking due to lack of water. I took it in 2005 at Big Bend National Park, TX. I then processed it using Perfect Effects from OnOne software. I turned it into a negative and then applied an effect that resembled leather and applied the border. I am classifying it as an abstract image with shapes and texture.
I first heard of high dynamic range (HDR) photography in 2005 at a photography seminar I attended in Big Bend National Park, Texas. Our seminar leader, Craig Tanner, explained it to us, but I just never quit understood the process. This was my first photo seminar and I was over-whelmed by everything that was going on and so I ended up taking a lot of shots at correct exposure, minus one and minus two. That was the case with this photo of a sotol plant with mountains in the background at sunset just off the Chisos window access road. I created the plus one and plus two exposures in Lightroom from the correct exposure image, and combined them using Photomatix. I did some extra processing using OnOne Software’s Perfect Effects 3. You can see this some of my other landscape images at http://www.randywilliamsphotography.com/p385922901.
This is a photo of two four-year old wrestlers at the Montana Little Guys Wrestling league tournament in Choteau February 17, 2012. The youngest age bracket is 5 and under, and the oldest is 12. This year there were many more girls wrestling than last year. The tournament was held at the Choteau high school gym. To keep my shutter speed high enough to capture the action, I set my ISO at 4000. I used a Nikon D3 body and a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens. I shot the images using Aperture priority mode at f/2.8, continuous autofocus and continuous shutter release. You can see all the images at http://www.randywilliamsphotography.com/p781093685.
I took this shot using a Nikon D 3 body and a Nikon 28-70 f/2.8 set at f/2.8 and a focal length of 28mm. I had my ISO set at 3200 and my camera in Aperture priority. The combination of these settings resulted in a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second. I use continuous focusing, continuous shutter release, and dynamic area auto-focus. I usually use an x-rite ColorChecker Passport© gray card to pre-set my white balance. The physical setting for this shot was the gym of the local high school. My main concern in action shots is shutter speed. I have found that if I want to freeze the action in a basketball game I need a shutter speed of at least 1/250 second, with higher shutter speeds being even better. To get the shutter fast enough in this particular gym, I set an ISO of 3200 and an aperture setting of f/2.8. I like to take a position against the wall right under the basket and take images as the players are coming in to take shots. This was my favorite shot of the evening with good action and lighting on the player’s face. You can see more of my action shots from this game at http://www.randywilliamsphotography.com/p747691558.
