A Pleasant Evening

A Pleasant Evening

Photography is very much a game of planning and luck.  I planned to take this image back in March when I was at Badlands National Park, however I wasn't able to.  Some nights it was cloudy (many nights in the early evening) so I couldn't get it; other nights the moon would interfere and some nights I was socializing with my friends at the park or working on other projects.  I just couldn't get it to work out that I could get this shot.  Last night, however, that changed.

I went up to Fossil Trail area to start with my sunset shots and got what I could before the sun dropped down below the buttes.  I then went down towards where I was going to shoot this and started to talk with a sweet lass as the sun was setting.  It was rather nice to be sociable with someone since I've been spending a lot of my time here alone with my camera or computer.  She wanted to see some of the shots I lost since I still had low res photos on the iPad and I offered to help her do some star trail shots.  Sadly, we couldn't figure out how to turn off the noise reduction on long exposures for one camera and the other one was auto focus so wasn't happy with the darkness.  Did give her a couple tips on just some star shots so hopefully they turned out well for her.

She was a little worried she destroyed my shot with how some of the things were going, but as anyone can see, it didn't turn out too badly, not at all.  Plus, I greatly appreciated her joining me as it made for a much more pleasant evening as I would have just sat there watching Battlestar Galactica on my iPad and talking while looking at the stars was more enjoyable.

So, a big Thank You to the Polish lass who joined me, made the evening even better.

Automation in Photography

Today is a better day, temperature wise, here in South Dakota, but I decided to do some work on the pictures I've taken rather go into the park.  One, it is still hot for me and Two, I plan on doing some night shots again so why bother wearing myself out shooting all day and into the night?  I'm doing more of what I had originally intended to do back in the spring but for various reasons didn't.

Sunset at Badlands National Park

Over the years photography has moved to making things more and more automated.  First there became auto processors for our film and now with Adobe Lightroom (r) and Photoshope (r) you can automate many of your tasks as a photographer.  Want to set a blanket color adjustment across the board, easily done with a few clicks and bingo. Want to remove a pesky person from the image? Well, just select and hit delete and tell the software to be aware of the content and match it.  So many ways to automate things. 

Even the HDR software I use can go through a directory and process each image into it's HDR form and then process it into a form that we can use on the web. (Any HDR image on ANY website isn't a true HDR image, the web standards don't allow it for one and most monitors can display them properly.  You have to translate it into another format that can be properly displayed).  I don't use a lot of this though. I may have the HDR software create the HDR image and save it, but I go through each one and look at them to tweak them the way I want.

Moon Light shot at Badlands National Park

So, instead of letting my computer do all the work I have spent the day working on processing as many of the images as I can get done that I've taken so far.  I have several hundred tiff files that are ready to be brought into Photoshop to process into a final image and that will take a lot of work as I sift through them all, looking and deciding what to display and what to keep locked away on my hard drive.

Hence, why does it take me so long to process my images? Because I do it all myself.  I don't let the computer choose what is the look I want just like I don't let me camera choose what is the best aperture and shutter speed for a shot.  This is MY ART and not what some company thinks what it should look like.

Not a fan of hot weather....

Hot weather and I don't get along too well, actually, it's a trigger for my migraines, one of two that I know of actually.  It's really more the sun than the heat actually, but I still don't like the heat too much as I get too bloody hot and sweat a LOT.  So being here in South Dakota at the moment, to reshoot some images from Badlands National Park, is bloody uncomfortable!  It's been over 100 a couple days, up towards 110, and the other days it is still in the 90s.  Way too bloody hot for me! Would much rather it be in the 70s during the day, not lucky to be in the 70s at night!

Anyways, I have had a good night to get out and shoot, sadly only one good one and one that I could get some before the clouds came in.  During the one good night I spent from about 8:30 until 12:30 driving and shooting in the park, didn't get to everyplace I wanted for moonlight shots and hopefully I can get back out tonight though I couldn't start until nearly 9:30-10 tonight due to the time the moon rises.  So, if I can make it out, it will be another late night and I just can't get much sleep in the morning since other people are packing up and making noise starting around 6:30am :/

Anyways, here is a picture I took around Sheep Mountain Table as the moon was rising on a hot night. Due to a nice haze I didn't see many stars this night. :(

And here is another image from the better night.  I haven't really looked at any of the images from this night so this is actually grabbed by randomness (well, it was the first one in the directory for that day as I shot past midnight so a new directory was made for that day's shots.