Splash! | Emerald Isle, NC
Playing with the Nikkor 70-200 2.8 around the legs of the Bogue Inlet Pier. The lens may have just climbed right to the top of my wish list!
The shot: Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 lens, 1/1250th second, f/5, ISO 200
©2012 Zach Frailey
Emerald Isle Photography Workshop
Folks have been asking me for a while now about offering some photography classes and training sessions. I have always wanted to do something along those lines. Although I’m very flattered that people want to learn from me, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t intimidating. Luckily, in talking with my friend and fellow photographer Brad Styron I learned that he was looking to do the same kind of thing. So we joined forces and co-hosted a beach photography workshop on Emerald Isle. It turned out being a great success and with six attendees and two instructors, everyone got a lot of one-on-one attention. We had two classroom sessions broken up by two beach shoots. I didn’t get as many behind the scenes shots as I wanted, but here’s a little collection. Thanks to everyone who came out, it was a lot of fun!
This is the finished version of the shot I quickly went over before we shot the sunset. I thought that the folks attending may like to see how it ended up.
If you didn’t get a chance to come out, there will be more sessions in the very near future. Interested in a workshop in your area? Shoot me an email and we’ll see if we can set one up!
©2012 Zach Frailey
Click image for full-size 1920x1080px desktop wallpaper image.
February 2012’s Desktop Wallpaper Calendar
Occasionally I’ll have some trouble picking what image will be featured on the next month’s desktop calendar. As you know, I choose my favorite shot from the month before. January was a great month in that I got a lot of ‘keepers’ as I call them; solid shots that are portfolio worthy. Any month where I have more than one or two is considered a highy successful month.
You can see the original post and image here.
‘Wet Feet’ is now available as the newest installment in my Limited Edition Gallery Series. You can see more information on that here.
Be sure to share this with your friends and family, it’s FREE!
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Standing at the Edge of the World | Emerald Isle, NC
Here’s a shot of my friend and fellow photog Brad Styron taking in an awesome sunset on the coast. I thought I would use this shot to take a moment and explain some of my post-processing a little more in-depth than usual. My methods have changed recently and this adaptation in processing has helped to strengthen my images. Where I used to tonemap and create HDR images, I now manually blend exposures. Hopefully the workflow breakdown below can explain it better:
Gear: Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Nikkor lens, tripod
EXIF: Three bracketed exposures @ f/22, ISO-200. (1/6 sec., 1/2 sec., 2.5 sec.) Manual white balance.
Step 1: I opened all 3 files in Photoshop. Adjusted the levels slightly in the lowest and middle exposures to bring out a little more brightness.
Step 2: Masking. How you do this is based on your preference. I like to layer my darkest exposure on top of the middle, work on it & flatten it, then layer that on top of my brightest exposure. I just like to work on a darker image and lighten it as I go.
There was only minor blending on the first two exposures, but on the final mask I brought in the water at 100% opacity. Using a brush of around 15%, I slowly lightened some of the highlights in the sky. That’s it. I then flattened the image.
Step 3: Using Nik Color Efex, I fixed the blue color cast in the image and added just a touch of contrast using the Pro Contrast Filter.
Step 4: With Nik Viveza, I selectively adjusted the structure in the foreground to add some extra sharpness. On a separate layer of Viveza, I dropped the saturation in the foreground sand (again, using the selective area feature). After applying the layer, I then masked a bit of it away in Photoshop to get rid of some of the over spill of the adjustment.
Step 5: I duplicated that layer and used the Dodge Tool to lighten the foam of the surf and the highlights in the clouds. Mind you, the tool was set very low (5-10%) and set to dodge the midtones. This was just a minor tweak to bring the scene back to more of my taste.
Step 6: After this was all done, I flattened the image and added on final filter. Using Nik Color Efex, I added a Glamour Glow (set very low, at 8%) with a very low touch of warmth to bring a calm, minimal glow to the scene. I flattened again and saved.
If there was one theme that you noticed, it was the use of ‘just a touch,’ ‘a little bit,’ ‘very low,’ and ‘light.’ The key to what I’ve been doing lately is to use every effect in moderation. Just because a slider or setting goes up to 100 doesn’t mean it should.
Most of what I do pretty much follows that workflow. Maybe a few less or few more uses of Viveza and Color Efex or a little more dodging and burning, but that’s the gist of it. Also, many times I end up simply blending two exposures rather than all three. It’s usually the darkest exposure that gets discarded in that case.
Hope that helps to explain what I do and can help you make a better image!
As always, you can comment or pick my brain at any of these sites: Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | 500px | Google+
©2012 Zach Frailey
Wet Feet | Emerald Isle, NC
This one is appropriately named ‘Wet Feet,’ because that’s exactly what I got while shooting it. I am also pretty sure this is the same wave that filled the moving parts of my tripod with saltwater and sand. It was all totally worth it though.
This was part of this evening that provided probably the best light that I’ve shot in. The late afternoon sky was deep blue with wispy clouds, the sunset too on the hues above and after the sun went down, the sky turned deep pink and red!
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The Shot: Nikon D90, 8mm Rokinon lens, tripod held. f/22, 1/8 sec., ISO 200.
