Off Season in the Marina | New Bern, NC
I caught this scene at the sun set on February 13 from the Bridgepointe Hotel and Marina in New Bern. The marina is not so busy in these off-season month, but will surely start to ‘heat up’ as the weather likewise does. I liked how the yacht and sailboat to the right filled the negative space opposite of the clouds and reflections to balance this photo out. It really leads the eye across the frame, which I like.
I bracketed three exposures for this scene, but standing on a floating dock, things didn’t line up very well. I auto-aligned the frames with Nik’s HDR Efex Pro (a program I actually use very little) and then masked the reflection on the boat’s window, the water and some of the clouds back in from the original layers.
The shot: Nikon D90, 18-105mm Nikkor VR lens, tripod held (while bobbing up and down on a floating dock). Nik HDR Efex for merging of three exposures, original layers masked back in using Photoshop CS4. Nik Color Efex and Viveza for finishing.
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!
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©2012 Zach Frailey
‘Sleeping Giant’ | Pittsburgh Zoo
*Update…A friend on Facebook informed me that this lion, named Juma, passed away last March at the age of 21. That deeply saddens me because that means this was the same guy that I saw each and every time I visited the zoo. I hope this image serves as a remembrance of him.*
Lately I have found myself really being drawn to a more ‘cinematic’ look in my post processing. I’m really liking a flatter, film-like finish. That’s what I was shooting for in this image by combining some Nik Viveza, Silver Efex and multiple texture layers in Photoshop. I finished it with a layer of about -50% contrast to flatten the image out. I then masked out a few portions of the lion and the foreground to bring back it’s contrasty look.
This technique is a work in progress.
Outside the Box
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This is a different take on the subject of yesterday’s Weathering Storms. As I find new locations and add to my Abandoned NC project, I have an increasingly difficult time deciding between processing and posting the completed image in color (as originally intended) or in black and white. Each image that I’ve completed resides on my hard drive in both color and black and white, by the way. I have decided to share this old boathouse, from a little different an angle, in black and white today. It’s a step in a different direction as I don’t share much black and white photography, but I feel that sometimes the lack of color can speak wonders of a scene. I’m interested to hear the feedback on this one.
The shot: Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR lens @ 40mm. Single exposure- f/16, 1/200 sec., ISO200. Edited in Photoshop CS4 with some Nik Color Efex tweaks, finished in Nik Silver Efex Pro for black & white conversion.
Marina Sunset | Morehead City, NC
On the first weekend in October, Morehead City hosts the North Carolina Seafood Festival. It is a huge event that attracts visitors from not only North Carolina, but all over the East Coast. On the day I visited, the crowds were enormous. It was hard to walk, let alone tote a camera, through the exhibit and food vendor areas. Toward the end of the evening, I found this quiet little area near the end of the Morehead City Waterfront to take a break. The sun was beginning to set over the line of sport fishing boats that are docked there and I thought this would be the perfect time to fire off some brackets. Due to the crowds and my laziness, I didn’t bring along my tripod. Luckily, there were many posts and fences to choose from to stabilize my camera!
The shot: 3 exposures, ISO-200, f/10. My standard HDR post processing: Merged in Photomatix Pro, Edited in Photoshop CS4 with Nik Color Efex and Viveza applied. Slight ‘Glamour Glow’ filter applied before saving to add realism and a calm feeling.
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