landscape photography – Page 7 – Jennifer Sawicky Photography

November 4, 2018November 3, 2018

2018-04-04: The Night Sky

I decided on the topic of the night sky for November, mostly because I spent an evening during my holiday at Joshua Tree National Park at a night sky photography workshop, and I have images I want to work through. Also, November may have some potential for night sky photos at home (since it isn’t too bitterly cold yet, and night is falling quite early, which is good for an early bird like me).

Just getting to the workshop proved to be quite an adventure. The night before, a rare thunderstorm rolled through the desert with heavy rain, and there were a lot of road closures due to small local mudslides. In the town of Joshua Tree, the main highway through town had over 6 feet of mud (and a buried Mini Cooper car) in the middle of the highway. When setting off in the morning, I headed toward the Cottonwood gate, planning to head up to the Oasis visitors centre through the park, but that gate turned out to be closed (and would remain so for several days to get everything cleaned up). Then there was a substantial backtrack to get back on the interstate and head to the other gate in Twentynine Palms, but through there I encountered more detours and terrible road conditions. I made it there in the end, albeit rather late and after the class had already started.

I headed back Sunday morning for the second part of the workshop, by then the main highway through the town of Joshua Tree had reopened. These are just some of the huge piles of mud that had been plowed along the side of the road.

Despite the crazy weather the night before, and threats of potential storms during the day of the workshop, the weather couldn’t have been more beautiful, with clear skies and just a few wispy clouds leftover. Besides the driving conditions to get to the park, the other downside to the weather was as the evening cooled, there was a lot of moisture still in the air, causing dew to form. I wasn’t worried about my camera (some of the people that were local, and not used to the moisture that I am, were quite alarmed) but it did mean that images started to appear soft and fuzzy later in the evening. Everyone packed up by about 9:30, because by that point it became impossible to get any clear images. Looking through my images, I can see a definite deterioration in sharpness as the evening draws on, but I still like the images from later in the evening, despite the softness.

Here are a few of the shots I have edited so far. I haven’t broken the habit of working in multiple editors, so I have images done in all of my programs.

DSCF1691On1 — We were set up in a day-use only part of the park, so there were a lot of people packing up to leave as we were setting up and taking images. The headlights and taillights of the vehicles provided some light painting on the foreground (though not always hitting all the areas I would have liked!) Edited in On1 Photo Raw.

DSCF1696Luminar — A joshua tree illuminated by car headlights, edited in Luminar.

DSCF1697-EditTopaz — People moving to and fro with headlamps and flashlights. Image edited with Topaz Studio.

DSCF1764 copy.jpg — The last image I took in the evening, with the milky way faintly decorating the sky and a plane moving through the scene.

October 21, 2018

2018-10-21: Comparing software for landscape images

I’m back from a very restful holiday to Southern California and a night sky photography workshop at Joshua Tree National Park last weekend. I’ll have some photos and stories to share from that in the coming weeks, but for now I wanted to get back to my topic of the month, reviewing how On1 Photo Raw, Luminar and Topaz Studio compare in editing images with different issues. The last post focused on high ISO, noisy images, and today I wanted to look at landscape images, and see how the different programs deal with removing sensor spots and other distractions.

I’m using images from my last trip to Southern Africa, as I was using the Nikon D610 on that trip, and that camera collected sensor dust very quickly. I had the sensor professionally cleaned prior to my trip, and without ever changing the lens, by the end of 4 weeks, I was having spots show up at f8. The images can be a bit frustrating to edit with so much gunk to remove, but they are great for putting different software to the test.

The first image was edited using Topaz Studio. There were only a few spots to deal with, since this was shot at 1/250sec, f5.6, ISO 2000. My camera really wasn’t set for shooting landscapes; I had been taking photos of animals prior and saw this scene and quickly composed and shot on the go (I don’t think the vehicle even stopped for this).

It was a chilly, misty morning when I shot this on the last day of my South African trip last year. I am happy with the spot removal from Topaz, and really like that the pockets of fog in the distant hills show up very much as I remember the morning.

Next up was Luminar, and I anticipated issues based on my previous use of the erase function.

This is the unedited image; I didn’t hold back and sent one of the worst (for sensor spots) sunrise images I had over to Luminar to see how it would manage.

I first tried using the erase function, and it left larger, yet fainter circles everywhere I clicked trying to remove the sensor spots. It’s a bit tough to see at this size, but the results are very disappointing (note no other edits were done to this version, other than the attempt at spot removal).

Thankfully, the Luminar clone and stamp tool works very well; so if I had one bit of advice to give, don’t waste your time trying to use the eraser tool, and go straight to clone and stamp for any spots or distractions in your images.

Using the clone and stamp tool effectively cleaned up all the sensor spots and the software was great for bringing out the beautiful tones to this sunrise image, without it ending up looking oversaturated.

Last, but not least, is an image edited using On1. I shot this image in the early morning on Ngala Private Game Reserve, just after a storm passed by. We had a beautiful sunrise, huge cloud banks, a couple of rainbows… I didn’t really know where to point my camera! I’m really happy with the way On1 dealt with the sensor spots; there was a little bit of noise / graininess in the clouds that I also worked to balance out.

I’m going to call it a draw on this one. Each program dealt effectively with the limited amounts of noise in the images, and was able to deal with sensor spots and other distractions effectively. I was able to get results in On1 the fastest, but even with the huge number of spots to deal with in the Luminar image, I didn’t spend more than 5 minutes start to finish editing any of these images.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my selections for the day; check back next week as I look at editing images of our feathered friends.

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead!

August 20, 2018

2018-08-20: Monochrome Monday

I was inspired by my post yesterday on white balance to continue editing images from my time at the Skelton Coast in Namibia. Given the flat light in a lot of the images, I thought black and white edits might be a good option. I am quite happy the way the turned out.

All of the images from my time at the coast were shot with my Panasonic FZ1000, which I have mentioned before is a great and capable camera, but sometimes the quality is a bit lacking when comparing to the files I got out of my Nikon or that I now get from my Fuji. But these were shot at the start of a long trip and I thought it would be wise not to subject the Nikon to blowing sand, given its terrible habit of picking up dust particles. So, I’ve done the best with what I got that day.

20170426-P1020613 — Ripples in a sand dune leading down to the ocean. All images April, 2017 during a trip to the coast from the Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp.

20170426-P1020669 — A group of seals perched on a rock. The seal colony had a smell that was out of this world (and not in a good way). We were all grateful our vehicle had windows, and we kept them closed as much as possible.

20170426-P1020689 — No image I took did justice to the number of seals in the water. At least here one is jumping, so you know what all the other little black specs in the water are!

20170426-P1020693 — A lone seagull on the fringes of the seal colony. We had hoped we might see a brown hyena during our visit, but only saw remnants of their visits littered along the shoreline; they seemed spoiled for choice with all the baby seals.

August 19, 2018

2018-08-19: Creative white balance

I recently watched a Luminar editing tutorial discussing technically correct vs creative white balance. Since I am almost always shooting outside, in changing light conditions, I don’t have a shots with a grey card in it to actually come up with the technically correct white balance. I tend to leave my camera on auto WB, and then adjust it as needed in post processing. But the tutorial still got me thinking about the different mood and feel that an image can have, depending on the choice of colour temperature.

I decided to play around with this concept a bit with a few images that I took on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. We took a short flight from camp to the coast and took a drive through the dunes, where it was warm and sunny with clear blue skies, but once we were at the coast line, low cloud and fog swirled around in strong winds, causing subtle, but rapidly changing light conditions as we visited a seal colony, explored a few of the wrecks along the coast, and enjoyed a picnic lunch on the beach.

On a previous trip I had flown over a portion of the Skeleton Coast, and found the abandoned buildings and shipwrecks fascinating to see, so having the change to see some of the wrecks up close was really interesting for me. The different colours and textures of the rusted, twisted metal against the natural sand, rock and water provided lots of options for photos.

20170426-P1020709 — A portion of wrecked boat on the Skeleton Coast. Here I chose to play up the blue of the background water and intensify the textures in the rusted metal. I feel the cooler tone of this image intensifies the feeling of desolation I get from this image.

20170426-P1020710 — Taking things in a different direction, this image is much warmer, as well as a bit faded and matte. Combined with the subject, I think it lends a sense of age to the image. You begin to wonder just how long this boat has been breaking apart on the coast.

20170426-P1020716 — This image would be closest to a technically correct white balance, though given the changing light conditions, all of the images are representative of how the area actually looked at different moments throughout the day. I thought this small piece of metal looked a bit like the blade portion of a ice skate.

August 15, 2018

2018-08-15: Wordless Wednesday

May 9, 2018May 8, 2018

2018-05-09: Wordless Wednesday

May 2, 2018May 1, 2018

2018-05-02: Wordless Wednesday

April 30, 2018April 29, 2018

2018-04-30: Monochrome Monday

The sun over the Boteti River. Each time I have been to Botswana, I have found the sky there completely mesmerizing. This past trip was no exception.

Wishing everyone a great week ahead – happy Monday 🙂

20180430_MM — Leroo La Tau Camp, May 2017.

April 28, 2018

2018-04-28: WPC Lines

The photo challenge topic for the week is lines (not the kind you were stuck writing in school if you were misbehaving in class…) 🙂

Here are a few images that I found that I feel have a strong linear element to them. I hope you enjoy.

20170425-DSC_0592 — A game trail through the desert leads up a hill and around a bend. Don’t you find yourself wondering what might be just beyond the line of sight? Namibia, April 2017.

20170425-1020349 — Jagged hills zigzagging into the distance in this aerial shot above the Damaraland region of Namibia. April, 2017.

20170427-P1020841 — Game trails through the desert again, but this time leading us to a lioness heading towards the river for a drink. Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, April 2017.

20170503-P1030063 — A road through the Nxai Pan leading to the Baines Baobabs. The image is deceiving, as the tree trunks are as wide as a vehicle. Botswana, May 2017.

20170511-DSC_4192 — I took this image of the sky while on a sundowner drinks stop; I was drawn to the way the setting sun was illuminating the linear clouds. South Africa, May 2017.

WPC: Lines

April 22, 2018

2018-04-22: Wide Angles – Stitched Panoramas

I had planned to put together my GoPro clips from Kenya this week, but time slipped away from me, so I have had to put that off until next week. Instead, I am sharing some of the stitched panorama images I have created over several trips.