donnamhughes

Green River

2008-07-06T06:43:17Z

Green River The pilot said, 'We're flying over the Green River, although it doesn't look very green today.' (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 45 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec, hand held), April 17, 2008

River Running Around the Cliff

2008-07-05T05:01:12Z

River Running Around the Cliff Since I have to do so much processing on these images to remove the haze and blue color cast, it leaves open many possibilities for how the final image looks. Many of these images I could reprocess and they would look quite different in tone, contast, and warmth. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 50 mm, f/4.5, 1/640 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Bluff III

2008-07-04T05:32:07Z

Bluff III (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 50 mm, f/4.5, 1/1600 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Ridges III

2008-07-03T05:15:33Z

Ridges III Ridges of a mountain or the back of an alligator? (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 50 mm, f/4.5, 1/640 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Ridges II

2008-07-02T04:44:10Z

Ridges II I got my A700 back from the repair service yesterday. It looks like the replaced most of the electronics -- the mother board assembly, the DC power board assembly -- and they repaired the image stabilization system. I was in France over the weekend and used my A100. I flew all that way and didn't once have a window seat, so I didn't get any more cloudscapes or aerial landscapes. And I didn't even get to downtown Paris for any sight seeing. I'm now processing some of the images from the events I attended. The A700 is so much better at higher ISOs and low light situations. I'm happy to have it back. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 50 mm, f/4.5, 1/800 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Ridges I

2008-07-01T04:24:03Z

Ridges I Bob from Forging Ahead expressed some surprise that I'm shooting at +1 exposure compensation. That's adding a lot of light to the exposure. I've found that everything is very bright when you are up that high and the automatic exposure of the camera tries to set a medium grey mid-point. This causes the clouds and light sky to be too dark. So, I add a lot of light. There is a lot of haze, which is light colored, and all of the images have a heavy light blue color cast at that altitude. Adding a full stop of light keeps the image bright and pushes the tone distribution of the histogram into the upper quandrant. That helps me capture the full tonal range underneath the haze and blue color cast. Then I process the image in Photoshop where I use the white balance tool to remove a lot of the color cast and I set my white and black point. These two steps do a remarkable job of bringing out the underlying earth tones of the scene. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 35 mm, f/4.5, 1/1000 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Snow Capped Mountain

2008-06-30T05:01:45Z

Snow Capped Mountain (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 90 mm, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Clouds Over Ridges II

2008-06-29T05:01:10Z

Clouds Over Ridges II In this image, a river runs across the frame at the foot of the bluff. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 60 mm, f/5, 1/1250 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Clouds Over Ridges I

2008-06-28T05:01:14Z

Clouds Over Ridges I I like the abstact quality of a number of the images created by the brown earth, the black cloud shadows, the flat white snow and the puff white clouds. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 80 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008

Snow Capped Bluff

2008-06-27T05:01:17Z

Snow Capped Bluff The snow capped bluffs and peaks of the Rocky Mountains presented many wonderful scenes from 30,000 plus feet. I snapped more images on this flight than any other before or since. I've also improved my Photoshop image processing technique, enabling me to lift more of the haze and blue cast from the images. (Sony A700, iso 200, +1 exp comp, 110 mm, f/5.6, 1/640 sec, hand held), Over the Rocky Mountains, April 17, 2008