Thursday, February 11, 2010

Rocks on ice

Rocks on the ice

A sunset as viewed from Nelson Point in Peninsula State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. Before I photographed the massive ice field in the previous photos, I stopped here. I had visited earlier in the day and had gotten some nice enough photos of the area:

Ice on the rocks

But the sunset added some nice dynamics to the scenery. Same rocks, same ice, different light.

When I started out with landscape photography, I was a list crosser-offer. I'd go somewhere, shoot it, consider it over and done with, then move on to the next place and so on. I'm now a come-backer. Shoot a location, then make a mental note to come back when the conditions reset. I think I've learned more about photography by using the latter approach.

Techie stuff: Metered off the top of the second-closest rock in the bottom photo and pretty much nailed the exposure. Just needed to adjust black and white points in post. Used a 2-stop graduated neutral density filter in the top photo and still had some contrast issues to deal with -- I kept the sky as captured, but selected the foreground and lightened it up further. I was in a hurry to get to the ice field so I was not as careful as I could have been. I commited what to me is the unpardonable sin -- the sun blew out to pure white in several frames. Photoshop can't fix that. Some otherwise great shots ruined.

Photographs © 2008 James Jordan.

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