I like visual reminders of things I should know but frequently forget… so today’s photo is a cheerful reminder of “It’s the journey, not the destination”. I took this photo of the landscape, but it’s the sinuous road which catches my eye and makes me want to explore this glorious part of Utah again and again.
See more at www.kelleybard.com. Enjoy your journey!
This beautiful animal was not far from the side of the road in Zion National Park. I’m not a wildlife photographer but I have great respect for them! I just don’t have the patience 🙂
See more at www.kelleybard.com.
One of the last photos taken on my recent trip through Utah, Arizona and Nevada. This was in the center of Utah. I watched this storm build for a while and stopped to take several images of it… this was when I finally started to see rain falling off to the right and I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I got hit with it, so I stopped and took several exposures for an HDR. I love how the underside of the clouds is so richly textured, and I’m a sucker for sunrays so the strong light beams are incredible to me. The dappled light on the ground was an extra gift here, as I really wanted to get some light on the ground and for the most part it was in shadow. HDR for HDR Friday… enjoy!
Thanks so much for viewing my work here. If you are interested, my website has lots to explore and enjoy. www.kelleybard.com. Feel free to browse!
Have you ever taken a landscape image you liked in theory but it just didn’t have great or interesting lighting? Here is a way I’ve found to create a better image from a good one:
This was a tree I found on the way to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was in a gorgeous area of these red rock formations, and I looked up and saw this tree and fell in love. The sky was more blue, and the rock wasn’t as vivid or well lit (it was solidly overcast, so the light was nice and soft but not interesting), so I chose to process it as an HDR. I took 3 images (my normal landscape protocol so I can pick and choose HDR’s in the future) and processed them in Photomatix. The result I liked best left the tree and rock dark. So I processed it a second time with the same images, this time making the light on the rock brighter and lightening the tree area as well. I followed the process discussed below and mixed the two .tif’s to create the rock lighting that I wanted. Then I finished the photoshop creation with some cleanup touches and here you are!
Process:
1. Take 3 or more shots (for me, the Canon can take -2, 0, and +2 exposures every time I shoot an image) whenever you might possibly use a photo for an HDR.
2. Process the set of exposures in Photomatix, the Nik HDR program, or Photoshop (any HDR creation program). Process it once as your ideal sky and save it. Then undo tone mapping and re-create it with your ideal rock lighting. Save that one as well.
3. Put both images into Photoshop, layer the images (shift and drag one onto the other) and mix them however you find best!
4. Finish it with noise reduction, sharpening, saturation and hue changes… whatever you wish for your HDR image.
5. Save it as a final image and enjoy!
So, a new option to use with good photos that I want to turn into great photos. Nice to find.
See this at www.kelleybard.com. Thanks for viewing!
Wow, that’s an interestingly HUGE image, huh? Different crops do different things in wordpress. I picked this one today because the water looks SO INVITING. But not the best image I’ve ever done. Although I like the color of the water. Lake Mead, on the Arizona side of the Hoover Dam.
See more (and hopefully better) at www.kelleybard.com.
THANK YOU all for the attention since I recommitted myself to this blog, not that i”m getting hundreds of hits a day but it’s nice to get the “like” stars and the comments. Love to build more connections here, so please, keep coming back and stay in contact!
More wide angle… I was exploring what I could photograph with the wide angle lens, and I got really close to this plant and was very happy that I could still see so much around the plant! I warmed up this photo as it seemed to need that warm, deserty feeling.
See more at http://www.kelleybard.com, or on the links to the right.
Enjoy!
This was the morning before I got my wide angle… it would have been nice to have on this shoot, though! I love, love, love Chautauqua Park in Boulder, CO. It’s amazing. I headed there the first morning I was in Boulder, and saw this amazing sky forming. You should have seen me booking across the field to catch a good angle! The photo is an HDR, made from 3 different exposures of the scene. I hope you enjoy it. The solitude and calm of that morning was amazing, and the otherworldly Flatiron mountains are incredible.
See this and other images at www.kelleybard.com, on at any of the links to the right (Buzztown, facebook, flickr…).
More images are going to come from this great trip, including some darling family and baby shots that I was blessed to take. Keep coming back to view them as I post my daily photos for 2011!
Thinking of summer…
This photo got a bit “extreme HDR-y” which I apologize profusely for. But, I like the shallow depth of field, I love the composition of the stairs, and I really like the bokeh-ed plant in the top right. So even with the problems, I felt like putting it out there for my daily photo. I’ll head there soon for a less sunny image, once the plants are growing. Summer really sounds wonderful right now, I’m excited about hiking and, of course, outside photography!
Other images are shown on my facebook and flickr pages (see links at right) and on http://www.kelleybard.com. The top rated photos from you guys often go onto my website as well, so feel free to comment on my work!
Enjoy.
I think, after my steampunk balloon photo, I’m trying to push the fantasy look of my photos a bit. So this is Lower Yosemite Falls, Idealized in my mind, for all eternity. The original pic wasn’t quite so perfect… not far from the final image, but more blah, less great water (in all honesty, I wish I could be one of those photographers who could make total fantasy creations in Photoshop- either I’m not creative enough, or just not computer/Photoshop savvy enough, but I wouldn’t even know where to start!). I always liked this pic, though, so I wanted to finish it. Photoshop and Topaz Adjust cleaned up the foggy look a bit, and sharpened it up. I turned it black and white, which made it better, but still not perfect… I went into OnOne PhotoTools and finally got the right mix, ghosting and glowing the water a bit, while still getting the sharpness of the rocks and the details. I finished with Lightroom and made the sepia look… which worked in my mind as I saw this as sorta ideal, possibly in the past Yosemite Falls.
Besides talking about this pic, I wanted to thank you all, again, for another max day yesterday! I think it was that steampunk balloon image that caught someone’s attention… I try to notice that and it’s good for me to see what works for people and what doesn’t, so keep commenting and visiting pics and such, please!
This, along with my other fav pics and (most importantly) YOUR fav pics, is posted to www.kelleybard.com. I’ve also got it on flickr and facebook. Hopefully I’ll get some more feedback on this in one or all places, so I can see what YOU think of it. Comments are loved, always. And keep visiting!
Enjoy.
**Event- Grand Opening of The Red Tent, a womens healing center in Durango, CO**
Monday, Valentines Day from 5-7 is the grand opening of The Red Tent. I spent a good amount of today there, putting my pics on the walls. I’ll be one of the featured artists for the next 2 months there. I’ve got 3 framed images (one a 30×40 frame and 20×30 print, it’s HUGE!) and a canvas wrap coming (another first). I hope to get lots and lots of maternity and infant work out of this, it will be a fun place to be associated with! Check out www.redtentwellness.com for information. And maybe… see you there!
A rainbow photo! Who couldn’t love a rainbow photo?
LOL. I had to work a bit in photoshop with brightening the colors of the rainbow while keeping them manageable in all the other parts of the image… also in darkening it to the point that the blacks approached true black (I try my hardest to have light from white to black in every image I finish). I do have a spot of the stream of water which got blown out. It makes me want to go back and create an HDR just to see if I can draw that back from the edge a bit (I almost always take 3 exposures of my images so that I can make an HDR or High Dynamic Range image from the combination of them, if I want to). Overall I like this shot and I think it would crop well to an 8×10 or so, which is nice.
I have my best work at my website, http://www.kelleybard.com, and my daily photos always get posted here, on Kelley Bard Photography’s facebook page, and on flickr. See the links to easily access any of these!
Enjoy!
Kelley Bard Photography- The PhotoBlog 