Tag: sun rays

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Inspiration Living Menlo Park Photography Photography - Black & White

Oh the Wonder!…

On my morning walk, I’m often surprised and delighted by some moment of serendipity that pops up and pulls my mind out of whatever rut it’s in and opens it up to what’s happening in the moment. Always a delight when it happens. Often becomes the highlight of my morning!

Here’s what popped up on my walk when I turned a corner and moved up a walkway…

Wow! Those light beams shining down. The woman standing right in the center. And the. A few moments later her companion joined…

I almost couldn’t work my iPhone fast enough to capture the moments but I got lucky.

I often enjoy exploring an image in black and white. Not sure it’s the best for this image given the color of the sun’s rays but worth a try…

She left before I could walk over and say hello leaving me behind with that delightful sense of wonder that occurs when moments like these come along in my life.

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HDR Photography Photography Photography - Nikon D600 Photomatix Pro Photoshop

A Special Light – Pigeon Point Lighthouse

A Special Light - Pigeon Point - 2012

My photo adventure yesterday over to the coast was one of those rare ones – I captured so many great images very quickly in the beautiful light and cloudy skies. It truly was a photographer’s winter delight!

I enjoy exploring a wide range of post-processing techniques with my images. Realism is fine – and many (most?) of my images are exactly that – realistic as shot in the field.

But, sometimes, you find a special image that you just want to “push” – off into a different, more artistic direction. Yesterday’s lighthouse shots at Pigeon Point are just the latest example.

I processed this image as a single image HDR from the original RAW file shot handheld with my Canon D600. I used Photomatix Pro for that initial HDR conversion and then imported the image into Photoshop CS6. After a few tweaks in Adobe Camera Raw, I used Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4’s Brilliance/Warmth filter in two passes to shift the color of the sun. There’s something about the warmth of this kind of processing that adds to our appreciation of an image – and it seemed to work in this case.

Finally, I used a few Content Aware fills in Photoshop on various chunks of the sky to smooth things out a bit and remove some potentially distracting artifacts. And I was done.

A “special light” indeed – hope you like it!