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DailyPhotos > paulbellinger  > Daily Photos > Daily 2013
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Nini Icon, Lake Sam Rayburn TX This is a photo that I’ve been meaning to share for a while. I took this out at the lake shooting into the sun, creating lots of lens flare. Then I added a lot of grainy and clarity in processing to make it almost look animated. The final touch was the fake light leak that I actually added by myself in Lightroom 4 without the help of any apps. I think it looks really cool as a thumbnail profile photo for facebook or G+. Too bad Nini likes her Cheech fb profile photo so much because she won’t change it! I didn’t get much response yesterday on the Sue Bryce 28 day challenge. So am I the only one taking the challenge? That’s crazy! Sue is going to show you how to pose everyone from one person to couples and groups of five. She’s going to show you how to pose hands and get five poses out of one composition. And all while using only natural light, which I know a lot of smugmuggers prefer. I cannot stress enough that if you struggle at posing, Sue is the instructor for you! She is the queen of posing techniques. Check it out at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 12, 2013, taken February 23, 2013
The Austin Building, Nacogdoches TX We had some big storms roll through last night and this photo was taken just as the storms were moving in. I noticed the clouds were moving really fast, so I set up a quick shot before heading home. I always like the contrast between moving clouds and still buildings. This is the Austin building on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. This is a single five second exposure. I used two neutral grad filters to darken the sky, bringing it closer to the exposure of the foreground. There are lots of tall pines all over campus and I find they make for challenging compositions of the buildings. See my previous photos of the SFA campus here and here. QUESTION: Is anyone doing Sue Bryce’s 28 challenges over the next 28 days? If you buy the course you’ll be enjoying an hour or more of Sue everyday, teaching you all of the poses and lighting techniques to run a contemporary portrait studio. It should be fun! Check it out at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce Critiques are always welcome. UPDATE: Check out my awesome 16 year old cousin's new blues song from Kolkata India: http://soundcloud.com/thesuitables-1/the-hat-song Daily photo: March 11, 2013, taken March 9, 2013
Tasty Crab Cakes, Nacogdoches TX These are some great crab cakes with remoulade from Autnie Pasta’s, one of our favorite restaurants in Nacogdoches. I had these crab cakes when I was out with a friend and they looked so pretty I made it a point to bring my camera the next time we went there. When I find pretty food I like to take photos of it. Food photography is a fun challenge. This photo was taken with the ambient light in the restaurant, mostly one overhead tungsten bulb. The photo had a warm yellow and orange cast so I cooled off the color temperature and desaturated it quite a bit. I added some extra desaturation to the non-food parts of the photo. I think I could have done much better if I used table top studio lighting but with ISO 2500 I made the ambient light work. Critiques are always welcome. UPDATE: The color temperature I ended up with is 3929. Thanks for your critiques! Daily photo: March 10, 2013, taken February 24, 2013
Rusty Sunset, Nacogdoches TX This train car fascinated me because it appeared to be half gone. This must be the antique section of the train yard where they retire old equipment. Just down from this half car is the caboose I featured previously. Despite the antique train cars, the sunset was the main attraction in my eyes, and I tried to find compositions that featured the sunset. This is a single eight second exposure. You can read about my filter setup for this shot on my Colorful Caboose photo. I forgot to mention previously that I broke my giant tripod on this shoot. It was terrible! I spent a lot of time with that tripod, so I was sad to have it go down. It was all my fault for not keeping it clean and putting way too much leverage on one of the extended legs. But even though it was an old Bogen model, I found the new Manfrotto version that is just as big and heavy but with some cool new features. I also ordered a replacement part so I can try and fix my old friend. More tripod discussion to come in the next few days, and over on the smugmug daily group on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SmugMugDailyPhotosCommunity/ CreativeLIVE is live and FREE all day today and tomorrow with Sue Bryce’s “28 Days.” I’m not sure what the workshop is about exactly, but I know Sue always delivers. I always make sure to tune in for Sue’s workshops. Check it out live all day or catch the rewatch all night at www.creativelive.com/live Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 8, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Natural Beauty, Nacogdoches TX She’s still a doll even when she’s not all dolled up! This is just one of those Saturday or Sunday afternoon laying around in bed shots. Sometimes the afternoon light is just too nice to resist so I coax Nini into posing for me. She’s usually willing to pose once a week or so, as long as it’s only roughly ten minutes or less. I think she looks like an angel with this light! She's my angel! For this portrait I was experimenting with the blown out backlighting technique. I used a white Styrofoam reflector to light up her face and put catchlights in her eyes. The light was so nice and soft that I didn’t do any retouching, and I used Nini’s favorite preset at the starting point for the processing. See her favorite preset here too. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 7, 2013, taken January 31, 2013
Nini’s Closeup, Nacogdoches TX We took this photo right when Nini walked out of the salon after getting her massage, hair and makeup done. I wanted to get a closeup that I could give to the makeup artist to show off their nice work. Until now though, I haven’t been able to find the makeup artist on facebook or anywhere, so eventually I’ll have to call the salon ask for their email address. At this point in the day it was a little cloudy, but there was plenty of nice soft light, so we shot with all natural light. I added a lot of contrast back into the image in post processing to give it some depth. To do so, I mostly darkened the shadows on her camera left side and on her neck. This is a technique I learned from Lindsay Addler on CreativeLIVE’s photoshop week last week. Because of the nice soft light there wasn’t much retouching required for this photo. My favorite photo from our shoot is this wider angle portrait I shared last week. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 6, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
Wavy Sunset, Lake Sam Rayburn TX We were really surprised to find that our little beach at Lake Sam Rayburn was only about half of it’s normal size due to high water. And the lake had huge two foot waves! It was crazy! The beach looked totally different and lots of rocks were now in play for foreground composition. It was a fun change of pace. Things were looking good until about a half hour before sunset when almost all of the clouds cleared out, making the sunset a bust. So I spent more time playing around with the dogs and taking video and I never quite got around to polishing off this composition. If I could do it over I’d like to move back a foot and get my tripod even lower. This is a single exposure using the two filter set up I mentioned here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 5, 2013, taken March 3, 2013
Colorful Caboose, Nacogdoches TX Well the caboose isn’t really colorful, but the sky is! I knew from the looks of the clouds in this sky that we were in for a very colorful sunset, but I didn’t have time to go to any of our normal sunset locations (aka, the lake). The railroad tracks are only a few minutes from our house, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did because even the ugly old train tracks looked pretty with this sky! This is a single 4 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. I wish I had closed down to f/22 for a little added depth of field so that the caboose was in sharper focus. Focusing on something a little further away would have helped too. With shots like this, my thinking is that if something is out of focus in the foreground, it is going to be more noticeable than something in the background. It’s for photos like this that I would like to be able to manually blend exposures in photoshop. That way I could blend one exposure focused on the foreground and another focused on the background, a technique called focus stacking. But I’d have to get photoshop first! Thanks for your comments last week! My most popular photo from last week was very special for me because it is a photo of my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Colorful Caboose, Nacogdoches TX

Well the caboose isn’t really colorful, but the sky is! I knew from the looks of the clouds in this sky that we were in for a very colorful sunset, but I didn’t have time to go to any of our normal sunset locations (aka, the lake). The railroad tracks are only a few minutes from our house, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did because even the ugly old train tracks looked pretty with this sky!

This is a single 4 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. I wish I had closed down to f/22 for a little added depth of field so that the caboose was in sharper focus. Focusing on something a little further away would have helped too. With shots like this, my thinking is that if something is out of focus in the foreground, it is going to be more noticeable than something in the background. It’s for photos like this that I would like to be able to manually blend exposures in photoshop. That way I could blend one exposure focused on the foreground and another focused on the background, a technique called focus stacking. But I’d have to get photoshop first!

Thanks for your comments last week! My most popular photo from last week was very special for me because it is a photo of my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013" href="javascript:openLB(2392001983,'',XLarge,'',1024,683);">Colorful Caboose, Nacogdoches TX Well the caboose isn’t really colorful, but the sky is! I knew from the looks of the clouds in this sky that we were in for a very colorful sunset, but I didn’t have time to go to any of our normal sunset locations (aka, the lake). The railroad tracks are only a few minutes from our house, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did because even the ugly old train tracks looked pretty with this sky! This is a single 4 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. I wish I had closed down to f/22 for a little added depth of field so that the caboose was in sharper focus. Focusing on something a little further away would have helped too. With shots like this, my thinking is that if something is out of focus in the foreground, it is going to be more noticeable than something in the background. It’s for photos like this that I would like to be able to manually blend exposures in photoshop. That way I could blend one exposure focused on the foreground and another focused on the background, a technique called focus stacking. But I’d have to get photoshop first! Thanks for your comments last week! My most popular photo from last week was very special for me because it is a photo of my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Colorful Caboose, Nacogdoches TX

Well the caboose isn’t really colorful, but the sky is! I knew from the looks of the clouds in this sky that we were in for a very colorful sunset, but I didn’t have time to go to any of our normal sunset locations (aka, the lake). The railroad tracks are only a few minutes from our house, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did because even the ugly old train tracks looked pretty with this sky!

This is a single 4 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. I wish I had closed down to f/22 for a little added depth of field so that the caboose was in sharper focus. Focusing on something a little further away would have helped too. With shots like this, my thinking is that if something is out of focus in the foreground, it is going to be more noticeable than something in the background. It’s for photos like this that I would like to be able to manually blend exposures in photoshop. That way I could blend one exposure focused on the foreground and another focused on the background, a technique called focus stacking. But I’d have to get photoshop first!

Thanks for your comments last week! My most popular photo from last week was very special for me because it is a photo of my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Canon EOS 5D Mark III |
More details: exif |
Original size: 5361x3574 |
Current: 800x534 |
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Keywords: sunset texas nacogdoches
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