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DigitalGrin > paulbellinger  > Nature > Sunset Sunrise
Mostly sunsets, but I do wake up early every once in a while.
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Sundown Blues, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The high water washed out part of our beach, creating this great little line and reflection pool. Since this photo was taken the water is now much higher and this part of the beach is completely under water. But there is still plenty of beach for us to play on! This is a single six second exposure. For an even longer blue hour exposure see my current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
Colorful Caboose Revisited, Nacogdoches TX I found out about a cool East Texas photo competition yesterday and started deciding which three photos to enter. I think this photo makes a good entry because it’s pretty and showcases some of Nac’s railroad history. I reprocessed it using Photoshop, and this is the second photo I’ve actually exported out of Photoshop. More on Photoshop below. The second photo I chose is this beauty of the Japanese Maples in the SFA Arboretum, which I have a 20x30” print of hanging in our bedroom and really love it. For my third choice I want to enter one of my Lake Sam Rayburn photos, and have tentatively chosen this one of the warm grass on our beach at sunset. But I don’t know, this isn’t my personal favorite, it’s just the one I think will be most useful for the Texas Forest Trail Region website. My current favorite of Sam Rayburn is this blue hour beauty, but I think it might be too abstract for this competition. Another Sam Rayburn favorite is this this colorful long exposure, but again I think the long exposure might be too abstract. Lastly, my all time favorite Sam Rayburn photo is this red and pink long exposure. Can you help me decide or give any other tips and tricks for entering photo contests? This will be my first. This photo is a reprocessed version of my original Colorful Caboose photo. I liked the previous version, but wish I had used a smaller aperture to achieve a longer depth of field and sharper focus on the caboose. I also didn’t like how underexposed the caboose is, mostly due to the graduated neutral density filters I used to reduce the exposure in the sky. So what did I do to fix it up a little? I went back to the archives to see if I had an overexposed exposure from the same spot, and I did because I usually always take multiple exposures before changing my composition. I brought the overexposed photo and the original into Photohsop in that order, and layered the original over the overexposed and used a layer mask to allow the caboose from the overexposed version to shine through to the top layer. I also applied a sharpening filter to the overexposed layer so that I could get extra detail in the caboose only, without introducing too much noise, which is what would have happened if I tried to sharpen the original too much because the caboose is so underexposed. Lastly, I added a vibrance layer to exaggerate the colors a little. I’m such as sucker for color it’s hard for me to not over saturate everything! How do you like the changes? Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 29, 2013, taken February 28, 2013 reprocessed March 29, 2013
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
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
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
Pink Skies after Sundown, Lake Sam Rayburn TX This is the view to the Southeast about 10 or 15 minutes after sundown. There was an abnormal amount of color going on in that direction and neither I nor Sarah (who was shooting with me) were set up to capture it. We were ready to leave, but the sky had other plans. I worked fast and got a few shots before the color faded. The composition turned out pretty horrible, but color like this is pretty forgiving. This is a single six second exposure. I used a circular polarizer to create more contrast in the sky and enhance the reflection. I’m happy to have received some constructive feedback yesterday on my portrait of Nini. Several people mentioned found the pole on the left side of the frame distracting, and nobody came out in favor of the pole. So I updated my post to balance out the conversation. Check it out here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 27, 2013, taken February 23, 2013
Crashing Waves, Lake Sam Rayburn TX A beautiful cloudy sunset on our favorite beach. The sunset was beautiful despite all of the clouds, as you can see here. The waves were crashing gently on our beach. This is a single ½ second exposure. I like the wave action that is captured with this fast shutter speed. Usually I shoot at longer shutter speeds that washout the details of the waves. I like both looks but prefer the long exposure look a little more just because it looks so much different. You can read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 18, 2013, taken January 25, 2013
Sundown Blues, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

The high water washed out part of our beach, creating this great little line and reflection pool. Since this photo was taken the water is now much higher and this part of the beach is completely under water. But there is still plenty of beach for us to play on!

This is a single six second exposure. For an even longer blue hour exposure see my current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013" href="javascript:openLB(2438979467,'',XLarge,'',1024,683);">Sundown Blues, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The high water washed out part of our beach, creating this great little line and reflection pool. Since this photo was taken the water is now much higher and this part of the beach is completely under water. But there is still plenty of beach for us to play on! This is a single six second exposure. For an even longer blue hour exposure see my current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
Sundown Blues, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

The high water washed out part of our beach, creating this great little line and reflection pool. Since this photo was taken the water is now much higher and this part of the beach is completely under water. But there is still plenty of beach for us to play on!

This is a single six second exposure. For an even longer blue hour exposure see my current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
See photo in original gallery.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II |
More details: exif |
Original size: 5616x3744 |
Current: 800x534 |
Share photo: links, forums, blogs |
Keywords: sunset texas timelapse nacogdoches lake sam rayburn
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