Alpine Lake Reflection

What a strange week.  Makes me want to sit here a second and consider where I am.  Lakeside, on a morning that might bring an end to the rain.  Big banks of clouds were still looming all around.  I set up for a much bigger reflection in anticipation of alpenglow on the background.   However, the clouds that snuck past in the night were still making their presence known.

{Drat!}

When that sunbeam hit the wall in the middle ground, I floated my camera about an inch above the lake to make this composition.  One of my favourite things about this is its asymmetry.  I think it tells a more true story with something missing.  Maybe I'm having a Dorian Gray moment.

Hope you all get out someplace pleasant this weekend.

Polarizing Play

Polarizing Play, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

I began this photograph in the fall of 2009 and have tried various ways of producing it, but couldn't get it right without a lot of heavy manipulation. When I made the source exposures I was having fun with my polarizer (hence the title), but later couldn't bring it all together in the studio with that sense of platonic realism I strive toward. While I was working on the recent panoramic HDRs something occured to me to try on this. I think it came out very nice, showing the various levels at which the objects exist while celebrating their luminance. Not bad for a couple of rocks stuck in the mud.

The Bridge at Riverbend Ponds Natural Area

This image is viewable at close to it's native resolution for those of you with a veritable surplus of time for art viewing.  Click here for the redirect, the viewer has it's own controls for navigation.  Enjoy!

I like the idea of large panoramic photographs, though they seem a bit impractical.  This photo is roughly 80 megapixels and 500MB, on paper it would measure to 78 inches long at 18 inches high.  I captured 240 exposures, of which I used 168, then compiled and tonemapped those down to 24 (7-stop brackets) to create this 180 degree view.  That may seem like overkill but I used art school math and Kentucky windage to hedge my bets.  Processing all those photos and stitching them all together was quite the experience as well.  If you experienced the lights dimming or sudden black-outs in your neighborhood, it's probably my fault.  Anyway, I think it turned out very pretty and strange.  This wooziness I'm feeling is most likely the result of number cruntching with an artist's brain.  Time to get some fresh air, perhaps I'll go for a walk.  Maybe you'd like to do the same?

Aspirations

Everything was going swell this morning until all the clouds lined up to block the sunrise.    I hung my head in despair and noticed these grasses admiring the reflection of clouds in the prefectly calm surface of the pond.