A Flooded River Camp Leaves Amazing Sand Patterns

• B&W, Nature Photography, Outdoor Adventure Photography
I had an assignment years ago to photograph a rafting trip on the Copper River from WR-SE to Cordova, Alaska, and it was one of the wildest places I have been.
 
One morning, we awoke to find our riverbank campsite flooding from rapidly rising water. We had about an hour to break camp before it was totally underwater and one of my last photos was my fellow guest standing on a patch of sand that was probably 6’x6′. We all got aboard and launched.
 
A couple days later the waters had subsided and left these amazing patterns in the soft mud. The guides said the cause was most likely an ice dam in the river, way up in the Chugach Mountains, has busted unleashing the water.
 
I was treated in the aftermath, to these amazing patterns along the riverbank. 
I used my Canon EOS 1N and Canon 16-35mm lens for the shot with the lens set to 16mm. That made the foreground closer to the camera which emphasizes the foreground. I next processed the photo in Photoshops B&W adjustment layer.
Want to learn more about adventure and nature photography? Check out my online courses at Great Photography Courses:

Processing Wet and Dry Cracked Mud

• B&W, Image Processing, Nature Photography

As I was hiking the desert this last winter, I spotted an area where rain had collected and created this pattern. What I thought was very interesting was how the mud was totally wet and then following the cracks, totally dry. It made for a nice composition was my feeling and I shot it with an iPhone.

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But you can see by this pre-processed image below, the photo would not work without some good processing since it was totally flat looking.

Photographing Wahweap Towers

• B&W, Nature Photography

This is one of the most amazing places I have ever shot! It’s part of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, Utah.

The soft light is very flat lighting: no whites and no blacks, just light grays and dark grays, so you have to create the black and white. But do you need them?

Honestly, I struggled to find my ‘look.’ The original file has a blue cast from the blue sky above, so I worked that a bit: added blue/took away blue, saturated, added contrast, then took it all away. Today, I decided to do B&W and high contrast. Tomorrow, who knows. 

B&W and HDR

• B&W, Image Processing, Software Techniques

I have been experimenting when time allows with variations of B&W images. I like HDR although admit that the days of super grunge are over for me. All the color globs and noise….been there, processed that!

HDR has come a long way and now I use it more for creating natural looking images with lower contrast like some architectural assignments I get for time to time.

I have photographed some objects over time where i went crazy with grungy HDR but now I prefer to process more normal and then maybe with a hint of grunge…then converting to B&W.

Here is a piece of equipment at an old mine in Arizona that I processed in HDR and as color then converted to B&W and pushed around a few of the tones with a B&W Adjustment Layer. The HDR does a good job of adding edge to textures and then those are converted to tones in B&W. This next image

The Barrel Cactus

• B&W, Nature Photography

I was just hiking around Sajuaro NP really hoping to find blooming cactus, but it is to early still. They will be blooming in the next few weeks, but I am an impatient traveler choosing to move to new locals and scenery. I did however grab a lot of other images including this detail of a barrel cactus which I then converted to B&W using Topaz B&W Effects. It seemed more interesting than color image.

Old Truck in The Desert

• B&W, Special Effects

We recently visited the Desert Bar outside Parker Arizona and if you have not been there it is worth the visit. It’s an old mine that someone bought and turned into a huge bar. Very cool!

On the property are many old vehicles like this one. I shot it and then converted it using Topaz BW Effects. They just came out with version 2. I then brushed back some of the color.

I Photographed This Beautiful Woman Last Night

• B&W, Portrait Photography, Software Techniques

Every once in a while I meet a great person and get all excited at the prospect of photographing them.

That happened the other night when I was teaching an Introduction to Portraiture at the Cascade Center of Photography in Bend, Oregon.

The school proprietors: Christian and Regula Heeb, had arranged this model for the workshop and when it was time to do some demos shots of her for the students to see lighting, I thought: “wow”, this is a very photogenic person.

After the workshop she stuck around for a few minutes and we shot a few more images and discussed more shoots in the future.

I used two large light boxes and then some skin softening in Portrait Professional before a B&W conversion in Topaz B&W Effects.

I’ve Been Working On The Railroad…with HDR

• B&W, Software Techniques

Grungy HDR is a lot of fun and once in awhile I have some free time (rare) to open images and just play. I took this shot in Nevada City Montana a few years ago after a workshop up there. It was one of many I shot in the NC area which is a gold mine (no pun intended) of historic buildings and artifacts from the mining days.

This old railroad car sat next to an old locomotive and a few other old cars. They were rusting and had peeling paint, and that makes them perfect for HDR or B&W with Sepia tone, or……? Let your imagination run wild.

The key to grungy HDR is Tone Mapping more than once and then what I have enjoyed doing is converting to B&W with Topaz B&W Effects and then using the Adjustment Brush to bring back color. What do you think?

Images From Badlands National Park

• B&W, Image Processing, Nature Photography

I was teaching workshops in South Dakota a few months back and before catching my flight I had the afternoon to kill so I zipped out to Badlands National Park and spent 4 hours shooting.

It is a great park to shoot and I had a great time, albeit brief. I am also a big fan of Topaz software and processed some of the images in B&W Effects from Topaz. The reason i did that was because early in my shooting the sun was quite high and there was haze on the horizon.

When you have the haze it desaturates the sky and is not so appealing. Convert to B&W and the sky is a shade of gray and works much better. Here are some shots: