Hardly Harley

The Golden Hour (the hour or so before sunset) lives up to its name with these golden cliffs. This is a 3 shot panorama which, after I cropped down to cut out some distracting rocks at the bottom, and too much sky at the top, came out to be 16.2 megapixels. A mere .4 megapixels more than my camera's sensor. But it's where those pixels went that make it more useful than a regular shot. At over 6,200 pixels in length it's far longer than the 4,592 pixels the camera can take in a single shot. A single shot with the camera would have had me choosing to cut out either the large rock on the left or some cliff on the left, so this worked out for me. With moving water it's important to try and get a lull in the waves when shooting through your sequence of shots for easier stitching together and to move quickly once you've prepared to shoot. I use my auto exposure and focus lock set on what I picture as being the center part of the photo then start shooting from left to ri…

I started 2014, photographically, on the wrong foot. My shooting has been uninspired, and so I went to shoot something I do enjoy and usually get good results with. A sunset. This shot was taken in a clearing with bushes at least as tall as me. And this is the reason why I love my rotating/tilting/flipout screen on my G3. I bumped the ISO up then held the camera up as high as I could while looking at the tilted and rotated screen to try and frame the shot. Once into Aperture I straightened the shot, adjusted for exposure then sent the photo over to Topaz Labs. There I did what's becoming a first step for most of my photos and doing some pre-sharpening or capture sharpening with InFocus, some DeNoise work for the sky, Clarity to work on contrasts and color in the sky (slight saturation bump), then some creative sharpening in Detail. I think when you shoot things in silhouette, like the rock on the left, the head in the center, or the tops of some small trees on the right, giving a…

First shot of 2014