What can I say, I love clouds. These three images we taken yesterday evening. The first is a 128 second exposure at the Mulikteo Lighthouse, the second is a 122 second exposure from Log Boom Park and the last is from Kerry Park on Queen Anne. I drove all over the place yesterday!
"Brush Strokes"
"Calm Waters"
"Hint of Blue"
I have had a couple requests for some before & after post-processing images. Here are some particularly drastic examples from this weekend.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments section!
Dynamic Range
All of these shots were taken just after noon so the sun was almost directly overhead, this is usually the worst time to take photographs. It causes a HUGE dynamic range that cameras just cannot resolve. When working in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) I use the fill light slider to bring back some detail in the shadows and the recovery slider to recover some of the details in the highlights.
White Balance
Another adjustment made was warming the white balance a bit to get rid of the blues in the shadows, this has the added benefit of warming the highlights too, making it appear as though the photo was taken later in the evening.
Enhancing the Sky
One trick I learned recently was how to make the sky pop! The trick is to reduce the luminosity and increase the saturation of the blues. This will darken the sky if it is a little overexposed. Note: this will not work if the sky is completely blown out (overexposed).
Enhancing the Waterfall
In order to bring out the waterfall a little I opened the image up in Photoshop CS4 and used the dodge tool set to highlights (at around 10%) and drew over the top of the falls.
Vignetting
Another option I've been toying with lately is adding vignetting to my photographs. It is very easy to over-do this option so be careful here.
"The View From Above"
"Through the Nooks and Crannies"
"End of the Trail"
Some shots from this weekends Blue Angels demonstrations. Thursday I shot them from Genesee Park, Friday from the roof of the Atmos Building and Saturday from the I-90 floating bridge. You can see them all here.
I was hoping there would be some great thunderstorm action here today but I only saw one strike... On my way down to SeaTac (to pick up Melissa from a BBQ) I stopped at the Jose Rizal Bridge and took this image of the showers approaching Seattle.
"Passing Showers"
This evening I drove out to Richmond Beach Saltwater Park to see if there were any noctilucent clouds (the answer was no). I don't believe I've ever taken photos here before. It's not too far from our place and it has a beautiful overlook of the Puget Sound. I'll have to head out there more often. I came away with these photographs.
"Swirling Mass"
"Moonset through the Rainfall"
Around 9:45 this evening I received multiple phone calls from friends that there were noctilucent clouds (NLC's) out over Seattle. I quickly ran outside to see how interesting they were and was blow away at how bright and structured they were. I quickly grabbed my camera, coat and flip-flops and drove over to Log Boom Park. When I arrived I was amazed at how much brighter they were than last weeks NLC's. Below are the photographs that I took, you can also view the whole NLC set on flickr.
"Good vs. Evil"
"Path to the Heavens"
"Striking a Pose"
"Fading into the Night"
I went to Golden Gardens again this evening with some friends and on the way home I decided that yesterday's startrails image didn't satisfy me. So I drove out to Log Boom Park and set up this 103 exposure image. It doesn't have the dynamic tree that the last one did but there aren't a ton of planes either...
"Log Boom Trails"
Each exposure has these attributes:
Shutter Speed: 30 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 640
Focal Length: 10mm
Yesterday, Rahul and I drove to the bluff in Magnolia overlooking the Puget Sound a place I haven't been to recently. While my camera was working on this image I helped Rahul learn how to take night shots with his Olympus EVOLT E-510.
"Magnolia Expressway"
This is a startrails image made up of 143 exposures. I knew there would be a couple planes in this image but there are WAY to many....
Each exposure has these attributes:
Shutter Speed: 30 seconds
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 640
Focal Length: 10mm
Extremely rare noctilucent or polar mesospheric clouds were visible in the PNW Tuesday and Wednesday this week! These clouds are usually not visible south of 50 degrees north but recently have been seen as far south as Nebraska. These clouds form in the mesosphere about 50 miles above the earths surface in the Northern Hemisphere summer when the mesosphere is the coldest (yes that's right, coldest). The can only be seen after the sun has set (usually about an hour into twilight) when the sun is illuminating them from below (because they are so far above the earth's surface they still receive sunlight).
The first sighting of these clouds was in 1885 and there is no evidence to suggest they may have been around before then, so this is a relatively new atmospheric phenomena that is not well understood. Some believe that it is tied with global warming as they have become more are more frequent over time and have moved further south. Whatever the cause, they are beautiful and make for great photographs!
UPDATE 7/23/2009: More noctilucent clouds (NLC's) formed today that were even brighter! Click here to see them.
