Sneak Peak: Indian Falls

Hey,

So I went to another waterfall today and got some decent photos of it as well as nice shots on the hike.  I was lucky because there has been a lot of rain here so there was a lot of water at the falls.  Sadly I did not have my tripod however that was okay because I just laid on some rocks and set my camera on a rocky ledge over the falls.

So this is a sneak peak of one of the photos, enjoy:

Update: E-mail

Hey everyone,

I just created a new e-mail for my photography so please send me any questions or comments you may have and I will get back to you quickly.  The e-mail is tomhoustonphotography@gmail.com.  Who would have thought haha.  Anywho, please do not hesitate to e-mail me with questions.

Hope all is well,

Tom

Photos: Holly

Hey,

Just did a shoot today and the photos turned out nicely.  I will post a link on this post when I upload them to Flickr.  They are up on my Facebook page if you want to check them out there as well.

Portrait - 50mm f/1.4 D

Thank you for looking,

Tom

Lens Re-Review: AF-S DX 17-55mm f/2.8 IF ED

Lens Re-Review AF-S DX

Hey,

I remember saying this lens wasn't as sharp as I wanted it to be for portraits however I just did an event for a friend's surprise birthday party and it may have changed my mind.  The photos were very sharp when I was at f/4.  This was not a problem because I was using it with the Sb-900.  Still not my 50mm but the 17-55mm does the job well.

Thought I would toss that out there as well.  But be sure to read my full review.

Lens Re-Review: 50mm f/1.4 D

Lens Re-Review: 50mm f/1.4 D

So I just remembered something about this lens from my country shoot I did a while back that I forgot to blog about.

As I was going through the photos from the shoot I noticed a handful of them were a little soft.  It looked nice however nothing was really in focus which wasn't so great.  I found all the slightly fuzzy photos and noticed they all were taken at f/1.8.  So this is what I believe led to the soft photos and now I am avoiding using this lens at f/1.8 which is fine since I use it at f/1.4 or f/2.8 - f/4 range.  I noticed at f/2 it has also fine.  I have not shot a lot at f/1.6 however I do know f/1.8 was not sharp for some reason.

Do I like this lens any less?  Nope.  I have no problem not using it at f/1.8 and I still love this lens.  If you have not read my review of the 50mm f/1.4 D you should.

Thought you should know,

Tom

Focus: Location, Location, Location.

Focus: Location, Location, Location.


Sometimes the difference between a good shot and a great shot is where you choose to take the photo from.  There are a lot of different factors to your location you choose to take your photo from.  The one I will be discussing in this article is getting to the right viewpoint to get a better photo.

I thought I would write a thing about this because when I was at Inglis Falls I noticed how important this is.  First there is a lookout by the parking lot that most people look at the falls from.  Then from there you can walk down further which gives you a better look out at the front of the falls.  From there you can walk even further and you find yourself off the nice path.  It gets very rocky and involves a downhill trek to the river and the falls.  From here you have to hike up slippery rocks to get closer to the falls.  But this is worth it to get a better shot.

I decided to write this because as my friend and I were trekking up the river, we past two photographers that looked like they were more than amateur photographers.  My friend and I decided to try to get closer to the falls and it was a little dangerous but we managed.  I got as far as I was willing to go due to the very wet and slippery rocks however there was a large boulder in my way.  So I decided to hop over some of the river and climb onto the boulder to get a better view of the falls and it worked.

Luckily enough, my friend was there and got a shot of me on my perch I had:

Myself on my perch - Photo Credit: Jacob Heyden-Thomas

So sometimes to get a better shot you have to be willing to risk a little more and push yourself further.  But do that safely since I almost did go swimming with my camera trekking up the side of the river.  But because I pushed on I got a shot like this:

Inglis Falls - 17-55mm

Thank you for reading.

Focus: Workflow

Hey,


So I thought I would do a quick-ish summary and walkthrough of how I edit my landscape photos.  More particularly my most recent waterfall shots at Inglis Falls.  I do pretty much the same type of things to my landscape photos but depending on the photo and exposure I tweak them all slightly differently but the same general gist.


I decided to use the waterfall shots since I used my timer on my camera which took multiple photos each time.  So I have multiple copies of pretty much the same shot, just the water looks slightly different in each one due to the water changing paths a little (no big deal).  And what better way to demonstrate the differences each of my edits do.


So first I will start with my unedited photo.  So this is straight out of the D90.

Unedited - Inglis Falls 

It is a good photo but I find it doesn't really catch the eye as much as it could.  Due to the long exposure, I think the colours fade just a little because it is a lot of light coming into the camera.  As well the photo is just a little lighter than I want it.  Not that I had the exposure off, or it was under or over exposed, just it is a little flat.

I do my editing in Aperture.  So if you have Aperture, thats great (go Mac) and if not that is okay since I am sure editing suits are all pretty much the same for what edits I am doing here.  So step one, I increase the contrast a little.  (On Aperture I upped it to 2.0)

Contrast - Inglis Falls

This helps catch the eye a little more since it a little darker, not as flat looking.  However you don't want to over do this (or any other edit for the most part) or else it will just look really fake.  As well, when you increase the contrast you lose a little detail in the dark regions of your photo so be careful.  If that is what you want, then by all means but personally I want landscapes to look like how I saw it.  That is why I love wide angle lenses since the photos don't look like a snap shot of it.  Anywho, back to the edits.  

The next two steps will help have the colours pop as well be more like how I saw them when I was perched on my rock taking the photos*.  So first I usually play with the saturation by increasing it a little. So the below photo is with contrast as well as and saturation increase. (Increase saturation to 1.1)

*(As I said in my post about these photos, I was with my friend who just purchased a D7000 so he took a shot I believe of me perched on my rock I had to climb onto to get these shots.  I will be writing a post about what one must do sometimes to get a "the shot." So it helped having my friend there to take a photo of me on my semi-sketchy rock in the river.)

Contrast + Saturation - Inglis Falls

Next to help with colour I increased the vibrancy a little which helps the colours be well, more vibrant (and for those who don't want the word used in it's def'n, the colours are more vivid and less dull).  (Increased the vibrancy to 1.0 I believe)

Contrast + Saturation + Vibrancy - Inglis Falls 

So with that, those are the main things I do to my landscapes to help them look a little more like how I saw it.  The D90/lens usually does a great job however in some cases these edits help a lot.  This was also a good example since the colours and over all image fades a little when you gather a lot of light when using slow shutter speeds, I find.  Using my macro lens I never touch the photos unless it is portraits.  So my frog's eye shot you may have seen (if not check it out), I didn't edit that at all.  No cropping or vibrancy, nothing.  However landscapes do sometimes need some work.  Before I was never one to really edit my photos however now I have learned to bring all my photos up to the same level and sometimes that means I have to do minor things to them.  When you put them all together, you can get one great shot.

Also I sometime burn or dodge photos (brighten/lighten) if certain areas would do better being darker or lighter.  I rarely do this because it usually looks bad (or I am bad at it) but I usually just stick to the contrast to control that.

So this is not the be-all-end all with editing but it is a few minor things you can do to make your photos pop a little more.

Photos: Inglis Falls

Hey,

This weekend, my friend just purchased a D7000.  So we went to take photos together at Inglis Falls.  He borrowed my 35mm and I was using my 17-55mm.  I also brought along my Manfrotto tripod so we could get slow shutter speeds to blur the water.

I was impressed with how the photos turned out.  Here is two but be sure to check out more of them on my Flickr.  I will also post a link to my friend's Flickr account and the end of this as well as on my home page.

Without further adieu:

Inglis Falls - 17-55mm - Manfrotto Tripod

Inglis Falls - 17-55mm - Manfrotto Tripod

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Jacob's Flickr

Update: Country Shoot With Rachel Bond

Hey,

So I have the final set of photos up on Facebook and Flickr.  I hope you check them out because I really love how they turned out.

Hope you enjoy!

Update: Sneak Peek: Rachel Bond

Hey,

I was fortunate enough to work with Rachel Bond recently doing a country photo shoot.  We were worried about the rain however the bad weather held out until we were about to leave.  It was a great shoot and we had a lot of fun.  So here is a sneak peak of what we got:

Rachel Bond - Country Shoot - 50mm f/1.4

Rachel Bond - Country Shoot - 50mm f/1.4

I hope you enjoy these.  And just to note it was very difficult narrowing down what were the best photos to use from the shoot because there were many favourites.  I will toss up different photos on my Facebook Page just because there were so many great photos to choose from.  Stay posted for a link for when I put them up on Flickr.