Charlestons Past

The Charleston workshop starts tomorrow and the dogwoods are blooming which makes it great for photography. This composition with new blooms and Spanish moss framing these old graves brought out deep feeling of peace when I was photographing this morning.

Charlestons Past

I used Topaz BW Effects 2 to process this image.

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Spring Azaleas in Charleston

The last few days I have been scouting out locations for the workshop that starts in three days and everything looks good for the spring bloom and the weather. The Azaleas in this reflection image look nice but in three days when the clients arrive it will be exploding with color.

Spring Reflections-Charleston

Raw image often look great until you run them through a little post processing.

Raw unprocessed image

Dark Shadows- Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston is one of my favorite places to teach and from late March through early April is a great time to catch the spring bloom. On the way in to Charleston last night I was able to check out a new location that friend suggested I photograph. The old Sheldon Church framed by live oaks and Spanish Moss has a haunting feel. I have been capturing images in Charleston for 20 years and there is always something new to photograph.

Sheldon Church, Charleston

After capturing this image I used Photoshop to Clone and Heal the ramp and a few other distracting objects before turning it into a black and white in Topaz BW Effects 2 to create the shadows, highlights and great textures.

Sheldon Church-Raw Image

The raw unprocessed image give me a nice starting point.

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Charleston Doors

Charleston if full of wonderful wrought iron gates and textured walls from america’s early history.  These gates and walls invite you to spend time photographing them.

After capturing this image I used Topaz BW Effects 2 to create the shadows, highlights and great textures in this Black and White image.

Gated Charleston

This raw unprocessed image is a nice image  until you see it along side the processed black and white.

Charleston Doors

Black and White of Three Windows of Charleston

An old traveling and photography friend from my Navy days liked the three window image from Charleston that I posted a couple of days ago and asked if it would look good in Black and White. This image casts some wonderful shadows created by the Morning Sun and I think it does look better as a Black and White than it did in color.

Three Windows. Charleston-Silver Efex Pro

To process this image I used Silver Efex Pro 2 part of the Nik Software suite makes this image pop the way the old B&W films would and for this image I used the following settings shown in the screen capture. Green filter, Kodak 100 TMAX Pro, Copper Toner 16, Burn All Edges Image Border-Off.

Silver Efex Pro 2 work flow

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The Watchman in Zion National Park

The Watchman is one of the great locations to shoot in Zion National Park. On the brisk fall morning that I captured this image the wind was whipping through the prairie grasses and creating a nice motion blur in the foreground and the rising sun was setting the sky on fire. Shooting manually at F/11 there were a variety of time exposures and ISO combinations that I tried and this exposure at 1/15th of a second at ISO 1600 is the one I liked the most.  There is nice motion in the foreground without losing all of the detail.

Watchman – Zion National Park

After a little exposure and highlight adjustments in Camera Raw I processed this image using Topaz Clarity, then Tonal Contrast in Nik Software. At this point the image looked great but the sky looked a little grainy so I selected the sky and used Topaz DeNoise to remove the grain.

Watchman – Zion National Park – Raw Image

 

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