Day: February 25, 2011

One-Year Ago (25-February-2010) — California

Photography Workshop “Yosemite in Winter: A Season of Contrast” with Michael Mariant. Day 1: Yosemite National Park.

NIK just released version 2 of their Silver Efex Pro plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom. I have been using version 1 of Silver Efex since it was released for converting digital images to monochrome (black & white). The new version has the look and feel of NIK’s HDR plugin. The first image is the original taken a year ago during the “Yosemite in Winter: A Season in Contrast” photography workshop (RAW image processed with Capture One Pro, and sharpened with Focus Magic in Photoshop CS5), the second is the B&W version converted using the new Silver Efex 2.

Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic. (David J Mathre)
Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic.
Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic, NIK Silver Efex Pro 2. (David J Mathre)
Yosemite Valley in Winter. Nikonians 2010 Yosemite Winter Workshop Day 1. Image taken with a Nikon D3s and 50 mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 200, f/8, 1/40 sec). Capture One Pro 6. Adobe Photoshop CS5, Focus Magic, NIK Silver Efex Pro 2.

Three-Years Ago (25-February-2008) — Colorado

Elderhostel “Photography in the Southwest” Workshop Day 1. Star Trails.

The following image is a composite of five 30 minute night sky exposures taken during a Elderhostel/Road Scholar photography workshop at Kelly Place outside of Cortez, Colorado in 2008. It was really dark other than the Christmas lights at the main building, and you could see a lot of stars in the sky. I moved the tripod as far away from the lights as possible and decided to do this series with a fisheye lens that would give a 180° field of view. The five images were combined using Startrails. This program is old (only works with jpg or 8-bit tif files) but works better than when I try to merge the images as layers in Photoshop.

Winter night sky looking north at Kelley's Place near Cortez, Colorado. Composite of four images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, 16 mm, f/2.8, 30 min). (David J Mathre)
Winter night sky looking north at Kelley’s Place near Cortez, Colorado. Composite of four images taken with a Nikon D3 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens (ISO 200, 16 mm, f/2.8, 30 min). (David J Mathre)



Individual images in this slide show can be viewed here.