David's Images of the Day Photoblog
I drove to Fort De Soto park early in the morning with a goal of photographing the sun rising through the Sunshine Skyway bridge. I then spent a few hours photographing birds at various locations at the park.
On the second day of the Page Arizona Workshop with Winston Hall we started with a session in Upper Antelope Canyon. The upper and lower portions of Antelope Canyon are narrow slot canyons on the Navajo reservation near Page Arizona. The Upper canyon is all at ground level and thus easier to enter and exit without needing to climb ladders. The downside for photographers is that more people tour the Upper Canyon. We had a great guide that metered the passage of other tourist giving us time to compose and execute our images. The canyons are favorites for photographers because of the constantly changing light and textures. The canyons can be a challenge to photograph because of the wide range of light levels well beyond the capabilities of digital camera sensors. The light was a bit flatter in the Upper Canyon vs. the Lower Canyon yesterday. As such, I didn’t need to use HDR when processing the images.
Some images taken while walking along the Mississippi Riverwalk near the convention center during some time off from the American Chemical Society spring national meeting. The images were all processed using Capture One Pro, including conversion to B&W. Compared with before the hurricane, the area around the convention center has undergone significant urban development and improvement.
I woke up early, and walked to the harbor where I saw a group rowing a Hawaiian outrigger canoe with a cruise ship in the background. I liked the juxtaposition of historical and modern. We then checked out of the hotel and traveled to Volcano National Park. After checking into the lodge, we went for a photo-walk down a tropical rain forest trail. The lessons here included using a flash, how to manually focus a macro lens, how to adjust the focus for camera viewfinder, and always thinking about the composition.
It is hard to believe that the day before I was taking pictures of wildlife in Colorado. I read a note on the Thom Hogan site a month earlier that he had a late opening for this workshop so signed up as quick as I could. At that time I was working 2 weeks a month in Boulder, so it would be a bit easier to fly to Hawaii. I previously purchased his D200 and D2xs eBooks and wanted to learn more about the cameras and become a better photographer. For the first three nights we stayed at the Kona Seaside Hotel. The group of four students and Thom met in the lobby at 15:00 for our first lecture. We then walked down to the beach to photograph the beach, some tidal pools, and sunset. Part of this first shoot was for Thom to observe our photographic practices and skills so he could customize individual instruction for the rest of the workshop.
I used different tools to process the last two images. I think I like the HDR version better because the sun is a disk and not blown out, although the sky/clouds are better in the first version.
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