Iceland (Part 6) Southern Region

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Robin S. Kent

Map of Chapter 6 Crop JPEG Map of Southern Region

Our next overnight was at the Hrifunes Guest House, a charming inn off the beaten track. Hrifunes is jointly owned by Hadda Gisladottir who traveled with us for the first several days of our journey and by our photography guide Haukur Snorrason. The meals are served family style and we can attest to the excellent skills of their kitchen staff and the comfort of the rooms. As I mentioned in Chapter 1 of this odyssey, Hadda primarily manages the guest house while Haukur primarily manages the photo tour operation.

D-17-06-12-001 (Iceland) View from the Reading Room, Hrifunes Guest House

D-17-06-12-002 JPEG (Iceland) Dining Area of Hrifunes Guest House

The next morning we headed off for the Valley of Thor, an area without roads, bridges, hotels, or restaurants. But that will be the subject of the next post. We still had a number of stops on the way.

It didn’t take long for Haukur to abandon the main highway for a destination he had previously spotted from his plane when scouting for remote photo locations. Needless to say, we had this location all to ourselves.

D-17-06-11-7213 (Iceland) Undisclosed Location, Southern Iceland

After returning to the main road, we spotted a large field of lupine that seemed to be calling for us to come and photograph it.

D-17-06-11-7267_74 (Iceland) Field of Lupine

The small village of Vik is an excellent place to stop for lunch and/or stroll along a black sand beach and/or capture some images of the hillside church above the village.

D-17-06-11-7314 (Iceland) Hillside Church Overlooking Vik and Reynisdrangar Sea Stacks

After lunch, we were planning to check out the Dyrholaey Lighthouse, but the road was jammed with traffic and so we opted for a nearby spot which gave us an excellent overview of Arnardrangur, a massive basalt monolith standing on Reynisfjara, the black sand beach.

D-17-06-11-7359_64-Pano (Iceland) Arnardrangur, with Reynisdrangar Sea Stcks in the Distance

A short distance from here, we came upon Skogafoss, one of the biggest waterfalls in Iceland. Its name comes from the Skoga River which tumbles over a 200-foot cliff befopre continuing to the sea some 3 miles away. At one time, the coastline was marked by these cliffs, but receded long ago. The river below the falls holds a large salmon and char population and is popular with fishermen between July and October.

D-17-06-11-7388 (Iceland) Skogafoss, Mid-Afternoon Light

This picture is somewhat deceptive because this is a popular tourist stop and several hundred people were there with us. But almost all were behind us to avoid the mist or climbing the 370 steps to the top of the falls where there is an overlook.

As one travels along the Route 1 in Iceland there are numerous farms on what appears to be a wonderfully serene landscape of waterfalls and/or snowcapped mountains. We stopped briefly at one that seemed especially nice as shown in the image below.

D-17-06-11-7400 (Iceland Blog 2) Family Farm in Idyllic Setting

But upon examining an explanatory sign next to the entrance road, we discovered that there is a downside to some locations. In the case of this property, that downside revealed itself on April 14, 2010 with the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. We would be headed in the general direction of that volcano next. But Haukur didn’t seem concerned.

Google Image

Next: Into the Valley of Thor……

Close to Home

Posted on June 3, 2016 by Robin S. Kent

Since I’m on the road today, this post combines the monthly One Friday Focus, sponsored by Stacy Fischer’s Visual Venturing Blog and a short piece inspired by a conversation last week with a fellow photographer. Meanwhile, I’m off on another short trip this weekend, hopefully to capture a few images of the Milky Way over the Atlantic Ocean. So once again, this post will serve double duty.

Last week Kim, a fellow photographer in the Great Falls Studios organization, described her specialty as photographing wildlife in her backyard. Later, while reflecting on what she had been saying, I realized that I had been doing only a little of this over the years. Other than a major effort on a pair of nesting bluebirds, I have not really concentrated on seeking subject matter just outside my windows. Her stories made me think that perhaps I should look harder. But for now, I decided to search through my files for some images that I already had taken to see what did happen to catch my eye. The one rule: they had to have been taken from a spot within 100 feet of my house. So, for what it is worth, here they are:

Kent June 2016 Solar Halo

Solar Halo

(Technical: Nikon D200 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 18mm handheld; 1/1,000th sec. @ f/16, ISO 200)

Kent June 2016 Snow

Snow on Tree

(Technical: Nikon D200 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 120mm handheld; 1/160th sec. @ f/6.3, ISO 200)

Kent June 2016 Magnolia

Magnolia

(Technical: Nikon D800E with 60mm f/2.8 Micro lens on tripod; 1/100th sec. @ f/8, ISO 400)

Heron D-16-05-21-5862

Blue Heron Taking Flight

(Technical: Nikon D810 with 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm on tripod; 1/500th sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 3200)

Kent June 2016 Butterfly

Tiger Swallowtail on Purple Coneflower

(Technical: Nikon D800E with 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm handheld; 1/1250th sec. @ f/6.3, ISO 800)

Bluebird D-16-05-02-9754

Female Bluebird Bringing Dinner

(Technical: Nikon D800E with 50mm f/1.8 lens; 1/2000th sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 800)

This image was taken last month but is the same birdhouse used in my post a year ago. I was planning a new approach this year. Readers may recall that previously I had used a 200mm focal length lens on a camera inside the house and an off camera flash about six feet from the nest. The flash was triggered by a wireless remote system (Pocket Wizard) but a single flash only provided a small amount of fill light. This year, I planned to use Nikon’s wireless remote that would trip the camera’s shutter and place the camera about 10 feet from the nest. I would be able to fire the shutter in continuous mode (not feasible with flash) while remaining inside the house. Unfortunately, I had only one day of shooting thanks to a sustained period of rainy weather. But should the birds return next year, I may have better luck.

One Friday Focus

This month’s image was another interesting challenge, many thanks to David Croker for providing it. As a reminder, the 1PF Challenge is sponsored by Stacy Fischer of Visual Venturing and anyone can participate. Details can be found at Visual Venturing .

David’s original RAW image is shown below. It offers a variety of possibilities and started as usual by going through some standard steps of image prep (setting B&W points, highlights, shadows, etc. in Adobe Camera Raw). Following this, I opened the file in Photoshop and tried several approaches such as a straight black and white print which looked very nice, but I finally decided to go on a more radical direction.

2016 06 1PF Original

This usually means a foray into the Filter Gallery, which is fast becoming my “go-to” place for this monthly event. Needless to say, I do not possess a single plug-in app so my choices are somewhat restricted, comparatively speaking.

But I digress. The tool I picked is the so-called Glowing Edges under the “Stylize” Tab. Although I have used this one before, it behaves quite unpredictably (at least for me) so the results can be quite different in each case. There are three adjustment sliders to control the effects and the final settings were: Edge Width: 2; Edge Brightness: 17; and Smoothness: 8. It was starting to look pretty decent, but the lovely blue sky in the upper portion was now a black void and desperately needed help. Rather than just crop it out, I used the clone tool to copy sections of the lower clouds. This, of course, created a new problem–the newly created clouds were not reflected in the water below.

The solution was to select the upper clouds, then copy them into a new layer. I then used the Edit–>Transform–>Flip Vertical function to flip the layer and then I dragged it down to the bottom of the image. An actual reflection should be softer and not as bright as the original object so I used the gaussian blur tool and a decrease in the opacity of the layer to create a look that matched the reflections that were already there. The final image is shown below.

Robin Kent 2016 06 1PF Final Final

Thanks again to David for providing this month’s image and thanks also to Stacy for keeping this herd of cats heading in a generally productive direction. Be sure and check out the other contributions at June One Photo Focus. One again, there will be an amazing variety of interpretations. In the meantime,

Keep Shooting….

New York City

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Robin S. Kent

First Friday! One Photo Focus and More!

This year is really speeding by; I can’t believe it’s already May. I’ve just returned from a short trip to New York City and it’s also time for Stacy Fischer’s monthly OnePhoto Focus Event, so this post will be serving double duty.

In the case of NYC, I managed to squeeze in brief visits to three of the city parks in between some other business.

The Pond, Central Park, Early Morning

William Seward Monument, Madison Square Park, Early Afternoon

William Seward, a New York native, was Secretary of State under President Abraham Lincoln, but is probably best known for his role in the purchase of Alaska, originally described by his critics as “Seward’s Folly.”

Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain, Bryant Park at Twilight

Josephine Shaw Lowell lived most of her life in New York City where she founded a number of progressive reform organizations during the 19th century including the still operating National Consumers League. Her husband, a Union soldier, was killed one year after their marriage and one month before the birth of her daughter. She never remarried. The fountain, installed 8 years after her death, is said to be New York City’s first major memorial dedicated to a woman.

Bryant Park at Night

Bryant Park, located between 5th- 6th Avenues and 40th-42nd Streets, has had an interesting historyover the past 240 years. Retreating American rebel forces under Geaorge Washington passed through this area in 1776 as they fled the British in the Battle of Long Island. In the mid-1800s, it was the site of a massive resevoir, part of a city water distribution system considered one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century. Shortly afterwards, the city’s first major tourist event, the Crystal Palace Exhibition was inagurated next to the resevoir and attracted over 1 million visitors. During the Civil War it was an encampment for Union troops. A few decades later, the space took on its current name to honor William Cullen Bryant, who was the longtime editor of the New York Evening Post, a civic reformer, and romantic poet. A major redesign in the 1930s created the space as we see it today. A detailed history on the park can be found here.

OnePhoto Focus

This month’s image was a lot of fun to work with, many thanks to Julie Powell for providing it. As a reminder, the 1PF Challenge is sponsored by Stacy Fischer of Visual Venturing and anyone can participate. Details can be found at Visual Venturing .

As usual, I first opened the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw and followed a standard workflow (Setting black and white points, etc.) before opening the file in Photoshop. The starting point is shown in the image below.

Original Image, after Adobe Camera Raw Adjustments

At this point, I thought a late night sci-fi interpretation might be interesting, so I experimented with the Filter Gallery for a few minutes and settled on the following steps:

A duplicate image of the Background Layer was created and I then applied the “Glowing Edges” filter to the Background copy layer (Filter–>Filter Gallery–>Stylize–>Glowing Edges). The settings were Edge Width=2; Edge Brightness=17; Smoothness=8. The layer’s opacity was reduced to 61% to allow a certain amount of the original scene to soften the dramatic effect of the filter tool. I then created yet another copy of the Background Layer and then applied the Trace Contour effect (Filter–>Stylize–>Trace Contour). The Level was set at 89 and the Edge was set at “Upper.” The opacity of this layer was set at 13% to give the filter just a slight effect on the image. The final image is shown below.

Final Image

Thanks again to Julie Powel for supplying us this image and thanks again to Stacy for managing this monthly event. It is always great to see what others have done with the same image, so check them out at OnePhoto Focus May 2016. In the meantime,

Keep Shooting…..

It’s Later Than You Think

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Robin S. Kent

Spring is arriving early in Washington, DC this year and time is running out for those wanting to partake of the annual visual treats that emerge after winter every year. The cherry blossoms still have a ways to go, but there is much to be seen already. A good place to start is the Smithsonian Institution’s Enid Haupt Garden on Independence Avenue. I visited it late yesterday afternoon and found the magnolia trees in perfect condition.

Smithsonian 01

Moongate Garden and Smithsonian Castle

(Nikon D810 on tripod, with 24-70mm f.2.8 lens extended to 26mm; exposure: 1/60th sec. @ f/16, ISO 400; two vertical images photomerged)

When I moved to the opposite side of the Moongate pool, another opportunity presented itself.

Smithsonian 02

Magnolia Tree and West Wing, Smithsonian Castle

(Nikon D810 on tripod, with 24-70mm f.2.8 lens extended to 50mm; exposure: 1/30th sec. @ f/16, ISO 400; approximately 45 minutes before sunset)

The above image is a view toward the north. But there was more. The setting sun occasionally found an opening in the clouds and provided a few brief illuminations of the Arts and Industries Building to the east as shown in the image below.

Smithsonian 04

Magnolia Trees, Enid Haupt Garden

(Nikon D810 on tripod, with 24-70mm f.2.8 lens extended to 66mm; exposure: 1/13th sec. @ f/16, ISO 400; approximately 40 minutes before sunset)

Update: A check on the cherry blossoms early this morning (March 11) showed that it will be at least a few days before they are ready for their moment to shine.

OnePhoto Focus (and More)

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Robin S. Kent

This is the first Friday of the month and that means it’s time for Stacy Fischer’s OnePhoto Focus, where photographers from all over take their turn on the same image. The range of interpretations is truly impressive, and you can find the links to the other submissions at Visual Venturing.

But first, a quick trip to the front yard where some butterflies seem to be evaluating the worthiness of some flowers growing there. Hard not to pick up the camera and walk 30 feet to the subject.

Cabbage White

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Female Dark Form)?

I am not certain about the identities of the above three butterflies, especially the one immediately above. If there are any experts out there, I would be most interested in any corrections they might have. At any rate, all three photos were taken with a Nikon D880E, handheld, using a 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Various focal lengths and shutter speeds, all shot at f/9.0, ISO 1600.

Now back to our regularly scheduled post, OnePhoto Focus.

This month, the challenge image was submitted by Katie Prior. Many thanks to her for allowing us the use of her photograph, shown below.

Original Image by Katie Prior

As usual, I opened the image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and made a series of fairly standard adjustments (setting black and white points, claity, and vibrance). The result of this first stage is shown below.

Katie Prior’s Image after ACR Processing

This is a case where I got caught up in the process and failed to keep notes. After opening the image in Photoshop, it seemed that Black and White would be the most promising approach, so my first step was to create a Black and White adjustment layer. I then added a few Curves Adjustment layers and a gradient layer, but while the image was becoming more dramatic as a pure B&W, it seemed to missing something. So I used another Curves Adjustment layer but instead chose (I think) the Cross Process preset. That made it a little more interesting. I then switched tactics and began to simplify by turning off the Black and White Adjustment layer and then all but two Curves Adjustment layers (removing 6 in all). At the end, the image had only 3 layers, the background layer (as it came from the ACR), a standard Curve Adjustment layer, and the Cross Process layer.

Final Image

Please chack out the many other interpretations of Katie’s image by visiting VisualVenturing.com. I haven’t seen any of the other posts yet , but based on previous episodes, there is no telling what kind of amazing creativity you will find–mystical scenery, romantic lighting, prehistoric creatures, perhaps even an appearance by the Loch Ness Monster. But it will be entertaining.

Keep Shooting…….

Virginia Bluebell Bonanza

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Robin S. Kent

Every year in mid-April, a few wooded areas in northern Virginia (as well as Maryland) are briefly transformed with dazzling carpets of blue. It seems only certain places, usually bordering a stream or the Potomac River itself, have the perfect conditions for a magical wildflower, the Virginia bluebell.

Virginia bluebells & other wildflowers along Potomac River side channel, 2009

The plant has a fleeting existence above ground. They appear when only a few weeks of warm weather remain before the life giving sunlight is blocked out by the emerging leaves of the overhead tree canopy. On the Virginia side of the Potomac, large tracts can be found in public places such as Riverbend Park along the Potomac River and Bull Run Regional Park along Cub Run.

Another location, which requires permission to enter, is the Madeira School, located in McLean, Virginia along the Potomac River. One morning last week, when the blooms were at their peak, I tagged along with fellow photographer and blogger Stacy Fischer who did have permission for a photo shoot at Madeira. Please check out her report by clicking here.

Here are a few iumages from that morning. Some technical notes are included at the bottom keyed to the numbers in parentheses.

View from a bluff above the Potomac as it exits Mather Gorge (1)

The trail leading to Black Pond (2)

Bluebells, with Black Pond in background (3)

Black Pond, spring fed and almost completely encircled by a bedrock terrace (4)

Outlet stream from Black Pond (5)

Moss covered log and bluebells

*Some technical notes:

Image 1: Telephoto image cropped for equivalent of 250mm view;

Image 2: Two images combined with Photomerge in Photoshop

Image 3: Two wide angle(36 mm) images; one focused on flowers, second on pond & rocks, then supermimposed on each other in Photoshop. Masking technique used to reveal only portions in focus.

Image 4: Three images combined with Photomerge in Photoshop.

Image 5: Single image, but difficult lighting required 6 Curves Adjustment layers and two Gradient layers in Photoshop.

Image 6: Two telephoto (200 mm) images; one focused on log, second on bluebells, then supermimposed on each other in Photoshop. Masking technique used to reveal only portions in focus. Should have taken two more images because log on right side and moss on left side are not sharp. There is very little depth of field with telephoto images of close objects, even at F/16.

Thanks again to Stacy for inviting me along. I’ve been an avid fan of her Visual Venturing Blog since I discovered it early last year and her AfterBefore Friday Forum series has been great fun.

ABFriday Forum–Week 45

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Robin S. Kent

It’s Friday, and time for all post-processing aficionados to gather around the campfire at Stacy Fischer’s Visual Venturing Emporium to swap stories about their creative wizardry. My submission to the ritual is a simple tale, an homage to Mother Nature’s renewal of life cycle, also known as spring, here in Virginia. All of the other stories are centrally located for your convenience at Stacy’s site, and the link to them is located at the end of this post.

The cherry blossoms are fading here, but the dogwood, redbud, and Virginia bluebells are emerging. And soon we will see the English bluebells, at least where they have been planted. Looking back to last year, the English bluebells were at their peak on May 8^th as I found when looking for a timely example for this week’s ABFriday Forum. As I recall, a bit of stealth was required to sneak into the backyard of a nearby house, and there was time for only a few exposures. The image chosen was opened in Adobe Camera RAW and the original version is shown below.

Original Unprocessed Image

(Technical data: Nikon D800E on tripod with 70-200mm f2.8 lens extended to 200mm; Exposure: 1/4 sec. @f/16, ISO 100)

After setting the White and Black points, some additional tweaking was necessary. Highlights were reduced (-70), Shadows opened up (+23), and I pushed harder than the usual +30 on both Clarity and Vibrance (+43 on both). The result is shown below.

After RAW Processing

From here, it seemed only two changes were needed. First, a slight increase in overall contrast,which was accomplished with the Adjustment Layer Curves option, selecting the preset “Linear Contrast” and the blend mode stayed at “Normal”. The result, shown below,slightly darkens the green foliage at the top and the rocks near the waterfall.

After Overall Curves Adjustment

But the foreground is still way too bright. So, using the polygon lasso tool, the lower half of the image was selected and a second Adjustment Layer Curves was used. The image below shows the area in red that was was masked from the effect of the adjustment. The setting on the adjustment layer is indicated with the blue (teal) arrow.

Curves Adjustment on Foreground

This seemed to be sufficient and the final result is shown below.

Final Result

Please take a look at the submissions by other participants at Stacy’s Visual Venturing Blog by clicking here.

Keep shooting….

After-Before Friday Forum Week 22

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Robin S. Kent

Original Raw Image

Stacy Fischer’s blog VisualVenturing hosts the weekly After-Before Friday Forum that provides a unique opportunity for photographers to exchange ideas about post-processing their images. There is always something new to learn from this exchange. This week’s Forum will be up later this morning and can be found here.

My submission for this week’s Forum was taken a few years ago in Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France. It was a cloudy day which can be really helpful for photographing flowers. But, as usual, the gardens were crowded with visitors so the best strategy was to search for individual blooms. This little fellow was seemingly calling out for a portrait so I gave it a try. The “Before” image above is the original RAW file with no adjustments.

A quick inspection indicates that, unless some special effects are being considered, the image does not seem to require any heroic measures. The standard workflow began with the Adobe Camera Raw dialog window. It seemed that the image needed to be a little darker overall to capture the mood of the cloudy day and also could use some added contrast. The contrast slider by itself was too harsh, so after experimenting with a combination of the Whites, Blacks, Shadows, Highlights, and Contrast controls the most appealing combination resulted in the settings shown in the screen capture below.

Adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw

The changes were as follows: Exposure decreased to – 0.40; Contrast increased to +35; Highlights decreased to -28; Shadows decreased to -3; Whites decreased to -15; Blacks increased to +11; Clarity increased to +24; Vibrance increased to +27. The resulting image is shown below.

Image After Adobe Raw Adjustments

The image was then opened in Photoshop. The only step remaining was to create a vignette to help bring the viewer’s attention to the central subject and give the image a little more depth (3-D effect?) to separate the subject from the background. There are many ways to create a vignette and these were the steps I followed (see image below).

I used the Elliptical Marquee tool to select an oval shape around the central flower, making sure the “Feather” was set for a high number (usually above 50 pixels). But since the area to be darkened is everything outside the oval selection, the next step was to click on SelectàInverse. (See yellow arrow) I next opened a Curves Adjustment Layer, set the Blend Mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 50%, and changed the layer name to “Vignette.” (See red arrows). The curves histogram was not changed from the default setting. Depending on the effect you are looking for, there is a lot of flexibility by using the controls for feather in the selection and the amount of opacity in the layer.

The final result is shown in the image below. As you can see, the difference with the vignette is quite subtle. Thoughts from readers would be welcome.

Final Image with Vignette Added

Once again thanks to Stacy Fisher for keeping the Forum on track. The other submissions can be found at her Visual Venturing post here. Please check them out. And don’t miss this Forum next week; there will be a “twist” to the proceedings. Stacy has sworn us all to secrecy, but it should be fun.

Summer Specials

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Robin S. Kent

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC is famed for its lotus display that peaks in late July. This year I found time for only one brief visit about five weeks ago. But I did manage to capture a few images which are shown below. The most recent report I have on the status of the blooms is pretty dated–July 31st. They apparently were looking very good on that day. If you are thinking of going there now, it would be best to check ahead. Here is the link the the Kenilwoth Aquatic Gardens website. The best time to go is early morning.

Pollinator Hovering

Single Lotus

Both images were taken with a Nikon D800E on a tripod, 70-200mm lens with an exposure of 1/640th sec. @ ISO 400. The apertures varied only slightly, about f/4 ,and the lens was close to fully extended.

If all goes well next week, I should have an image or two from Yosemite National Park. If Mother Nature is kind to me, I’ll have some images quite different from these.

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Stop, Look, and See..

Tag Archives: Flowers

Iceland (Part 6) Southern Region

Close to Home

New York City

It’s Later Than You Think

OnePhoto Focus (and More)

Virginia Bluebell Bonanza

ABFriday Forum–Week 45

After-Before Friday Forum Week 22

Summer Specials

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