Updates

Just thought I’d share another photo from my West Fork Hike.  Since I didn’t have a wide angle lens, I did a top to bottom pano.  Came out pretty good.


Continue Reading »

Yesterday we decided to do Oak Creek Canyon, with the major goal being West Fork.  This is one of the most famous hikes in the USA (also known as Call of the Canyon from the Zane Grey novel.)  I’ve done this hike twice before, once at Thanksgiving and once in the Winter.  Both were great.  I loved the Winter hike with snow coating the trail and the stream frozen almost solid. On Friday when we got to the parking area, it was totally jammed.  We decided to park along the highway (89A) and walk back to the trail head.  On the way one of our party fell down and skinned...


Continue Reading »

I did 2 panos yesterday. A traditional left to right pano & top to bottom pano. I did the top to bottom because I couldn't get the entire scene into the picture. (Really need to get a new wide angle lens some day.) For now I'll publish the left to right pano.


Continue Reading »

We arrived in Sedona around 3PM. Decided to rush off and check out Red Rock Crossing and the views to Cathedral Rock. I'd hoped for a dramatic sunset. The sunset was OK but it didn't really stretch out to Cathedral Rock. Turned around and used the slickrock as a foreground element.


Continue Reading »

I’m going back to Sedona on Thursday. This will be my 3rd trip in 3 years. Sedona is an amazing place with great hikes and beautiful things to photograph. Rather than looking for more places to photograph for the first time, I want to take another look at places I’ve been before and try to get a different angle on them. Here is my re-do list: - Better time of day? Get up early! - Better weather? - Try IR photo’s - HDR for sure. - Do pano’s, especially when doing big expansive views. - Work different angles, more close ups - Add people to a few shots to demonstrate scale - There...


Continue Reading »

On Wednesday I leave for Sedona.  And I know that there is no way I'm going to finish my Yellowstone & Grand Teton Galleries before I go.  I know... there are worse problems in life than being on a short schedule for Sedona.  One of my favorite places.  But I thought that I need to get some thing moving, so I decided to publish a gallery of images from the Grand Prismatic Spring (in the Midway Basin in Yellowstone.)  When I complete the Yellowstone gallery not all these images will be there.  But I can honestly say that I'm happy with all of them.  The Grand Prismatic is an amazing place. http://stetz.smugmug.com/NORTH-AMERICA/NORTHWEST/grandprismatic/10014469_EcCYN#685302710_jMmEc ...


Continue Reading »

It takes me a long time to go through the process of selecting the best photos from a shoot. I do some evaluation in Lightroom. Give the photos an initial rating, spend some time editing, perhaps apply the help of a plug in or 2. I thought that I would narrow the scope of my Grand Teton photos. Only review shots of buildings inside the park. That did speed up the process. Although I still found it hard to "give up" on some of my favorites, at least the "keepers" were similar enough to make me happy. You can see my mini gallery here: http://stetz.smugmug.com/gallery/9981942_3Evgk#682277471_ySoyV


Continue Reading »

I'm now able to post my Wordpress blog directly from Lightroom. I think that any tool that can make it easier to publish my posts is a great idea. There are several good export plugins for Lightroom available. I already have the one for Smugmug. But I hadn't heard about a blogging export tool until now. You can find at: http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lr2blog.php?sec=main


Continue Reading »

I was up until 2:30AM last night re-installing all my software after upgrading to Windows 7. I think I'm getting a performance improvement with Windows 7, but I've lost another day in processing the images from my trip to Yellowstone & Grand Teton. Thought that I'd upload a photo from a beautiful snowy day right before I left. I love weather drama.


Continue Reading »

UPDATE:  I enjoyed converting to Black & White so much that I decided to create a small gallery of B&W photos from Yellowstone.  These were taken in IR & converted using Nik Silver Effects Pro.  Here is the link to the gallery. http://stetz.smugmug.com/gallery/9892357_zNapt#673982685_Ad4td Today's post is more of a survey.  I love the other worldly look or IR photo's.  I also think that they often do a great job of being converted to Black & While.  The follwoing is an IR photo & the same photo converted to BW (using Silver Effects Pro.).  Let me know which one you prefer. ...


Continue Reading »