Uploads from Justin Smith - Photography, with geodata

Woods Hole 5

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:52:58 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's a brand new image, although I took the shot back in November of last year. This one may be processed a bit more than some of you like... I wanted to push myself a little on what I've learned about luminosity masks, selective use of orton, etc.

I'm going to print this image as a huge metal-print (40x60) soon... I really need to get any idea how the D800 images look at that size. I won't be doing any big prints (24x36 and up) in standard inkjet format, only metalprint or fujiflex.

Also, this is another example of how the D800 nearly eliminates the need for exposure blending. This is blended from two shots for focus only, all other settings were identical. No filters were used either.

Taughannock Falls Gorge

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:09:02 -0800

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Well, it's been a long time. I've been working on my website (with a lot of being lazy and not working on it), and now it's done enough to be live, so I've resumed working on photos again. If you decide to visit the site and have any problems with it, let me know. And yes, new logo / watermark as well.

Here's a last shot from the Finger Lakes, where I went back in October last year. After getting the previous shot of Taughannock Falls, I noticed this slow-moving patch of the brook reflecting the high gorge walls in the newly risen sunlight.

I went a bit light on the blending here. I could have easily made the shadows nearly as bright as the rest, but I don't think that would have looked natural. The eye expects the shadows to be a lot darker so I've lightened them only enough that detail is visible.

Taughannock Falls 2

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 04:06:43 -0800

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's how Taughannock Falls looks from below. There's an official viewing area with a stone wall and all that, but I wasn't really satisfied with that for a foreground. Of course, there are signs telling you not to leave the viewing area and wander near the water, but I'm a rebel. These leaves that collected here seemed a better foreground. This was made from only 2 exposures for focus... one shot had all the range of brightness I needed. The D800 is just that good. Of course, I bracket anyway to be on the safe side.

Hope my friends here in the US have a great holiday tomorrow, and might as well wish a great day for everyone else not in the US, too.

Nikon D800
Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8

Taughannock Falls 1

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:31:56 -0800

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Another commonly-photographed view from the Finger Lakes, this is Taughannock Falls just north a few miles from Ithaca, NY, as seen from the overlook by the road. I got here just before sunrise. I had figured that sunset would place the gorge in deep shadow, and I wasn't about to place my bet on it being overcast when I was here, so this seemed the best way to do it. There is a bit of red glow in the sky (looking west from this view), but the sun is in the opposite direction and literally just barely up.

The foliage was exactly what I had hoped for. Some may consider "peak" foliage when everything has changed into a uniform wall of reddish-orange. I happen to prefer it most like this, where the early orange trees stand out in stark contrast to the ones that haven't even started changing color yet.

Unfortunately it had been very dry the months before I went here, so the waterfall itself was a narrow ribbon of silver against the rock. It looks bigger from down in the gorge, and I will have more from there.

Nikon D800
Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8

Cascadilla Gorge

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 05:32:24 -0800

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's a shot from the aptly-named Cascadilla Gorge. This neat place is located right in Ithaca. The gorge is actually pretty deep and nothing is built right up to edge, so you can't see the urban development easily from within the gorge. For some reason, the brook here was pulling the bubbles from the cascade into a narrow band, even though the water was flowing over a much broader area. Seemed like it make a good leading line.

Unfortunately, much of the gorge was closed when I was here. I encountered a similar situation with the gorge above Ithaca Falls.

Nikon D800
Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8

Ithaca Falls

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:10:43 -0800

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

I've been slacking on getting photos processed. Here's very different shot, from Ithaca Falls. I used my 180mm to get in close for detail. The massive waterfall is covered with potential compositions like this. The whole falls is about 15,000 sq feet of terraced cascades.

I do have a wider shot of the falls, but like many other shots from this trip, I have had problems getting distant objects to be in perfect focus.

Nikon D800
Nikon 180mm f/2.8
77mm Hoya ND filter (9 stops) hand-held over the end of the lens (because the lens takes 72mm filters)

Watkins Glen #2

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:45:24 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

I guess this is the iconic view in Watkins Glen, showing Rainbow Falls on the left and the bridge across the creek. I've seen a lot of shots of here, but of course I had to have my own. Another blend of several exposures to handle the tricky lighting here, and also for depth of field.

Watkins Glen #1

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:53:31 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Alright, first one up from Watkin's Glen. This place was pretty awesome. I arrived early in the morning hoping to beat the crowd. The sky was nice and overcast most of the day. If it had been sunny, it probably would have been a lot harder to blend in the upper parts of the gorge (as it was, it still took 4-5 exposures and some tricky blending in PS).

This is Cavern Cascade, probably the tallest single-drop in the gorge, although there might be a few cascading waterfalls in there that are higher. I'm not sure. The walking path actually goes behind the waterfall, so there are a lot of people that want to get their picture taken next to it. In addition to blending for focus and exposure, I took a few different shots targeting the area behind the waterfall, so that I could easily remove all the people in the image.

Buttermilk Falls State Park #1

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:07:08 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Just getting around to processing my images from a 3 day trip to the Finger Lakes area of New York. I visited Watkins Glen, Taughannock Falls, and many other cool waterfalls and gorges.

First, here is a shot from Buttermilk Falls State Park. This is from above the main falls at the bottom of the gorge, which was running at a trickle due to a dry summer. The gorge above the main falls had plenty of things worth seeing, though.

This is also officially my first shot with the Nikon D800. It is a blend of 2 exposures for focus. Nearly everything I do from here on will be blended for focus, because the ultra-high resolution of the D800 sensor shows a narrow depth of field even with wide angle lenses when the image is viewed at 100%. Interestingly, I'll need less exposures blended for light and dark, as the RAW files capture a ton of detail in the highlights and shadows.

One of the things I knew I was going to love about this camera is that I can shoot at ISO 50 (my old D50 could only go as low as ISO 200). This helps me to be able to get longer exposures for things like waterfalls without having to put ND filters on or move the aperture outside of its optimal value.

This image on Flickr will look just like it could have come from my old D50, because the web resolution is less than half a megapixel. The important difference is that I can print this image at 24x36 inches and get more detail per square inch than my D50 will produce printed at 12x18. For me, it's all about the print.

Nikon D800
Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8

Halibut Point 10

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:13:29 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's one more from Halibut Point last weekend. This was just before leaving, the rock had these awesome cracks that I wanted to use. The color in the sky is actually to the north-northeast, so not anywhere near the actual sunset.

I may not get out again to shoot until October. Things are starting to get busy with preparing for the annual craft fair at Tower Hill, which I will be participating in again this year. I have to get a lot of prints, matting, and packaging done before then. Around the same time in October, I am hoping to be heading to the Finger Lakes area of New York. This is one of the best waterfall regions in the Eastern US, and I hope to be there to coincide with the foliage change. I'll definitely be hitting Taughannock Falls and Watkin's Glen, and may fit a few other places in as well.

Woods Hole #8

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:56:04 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

After the last shot, I left the beach, however the sky got a nice glow to it later and I decided to get a wider shot from the yard up the hill.

Woods Hole Beach #7

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:42:05 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

The is my first shot processed with Photoshop CS5. Prior to this, all my photos were processed using Photoshop 6, which is over 10 years old. Upgrading has been really great. Spot Healing tool, Lens Correction filter, Smart Objects, editing in 16-bit color, and a lot of other things have proven very useful. I'm still getting the hang of it.

This image was taken in Woods Hole while visiting family. The evening before had an absolutely epic sunset that I missed out on. At least it wasn't completely cloudless. I did not use my usual filters for this, trying to focus on exposure blending techniques. I'll have another from here.

Rocks near Annisquam

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:45:41 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

I'm a little bit on the fence with whether or not to put this on my site... Flickr is kind of my "anything goes place" though so here it is. This is from a rocky beach in Gloucester a couple weeks ago. I went here with usual suspects, Chris Lazzery and Rich Williams.

The sky looked very promising on the drive there, lots of big dramatic clouds. It seems that clouds like this always evaporate by sunset. Instead we had hazy stuff and a solid bank on the horizon (which would later bring rain). The colors seemed a bit muted as a result. Further complicating my intentions, the rocks right up near the water were covered in a thick slop of seaweed. That stuff just turns into a homogenous mess in photos. So instead I looked for something interesting in the rocks far back from the water. This was the best I could come up with, some interesting patterns and a leading line.

I used the Singh-Ray Blue & Gold to get a bit more color out of the sky. It's also responsible for the blue color in the water, which is a bit funky but does provide some needed contrast. This shot is a blend of 5 shots for focus and for exposure. One thing which frustrated me for this shoot was the center column of my tripod, which prevented me from getting even closer to the interesting rock patterns. I need to get rid of that part. Unfortunately the top plate which the ballhead attaches to seems permanently stuck to the column. I may have to order a new top plate to use.

I hope to get some interesting shots from NH when I go backpacking in a few weeks.

Mount Monadnock #2

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:12:19 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's another from Mount Monadnock, taken a while after sunset when the sky was on fire. This was a much simpler shot than the last one, mainly just done with grad filters and not much blending work.

Flickr has been pretty horrible the past few weeks in terms of load times and stuff. I swear I have to click every link two or three times to get it to work. Thinking maybe it's not worth it staying here...

If you are in Boston and need an excuse to burn some time away, I have a few images on display at UMass Boston for this week in the Campus Bookstore. I'll try to get a shot of the display tomorrow.

Mount Monadnock 1

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:31:34 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

A few weeks ago, I went up Mount Monadnock with my brother in the late afternoon. It was timed so that we would be coming down to this sub-peak called Bald Rock at about sunset. Now, most winters there would still be snow at the time I was here, and that's what I had hoped for when I originally planned this, but this is not most winters. Still, the light on the mountain was pretty nice, getting filtered by hazy clouds at sunset.

This was done using the new techniques I've been working on. Processing took probably about an hour and a half. I like how the mountain and trees came out, but something's just a tad off with the sky. I think part of the problem is that there was very little contrast in the actual sky, and blending using luminosity masks can actually lower contrast, so you end up having to bring contrast back which can lead to posterization, or weirdness like this. I still used my grad filters for this, but I'm tempted to try just a blended shot next time I get out (along with focus blending - really want to try that!).

The sunset actually ended up being pretty epic, and I'll post a shot from later on another day.

Minot Beach #2

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:04:31 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's another from Minot Beach in March... this one also uses my older techniques for processing. The clouds mostly faded away by the time the sun was in optimal position to light things up, but this one cloud did pick up a bit of light. Rocks off-shore were minimizing the waves so I backed up (or rather, went around to avoid making footprints) and shot this angle where some water was running into the ocean around a large embedded rock in the sand.

Buttermilk Falls State Park #3

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:53:05 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

If you've checked my website at all the past couple days, you've probably found that none of these images are there yet. Unfortunately, the website is kind of locked in time right now as I am developing a new website to replace it.

I square-cropped this to remove distracting elements at the top. Just another view of the amazing carved out gorge above Buttermilk Falls. If I were to print this I am pretty sure I would lighten it quite a bit, but on the monitor it seems to look good this dark.

Buttermilk Falls State Park #2

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:59:49 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's another shot from the gorge above Buttermilk Falls. The gorge is full of small cascades like this. I shot a many others, but only a few are usable. One thing I did not do correctly with many shots: I was planning on blending both for focus and exposure, and I didn't realize that to do both types of blending you really need to have a full set of exposures for each focus you use. Otherwise there are going to be problems. In the case of this shot, I was able to work through the problems as there was only a very small area that was overexposed, which I solved by cropping to a 4x5 ratio to keep out the bright wall at the top of the original image.

This shot makes it look like I was far from civilization, but the city of Ithaca is only a mile away from here.

Halibut Point Starfish

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:46:50 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Here's a sunset shot from Halibut Point in Rockport, MA. I was pretty excited when I heard a few kids nearby yelling at each other that they had found starfish. There was the solution to my foreground dilemma.

This ended up being one of the more challenging images to process that I've done, and I'm not completely satisfied with the results. Part of the problem is that I didn't bring a polarizer, which would have allowed me to capture more of the underwater detail in the rest of the pool. This is blended from 4 shots. I took 8 shots originally, with 2 focus settings and 4 exposure settings. I ended up only needing the 2nd brightest and the darkest images. One of the things that made shooting 8 exposures difficult is that these buggers don't stay in one place.

This tidal pool is also full of common periwinkels, various sizes of crabs, and small anemones. It's a little mini-ecosystem that only connects to the ocean at high tide. Pretty cool.

Salem Willows pier

nobody@flickr.com (Justin Smith - Photography) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:30:50 -0700

Justin Smith - Photography posted a photo:

Had a productive day of photography yesterday, shooting both sunrise and sunset with my friend Chris Lazzery. Here's the first shot, from the sunrise shoot. This was taken at a small east-facing beach at Salem Willows, in Salem MA. This was the first time I've gotten to shoot a pier like this (aside from ruined piers in East Boston). The sunrise was cloudless, but still vivid due to extreme haze. In fact, the sun was a dark red circle as it came up, quite easy to look at (although it still made me nervous so I didn't look long).

For sunset, we went to Halibut Point where the sky was doing very different things... I'll have those up another time.