After my run this weekend, I decided to swing by a couple locations I have had on the radar for a while. Surprisingly, this facility is fairly accessible at 7am on a Sunday. I approached it from a variety of angles, however because the sky was as clear as it has been in quite some time, I didn’t have the backdrop of interest I was looking for. I did find a couple of interesting foreground elements to incorporate, but nothing was really working. I thought to myself, what can I do with huge white silos and a blue sky? My decision was simple….Orange Filter! I applied an orange filter in my Silver Efex pro conversion, darkened the sky up, and created the contrast I was looking for to surround these structures.
Capture Notes:
Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16 ATX Pro
Gitzo Traveler
Exposure: 1/4000 sec
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 14 mm
Exposure Bias: -2 EV
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes:
Capture (1 images)
Nik Siler Efex Pro – High contrast orange filter
NIk Viveza 2 – Selective boost to structure/brightness in foreground
Sized for web
Nik Sharpener 2.0 – Adaptive 40%
LightAsMagic.com
Hi, I’m new to your site.
What is ‘Capture’ software. I was looking for it on the web and can’t find it?
Thank you for including your Capture and Processing notes.
Thx,
Val
I guess I should have clarified that. Â I have debated moving that notation into the capture notes. Â It doesn’t refer to any software, it actually denotes how many images I bracketed. Â Sorry for any confusion. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Will do Val! I am working on a couple of videos that outline those very items. Until then, here are some quick notes.
HDR Workflow: I import directly from my camera to an ‘OnDeck’ folder where I user Adobe Bridge to build my bracket stacks and organize brackets into project folders. Once that is done, I use NX2 to preform a batch raw conversion on the RAW files in the respective folders. I then use Photomatix 3.2.8 to HDR/ToneMap the resulting .tiffs. Once that is done I save off the tonemapped tiff and the photomatix settings file to the same project directory folder. After that, I open up the ToneMapped .tiff in PS, do all my edits, (occasionally save it as InProgress.psd to the same directory) or just flatten it and save it off as [ImageTitle].tiff to the project directory. In the last step I backup the project directory to DVD and DROBO. The final image is imported into an Aperture 3.0 gallery, an iPhoto gallery, and saved off to a remote server store.”
NON HDR Workflow: Import into Aperture 3.0 “OnDeck” project and apply meta data. Then, when I begin to apply edits, I organize into a more meaningful project. If there is an image I really want to dial in. I will export the master RAW from aperture then convert it in NX2 or Adobe Camera Raw. Once it is a .TIFF, I process in Photoshop using PS, Noiseware, NIK, and Topaz (depending on what I want to do). After I am done, it is imported into an Aperture and iPhoto Gallery and backed up on my DROBO and a remote server.
Once I start running out of storage space, my WF might change a bit.
I hope that helps until I get the videos together. Let me know if you need any clarification.
Thanks for asking.
Justin
p.s. I will keep trying to share the inspiration!
I love what you did with this. And, the title is perfect. Even though I don’t have the nifty software you’ve got, I like hearing about your process. Thanks…..
Thanks Julie. Looks like you don’t need any nifty software, your images are great as they are. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
Take care!
Thank you Justin,
Would you mind sharing your initial workflow, eg. how you get your memory card images to your computer. Since you shoot Nikon, do you use Nikon Transfer and Capture NX2 before you move on to PS/LR etc.?
Thx again and please keep posting great images and inspiration!