Bringing Chaos into the Ordinary
This is underneath the pier at Fort Myers Beach in Florida. Guess that’s why I called it Under The Pier And Dreaming. I’m original like that.
This was done in HDR using Aurora 2019. One image and done. I haven’t shot bracketed images in about forever when you can do HDR with one anymore. The program does a good job with just one image so why bother.
Enjoy
This is the fishing pier at Fort Myer’s beach. Shockingly enough this was my first trip ever to Fort Myer’s beach so I really had no idea that the pier even existed.
I set up my trip in the water as I took this photo. Some guy was behind me going what you shoot? I was like the sunset over the pier. He goes brilliant and busts out his cell phone for the same shot. He ended up following me and getting the same shots I was getting for about 15 minutes.
I did this one in subtle HDR. I didn’t see a need to go nuts about it. Plus I prefer the subtle versus the so damn obvious versus of HDR.
Anyways. Enjoy.
This was taken at Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve when I went through there. There are a few areas where they have set up viewing platforms so I figured I might as well use them.
I wanted to incorporate the lily pads and get the reflections in the image as well. I luckily took several images because the first image I worked on turned out not to be in focus. Good thing you can just copy settings in Lightroom and be done with it. Once I took it into Photoshop did some dodging and burning to bring out the reflection and add density to the trees.
Figured why not play some more and took it into ColorEfx and added a few more tweaks here and there. Final bit was just cleaning up the dust spots and then sharpening. Professional hint, sharpen then clean else you may get some weird artifacts.
Enjoy.
This image was taken at Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve in Fort Myers Florida. I took this in early January which in Southwest Florida means it’s still stupid hot and there was still leaves on trees.
While I normally like to do a series of images if I am going to get into the editing swing of things I’ll stick to one or two depending on the level of intensity required for me to do it. Not that this took a lot of effort.
This was the first time I used Aurora 2019 which was much improved and the first time I used it on a PC. The new interface and the speed of this laptop versus my old Mac are massive. Going from 16gb of RAM to 64gb makes a huge difference. Plus all my drives are SSD and my external drive is USB-C to it’s much more pleasant to work now.
As always click on the image and it will take you to my Flickr where you can download the full resolution if you like.
Enjoy.
No idea if this roof was part of the palace or the temple at the Royal Palace in Cambodia. There were so many parts sealed off and I was using a zoom lens that I can’t remember.
Based just on the architecture my guess is it’s a palace building roof. The temple used a slightly different style architecture but I’m not 100%. Still, the way royal and temple buildings are done in South East Asia are really elaborate. I could totally live in a house with a roof like that. Repairs may be a bit costly but I figure I can afford a roof like that repairs may not be an issue.
Editing this I went with a quick run through with Aurora HDR 2017 so it has a bit of HDR in it. Then I went ahead and did a bit of dodging and burning and called it a day.
Enjoy.
I was outside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and saw these 2 monks walking by. I just waited for the shot and took several frames as they walked by.
I don’t pretend to understand the colours or monks robes. I know some are brighter than others. Older monks tend to have darker colours than younger ones. I’m sure it signifies rank but I don’t understand it enough to speculate and I’m too lazy to look it up on Google.
I liked the image, did a bit of a dodge and burn and ran a filter against it and called it done. I am suffering from a severe case of man flu right now so it’s all I can do to type this.
Enjoy.
Shot this along the river inPhnom Penh when I was walking back to my hotel from the Royal Palace.
Monks themselves aren’t that exciting when you live over in Asia. They are very common and not a big deal. I will say I saw more monks in Cambodia than I do in Thailand. Well, I should say I see more monks during the day in Cambodia than I do in Thailand because I constantly see the Thai monks collecting alms in the wee hours of the morning here in Thailand.
I liked this image because you just have the contrast of the rather dull scene with the splash of color from the monks robes.
Enjoy.
Was just standing on shore and saw this scene and figured why not take a picture. The single clouds was the dominating object in the image but there was so much else that I just liked the total scene.
I am not 100% sure where I took this image. I know I had my Sigma 17-70 on my Nikon D5500 but that’s about it. I believe I was near the Bali Hai but don’t quote me as I was wandering around the area with my camera and just taking photos.
Editing this I bumped it up with Macphun Intensify and liked the end result. I am starting to put more contrast in via my curves adjustments now and let Intensify bring out features. I didn’t bother to mask anything in. I did spend copious amounts of time removing dust spots from the lens and then burned the cloud down a bit.
Enjoy.
I think this area is called Bali Hai but don’t quote me on it. If you don’t have a motorbike or car you aren’t going to get there because it’s a hike from the Bali Hai pier in Pattaya.
I drove up there and was just tooling around. Bali Hai pier is getting redone so it was closed and I didn’t feel like trying to find a space to park and then walk out on the pier. So I rode down to the lighthouse and took some photos.
Light was kinda flat so I went with a black and white for this because I think it looks cooler this way anyways. I left the people in the image to give you a sense of scale. It’s not a big lighthouse, hell I don’t even think it does anything except guard the weeds and trash around the area.
Enjoy!
Well I am back. Conditionally speaking of course. Which will be explained shortly.
First off, I had to take a break. I was suddenly thrust with the problem of being a landscape/travel photographer shooting when I felt like it to being a full time portrait/event photographer. Whole different world and one I wasn’t exactly prepared for.
I had done events before. No big deal. Bang the photos out and done with it. So shooting parties wasn’t a real difficult task. The problem was the portraits. I never really shot them much. If I did they were off the cuff and for fun, not work.
I suddenly had to become a portrait photographer which was a whole new world to me. It meant learning to retouch photos on a level I had never done before. It also meant learning flash and lighting and all that went with it.
Over the past month I have learned. I have never spent so much time in Photoshop in my life. When I wasn’t in Photoshop I was reading articles on how to retouch faces, match skin tones, and so on. Took a lot of work and effort.
With all that I didn’t have time to shoot personal work and to be honest I still don’t but trying to change that. I doubt I will do 5 days a week anymore. I just can’t because of other commitments.
I rather publish a photo I am proud of or that I personally enjoy then some crap I shot just to put in for filler. It doesn’t work and I feel I let myself down by publishing crap.
So with all that said, I’ll be most again. Just not as frequently and on a schedule that is slightly more erratic than before. Goal is 3 or 4 images a week and no longer on a Monday – Friday schedule. They will go when I think I have something worth sharing and will just be published whenever. No more scheduled photos. I live on the other side of the world now. So time zones are a bit of a pain and really not worth the effort.
This image was taken off the balcony of my room. My view is towards the Gulf of Thailand (I can’t see the water) and towards downtown. It’s a weird view but I like it.
The sun was setting and I had my Nikon D810 (which I use for all portrait work) on a table so grabbed it and took this shot.
When I went to edit it I wanted that sunset to pop and the buildings to clip towards black. Did all that and then used a bunch of filters to get the sky to pop. Each one a different layer. Trust me, nature didn’t make this sunset. The joy of doing that is you always introduce noise into a sky photo. So I just ran another filter to denoise the image. Then I masked it in so it didn’t look unnatural and called it done.
Enjoy
