Kpmedia's Photography Portfolio - Learn DSLRs by Example!

kpmedia · #1 11-22-2010, 07:22 AM

This isn't really my "portfolio" as much as it's simply an ongoing display of shots I've taken recently.

In some cases, it's going to be old photos that I decided to edit or re-edit, and have shared for your benefit. I have tens of thousands of images, and that's just the "personal" shots! Material shot for newspapers and magazines has always been given priority, so my own work tends to languish on hard drives and in slide/negative sleeves.

Feel free to ask how shots were taken, how processing was done (Photoshop, Lightroon, DxO, etc), why it's a good shot, or other related photographic questions -- I'm glad to share that information, in the interest of teaching photo to others. Note that I may move posts to new threads.

If you like what you see here, click the THANKS button.

Feel free to start your own "portfolio" thread.
If you wish for it to be critiqued, simply mention that in your post -- I'll be happy to do it.

Before you reply in this thread: I do NOT need critiques of my work. There are already plenty of editors in my life with no shortage of commentary. If you like what you see here, simply hit the "Thanks" button. This thread is for educational purposes, for teaching photography based on example. Only make a post if you're wanting to learn something about my images.

kpmedia · #2 11-22-2010, 07:27 AM

This top image was taken from the apex of a mountain, as a storm rolled in late one night on the trip described below.

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Here's some "fall foliage" shots from eastern Tennessee / western North Carolina, from October 2010. This was a casual trip to view some eastern color, and I didn't take a lot of shots -- it was mostly a sightseeing weekend drive, with a camera tossed into the back seat if needed.

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Remember that I'm not even a landscape photographer.

Sossity · #3 11-25-2010, 09:49 PM

I like all these photos, but the most dramatic one, the lighting, what settings did you use?

kpmedia · #4 11-27-2010, 10:57 AM

We had just come to the top of a mountain, and were driving along the ridge when we noticed a shallow car pull-out (for passing) near the summit. We knew weather was moving in, and it seemed like a great place to stop and have a look at what was coming our way -- hoping that we'd be out of the mountains before it hit.

You could see lightning in the clouds, lighting the sky pink and purple in those cloud patches, which I thought would make for a nice photo of the landscape, so I pulled out my camera. I ran off about 10 test shots to get exposure and white balance right -- cheating by using the LCD, because we were in a rush, wanting to get off the mountain before rain hit. It was pretty dark, too, so it wasn't easy to see the camera. It was also accompanied by unexpected freezing cold winds, making my time outside the car pretty miserable. The LCD on the Nikon D3s is pretty accurate, so it can get me close enough to Photoshop minor exposure differences later on.

I sat on a leaf-covered boulder, and balanced the camera on another large rock that sat a bit higher. From the glow of my LCD, I could see that bugs had crawled from under the leaves and onto my pants as I sat on their home. It wasn't the safest place to be, precariously dangling on the edge of a semi-cliff.

About 20 shots into it, the first bolt of lightning shot out from the clouds, at the exact moment I had the shutter open. It was completely unplanned -- a happy accident. I was thrilled. Maybe 4-5 more bolts were thrown, before it returned to in-cloud glows again. Not being prepared to photograph lightning bolts (no tripod for long exposures, no lightning sensor releases -- nothing), I ran the camera at 7fps for several buffer-filling bursts hoping to catch another. About 200 images later, I was still left with only the one bolt shot.

In my rush to set up the camera in the dark cold, I forgot to put it back into RAW+JPEG mode, so all I have are JPEGs. Luckily, the D3s processed them to my satisfaction anyway. Generally I try to shoot landscapes as RAW+JPEG, just in case I want to play with it in advanced ways.

This particular image was shot with older Tamron 17-35 f/3.5-4.5 that I've had for at least a decade, which has a Hoya S-HMC UV(0) on it. According to the EXIF, it was zoomed in to 31mm. I had set the camera to 800 ISO, and f/6.3 (a half stop away from the "sweet spot" for this lens, based on my tests that put it at f/7.1). It was in aperture priority "A" mode, and shutter speed automatically came in at 1/30th. It was set to the "cloudy" white balance preset. It was actually supposed to be set at f/7.1, but sometimes you can accidentally hit the dial, which I must've done in the dark.

The image looks every bit as true as what I saw with my own eyes that night. It's not been fudged or faked any. I did almost no corrections to it, outside of cropping it wide (chopping off some ground and sky from top/bottom), and cloning out a piece of dust that had apparently fallen onto the lens filter.

It looks nice at a small size, and simply gorgeous as a large wall print.

I'd love to say it was a planned shot, I'm a master photographer, etc -- but I'd rather be honest. It was a mix of luck, equipment and skill that created this image. I'd set the camera up well, I had the right gear on scene, and it just happened to be open when mother nature lit up the sky. Without all three of those in place, there would not have been an image.