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This Week at the Lake – 52/52

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Well, here we are. The final installment of this 52 week project. I’m going for a little bit of symbolism in the lead shot as I’m watching the sun set on this project. I also started the project with a sunrise, so I wanted to end with a sunset.

Radnor Lake is actually a pretty tough place to catch a sunset. There really are no good angles. I had three chances to get a shot of one this week, starting on Monday which was a complete rain out. My second chance came on Tuesday, so I parked at the east parking lot ad tried to capture it from Otter Creek Road:

This sunset was really amazing. And while I liked how this shot turns out, it doesn’t show most of the color that was there. The sun is actually setting off camera left, behind the hills. What you see at the end of the lake is actually the edge of it.

So my next opportunity came Thursday evening. I decided this time to shoot from the trail that directly faces the sunset. I wasn’t sure how I was going to compose it with all the trees, path, fence, etc. I decided to use the fence in the composition and to put myself in the photo. The result is the lead shot.

A couple others from the final week:

And that’s it for the week and the year! Thanks to everyone who viewed, commented, liked, or supported this effort. It’s been a lot of fun and I feel like I’ve come a long way as a photographer. Have a look at the first few weeks and see if you think I’ve improved. Constantly shooting will help you do that.

If you are a photographer and are thinking about a year long project, weather a 52 or a 365, I highly recommend it. Don’t make too many rules though! It has to be fun for you, it has to be something you want to do. I had to get up at 4:45 in the morning each time I wanted to get to the lake for a sunrise or for early morning shooting. Because of my wife’s work schedule and my son’s school schedule I was able to do this only about once a week, but I actually looked forward to that day. I never once viewed this project as a chore, or wished I hadn’t committed myself by starting this blog or posting on flickr.

Don’t think for a minute that now that this is over I’ll stop going to the lake! Radnor Lake is an amazing place (really early in the morning when there aren’t too many people there 🙂 ) Abundant wildlife and beautiful views. There is ALWAYS something to shoot at Radnor. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend you check it out.

I have some other ideas in the works for other projects, Subscribe to this blog you will receive an email every time I post something new! Or, become a fan on Facebook.

All of the “This Week at the Lake” photos are available for purchase as fine art prints and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Friends of Radnor Lake! Send me an email for more info (m_macgregor@comcast.net)

Thanks!

This Week at the lake – 48/52

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48 Weeks in and I get my first hawk photos of this project (not counting the occasional fly over). I believe this is a juvenile Red Tailed Hawk. I’ve been wanting to get a shot of one of these for so long! It was very cold on Thursday but I decided to visit the lake on my lunch break anyway. My fingers nearly froze while I was watching this guy but I got some shots before having to get back to work. The top photo is in HDR, the others are not.

I thought this one was kind of cool…

And here are a couple shots from Wednesday mornings sunrise:

And that’s it for the week!

Thanks for looking!

Check out all the previous weeks by Clicking HERE

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Malcolm MacGregor Photography is on Facebook, check it out and become a fan!

All of the “This Week at the Lake” photos are available for purchase as fine art prints and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Friends of Radnor Lake! Send me an email for more info (m_macgregor@comcast.net)

This Week at the Lake – 47/52

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More snow in middle Tennessee!? We’ve had quite the winter so far. I haven’t lived in this area for long but even I know that this much snow is pretty unusual. Tuesday night into Wednesday morning we got more snow so I headed out to Radnor Lake. I got the above shot before anyone else messed up the snow on the deck by putting footprints all over it!

Other shots from the snowy morning:
Caught these bucks in a battle to the death! OK, not really. They were more just kind of playing I guess. It never looked real intense and it certainly didn’t last very long!

I really liked the framing of the trees here and cold tones.

More random texture work

I haven’t gotten a shot of this stream at all during this project. This is downstream from the dam.

I went back to the lake on my lunch break to try to get more snowy shots:

Saw this deer about to cross the road as I leaving to go back to work. I got out and ready just in time! (I wish that sign was a “Deer Xing” sign)

I also went on Monday when I got these Deer shots:

And just to say I saw the owl again, here is a shot from Friday:

And that’s it for the week!

Thanks for looking!

Check out all the previous weeks by Clicking HERE

Don’t miss a week! Subscribe to this blog and you will receive an email every time I post something new!

Malcolm MacGregor Photography is on Facebook, check it out and become a fan!

All of the “This Week at the Lake” photos are available for purchase as fine art prints and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Friends of Radnor Lake! Send me an email for more info (m_macgregor@comcast.net)

This Week at the Lake – 34/52

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This week is all about the fall color at Radnor Lake. I’d say the color has peaked this week. There is mostly yellow, but also some bright reds and deep oranges. It’s a beautiful time to be walking the trails…

A couple more shots I wanted to share that don’t have to do with the fall color:
This is a single exposure (30 sec) with a Graduated neutral density filter. Not something I do often but wanted to try it “non-hdr”.

Also, a couple black and whites that don’t fit with the “Fall Color” theme:

And that’s it for the week!

Thanks for looking!

Check out all the previous weeks by Clicking HERE

Don’t miss a week! Subscribe to this blog and you will receive an email every time I post something new!

Malcolm MacGregor Photography is now on Facebook, check it out and become a fan!

All of the “This Week at the Lake” photos are available for purchase as fine art prints and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Friends of Radnor Lake! Send me an email for more info (m_macgregor@comcast.net)

Lori N. and Jennifer T.

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I was very happy to have the opportunity to take some photos of Lori and her sons Brandon and Evan. It’s been a long time since she had any photos taken so I was more than happy to help out!

Jennifer is a friend of mine and a good friend of Lori’s so when Jennifer heard I was doing a shoot for Lori, she decided to come along also to get some photos of her and her daughter. It was a great afternoon and we came away with tons of “keepers”!

Of course I had to break out the red chair again!

Thank you ladies for the opportunity, and thanks Brandon and Evan for tolerating!

This Week at the Lake – 31/52

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I’m getting closer!
For the last couple of weeks, nearly every time I visit around lunch, I’ve seen a hawk flying around. I haven’t been able to catch him in a tree or on the ground yet, but I finally caught him flying close enough to the ground to get a decent shot of him! This is only at 200mm and only cropped a little.

Of course, I had to play around with the photo some, here is a more dramatic lens flare version:

On Thursday, I posted on my Facebook Page about some tones I was working on. Here are a couple shots using very similar tones and processing:

Signs of Fall at the lake!

And Finally, the “mandatory” weekly deer photos:


I got these three shots up on the Ganier Ridge Trail, this week was my first time heading off on that trail…

And that’s it for the week!

Thanks for looking!

Check out all the previous weeks by Clicking HERE

Don’t miss a week! Subscribe to this blog and you will receive an email every time I post something new!

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This Week at the Lake – 30/52

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I let my son choose the lead photo this week. I couldn’t decide between this deer portrait and this lakescape:

I think he chose well though, I think that is my best deer portrait so far.

I got some pretty good stuff this week, I started off on Monday morning when I shot the sunrise above. Tuesday I went on my lunch break. As soon as I got close to the lake I could here tons of geese. They have certainly returned from their summer break in a big way! I headed down Otter Creek Rd along the lake to capture some goose photos:

I also got this abstract

I got to go again Wednesday morning so I headed back down Otter Creek Rd.

This time the lake was very steamy/misty

I wanted to capture some geese photos with the mist
I went a little crazy with this one, but I thought it looked pretty cool

I really wanted to get one in flight, I managed this one

Finally I had to head back to the car. I stopped one last time at a clearing and I heard the geese – here they come!
Finally, a group flew right by me

I went again Friday during lunch and that was when I captured the deer portrait above and this one

And that’s it for the week!

Thanks for looking!

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How I did it – Part 4

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Another Tutorial! Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the photo posts soon!

I’ve had another request for a tutorial. This time someone would like to see how I convert to black and white. Believe it or not, there are TONS of ways to convert an image to black and white. However, there is one particular method that I use often. I believe I got it from a Scott Kelby photoshop book for CS2 purchased on Ebay. It’s a very easy process that makes for a great action.

Here we go…..
Here is what we are starting with:

Now, this is an HDR image and I am already finished with my normal processing. You can check out my other tutorials to see those steps. So now I decide I’d like to see it in black and white.

First step is to convert the image to LAB mode — Image, Mode, Lab Color:

Next, in the “Layers/Channels/Paths” box, click on the “Channels” tab. You’ll see all the channels are selected, select the “Lightness” channel (which turns the others off)

With the “Lightness” channel selected, we want to convert it to grayscale — Image, Mode, Grayscale

It will ask you if you want to discard the other channels, say yes:

Now, back on the “Layers” tab, do a CTRL+J. This duplicates the layer. Put that top layer in “Multiply” blend mode and adjust the opacity to taste:

And that’s it! Black and white complete. If you write this as an action, leave the opacity at 100%, that way you can adjust it differently for each image you convert.

An alternate to changing the opacity, you could add a layer mask:

and then grab a soft black brush:

And paint the areas that you think are too dark:
(this image shows where I have painted)

Here is the final result:

Now, to answer the question that was posed regarding my First Tutorial. If you’ve read that one, you’ve seen that I often layer a black and white image on top of a color HDR image to make it dark and achieve a dramatic look. When I do that, I do not copy the layer and put it in “Multiply” blend mode. After I convert to grayscale, I copy that layer and paste it on top of my color image.

Hope this provides some useful information.

Here are some helpful links for learning more about Photoshop:

Photoshop Support Group
Photoshop Tutorials by Allan Gengler
Actions by Allan Gengler
CoffeeShop Actions

How I Did It – Part 3

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I had a request from a fellow photographer for a “How I Did It” post. For this tutorial, I’ll show you everything I did to turn this:

into this

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Once again, this is an HDR or High Dynamic Range Image. To create an HDR image you need to take multiple exposures (usually 3 but can be us many as you want) of the same scene.

To do this, I put the camera mode in Aperture Priority and set the auto bracket to (-2, 0, +2). This will make the camera take 3 consecutive shots, one exposed properly, one underexposed by 2 stops, and one overexposed by 2 stops.

Here are the 3 shots with their exposure values:

0 ev 0.6 seconds @ f/8


-2 ev 1/6 seconds @ f/8


+2 ev 2.5 seconds @ f/8

Always ISO 100 and always a tripod when shooting HDR

These 3 images are opened directly into Photomatix. I use Photomatix for all of my HDR’s. If you are interested in buying Photomatix, use the coupon code “malcolmphoto” for a 15% discount! It’s already at a great price ($99) and even better with the discount.
You are then presented with “Generate HDR – Options” – here is what I choose:

I always use the “Details Enhancer” option. Here are my settings there:

It’s important to remember that while I used these settings on this image, they may be completely different for my next image. You really need to play with the sliders and get a feel for what they do to your image. Then you can make adjustments that suit your taste. It’s also important to remember that is doesn’t stop here! There are many things that need to be corrected/adjusted in photoshop.

At this point I save it as a .tiff and head to photoshop……….

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Now we are in Photoshop, here is what we have

Not too bad as it is, but could look a lot better!

As in my other tutorials, I start off with a levels adjustment:

I found that this adjustment blew out the Joe’s Crabshack sign so I grabbed a black brush and painted over the areas (on the layer mask) that got too bright. This image shows where I painted:

By doing this, you are applying the levels layer to the entire image EXCEPT where you painted on the layer mask.

Next I’ll do a curves adjustment layer:

Next is one of my favorite adjustments to do, a slight color balance adjustment for the shadows and highlights:

You can see I click the “shadows” dial and set it to -5, 0, +5. This adds a bluish tone to the shadows. In the case of this image, I also did the same adjustment to the “Highlights” dial. This helps get rid of some of the reddish, orange colors.

Next I did a saturation adjustment layer where I desaturated the yellows.

Again, I didn’t like what this did to the sign so I painted on the layer mask with black in these areas:

Now I do a “Stamp Visual” or CTRL-SHFT-ALT-E. This adds a new layer at the top of all the previous adjustment layers.
On this layer I run an Unsharpen Mask

Normally at this point I would run a noise reduction software, however, on this particular image I did not mind the noise. It’s a dark image (certainly a lot darker than an HDR could have been) but I liked it that way. This is because I wanted the big Joe’s Crabshack sign to be the focal point. I actually set the 0ev exposure for the sign. I knew it would be a dark image overall but that is what I wanted.

So, that’s it!
Here is out final result:

Thanks for looking! I hope you found this helpful. Please ask questions if you have them, I’ll try by best to answer.

Remember,
If you want to know “How I Did It” for any photo on my flickr photostream, leave me a comment on this page or send me a flickr mail. I’ll be glad to make it my next “How I Did It” entry!

Also, as I mentioned in my first How I did It post, here are some helpful links for learning more about HDR:
Stuck in Customs
HDR Exposed
HDR (a flickr group)
Tutorial Collection at My First HDR flickr group

Helpful links for learning more about Photoshop:
Photoshop Support Group
Photoshop Tutorials by Allan Gengler
Actions by Allan Gengler
CoffeeShop Actions

This Week at the Lake – 24/52

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Lot’s of photos this week! I visited Radnor Lake in Nashville Tennessee on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Wednesday morning was rainy, so I walked down Otter Creek Rd. I headed to one of the best spots at the park to get a lakescape. I’ve got shots from this spot on Week 13, and Week 16, and Week 19. This time it was different with the dark rain clouds:

Heading back to the car, I got this shot right before it really started raining hard:

I went Thursday mid-day. The temperature and humidity have dropped considerably from last week, as you can see from this photo with the nice blue sky and fluffy clouds:

Then I went Friday early morning. I started off heading to the spot that I got shots for Week 15 and Wee 22 and I got this:

While setting up for this shot, I heard a loud crash maybe 10 feet away. I look over and there is a young buck staring at me. Then another comes to the shore and then some does arrive. I snapped this shot and then backed up from the shore and switched lenses. I’ve been looking forward to the fall, hoping I could get some shots of bucks. These may not be very impressive bucks but they are certainly the best I’ve seen so far. I ended up following them along the trail for nearly a mile, grabbing many shots:

This is one of the does

Got the idea for this shot from a Matt Hansen photo. I’m not sure I pulled it off nearly as well as he but I still liked it.

Loved this one too!

Last one!

On the way back to the car I stopped at the dam where I usually see green herons. Sure enough there was one there, I only grabbed a couple shots before he was scared off by other walkers:

Thanks for looking!

Check out all the previous weeks by Clicking HERE

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