The Obvious

Green, Red, Yellow

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:16 -0500

Here is another photo taken in California a couple of weeks ago. You can read more details about the trip in my previous post, or click on the link to the right to see the all galleries with landscapes, portraits, and other stuff.
I am don't know much about flowers in general (although I should probably start learning more), so all I can say about this photo is that it's got pretty colors :). In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there were more wildflowers in Central Coast of California this year than in previous years, which made for some very colorful photos.
Titus

Mountain & Seagull

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:48 -0500

After a week of being back from California, I finally managed to finish going through the many, many photos I took during the five day tour. In case you haven't read my previous posts or Twitter & Facebook, I was part of a small group of photographers who went on a tour of the Central Coast of California with Dave Wyman. We had a great time, took lots of photos, and moved at an incredibly slow pace - a photographer's dream, although some of the other photographers fell asleep waiting for me :).
I could write a 10 page article on how beautiful California is, and how perfect the weather was... but I'll leave that up to others who have better writing skills. I also doubt that my pictures will do any justice to what I saw since most of the time I was too excited about the new and unusual nature/landscape. Perhaps next year I will have some time to go by myself at an even slower pace and really think through every photo before taking it. However, I do have a little over 100 photos that I took and that I am fairly pleased with - I uploaded them in a separate gallery (link on the right) divided into landscapes, portraits, and miscellaneous objects/snapshots. I should also mention that the post processing was very minimal on all of them - I shot them in RAW, adjusted the exposure, WB, color, and contrast in Capture One where needed, and then corrected the distortion in Photoshop.
I was particularly excited about this shot when I took it because I had never seen the ocean, seagulls, flowers, and mountains together in a square mile radius before. Unless you live in California on the coast, or somewhere in Southern Europe by the sea, you probably have never seen that combination before either and you will understand my excitement. This also explains why the other people in the group (who were from California with the exception of two others) thought it strange that I would wait for a seagull to fly in my photo rather than take photos of the ocean :).
I am going to post a photo every day over the next few weeks, so if you want to read more details about the photos that you see in the Central Coast of California gallery, check back tomorrow, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter (links to the right).
Thanks for stopping by... and it's good to be home! ;)
Titus

Champ & Camera

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:44 -0500

Here is a more recent photo of our son, David. I was taking photos of him up close with my 17-40mm lens at 17mm, and he reached for the lens in hopes that he could chew on it (at the least).
I don't have much else to say about this one - processed in ACR for B&W conversion and contrast, corrected the perspective in PS, and that's about it. Here is a link to the original photo in color.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and even more thanks to those of you who are voting for The Obvious in the 2010 Photoblog Awards or bookmarking at Photoblogs.org.
Titus
Update: I will be part of a photo tour of Central Coast in California until 6/22 and I won't have much time to post anything new, although I am stocking up on future posts by the hour :).

Rock Flower

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:55 -0500

While trying to come up with a new/unique way of taking photos from the overview by the Stone Door at South Cumberland State Park (TN), I noticed a tree branch with lots of flowers on it that was sticking out between two rocks. I thought that would make the coolest photo, and I set to try and take pictures of it. Sadly, there was no way for me to get a good angle of the flowers, nor was the light any good. So I gave up.
About half an hour later, I returned to a nearby cliff edge to take the shot I ended up publishing a couple of days ago, and right as I was getting ready to leave, I looked to my left and saw this view. I checked my life insurance prayed and set to take the shot you see here. The light was perfect, the angle was exactly what I had in mind for my setup (Canon 5D Mark II at 17mm, which translates to ~11mm on a DX or 1.6 crop camera body), and I was ecstatic.
Today's post may not seem as impressive to you as the previous one, but for me it was a great reminder that perseverance, patience, and most of all - Providence, make the main recipe for taking great photos.
Titus

Murfreesboro Sunset

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:14 -0500

I have taken countless photos of skies at sunset where the camera faced the sun, but this is the first one that I am posting on The Obvious where the camera is pointed in the opposite direction.
About half an hour before sunset we had a huge storm all of a sudden, with both high and low clouds moving at very high speeds. It was an amazing view, but I couldn't get to a good, open location fast enough. After driving for about twenty minutes, I finally decided to go next to the new hospital (MTMC) and wait for the sunset there. Needless to say, the wait paid off, and I witnessed one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen. Not only were the clouds a deep burning orange color, but there was the first rainbow I had seen against such a colorful background. In fact, if you look closer, there is a second rainbow barely visible to the right of the first one.
The sunset lasted less than five minutes, during which I was able to take a couple of panoramas and several shots from different angle. After looking at the pictures I decided to go with the panorama since it showed exactly the amount of sky needed to give you an idea of what I saw (although I wish I had slightly more ground). Post processing was quite straight forward and simple, with the exception of the stitching part, which took quite a bit of time and meticulous adjustments. I could have brought more detail out of the clouds, but I decided to keep it as close as possible to the original
I had originally planned to post a different photo today, one from my trip to the Stone Door, but I moved it to Monday instead.
Have a great weekend ;)
Titus

South Cumberland, Tennessee

Sat, 29 May 2010 22:03 -0500

Last Saturday I was able to go with the Murfreesboro Photo Club to the Stone Door (South Cumberland State Park). I hadn't visited that side of the park before, so I really didn't know what to expect... other than a big stone wall, which is what I had seen in previous photos. I didn't end up taking any good photos of the Stone Door, which was merely a 5-10 foot opening between two very tall rocks (in Romanian we call them 'keys'), and much too difficult to photograph in just one quick trip. However, right before descending through the stone door, we came across this marvelous open view and spent at least one hour photographing it.
Although I haven't seen any photos of it myself, I am sure that this open view of the Cumberland Plateau has been photographed countless times by both amateurs and very good landscape photographers. On one hand I was a bit discouraged, knowing that there was a very small chance for me to come up with something completely unique within the one hour I spent photographing the view, but on the other hand, I enjoyed the challenge of making something so popular look different through my own perspective. So I tried different angles, photo filters, digital cheats (bracketing, panoramas, etc.), but nothing seemed to give me what I was looking for.
Right as we were getting ready to leave, I noticed the cloudy sky starting to clear up a bit, and make room for an amazingly clean and fresh blue sky. Not only that, but the wind also picked up a bit, so the clouds moved fast enough for me to plan which portion of the plateau I wanted to be lit by the sun, and which one to be covered in shadow. Needless to say, I was very excited about the whole change in light... it's amazing how much the whole dynamic of a photo can change within minutes!
As far as the technical details go, I used a Hoya Polarizer filter on my Canon 5D Mark II and 17-40mm f/4 lens. I had a neutral density grad filter for the previous photos, but when the clouds became more scarce, the polarizer was enough to make the balance between the sky and ground perfect. Post processing was pretty straight forward - I applied several deep yellow filters to the forest to make it look a bit more natural and match the colors with the sky, several adjustment layers (contrast, curves, layers), and a bit of digital magic - I pasted portions of the lower corners from different photos to make the distortion of my 17-40mm less obvious.
Speaking of the Canon 17-40mm... it's been an amazing lens in many aspects, but I still have to learn quite a bit how to use it properly. It's very different than my Tokina 11-16mm on my Nikon D300... different distortion, especially in the corners, and especially in this type of landscape. Once I'll figure out exactly what I am doing wrong, I'll make sure to mention it here too ;)
Titus
Update: I posted another shot taken just minutes after today's post here.

SouthEast Baptist Church, Murfreesboro

Mon, 24 May 2010 12:28 -0500

I was a bit hesitant about posting this photo, mainly because it is not an "artistic" photo, but rather a snapshot of one of the most interesting sunsets I have ever seen. I know most of you photographers will doubt me when I say that I processed the RAW file with ACR in standard settings without any adjustments, opened it in Photoshop, corrected the distortion, and that's it... but you'll just have to trust me :). Most people who saw the sunset are still talking about the bright colors that followed a powerful thunderstorm.
The sunset lasted just a few minutes - enough for me to get in my car, drive one block to SouthEast Baptist Church's parking lot, and take 20 photos in the rain. Laura (wife) pointed the sky to me about 10 minutes before I left, but I was too involved in cooking an amazing stir fry dinner :).
On a different note, I just returned from a day trip to Stone Door. It was the same trip the Murfreesboro Photo Club tried to plan twice last month right when the Great Flood happened in Tennessee. This time we did go, and I think I may have a couple of photos that I really like, so check back in a couple of days to see them.
Have a wonderful week ;)
Titus

Tennessee Nursery

Tue, 18 May 2010 20:05 -0500

As I had mentioned yesterday, this is one of my all time favorite photos. I have been wanting to take a photo like this for years, but I never seem to have had the chance to do it. In fact, when I shot it I didn't think too much about it... I just grabbed my Nikon D300 and 80-200mm f/2.8 lens, snapped a few photos and moved on. In my mind I envisioned much more dramatic hills with long rows of plants and a partly cloudy sky letting a couple of beams of light on the most important part of the photo, etc.
Because I didn't think much of the photo when I took it, I really don't know where we were... somewhere between Murfreesboro and Rock Island Park. It wasn't until Laura saw the photos and said she liked them that I thought about stitching the two photos into one panorama, and when I the panorama merged in Photoshop, I was very excited and worked on it for almost eight hours.
Perhaps one day I will write a short tutorial on the whole post processing of this photo, and although the original version didn't look too different, it took lots and lots of trial and error until I got it to look the way you see it now. I may add a few more comments and perhaps even a link to the original file at a later time, so check back here in a couple of days.
Titus
5/21 Update - I have recently switched to newer template for this website. Any feedback is much appreciated ;)

Wildflower & Grass

Tue, 18 May 2010 11:24 -0500

Not much to say about today's photo... simple, pretty, and hopefully a nice bridge between yesterday's busy landscape and tomorrow's melancholic one. Speaking of tomorrow's post, it is one of my all time favorite photos I have taken, and surprisingly enough... it's not a sunset!.
With photos such as this one I find it difficult to keep a good balance between contrast, color, and saturation. Which is why I spent quite a bit of time fine tuning the levels, contrast, and especially colors both during the RAW conversion and later in Photoshop. You can see a quick (and superficial) RAW conversion the original here.
Thanks again for stopping by.
Titus

Wildflowers & Field

Mon, 17 May 2010 09:25 -0500

This past weekend Keith and I went out to take photos of the Great Falls at the Rock Island Park. Needless to say that the area is absolutely gorgeous - if you live in Tennessee and haven't visited it, you should definitely do it. I will post a few photos from the trip in a few days, but for now I decided to post this photo of a field that we randomly took pictures of on our way home.
I don't have much to say about this photo other than the fact that this field was one of the very few fields that didn't have a fence and an intimidating "No Trespassing" sign, which is why we spent quite a bit of time taking photos here. It was also one of the very few fields that had both tall grass and wildflowers... and although I would have given anything for a more hilly background, I think the simplicity works OK in this instance.
Have a wonderful week! ;)
Titus