Maui, Hawaii
This past summer my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting the Hawaiian island of Maui. So many beautiful sites to see and photography, but not enough time to see all that we wanted. This image is a 200 second exposure capturing the water flowing around the lava rock off the coast near Kaanapali. I used two ND filters reducing the exposure by 14 stops, as I was photographing during a sunny day.
Having fun creating an image different than my normal. For this effect, I choose a photo of mine from a vacation to Illinois a few years ago, as I liked the straight tree trunks. This effect was achieved in Photoshop, first by creating a duplicate layer to preserve the original. Then the motion blur effect was added to the duplicate layer, then fine tuned to the degree of blur I liked. Then the effect was masked off in certain areas to give contrast between motion and stillness.
A beautiful morning just after sunrise on the Gila River at the Baseline and Meridian Wildlife Area, Tolleson, Arizona. It might be hard to believe by looking at this image, but this place is in the heart of the Sonoran Desert right outside of the city of Phoenix. This place is an oasis in the desert where people come to fish, enjoy many species of birds, and photograph.
This photo was captured with a 30 second exposure to smooth out the water and give a burst of movement in the clouds.
A sunset photo of the Mill Avenue Bridge over Tempe Town Lake in Tempe, Arizona. This is a man made lake created by damming the Salt River. To the left of the bridge is Tempe, Arizona. Then just to the right is the City of Phoenix.
I wanted to create a long exposure image to both smooth out the water on the lake and capture some movement of the clouds. Due to slow moving clouds, I had to use an 83 second exposure to capture the movement I wanted.
For me, I really liked all the contrasts this image displays. First, there is the contrast of the light and shadows. Then the clouds look like an explosion of energy to contrast with the smoothness of the water. The capture of motion also contrasts nicely with the solid standing bridge.
You may view a larges size version of this image on Flickr
Saguaro cacti against a colorful Arizona sunset west of Phoenix, Arizona. I created this image by capturing three images f14, ISO 100, /1/500 second with one each + 2 EV and -2 EV, and creating an HDR merge in Lightroom. After merging, I continued editing with Topaz Studio using the precision contrast and detail adjustments along with HSL Color Toning adjustments. I love how Topaz brings out the details in an image.
Photographing the waves crashing into the rocks of the breakwater at the harbor in Vertura, California was quite fun for this Arizona photographer. This is something that one does not experience in the beautiful state of Arizona. I really wanted to capture the power of the movement of water. I held I finger ready to fire the shutter as the waves were crashing against the rocks. To get a bit of movement, I used a shutter speed of 0.4 seconds. Later in Lightroom, I dodged (lighten) the bright spots in the water just a little bit to draw attention to the movement of water. Then I also darkened the shadow in the rock to add a bit of mystery and enhance the mood of the close of the day after the sun just dropped below the horizon. I finished off my editing by dodging the tops of the rocks so you can see the shapes of the rocks and show a little bit of the details.
Walking around the desert looking to make an interesting landscape image when you have grayed out skies, can be quite challenging. However, I did come home with this image worthy to work with. I felt the dead tree in the foreground along with the sun bleeding through the clouds worked great with the mood of this shot. I did an HDR merge in Lightroom then played around with tonal adjustments to come up with this. I also reduced saturation a little using the HSL panel. To finish it off, I used the radial filter to brighten up the dead tree a little bit along with using the adjustment brush to dodge and burn in other areas of the image. Photographed west of Phoenix, Arizona.
You may view a larger size version here on Flickr.
One of my rare Arizona desert landscapes without cactus. This image was captured at the Skyline Regional Park, Buckeye, Arizona along a hiking trail. I stopped down my aperture to f14 to get the star effect as the sun was fixing to go down, behind the mountain. I also used the adjustment brush in Lightroom to brighten the rocks in the lower right to give the effect of the light striking them. Then I lightened slightly a bit of the landscape between the rocks and the sun and to the ridge of the mountain to create paths for the eyes to follow to the sun. The eyes will either go straight from the rock to the sun, or travel up to the ridge of the mountain, then down to the sun. I also used the adjustment brush to darken some of the shadows. You may see a larger version here on my Flickr or here on 500px.
Sunset at Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona. I was getting a little creative with the colors using cross processing in Lightroom on this one.
A beautiful Arizona desert sunset, silhouettes, colors and all. Photographed west of Phoenix.
Ken Mickel Photography 