Inspirations – The Pinnacles by Beau Mitchell

© Beau Mitchell

7 images panoramic stitch
Canon 450D 17-40mm F4 L lens @ 32mm
 1 second at f/16 with ISO 100

I wanted to shoot “The Pinnacles” on a cloudless evening to capture a soft gradient in the sky. I knew a cloud filled sky would clutter the composition. Fortunately, the weather on this night was perfect! As the sun disappeared into the horizon the limestone pillars lit up and the sky turned a nice purplish colour. A little bit of planning, and a little bit of luck, goes a long way when photographing a location such as this. ~ Beau Mitchell

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Inspirations – Beate Dalbec

© Beate Dalbec

This image was taken during my visit to Yellowstone National Park in June. One location I was very much looking forward to photographing was Grand Prismatic spring. The afternoon I arrived the weather was still pretty decent and with rain and thunderstorms in the forecast I decided to head straight there. I hiked down Fairy Falls trail and then climbed a hill in order to get a good view from above. No sooner had I reached a good viewpoint, when this herd of bison showed up and proceeded to walk right past Grand Prismatic. It was an incredible sight!!! I barely had time to grab my camera so I would not miss this once in a lifetime moment. I took several images – some close-up with just a few bison and also this one to capture the entire scene. The bison also convey a great sense of scale to show of the size of Grand Prismatic spring.  No sooner had the bison disappeared that the skies darkened and a thunderstorm started. Time to pack up and rush back to my car.

The image was taken with a Canon 5D II, 70 – 200 IS f4, ISO 500 at 200/sec and required only minimal processing. Just the usual sharpening and contrast and it was cropped into a Panoramic. ~ Beate Dalbec

Travel Photo Contest – Stephen DesRoches

Stephen DesRoches

©Stephen DesRoches

 

Something that is travel to me, is home to another so I struggle with what actually defines travel photography. When away from my small home town of Charlottetown, one category that sings travel for me are cityscapes. I like to take home something close to a skyline view of each location I visit as a collectable item. It’s a common subject and all done before but consider it like a souvenir.

Here is that common view of downtown Montreal Quebec seen from Mont Royal. Determined to be a little unique, we had hiked up the side of the mountain early in the day to get a sense of the trails and view and then returned later that night in the dark for this photo. A total of 15 photos to be exact. This HDR panoramic view was a merge of five frames using three exposures for each. To show details in a 400px window of this very wide 13000 by 2000 pixel photo, I’m including a cropped view below the full piece.

The Weekly Photo – June 11

©Darwin Wiggett - Canon EOS-1ds, 17mm TS-E lens

I love wide angle lenses but often even my widest lens (17mm on full frame) isn’t wide enough! At the Spring Rockies Photo Tour we had this amazing sky one morning and from horizon to high above our heads the clouds were full of lines.and texture. I wanted to capture all that sky plus a foreground. This is where my Canon 17mm Tilt-Shift lens came to the rescue. If you look at the set of images below you can see that I took four horizontal images to make this one ultra wide vertical photo. First, I took the third image in the series below. Here I had the camera back level to the horizon so the trees did not distort. Then I took the fourth image by shifting the lens down to see the foreground. Then I took the second image with the lens shifted up to see the sky. Finally I swung the camera and lens up and shot the first image to get the clouds directly above me. For each shot I took three exposures and then blended them as an HDR using Exposure Fusion in Photomatix. I used Photoshop CS5‘s “Photo Merge” to stitch the 4 HDR images together into one big vertical image (final file size is 18 by 30 inches at 300 ppi). In the end I have a big file that can be printed huge and that has correct perspective but that takes in nearly 180 degree angle of view.

©Darwin Wiggett - component parts