Waikiki After Sunset
by James Howe on Jan.16, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 200, Exposure 4 seconds @ f/22)
This shot of the main stretch of Waikiki Beach in Hawaii started out life as a series of brackets to be used for an HDR. I had set my tripod up on a breakwater and shot back at the beach area about 20 minutes after sunset. I processed the brackets, but I didn’t like the end result. There was a bit of a breeze that night and I think it contributed to some camera shake which caused the resultant image to be less sharp that I like. I looked at the brackets and decided to see what I could do with just one of the brackets. Turns out the middle bracket had enough detail to produce an interesting image. The main goal in processing was to brighten certain areas of the image, particularly the hotels. I also wanted to make sure that the clouds had some detail. The original image had a large amount of ocean which I didn’t think contributed to the image, so I cropped it to make it more of a pano. I think that works well with the shape of the coast, the buildings and Diamondhead in the background.
Feel free to leave comments and questions below!
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Oahu Coastline
by James Howe on Jan.12, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 44mm, ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f/11)
The shot above shows a portion of the north east coast of Oahu, Hawaii. My family and I recently visited Hawaii and one day while the rest of the family was off on a kayaking trip, I rented a car and took a drive around the island. It’s hard to get good landscape images when you are on vacation with others simply because schedules don’t always allow you to be in the right place at the right time to capture the best light. Instead, you just have to shoot what you are given. On my drive around the island I stopped at this small beach park. It was very windy that day and it made for some really nice surf. I took several pictures at this beach and when I was leaving I walked over to this area which was located underneath some trees. I liked the way the foreground plants and the tree framed the surf and the distant hills. Unfortunately the light was rather strong and created some haze in the distance, but I still liked the view so I took the picture.
The picture presented a complicated scene, very dark foreground, very bright background. I had my tripod with me and I could have shot this as an HDR, but with all the wind I thought there would be too much blurring due to motion and I wasn’t looking for the smooth water shot that blurring might give me. Instead, I created two versions of this image in Lightroom. One with a brighter foreground, one with the darker foreground. I opened both images in Photoshop as layers and then used layer masks to brighten areas of the scene that I wanted to be brighter. As I worked on the image I thought that it might look good done more as a painting than as a photograph. I used Topaz Simplify with the Buz Sim preset to create something more painterly. I wasn’t completely happy with that, so I decided to blend my painterly version with a normal version, creating a hybrid of the two. The end result is what you see above.
Please let me know what you think, or ask any questions you might have about the image or the processing below. Mahalo!
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved
Bits of the USS Missouri
by James Howe on Jan.04, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 48mm, ISO 400, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6)
One of the things my family did when we visited Hawaii recently was to visit Pearl Harbor. One of the exhibits that is now located at Pearl Harbor is the USS Missouri. The image above was taken during a tour of the USS Missouri. Most of the lower decks of the ship are still off limits, but you can go through most of the upper levels. This picture shows a phone from the bridge area of the ship. I have a thing for old technology and I just liked the look of the thing.
For those who may not know the history of the Missouri, it has a couple of historical distinctions. One of the things I didn’t know about this ship was that it was the last battleship ever launched. The attack on Pearl Harbor ushered in the age of the aircraft carrier and the usefulness of the battleship was greatly diminished. The other notable fact about the Missouri is that it was the ship on which the Instrument of Surrender was signed which ended the war between the US and Japan. After some work during the Korean war the ship was decommissioned in 1955. In 1984 the ship was modernized and recommissioned to serve in the Persian Gulf. The ship was decommissioned one last time in 1992. The ship found it’s final home in Pearl Harbor in 1998.
When I decided to work on this image I wanted to punch things up a bit. I used a few different filters from Photo Tools to give it the more grungy, off color look that it has.
Please feel free to leave any comments or questions below. Thanks for stopping by!
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Pali Lookout
by James Howe on Jan.03, 2012, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 28mm, ISO 800, 1/1000 sec @ f/11)
This picture was taken in Hawaii on the island of Oahu at a place called the Pali Lookout. The site overlooks the 985 foot cliffs of the Koolau Mountain Range and has a special place in Hawaiian history. It was here in 1795 that King Kamehameha and his warriors defeated the Oahu armies by sending them over cliffs to claim victor and ultimately unite the Hawaiian Islands. The site does provide an incredible view off to the north on Oahu’s windward side. The lookout sits in a gap in the volcanic mountains and channels the trade winds which blow across the islands, turning the area into something akin to a wind tunnel. The wind was so strong the day I was there that I was afraid that the wind would rip the glasses off of my face and send them into the valley below.
Process started in Lightroom where I created both a light and dark version of the original image. I wanted to bring up some of the detail in the vegetation in the lower left. I opened the two images as layers in Photoshop and manually blended them using a layer mask. I then used a handful of filters in Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out some detail in the clouds and elsewhere in the image. I then used Silver Efex Pro 2 to create a black and white version, but I set the opacity to 72% to create an image which has a tinted look to it.
Certainly would love to hear your thoughts on this one, feel free to leave them below.
Copyright ©2011-2012 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.
Punalu`u
by James Howe on Dec.26, 2011, under Travel
(Nikon D700, 28-300mm at 92mm, ISO 200, 1/500th @ f/5.6)
My family and I are taking a vacation in Hawaii and we arranged to make a day trip to the island of Hawaii (we’re staying on Oahu) so we could visit Volcano National Park and see some other sites. One of the places we visited was the black sand beach at Punalu`u`. We arrived late in the afternoon so the lighting was nice, but still very bright. The combination of black sand, volcanic rock and bright sky made for difficult exposures. Fortunately things weren’t too bad when I was able to shoot away from the sun. Punalu`u is a fantastic location and trying to shoot it made me appreciate the challenges of creating a great landscape image. Trying to come up with the right combination of exposure, proper f-stop, etc. is something I’ve never really been good at. With this shot I tried to capture the look of the area with it’s dark rock, interesting vegetation and wonderful surf.
Processing was actually pretty minimal. I added some blacks back to the raw image to improve the contrast and did a little sharpening. I also added a brightening curves layer which I selectively applied at various opacities with a brush to bring out some of the highlights.
I would certainly love to hear any constructive feedback on what you think of this image, and things I might have done to make it better. Please feel free to leave comments or questions below. Mahalo!
Copyright ©2011 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.