Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

This image was shot on the eastern side of Lake Michigan near the Grand Haven Lighthouse in Grand Haven, Michigan.

I had been photographing the surfers who where surfing near the pier at Grand Haven, (Yes that’s right, surfing on Lake Michigan. Read my post, Lake Michigan Surfers for proof.) waiting for the sunset to happen. When the sunset finally came it wasn’t much. There weren’t any clouds in the sky and the haze was killing the nice light on the lighthouse.

One thing that did stand out for me was the golden reflection in the water. It was really beautiful.

I ended up shooting many pictures of  the sun setting into the lake and the light reflecting off of the waves, but I think my favorite images from that evening were the ones where I focused just on the reflected color in the water. I feel they show nature’s simple beauty and the peacefulness of a Lake Michigan sunset.

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Wisconsin’s fall color season is quickly coming to an end, and with hight winds forecast for Thursday and Friday, it will be over by this weekend. With that in mind, I decided to get in one last day of fall color photography and headed out to Petrifying Springs Park yesterday.

I would say that about 70% of the trees are now bare in the park. There are more leaves on the ground than in the trees. What’s interesting is that I found myself noticing things that I didn’t notice when the colors were at their peak. Without my eye being drawn to the amazing colors overhead, I was able to see the smaller beauties that were all around.

The image above is a good example of that. At first I was drawn to the area by all the leaves on the ground, but as I walked around I noticed the contrast of the tree’s dark color with the bright leaves and really liked it. I wanted to emphasize that contrast so I lowered my composition to inches above the ground and framed the shot so the tree took up a large portion of the picture. My first shots had more sky in them, but the sky was kind of a distraction so I came in even tighter and left most of the sky out. I’m pretty happy with the final result.

You can see more images from yesterday on my SierraVisions post, Fall 2009, The Last Hoorah

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Here lately, while I’m waiting for the fall colors to really get going in Wisconsin, I’ve been going through some of my old images from the Eastern Sierra. Mostly images from the fall of 2005. I shot a lot of photos in Sept. and Oct. of ‘05 and I remember being disappointed in many of them at that time. Looking at them now, four years later, I’m finding that I really like many of these images.

What I’m seeing are images that were composed nicely, but have some exposure and color issues. I’m sure at the time I was disappointed in these images because of that. I knew Photoshop very well in 2005, but I wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable as I am today. Now I can fix exposure and colors issues without even thinking to much about it. Another big difference between now and ‘05 is Adobe Lightroom. It wasn’t even out back then. I think it came out in 2006 if I’m not mistaken. Lightroom has now become my main tool in post processing. It gives me the ability to fix the white balance and exposure  issues that many of these images have just by moving a couple sliders.

This image of an Eastern Sierra aspen grove is a perfect example. The white balance was very blue on it and it was slightly underexposed. I shot this image as a JPG, not a RAW, but I was still able to fix the white balance and exposure in Lightroom. Just by adding yellow and magenta I warmed the picture up and with some contrast made it look as I first envisioned it.

It’s pretty awesome to go back through my files and find these types of hidden treasures. I’m finding that as I become more knowledgeable with Lightroom and Photoshop, I can save images that I thought were lost.  Sometimes I turn them into black and whites, and sometimes I’m able to make them look as I wanted them to look when I first shot them.

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Sometimes when I’m out shooting I find myself overwhelmed by the beauty that’s all around me. This often happens in fall when the trees are all changing at once. There’s so much beauty that it’s hard to focus on what to shoot. At times like this I try to remind myself to simplify and look for something that stands out from all of the beautiful chaos. Maybe the curve of a tree trunk, a patch of color that’s different from the rest or maybe a single leaf lying on the ground.

Today’s image was taken in Yosemite Valley on a day like that. We were walking a trail not to far from Bridalveil Falls, the colors along the trail were breathtaking and I was having a hard time shooting because if it. Then I noticed this leaf from a Big Leaf Maple. It was just lying there on top of many other leaves and seemed like nothing special. But I liked the way it stood out from the other leaves. Most of them had been on the ground for awhile and were turning brown, but this one was freshly fallen and still had good yellow color.

Using the macro setting on the camera, I moved in close to the maple leaf to make it stand out and to simplify the chaos of the forest floor. Then I used the smallest aperture this camera has, f/11, to make sure all of the leaves came out sharp. Luckily there wasn’t any wind because my shutter speed was close to half a second.

Of all the pictures I shot that day, this is one of my favorites. Not only does it show the simple beauty of nature, but it helps to remind me to simplify when surrounded by chaos.

Technical Details:
Minolta DiMAGE A2
Shot at 25mm
ISO 64
F/11 at 0.6 Sec.
Tripod Mounted

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