Kurt Reitz Photography
Fine art Nature and wildlife photography
Daily Image
What I am shooting at the moment.
Cape Hatteras at night.
December 4, 2014
Today's Theme: "Your work space"
Now I am breaking my own rules. I was determined to create an image on the day I get the theme. This theme left me conflicted as I work in a beautiful space and have made many beautiful images of where I work. Today, however, was cloudy and colorless and I had to teach and leave right after work. So here is an image from October, not particularly good or interesting but representative of my typical morning at work.
December 3, 2014
Today's Theme: Impressions
I was totally uninspired looking for color today. Where has all the color gone? Alas. I settled for some green evergreen trees and brown leaves. Another drab and dreary day.
This image is the standard cliche -- motion blur. I was looking for a shutter speed of about 1/10 second and just the right amount of movement with the camera at the time it was shot. To add some saturation and punch to the original I duplicated the image in photoshop, brightened the copy and then blended it with the original.
December 2, 2014
Today's Theme: Vertical
What a lousy day to try to create an image. Cold and raining all day long. Because of the rain I could not shoot outside, especially pointing upward! The rain finally broke after dark. My first attempt was shrouded in fog and mist and by the time the 6 minute exposure was over the lens was covered with water droplets. Very Annoying. On the other hand the first attempt was shot during twilight so there was still some light in the sky which gave it a whiter, more pleasant color. Later, after it was dark the lights of Solomans Island and the overcast sky created that horrible, yucky brownish mess that artificial lights combine to produce.
My options were limited -- by changing the white balance I could only get a yucky brown, pink, or purple sky. The latter looking decidedly unrealistic. When in Rome ... had to settle for obviously unreal, but so goes night photography. The Image below is a 6 minute exposure, painted with diffused white light from both my flash and a flashlight. There was a streetlamp nearby that cast a green glow on the branches as well. You can see the bluish tint on the green leaves from cooling the white balance.
The first image below was the original from which the final image above was derived. The second image was taken during brighter skies and mist.
December 1, 2014
Today's theme: "Who are you?"
So it begins again. Selfies not allowed. I first thought of a leaf blowing in the wind as I often feel that way but without an assistant I could not throw leaves in the air and focus on them fast enough. I'm sure there were folks who thought I looked like an idiot as I tried. Alas.
So next was "a small boat on a big sea". I stopped by Walmart on my way home to buy a cheap plastic boat and then headed to Solomans Island at sunset. Sadly, short of driving a few hours, there was no location where i could capture the sunset and the expanse of the Chesapeake Bay -- big sea -- so I had to settle for the Patuxent river. Not ideal. So the resulting image is a handheld HDR. Because the boat was moving on the water I had to bump the ISO enough to get an acceptable shutter speed while still trying to maintain enough depth of field to keep the background in focus. The image below is a compromise -- soft after noise reduction, background slightly out of focus. Sigh.
