Like yesterday’s image, the above poster was also part of the market test in LA; here is my original post and photo on that story.  The image was from the Hidden Falls Trail in Grand Teton last year at this time.

So it is really exciting to report this image was also licensed for unlimited nationwide bus stop signage for one year, along with some other uses!

You might notice the version that illustrates the blog entry on the Hidden Falls Trail is darker then the one you see above.  That is because images used in this blog are usually from the a jpeg with very little Photoshop adjustment applied, because I’m in the field and short on time.  In this case, the final version was actually a blending of two different exposures created by working with the raw files after returning home.  I always capture both a jpeg and raw file when taking a photo – This blog is the only place I use the jpeg; otherwise I only work with the raw file. 

Hidden Falls, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

This photo is also part of the Nature Valley ad campaign for Los Angeles and Orange County, California - this image will be appearing on bus shelters in the area over the next couple of months.

You might remember this images from last summer, it was from the Hidden Falls Trail in the Grand Tetons.

Well we have just updated our website gallery with all our new Grand Teton National Park Photos.  Now that we have a fair amount of spring a fall coverage of the area, the lack of winter coverage seems like a glowing hole.  Hopefully one of these year. 

 If you followed our travels through the Tetons on our blog, then many of these photos will look familiar.

If you have followed this blog for long, you will remember the wonderful time we spent around the Grand Tetons this past June.  It is nice to have images from that trip already in print – from pond to print in less then 6 months! 

This is one of the advantages of digital.  During the days of shooting slides, a trip like the one we took to the desert southwest last winter would just now be making it to market.  With digital, that trip paid for itself within just a few months!

These trips may pay for themselves quicker, but they won’t begin to pay for any of the homes in this catalog!

Here you can read more about our travels to the Grand Tetons on the photo blog.

Horseback riders this past fall in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

If you followed the link in yesterday’s post on saturation masks, you will realize Tony also offers actions for something called luminosity masks as well.  This is another subtle, but powerful tool that frankly I haven’t mastered and rarely utilize, but I plan to spend more time trying to master them over the next month as we begin to adjust our autumn photos. 

So why discuss it if I don’t use them yet?  Well, I have recently discovered another use for these masks that make them much more valuable, but I will save that for the next post.  Again, this is a relativly advanced topic that won’t interest everyone.

I should begin by saying, to find the actions along with a very detailed description, you are probably better off going directly to Tony’s Luminosity Mask page.  For these actions, or the saturation mask actions, Tony asks for a small donation at an amount you decide.  I think it is money well spent.

What Tony’s actions do is create an curves adjustment layer along with one of 12 different masks – these masks affect just a certain portion of the image based upon its tonal value.  Now I have long recognized the benefits of a curves adjustment – adding a little contrast to an image can give it a real boast.  With these actions, you can now adjust the contrast via curves for a certain tonal range giving us far more control then we ever had before.

As I mentioned, the masks come in about 12 different flavors, with one revealing only the “Super Lights” on one extreme, down to the “Super Darks”  on the other extreme, with about everything covered in between.  It is probably easier to show you what I’m talking about, rather then trying to explain. 

Here is the mask for “light lights”

Remember, black blocks and white reveals.  So you can see, any curve adjustments made with this mask will largely only effect the light portion of this image – in this case, the trees.

Here is the “dark darks”:

Now you can see if I make curve adjustments with this mask, I will primarily effect the far hill-side and not the trees. 

I must admit, this was a low contrast photo – probably about the worst one I could have used to demonstrate the differences in these masks, but even so, I think you get the idea. 

One of the beauties of these mask – since they are derived from the actual image, they are completely self-feathering.

Tony’s mask are really easy to use – they automatically create a curves adjustment layer along with the described mask – from there it is up to the photographer to experiment!

In the next post, hopefully by Monday, I will share with you why I’m really excited about these masks.

Kayakers enjoying a warm, sunny fall day in the Grand Teton National Park.  That looked like fun!  We are now on the road to Reno and Lake Tahoe after a great time in the Tetons.

Sunrise from the same wonderful place as yesterday’s post.  Yesterday’s Teton photo was at sunset.

Here are more Grand Teton Photos.

Now this is my kind of viewpoint!  Unlike yesterday’s post – here I was the only person within at least 3/4 a mile.  Just me, the crisp fall breeze, and the distant bugle of an elk.  Perfect.

Here are more photos of Grand Teton National Park.

The bad news, the Grand Tetons is crawling with photographers right now.  The good news, they all tend to shoot at the same four or five iconic viewpoints, with the beautiful Oxbow Bend being at the top of this list.  This makes it easy to avoid the crowds - which is what I have been doing all week.  But my Grand Teton collection wouldn’t be complete without an image from this famous location, so I braved the crowds and shot it at sunrise.  This is one of the least crowed sections of the bend, I bet there were over a 100 photographers there this morning.  I have never seen anything like it.  Some of the guys next to me said the morning before was even more crowded!  Why is it so popular?  Not only is it a beautiful spot, but it is right next to the main road with lots of parking.

A cow and calf moose in front of Mount Moran, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.  You can read more about our travels to the Grand Tetons on our photo blog.

A few minutes after yesterday’s photo.  The light dusting of snow really helped.

Three pronghorn just before sunrise.  Unfortunately they didn’t stick around for the beautiful alpenglow!

Grand Teton last night.

The Jackson area has been getting some much needed rain since we arrived, which means some wonderful fresh snow on the Tetons!  Uneventful travel getting here, in fact every flight was early!

Janine just completed another new section to our website – Grand Teton National Park photos.  These photos are almost all from our spring visit.  Again if you have followed the blog, many will look familiar.

Janine has just finish updating our page of Yellowstone National Park Photos from our spring trip.  If you were following the blog during that time, you will probably recognize many of the photos.

I have received a number of emails lately asking for more of the details behind each photo.  It is a good suggestion, and I have promised to do just that on occasion.  What I thought might be interesting would be to share my detailed thought process behind a single image.  I decided to do that with this photo from our spring trip.  I think some people might be surprised all that goes into just one photo.

First the good:

Composition 

I had to move the tripod up and to the right a little, and wait briefly for my super-model (Janine) to drift downstream and towards me.  I thought it was very important that her head and the bow of the boat didn’t merge with the reflection of the mountain.  I also didn’t want the reflection of her head to be cut off by the bottom of the frame.  In fact, I felt like there should be a little buffer between the edge of the frame and her refection, so this gave me a very short shooting window.

I also felt it was important that she looked into the frame from the bottom left of the mountain and reflection.  She probably couldn’t see the reflection from where she sat, but the casual viewer wouldn’t be aware of this. 

Timing

I would have loved to have shot this at sunrise, but I knew there would probably be other photographers there, and I didn’t want to mess up their shots.  I figured by waiting until an hour after sunrise the other photographers would be leaving, and the regular visitors wouldn’t have arrived yet, giving me a little window of time to myself. 

My timing was good.  There were a couple of photographers just wrapping up.  They appreciated that I waited for them, and I appreciated that they didn’t shoot my setup - although they had every right to.  We had the place to ourselves for the rest of the morning, at least while we were there.  I have spent a fair amount of time searching for a similar spot that isn’t popular with photographers for some more shooting this fall – I think I may have a spot or two. 

Color

Having visited this spot in the morning on other days, I knew the scene would be dominated by blues and greens.  For this reason I thought it would be imperative to have a red or yellow kayak.  I felt like these colors would be more pleasing in the scene, with red my first choice just because it is my favorite.  The owner of the kayak rental shop was very understanding even though it meant doing some digging through the storage area to reach a red kayak.   

The Hat

The hat helps give the photo a casual, relaxed Wyoming-ish type feel.  It would look out of place on the tundra, but looks pretty good here.  Plus, super-models can be very demanding these days, and I do my best to keep this one happy.  So if she wants a hat…

Technicals

I shot this with a Canon 5D with the ISO set at 100 to minimize noise – I certainly had plenty of light!  I used f/14 which should have provided all the depth of field I would need, so the resulting shutter speed was 1/30 of a second.  I used the Canon 24-105 set a 47mm, and of course I used a tripod. 

The not so good

Composition

Every photo has some flaws and this one is no exception.  In order to keep the elements in place that I mentioned above, I also had to include a little shadow in the lower right hand corner.  The casual viewer would never see this especially now that my copyright hides it - I think the viewers eyes would start at the kayak and would move and circle around the mountain, reflection and back to the kayak.  For this reason, I don’t think the black corner hurts the photo, but I would have preferred solid grass.

A bright corner can kill a photo in my opinion.  I often find this in scenes where a portion of the sky is inadvertently included in one of the upper corners of a photo.  The viewers eye is almost always attracted to such a bright spot, ruining an otherwise well composed photo.  A dark spot doesn’t seem to have the same effect.  A square crop would work perfect here by eliminating the whole right hand side, but I almost never crop an image.

Timing

I love to photograph predawn and the first light of day.  It was frustrating to not have that killer light, although I think this photo will be successful anyways – many buyers prefer the bright blue sky.

So there you have it – way more then you ever wanted to know about 1 of our 301 photos from our spring trip – that is if anyone is still reading .  Here is a larger version on the photo.

Back to our spring photos – this was five separate photos of the Upper Geyser Basin, the Old Faithful Geyser and Inn and the other Park Service hotels in this popular part of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

Here is another image from our spring trip.  This panoramic is made up of 3 separate images.  Unfortunately on the blog I am limited to 400 pixels in width which leaves it pretty small.

When Janine wasn’t with me on my Alaska travels, she was hard at work converting and adjusting photos from our spring travels.  She also got help from Jenessa who we hired part time.  When I’m traveling, my blog posts are usually photos that need little work.  I thought I would now share some other images from the spring trip – ones that required the combining of images to overcome either wide dynamic range, or for the creation of panoramic photo.

This is one of those photos.  It was very dark inside this little chapel, and very bright outside.  A photo of the inside of this chapel that didn’t show the amazing view out the window would not do the place justice.  So this image is made up of two seperate exposures, one for the inside and one for the outside, and then they were combined in Photoshop later.

On a side note; I apologize for the blog being down for awhile today, evidently I needed to update Wordpress.  Now that I have done that, I see some strange characters have been added to all my old posts.  I have know idea why, and it may be awhile before I can fix them, but I will.