March 15th, 2012
I visited California for my grandmother’s 93rd birthday. She had received a couple bouquets of assorted flowers and orchids. She asked me to photograph the flowers so that she could remember them after they wilted away.
I shot these orchids in the backyard in bright sunlight. I used a Canon 60D with a 50mm f/1.8 for a wide open aperture for a shallow depth of field. I’m pleased with this shot but, I wish I had used a reflector on some of my other shots. There really wasn’t a whole lot of post-processing on this one. A little vibrance, some saturation and I increased the black levels to darken the background a tiny bit.
Tags: Family, flower, orchid, plants
Posted in Portraits & Stills | No Comments »
October 20th, 2011
Took a trip up to Prescott to scout out some fishing spots and try to capture a few good shots. I took this six-image pano when I got there. This WordPress theme doesn’t play well with wide images so I cropped it a bit for this post. The full image can be seen on my Flickr page HERE.
Watson lake is quite small. The center of this image looks across the widest point. If you click to the larger image you can see several people kayaking in the middle. The contrast of the water rising up amongst the rocks is beautiful. The rock formations are the Southernmost part of Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: arizona, AZ, desert, lake, landscape, outdoor, plants, prescott, water
Posted in Landscapes, Scenes | 1 Comment »
June 11th, 2011
This was another of the Chihuly glass sculptures on display at the Chihuly: The Nature of Glass. The exhibit was on display at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, AZ from Nov. 22nd 2008 to May 31st 2009.
This shot is a composite of a 3-shot bracketed exposure. I had a fourth shot in which I played with light painting on the plants in the foreground but it really didn’t work out. Also there were many other people shooting this sculpture from all sides and I wasn’t comfortable making all of them wait while I shined a flashlight almost into their lens. I ended up darkening the foreground and eventually cropping it out almost entirely. This particular sculpture was so bright that I used bracketing so I could mix in areas that weren’t totally blown out in the highlights. Photomatix did not work well with these images and I ended up manually layering them so that the darkest areas were well lit and then I masked out many little spots to restore some of the brightness in areas. I also painted in a lot of black to hide the noise in the foreground and background. This sculpture was very difficult to faithfully reproduce what I saw with my eyes.
I was at the garden this night with Arizona Highways Photography Editors, Peter Ensenberger and Jeff Kida. We had all spent a little too long on sculptures closer to the entrance and we got split up by the time I had made it this deep into the gardens. I wish I had gotten some advice from them on shooting this sculpture.
Tags: art, Chihuly, desert, Desert Botanical Garden, event, glass, HDR, outdoor, Phoenix, sculpture
Posted in HDR, Scenes | No Comments »
June 11th, 2011
This photo didn’t get much editing. There wasn’t a lot I could do without obscuring the water from the sprinkler and I liked it almost as is. They were facing away from the sun so I had to do some dodging to lighten up faces. Beyond that, there was a little color correction and levels adjustment. This was another shot taken in the backyard in Riverside, CA. We were all sitting out under a tree enjoying the weather. My uncle Leo, always busy working on something, had stopped to play with his grandkids in the sprinkler. I was tempted to crop out the left side of the image but I left it in to include more of the sprinkler drops. The drops seemed to look more like weird spots in a tighter crop.
Tags: children, kid, outdoor, portrait, water
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June 11th, 2011
I caught grandpa sneaking a nap as we sat under a tree in the backyard enjoying the Southern California weather in Riverside. I have been fussing with this image for a long time and the exact details of the process are mostly forgotten. I can remember that I used a gradient overlay B&W conversion process (hopefully I will remember to go into detail on that process soon) and a few other techniques to attempt to boost the contrast and detail in the hat skin and clothing. Most recently I used a layer mask and added some lens blur to further obscure the background. I’m undecided on whether or not to crop the photo and in which direction… I’ll play around with it some time.
Tags: Black & White, Family, High Contrast, portrait
Posted in Black & White, Portraits & Stills, Scenes | No Comments »
June 10th, 2011
A friend recently asked me about the need for a UV filter on a lens. Others have asked me about this in the past. It seemed like a good opportunity to write about it.
photo by Ashley Pomeroy
First and foremost, a UV filter can be seen as an insurance policy. A $20 piece of glass that protects $100s of glass.
You don’t have to adjust exposure or shutter speed for a UV filter in any conditions like you would for a polarizer or an ND filter. So basically, you can put it on your lens and leave it there. Other filters screw right on top of a UV filter. I buy a UV filter for every lens I have and leave them on the lens 24/7.
Besides the insurance, why use a UV filter? To my understanding, a cameras sensor (and even film) is sensitive to Red, Green and Blue light. UV light falls in the Blue end of non-visible light and the sensor is sensitive to light outside of the visible spectrum. That non-visible light can over-saturate the sensor and can often manifest as a blue cast over the image. This affect becomes more likely as you gain altitude as there is less atmosphere filtering the UV light. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: equipment, filters, gear, landscape
Posted in Equipment and Gear | No Comments »
May 30th, 2011
Chihuly sculpture scene, Desert Botanical Gardens 2009
This shot is of one of many of the scenes of the exhibit Chihuly: The Nature of Glass. The exhibit was on display at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, AZ from Nov. 22nd 2008 to May 31st 2009.
In this shot I did a lot of dodging and burning within the plants and also on the glass itself. This HDR result was from 3 bracketed exposures. I was trying to just ever-so-slightly add a painted look to the shot. I pushed the HDR effect a bit to bring out the clouds in the sky which appeared very bland in the source exposures.
Out of the camera the glass just didn’t have the shine and luster that it did in person. It was mid-afternoon and I wish i could have been there earlier in the morning for better light. I don’t recall what cast that shadow on the saguaro in the foreground.
Tags: art, Chihuly, desert, Desert Botanical Garden, event, glass, HDR, landscape, outdoor, Phoenix, plants, sculpture
Posted in HDR, Landscapes, Scenes | No Comments »
May 30th, 2011
This is a fountain in the courtyard of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ. I was at the museum for The 2011 World Hoop-dancing Finals. This shot was taken on Sunday afternoon near the end of the competition and a worker was hosing off the ground and cleaning up. The fountain was framed nicely by the archway. I wish I could go back with a ladder to shoot it again from just a little higher perspective.
In this photo I did some perspective correction. I removed a length of red rubber hose that was lying in the foreground and I removed some people that were wandering about in the background. I added a little sharpening to the trees to add some life to the limbs and leaves. A little burn in on the tables, chairs and middle-ground. Finished it with a very slight vignette around the edges.
Tags: architecture, art, event, fountain, Herd Museum, outdoor, Phoenix, water
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May 30th, 2011
At the Fiesta Bowl Parade in Downtown Phoenix with my friend Mike and his family. In this photo I added some lens blur to push the background out just a bit more. I created a fake-HDR effect to sharpen the details of her knit hat, sweater and her cute face.
Tags: children, event, HDR, kid, parade, Phoenix, portrait
Posted in HDR, Portraits & Stills | No Comments »
May 28th, 2011
I’m developing this blog so that I can share and talk about some of my photos and the processes, thought and ideas that went into creating them. I am rarely satisfied with my photos right out of the camera (and I shoot in RAW) so most of my photos will be at least partially post-processed. Talking and/or writing about the process helps me learn.
I hope you like the photos and please comment.
Mike Millar
Tags: hello, intro
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