Afternoon in Venice
St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, Italy...bathed in warm afternoon light.
I was wandering around in lovely Venice, Italy (with the camera, of course) and basically was waiting for the sunset to fully arrive. It was golden hour and there was some nice warm light out, and I was snapping away. I spent a good bit of time in St. Mark's Square, which is always crowded, and even though I couldn't get a clean shot of the place, I was still happy just to be there to see it.
Golden hour in Anguilla
Golden light over a serene beach in Anguilla...
The beaches in Anguilla are amazing!
When we visited Anguilla earlier this year, I was amazed at just how beautiful this little spot is. I captured so many photos of serene, beautiful beaches in all sorts of light. This was just before sunset and as you can see I had the place nearly to myself. I'm not sure where everyone was, but I am very glad to have been standing there while this was happening!
Sadly, Hurricane Irma came through and devastated large parts of this island. According to reports I read online, this location (which is at the Four Seasons Resort) was heavily damaged, so I wish them all a speedy recovery.
Golden hour in Anguilla
Gorgeous golden hour light at the Four Seasons Hotel, Anguilla...
A lovely late afternoon in Anguilla!
We spent a few nights here at the Four Seasons Hotel Anguilla, and basically spent each day on the beach and then spent our happy hour/dinner hours at the bar by the pool. This was about a 15 second walk away, so I would just wait for the light to get all awesome, then take a few steps and fire away. It was pretty easy, I confess, but someone had to do it! :-)
Lake Austin sunset
A lovely sunset in Austin, just a few miles from home...
Just a few minutes from home - no packing required!
There is a certain joy to just grabbing the camera and making a short drive somewhere close to take some photos. While my travels are rewarding and exciting - and I can't imagine not ever traveling - I do enjoy the simplicity of not having all the gear with me. There is a certain sort of freedom to that type of photo outing.
This one is from the Loop 360 Bridge overlook in Austin. Literally it's about a 5 minute drive from home, assuming there is not any traffic. Ok, so more like 15-20 then, since there always seems to be a lot of traffic in Austin! Nonetheless, when you climb up this cliffside and get this commanding view over the lake and bridge, it's always worth it. Throw in a nice sunset and it's a great outing!
The sunset skies of Anguilla
Four different but equally beautiful sunset shots from lovely Anguilla...and all I had to do was get up from my bar stool and take a few steps to frame them!
So many beautiful sunsets in Anguilla!
When we were in Anguilla, I had several amazing sunsets in a row. I got a little spoiled, I will admit, but hey they just kept showing up and I just kept firing. Heck, I hardly even had to leave my seat at the bar to capture these. ;-)
Literally, I would wander just a little closer to the water and fire away. It was simple. I love when that happens. I hardly had to do a thing - that's how a vacation ought to be, right?!
Sunset in Firenze
Sunset over the Arno River in lovely Florence, Italy...
Ah, lovely Florence - such a gorgeous town!
Florence, Italy - known to Italians as Firenze - is the birthplace of the Renaissance and one hell of an amazing city. I loved our visit there last year, and was lucky enough to have some pretty nice light a couple of evenings there. Good light always makes a trip more memorable. ;-)
I was set up on one of the many bridges that span the Arno River, waiting for sunset and pretty much just enjoying life. It was busy but not overwhelmingly crowded. I could easily get a nice spot to shoot from, so I moved around a little bit in order to try different compositions.
Mostly my target was in the other direction from this photo, which is the Ponte Vecchio, their famous "old bridge" that crosses the river. But for this photo I walked to the other side of the bridge in order to capture the beautiful sunset that was happening behind me.
It pays to move around and experiment when you are out shooting. If I had been just focused in the other direction, I would have missed this, and that would have been terrible. :-)
Golden hour in Strasbourg
A stunning golden hour in Strasbourg, France...
A lovely view of a lovely town!
Late one afternoon back in December when we were in Strasbourg, I headed out with hopes of capturing some golden hour and sunset shots in the historic quarter of town known as Petite France. It's a wonderful and scenic part of town and one that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring.
From our rented apartment, I meandered through town until I got to the river, and then followed that to Petite France. It was a worthy detour and I stopped a lot along the way to take shots. My wife and daughter opted to skip so I was alone and in my element. As you can see, the light turned out pretty awesome and I was rather happy to be there firing away!
Golden hour at The Vatican
Golden light descends on The Vatican in Rome...
Here's a pic from our Rome trip - great light that evening!
We had been out wandering Rome all day - which is quite fun to do - and were heading back towards our rented apartment, which was sort of behind The Vatican. Sunset was approaching, so of course I was busy firing away. When we got to this spot where we needed to cross the street, I just had to stop and set up the tripod and fire some brackets. I couldn't resist this beautiful golden light. In fact, I ended up staying in this area for a while because sunset turned into quite a spectacle and I just couldn't leave!
This is a 3 exposure HDR merged and edited in Aurora HDR 2017.
The best view of Florence
If you are looking for the best view of the skyline of Florence, Italy you can find that in today's blog post. But it's not a secret - I had to share it with a few hundred of my closest friends. :-)
The best view of Florence is at Piazzale Michelangelo, but this is NOT exactly a well-kept secret. ;-)
I love to capture skyline photos when I travel, but it's not always easy to do. Some cities just don't offer a good location for taking in the grand expanse of a place, but Florence Italy certainly does.
Prior to arriving here, I did some online research (as I always do before going somewhere) about Florence and it wasn't much of a time investment to figure out that Piazzale Michelangelo is the best view of town. It's a hell of a climb, but it's well worth it.
So I set off quite a while before sunset and clambered up the fairly steep hill to get here. My expectations were that I would find some folks here doing the same as me (or at least watching the sunset), but in reality this place is BUSY. It was literally jam packed. It's a big, wide plaza on the top of a hill, and there is a bar/restaurant and hordes of people. Of course, I was there in late summer so that is at least partly responsible for the crowds, but nonetheless it was a madhouse.
At first I was concerned I wouldn't be able to find a good spot, but surprisingly I did, and quickly. Once I got settled, I stayed there for quite a while. I was afraid to move actually, for fear of not getting another spot with a clear view. While most of the people there were of the tourist variety (no tripod, iPhone or point and shoot camera - though I want to point out there is nothing wrong with that), there were some others like myself that had all the gear set up and ready to go. I guess everyone got the message that this is THE spot for a skyline view.
While the sunset wasn't exactly magical, it's an incredible view of a beautiful city and one that I am very happy to have spent an evening capturing, even with my iPhone (yes, I still do that a LOT) and my point and shoot camera - not to mention my full frame Sony (which the above photo was captured with). I try and cover my bases by using several cameras, LOL. Besides, you can never take too many photos, right?
If you visit Florence, be sure and spend an evening up here catching the sunset. You'll be very glad that you did!
Golden hour at Cathedral Rock
Despite the exorbitant heat of summer, Sedona really does seduce the senses. There are some incredible landscapes nearby that offer great photographic possibilities. Today I show you Cathedral Rock.
Sedona really has some amazing sights!
I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about visiting Sedona. I knew it would be hot, and coming from Texas, that was about all I could think about. I had seen photos of the landscapes around the area and knew it was pretty, but since we were there in the summer, the heat was about all that I thought about.
Until I got there.
The town really did surprise me. Although a bit touristy, it does offer a wealth of outdoor activities (which can be challenging in the heat) and of course also offers a healthy dose of what I wanted to do: photograph the landscapes.
One of the first places we went was over to Cathedral Rock. It's a short drive from town and after hiking around the park and taking it all in, I set up here in this field to capture the golden light of the setting sun fall on Cathedral Rock. It's pretty fabulous to witness!
Golden hour at Fan Pier
I caught a nice golden hour in Boston one evening, and walked away with some shots I am proud of! I've also been experimenting with some black and white photo conversions, and talk a little about that today, too. Enjoy!
This is the classic view of Boston, in my opinion, and I lucked into some nice light while standing there!
I like Boston - it's a nice city. I would like to spend more time there and really get to see it in more depth, but thus far all my trips there have been very short. In this case, I was there for 2 nights but only had 1 free for shooting. So, I met up with my friend Bob Lussier and we headed over here to Fan Pier.
I'm a sucker for skylines, especially when there is water in front of them.
The nice thing was that there was NOT a bunch of other people here. Sure, some folks came and went, but it was generally empty. That's my favorite type of shooting condition - no one else around. ;-) It's not that I don't like people, it's just that I don't like people walking into my shots. You can actually see a couple people in the below shot, but they weren't really in the way.
Oh, and one other thing. I've been experimenting with black and white quite a bit lately. It's pretty obvious that I am a big color sort of guy, if you've looked at any of my images. I just love bold and expressive colors. But like most other people, I do love a nicely rendered black and white. There's just something timeless about it. The thing is, I've enjoyed LOOKING AT black and whites over the years, but I've never expended any serious effort trying to craft them - until now.
Now that I am using all the Macphun products in my workflow, I started experimenting with Tonality, which is their black and white conversion product. After just a short while, I decided that I really love the product and the process of creating black and white photos. In fact, I wrote up this review of Tonality here on the blog. I took one of these Boston photos and converted it, just for comparison purposes. But I've also been going through my library and reworking a bunch of old shots into black and white - it's been quite fun, and you will see more of that here going forward. I have no plans to abandon color of course, but adding in some black and white is a nice change now and then. Hope you enjoy them!
Thanks and let me know if you have any questions!
Golden hour at Haystack Rock
I caught an incredible golden hour recently at Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, Oregon. It was one of those times when everything just worked out perfectly. Here are 10 photos that prove it!
There's just something about Haystack Rock!
I love coastal Oregon, and while I often aim to discover new places, there are some that are so awe-inspiring that it's hard not to return. Haystack Rock is just such a place. This massive monolith sits on the beach in the little town of Cannon Beach, Oregon and it draws quite a crowd, especially in summer.
We recently spent several weeks in the area, and I made it a point to get here a few times and grab some shots. My hope of course is always to get a nice golden hour, sunset, or blue hour (or ideally, all three) but you can never really predict these things. You can hope, and based on what you see in the sky you can certainly get your hopes up, but you can never accurately guess whether it will turn out nice or not.
So one afternoon we headed over there hoping for great light. There had been some decent clouds all day, and I had my fingers crossed. As you can see, when golden hour arrived, it really started to come together.
I was getting pretty excited and ran around firing all sorts of shots from various angles. It was also close to low tide, which in my opinion is the best time to shoot on the Oregon beaches, because of all the rock there. The receding tide leaves behind all sorts of little pools, which you can use in your photographs to draw the eye.
So that's exactly what I did with some of today's shots. These long sections of water were lined up just about perfectly, and I fired away with them in the foreground as a leading line. The funny thing to me is that I was the only one really doing that. I just assume everyone would shoot this way, but it was just me - which was totally fine by me of course! I would rather have it all to myself anyways. Nearly all the other photographers were clustered either down close to the rock itself, or on the other side of the rock (further south down the beach - I shot from there for sunset, and it's a very popular spot).
I hope you enjoy this collection of photos from that day. And yes, I stuck around for both sunset and blue hour, and OMG it was marvelous. I just need to work on those pics and get them ready, so that will be another time.
Thanks for stopping by today!
Golden hour on the Brooklyn Bridge
How awesome is the Brooklyn Bridge? Pretty awesome! Here's a collection of shots from a photo outing I had there one evening last year. It started around sunset and kept on going into blue hour. Hopefully I can return to NYC later this year and shoot it again - there's a lot of things to aim the camera at there! (Hey Jim, that's pretty obvious! LOL)
I have always wanted to shoot the Brooklyn Bridge!
I have seen so many shots of the Brooklyn Bridge over the years, and have literally wanted to shoot it forever. It's a beautiful bridge, as you probably know. You've seen pictures too, right? Or maybe you have been there? The problem for me is that it is in New York City, and I live in Texas. I love to shoot bridges, but that's a long drive. Know what I mean? And while I travel a bit, it's rare that I get to go to NYC.
Luckily, sometime last year I made a trip up there (actually, come to think of it, I made two!), and the first thing on my list of what I wanted to shoot (and yes, I always make a list for my trips) was the Brooklyn Bridge. I just HAD to get there. It's iconic. Plus, I just love bridges. How can you pass up such an opportunity?
The good news is that I have a photo friend there, Mark Garbowski, and we met up to shoot one evening. I met him in Manhattan, and he drove us both over here so I could indulge myself at this iconic spot. It's great to have a local contact to shoot with, as they always know the best spots (I've had meetups in Nashville, London, San Francisco, and more - it's always great.).
Anyways, it worked out pretty well. (Thanks Mark!)
We started on the bridge, and eventually ended up wandering down the river's edge to shoot both the bridge and the Manhattan skyline, which is just across the river. It was a fabulous evening of photography and was great to hang out with Mark as well. We had been friends online for years, but there's no substitute for meeting someone in person. It's always better.
As you can see in the photos, the golden hour was bright and beautiful. I am really warming up to shooting at golden hour (pun definitely intended!) more often these days. I've never NOT liked it, it's just that blue hour was more my thing. But lately I am finding more and more about golden hour that I like, including blown out highlights in photos. Yeah, that may be something many are trying to avoid, but I don't think it's always a bad thing. It's real, after all. And of course, the lovely warmth of a golden hour shot is quite awesome.
And of course, we stuck around and shot through blue hour as well. Why leave when you have such a great scene to point the camera at?!
So here's a collection of pics from that evening - enjoy! Thanks for looking!
Golden hour at The Brooklyn Bridge
For my trip to NYC, I had a list a mile long of things I wanted to shoot, and the Brooklyn Bridge was very near the top of that list. While I didn't make it to all of them, I made sure I got here, and it was worth it!
Bridges are one of my favorite subjects, especially when they are as awesome as this one!
The Brooklyn Bridge is well-known and often-photographed, so getting an original shot of it is pretty difficult...and I am ok with that. I just wanted to get there and see it, shoot it, and walk across it. If I got a photo I was happy with, I considered that a bonus.
I got a few actually.
I was out with my friend Mark Garbowski and this was the first stop. Being a relative newbie to NYC (my last trip was about 5 years ago), my primary choices to shoot there were all the standard stuff you would think of: Times Square, Central Park, the skyline of Manhattan, and of course the Brooklyn Bridge. There were a lot of others too - some I got to, and others will have to wait for another trip.
But being a bridge lover, I just had to get here - it was a high priority. So we started here, walking across the bridge and enjoying the golden hour which was quite pretty. I took a lot of shots but most of them haven't been processed yet. These two were fired in quick succession.
For that first one, I just had to wait for the crowds of people to thin out a little bit, and then I fired handheld really quickly. No tricks here, just straight-up photography, and a little waiting. It usually works.
The long shadows of sunset
There's just something about sunset in Santa Fe...it's always gorgeous.
Sunset in Santa Fe - always a treat!
I love shooting in Santa Fe, and it always seems that the sunsets there are special. I don't know what's happening out there, but it usually ends up being quite a beautiful sight. Today however, I have some shots to share from before sunset.
I was up on a hill just outside the "ring" around the historic plaza area of Santa Fe. There's a big cross up there and you get a decent view of things. And since it's hard to find a good sunset spot in the city, I chose this place one evening and it worked out well.
But of course, prior to the sunset is the period known as "waiting for the sunset". It can often be quite beautiful, especially around the golden hour, but sometimes it can be pretty bland. This evening offered up some nice golden light, although the sky didn't produce anything spectacular.
But I was interested in the view over the adobe houses, and of course that tree was pretty cool. I like trees. So I wandered around on the top of this hill for a while, shooting this and that, and watching the long shadows that the failing light was creating. Not a bad way to spend some time, actually!