By Jay Patel, on February 29th, 2012 
Many landscape photographers shun the midday sun…but did you know that the best time to capture intense colors in Yellowstone is close to noon when the sun is high in the sky? The sunlight brings out the brilliant colors in the different microorganism growing in the water… and I didn’t even have to crank up the saturation in PS.
I used a “partial polarization” technique – simply rotate the polarizer so that it is somewhere between it’s full effect and none at all – to help bring out the colors without making the sky too dark. Mist is an important part of this image. For this photograph, I waited until the mist covered up most of the human elements in the scene… I didn’t want to include the boardwalks and tourists just on the other side of the pool.
By Varina Patel, on February 28th, 2012 
So, here’s a shot I took in Jura, France in 2006. This is Grand Saut Falls. The region is incredibly beautiful – and I was lucky enough to be able to spend nearly three months wandering the countryside with my children. We hiked as many trails as we could find… visited castles… played in caves and rivers and lakes and waterfalls… picked dandelions… talked to wild swans…
I hiked this particular trail several times during our visit, since the area is packed with spectacular waterfalls. I wanted to shoot the falls with a layer of clouds in the sky to filter the light and avoid blown highlights in the water. (This image isn’t about spectacular light or brilliant skies – but it’s important to consider the light just the same.) So, we picked a slightly overcast day at the beginning of June – while the flowers were still in bloom, and before the summer crowds trampled the undergrowth.
I wanted to smooth the flowing surface of the water for a silky effect, so I chose a shutter speed of 0.4 seconds. Since the flow was pretty heavy, that would be enough to produce the effect I was looking for. An aperture of f/11 was sufficient to capture the entire scene in sharp focus – provided that I chose the right point of focus.
I set up my tripod at the edge of the trail, and settled in to wait. Because of that long shutter speed, I’d have to get the shot at a moment when the breeze settled down. After a short wait, I got the lull I was hoping for. I fired off a few shots – checked each for good focus, and deleted those with any motion blur in the leaves.
It’s a simple image – meant to convey the fresh beauty of the location with a simple color palette and a clean composition. I used the flowers in the foreground to provide a sense of the place. If I print this at large size, I want you to feel as though you could reach out and touch those flowers.
What do you think?
You can see more of my photos from France in my free eBook.
By Varina Patel, on February 27th, 2012 I love shooting water droplets. They are tiny and perfectly formed, and light plays within them , making them seem to posess a life of their own. Here are some of our water droplets.
Studio photography gives you fine control of light and shadow. For this shot, I placed a flower in a black box, placed a piece of glass on top, and sprinkled water droplets on the glass. A thin layer of RainX helped the droplets bead up. I set up my camera on a tripod, and shot straight downward, making sure the flower was properly exposed.
After it rains, water droplets form on branches and leaves. Jay used a macro lens to capture this pretty droplet and found a tiny world inside it. He took two shots – one for perfect focus along the edge of the droplet, and the second for the reflected scene within. Then he combined the two images in Photoshop.
Here’s a shot of dew on a fresh green stem. Varina wanted to capture the essence of Springtime. She got down on her knees and used a macro lens to get close to this little gem. The simplicity of the composition and color scheme let the droplet stand out.
Broad leaf vegetation often allows water droplets to bead up – in the same way that they do a on a freshly waxed car. Jay used diffused side-lighting for this shot. If the subject is small enough, you can create subtle lighting with a diffuser – but in this case, Jay used indirect light coming from the entrance of a small cave.
And here’s one more. This is a shot taken the day after a heavy rain – in the middle of winter. Temperatures dropped during the night, and tiny droplets froze on every leaf. Varina used a very narrow depth of field to capture the beauty of this miniature ice sculpture.
To learn more about composition and color check out our eBooks below:
 
By Varina Patel, on February 24th, 2012  So – how do you capture a scene like this one? This is one of the more difficult situations to work with. First, the range of light is extreme – dark shadows and blinding highlights mean I can’t capture the entire dynamic range in a single exposure. And since the light beams reach below the horizon line and the dark trees stretch above it, a Graduated Neutral Density filter will cause as many problems as it solves.
The solution? Bracketing. I took three exposures to capture most of the dynamic range. One shot exposed for the darkest shadows. One for the mid-tones. And one for the highlights. I let the brightest area inside the sun remain over exposed, since we can’t see details there in reality and reducing the brightness of the sun would create a very odd, unnatural look.
Once I had those three images, I needed to blend them as smoothly as possible. I processed each image carefully for the area it would represent. I used the mid-tone image for most of the sky, and used the other two images to bring out details in the trees and foreground… and of course, the bright areas around the sun. Then, using layers and very careful masks in Photoshop, I blended the three images. I use the “iHDR” manual blending technique that Jay and I have developed over the years. It’s much more effective than your standard HDR software because it allows us to apply blending only where it’s really needed.
When blending was finished, I removed a bit of lens flare (which is often a problem when you are shooting directly into the sun). I chose to leave some lens flare because I liked the visual effect of all that scattered light.
Does the scene feel natural and real to you? Does it evoke an emotional response?
By Varina Patel, on February 23rd, 2012  Click to Download Today’s featured download is from Glacier National Park in Montana. I took this shot early in the morning, as the alpenglow played on the peaks in the distance. I needed a long exposure in order to capture the small amount of light – and to smooth the surface of the lake for a dreamy, opalescent effect. Rain and splashing waves made it hard to keep my lens dry. I had just enough time to take three shots before the alpenglow disappeared… and only this one was free of water droplets.
As always, these images are provided for personal use as computer wallpaper or backgrounds ONLY. Copyright belongs to the photographer, and photographs cannot be used, redistributed, or recreated in print or on the web or in any other medium without written permission from the photographer.
By Jay Patel, on February 22nd, 2012 
This shot is from Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado. We were lucky enough to catch a storm breaking up over this beautiful landscape.
Technically, this was a challenging image to capture and process. The range of light was extreme because I was shooting directly into the sun – but a GND filter wasn’t helpful because the horizon isn’t strait. Instead, I took 3 separate bracketed shots and blended them using our iHDR manual blending workflow.
To learn more about iHDR Workflow click on the image below:
By Varina Patel, on February 21st, 2012 
I took this shot before sunrise at Graveyard Flats – Banff National Park in Alberta Canada. The mist was hanging over the mountain in the distance, and I loved the stark beauty of the scene. It was still pretty dark, so this shot required a long shutter speed… ten seconds at f 7.1. Processing was easy – just a matter of getting the white balance right.
By Jay Patel, on February 20th, 2012 
Not too long ago, Jay sold this shot of Cedar Falls (titled The Looking Glass) as part of a collection of fine art images. He has many shots of waterfalls, and this is not one of his favorites. The image lacks the vibrant colors or grand vistas that you typically find in Jay’s more popular landscape photographs. When the client asked about waterfalls, his first instinct was to send them samples of the most popular waterfall images in his portfolio. One of the first shots he sent was Arizona Dreaming… the brilliantly colorful “icon shot” from Havasu Falls in Arizona.
But, the client passed on all the iconic and popular shots from Jay’s gallery. Instead, she chose the quieter image… one that he had never sold before. He was curious about her choice, and he asked her about it. The answer was simple – she wanted images of local icons… no matter how ordinary they looked in comparison with those iconic locations.
Next time you attend a local art fair, make sure you have plenty of local images. Colorful photographs capture the eye of the viewer – but familiar places capture their hearts.
By Jay Patel, on February 17th, 2012 
Take a look at this photograph and ask yourself… Where do I want to go – and what do I need to do to get there? Now, go do it…Life is short!
This was an easy shot. I lowered my tripod down as low as I could so that my camera was close to the sand. I have the appropriate hyperfocal distance memorized for my wide-angle lens, so it was easy to ensure that everything was sharply in focus. And then, I waited for the wave to come towards me. I released the shutter – and that was it. All done. The shot needed very little processing. Doesn’t this workflow prove that the best things in life are simple. :)
By Jay Patel, on February 15th, 2012 
Nature has a way of arranging elements perfectly. For this photograph, I found perfection in the parched desert landscape of Death Valley in California. While scouting locations for our upcoming workshop, we stumbled upon an area where mud and salt were juxtaposed in complex jigsaw patterns.
This was an easy shot – just point and shoot. We had lightly overcast skies that provided diffused lighting just right for detail shots like these. The trick was to get an interesting composition – and then to get everything sharply in focus. I used a long lens to isolate just a few pieces of cracked mud.
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