Archives For water

Havasu Falls, Arizona

Varina Patel —  May 17, 2013

Coloring Book

Map: Havasu Falls, Arizona

Havasu Falls is incredible. The waterfall and its turquoise pool are highlighted against a backdrop of rich orange sandstone. On this particular evening, the sunset painted the sky in shades of pink, purple, and blue. The colors feel as thought they could have been chosen from a box of crayons by a child who didn’t care about the “real” color of things… so I titled this one “Coloring Book”. But it isn’t imaginary. It’s quite real. And truly beautiful.

Getting here is tough. You won’t be driving to the campgrounds. The nearest road ends 11 miles from the village of Supai, so you have three options. You can hike, go on horseback, or take a helicopter. We carried our packs down into the canyon via a series of rough switchbacks. It’s a difficult path, but once you reach the bottom, you can follow the canyon towards the village. You’ll need a permit to camp here, and you can get all the information you need at: http://www.havasupaifalls.net/

We stayed for three nights before packing up and heading back home. Keep in mind that you’ll be making that final climb after a long hike, so be sure to bring enough water and conserve your energy for the final push. The website offers this advice…

“The hike is a moderate difficulty hike, 11 miles from Hilltop to Campground. Temperatures in the summer can exceed 110 degrees, and there is no water available on the trail until you reach Supai at about 8.5 miles. Know what your body can handle, and pack accordingly.”

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Liquid Sky

Varina Patel —  April 23, 2013

Lanikai, Oahu - Hawai'i, USA

I took this shot of Lanikai beach from a high ridge that looked down on the palms from high above. The angle gave me an incredible panoramic view of the clean, turquoise waters and the coral beneath the waves. I chose a composition that eliminated the dry land, and left the palms framed by the ocean. Standing up there, looking down – this is what stood out to me. Those tall palms, swaying in the wind – and the brilliant backdrop of liquid sky. What a place!

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The End of Days

Varina Patel —  April 12, 2013

Kilauea Lava Flow, Big Island - Hawai'i, USA

This is a shot from the Big Island of Hawaii. Here, the lava flows in to the sea. I loved the chaos of this location. The slow shift of the fiery lava that created a startling new landscapes overnight. The intense heat against my skin – and the steady breeze off the sea that tossed my hair, and provided a breath of fresh air above the burning. The furious boiling as hot lava hit the cool ocean – and the rush of steam that seemed to have a life of its own. The lava creates a brand new landscape – by destroying everything in its path. Houses. Trees. Livelihoods. We walked for two hours and saw just one living creature – a tiny spider that had laid claim to the wasteland and spun a little hammock to call home.  In some places – where the lava was old – tiny plants were springing up. Harbingers of a new world to come.

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Creating a Splash

Varina Patel —  March 12, 2013

Papa Bay, Miloli'i - Big Island - Hawai'i, USA

This was a fun afternoon.We were headed for the airport on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a slow and meandering drive – and we weren’t in a hurry – so we decided to take a side road that led toward the oceanside town of Miloli’i. What a view! Newer homes had been build along the cliffs, and the waves were pounding against the rocks. We pulled out our long lenses and started trying to capture the waves as they broke. To get a shot like this, you need to be above the surface of the water, and at a good angle so that you can look through the wave. We shot on a bright, sunny day in order to capture the brilliant color of the water as sunlight passed through it.

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Hakalau - Big Island - Hawai

The Spider’s Pearls: Tips for Shooting Tiny Things

Varina Patel —  February 1, 2013


This is a shot I took on the Big Island of Hawai’i. We were driving along the road, and we noticed a small road way down below us in a beautiful valley full. So, we pulled off the main drag and found the road we’d seen from above. I’m glad we did. We found ourselves in a gorgeous spot – waves pounding the rocky shore on one side, and lush rain forest on the other.

I noticed these lovely water droplets strung like pearls on a spider’s web. So, of course, I pulled out my macro lens and got down to business.

Capturing a shot like this is tough. Even with a macro lens, it was hard to get in close enough for the shot I wanted. And the slightest breeze is enough to keep the web dancing… so getting a sharp picture required patience.

I took several shots – hoping that I could get one that was sharp. Thanks to a few moments of stillness, the photo I took with a 1.6 second shutter speed (ISO 100) is cleaner than another I took with a 1/6 second shutter speed (ISO 400. :) Sometimes, you just get lucky. :)

A few tips for shooting spider webs.

1. Look for a clean background. Here, I used an aperture of 7.1. That setting gave me just a bit of depth of field to work with, and left my background completely blurred out. I was VERY close for this shot… just at the focus limit of my lens, so my depth of field is incredibly narrow.

2. Look for patterns. Notice that I included only a few strands of the web in this shot. I looked at it carefully to find repeating patterns that were appealing to me. The Y-shaped strands give me the patterns I want, and the single strands break up the pattern just enough to keep things interesting… in my opinion, anyway. :)

3. Align the objects you want in focus on a flat plane – and keep that plane parallel to your camera’s sensor. As I mentioned before, I was working with a ridiculously narrow depth of field here, so anything outside my narrow plane of focus would be blurred. I adjusted my camera very carefully to be sure it was aligned as accurately as possible.

To learn more about photography check out our eBooks below:

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Hilina Pali, Big Island - Hawai

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

Varina Patel —  January 15, 2013

When I’m on location, I’m constantly aware of my surroundings. I’m looking for clean colors, simple compositions, and quiet beauty. As we were driving towards the Hilina Pali overlook in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on the big island, I noticed that the color of the sky perfectly matched the color of the sea. Light played on the surface of the water, and in the distance, soft clouds reflected the same subtle light. I grabbed my camera as soon as we came to a stop, and put on my 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x multiplier. I put my camera on my tripod to keep it steady. (We were testing our new Induros on this trip – I’ll be writing a review very soon!) I needed to work very quickly because the light was changing fast, and I didn’t want to lose the cloud that fit so nicely into the composition I wanted.

The image was extremely simple to capture. The range of light isn’t very broad, so I needed only a single exposure. However, the meter reading for a shot like this will be incorrect because the entire scene is bright. I increased the exposure by about 1.3 stops in order to capture all the color and detail I wanted. In post, I adjusted my color balance slightly so that the image felt very clean – just as the scene felt as I was shooting. No weird color casts allowed! :) Then, I cropped for a pano presentation.

What do you think? Does this shot fit into my minimalist collection?

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Cascades du Herrison - Jura, France

What Sells: Collections

Varina Patel —  January 7, 2013

When you present your images for sale, consider using gallery features that allow you to group your images into categories based upon similarities. For example, I have a gallery that is dedicated only to unusual geology, and another that is just for water shots. You can set up a gallery for images with a dominant blue color theme, or for photographs from a specific location. Your options are wide open.

We use SmugMug for our online print sales, and I absolutely love the Smart Galleries feature. It lets you use keywords to create collections, so that potential buyers view images with shared characteristics. When a buyer wants more than one image, they often have a theme in mind. One buyer asked me for 30 detail shots that she could sell as a wallpaper collection. Another wanted several waterfall photographs for decorating a newly opened hospital. In Cleveland, a buyer wanted images of local parks and iconic locations for the walls in an office building. As you build your portfolio, keep an eye out for images that work well together, and be sure to present them as potential groupings.

To learn more about photography check out our eBooks and webinars below:

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west_virginia_0091 copy

Hey, Dad… Is This Close Enough?

Varina Patel —  December 11, 2012


My dad used to tell me to “get in close” when I was taking pictures with his sturdy little Pentax, K1000. It was good advice! When I’m shooting, I’m often thinking about how I can get close and fill my frame with my subject. I took this shot with a Canon 180mm macro lens. The greatest challenge when shooting macro is getting the focus just right – especially when you are outdoors and working with windy conditions – or a moving subject. In this case, I used a wide aperture (f/5) to capture a very narrow depth of field. This serves to eliminate the details in the background for a simpler image.

In post processing, I check my color balance carefully to make sure the greens looked natural. Then, I used my Wacom graphics tablet and stylus to draw a really quick selection around the tip of the grass and the water droplet. I feathered the selection, created a mask on a duplicated layer, and then sharpened the layer. The mask let me target my sharpening to the areas that needed it – leaving the background nice and soft.

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Saltworks

Jay Patel —  October 31, 2012

This was probably one of the best sunset I have ever photographed on the salt flats of Death Valley National Park. The sky was lit up in all directions, and there were a couple of inches of water on the flats – which are typically dry and desolate. All that standing water created amazing reflections of the color and light in the sky. I was thrilled to be able to capture such incredible detail, too.

The salt formations stand out dramatically in the foreground because the camera was down low – half a meter or less above the ground. I controlled the exposure between the sky and foreground using a soft, 0.6 graduated neutral density filter. Even with a GND filter, some areas of the sky were overexposed and needed manual blending. I used layers and masks in Photoshop along with our manual iHDR workflow to bring out the details in the highlights.

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Flowers in Columbia River Gorge - Oregon, USA.

Quick Tips: Leading the Eye with Focus and Blur

Varina Patel —  October 25, 2012

I took this pretty shot early on a rainy morning in a meadow. Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge is overflowing with flowers in Spring, so it’s a perfect time to pull out your macro lens and play with the possibilities.

When a single element in an image is in sharp focus and the rest of the image is blurred, the eye tends to settle on the sharp element. The blurred areas lack detail, so the eye shifts away from them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t in integral part of the image – not at all. But a soft blur allows me to soften the effect of the pink flowers in this photograph. The sharp grasses and water droplets draw the eye.

I took this shot with a 180mm macro lens. Although the pink flowers were beautiful, it was the water droplets that caught my eye. So, rather than trying to capture the entire scene in sharp focus, I chose to bring the droplets and grasses into focus and allow the pink flowers to go soft. I use this technique to point the viewer toward the object I want them to notice. In this case, I chose those two blades of grass covered in droplets as my “point of interest”. So, my goal is to minimize distractions in other areas of the image. The pink flowers provide a sense of place and a beautiful counterpoint to the main subject – but the eye migrates towards the water droplets rather than wandering around through the image.

Post-production is just as important as in-camera work. In this case, I made sure the white balance was just right – I wanted a nice, clean pink, and a very natural range of greens and yellows. If I’m trying to keep your eye on those little water droplets, the last thing I want is for you to be distracted by weird colors. The same goes for distracting spots. I used Photoshop’s Patch Tool and my Wacom tablet and stylus to remove them quickly. They might have been bugs, but were so blurred that they were unrecognizable - and they certainly didn’t add anything to the image. And for printing or web display, I used my tablet to draw a quick selection around the droplets, created a mask, and sharpened just that small area. I left the rest of the image alone for a very soft look.

The finished product is very simple. I created a clear point of interest with a narrow depth of field. I kept my colors clean to avoid distracting my viewer. I removed any distracting spots that might grab your attention. And I avoided sharpening areas that were meant to remain soft. What do you think?

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