February 2012 Desktop Calendar
Another month has rolled around and it’s once again time for a new desktop calendar. This month’s comes from Nepal and what was somewhat of an aborted morning of photography. We’d headed up to Nagarkot on the ridge above the Kathmandu Valley in order to get up and photograph the sunrise over the Himalayas. The Gods of weather weren’t really with us for the sunrise part of things though as a heavy cloud cover moved in and we didn’t get so much as a glimpse of either the sun or the snow-covered mountains. However, once you’ve gotten up before dark on a cold, misty morning and seen your photography plans disappear you’re only left with two choices. Either go back to bed or go for a walk and see what you can see. I took the latter and wandered off around the hillside, finding a narrow trail that led part way down towards a village below. Although the fog was still covering most things up high, there were patches of light shining underneath it briefly and this was the result.
As always, there are a variety of sizes for you to choose from. And below is the same image without the calendar which can be licensed, purchased as a fine art print and shared.
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A terraced hillside in Nepal on a foggy morning. (Craig Ferguson)
Small Waterfall in Yangmingshan
Yesterday gave us a very rare sunny winter’s morning in Taipei so I decided to head to a waterfall in Yangmingshan National Park that I’d read about but never been to. After a 20-30 minute uphill walk along a road (complete with a sighting of the Google Street View car), I reached the trail head and headed in. I was only planning to do half the hike mentioned in my Yangmingshan hikng guide, being only interested in the promised waterfall. I veered right at the fork in the path like the guide book told me and according to the directions, it should have been a walk into the denser part of the valley and the waterfall. The first dilemma came when I reached a second fork that wasn’t mentioned in the hiking guide. One direction looked like it headed towards some houses on the road above, the other seemed to head toward the river valley. So I followed the likely looking path only to quickly find out that it soon ended at an abandoned and overgrown farmhouse. Backtrack time. Taking the other fork, I headed up and after another small wrong turn, found my way to the correct path.
Most of the way, the path was a narrow ledge – maybe a foot wide at most – next to a fairly steep vertical drop. It wasn’t particularly difficult to follow but it did require concentration and attention. Finally I reached the first, smaller waterfall which is seen in the photograph above. Fortunately (from a photography perspective) it was a bit wider here, giving me enough space to set up my tripod and get a few pictures. There were really only 2 angles that were possible, so it was a pretty quick shoot. Continuing on, scrambling up a muddy, slippery path and then along an even narrower ledge, I came across a blockage in the path with my goal in sight. I could see the waterfall and also see another hiker on the other side of the obstacle. He advised me to back up and look for a smaller dirt path to my left that would allow me to bypass the blockage. Finally I was in. Only to discover that it really wasn’t worth it. In the areas that it was possible to access, there really wasn’t much of a view and there was so much spray in the air that the shots I did take mostly have visible water drops on them. It would be a good location for macro photography but that’s not really my thing. It took a fair bit of effort to get into the location and when I got there, I wasn’t impressed with what I found.
Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
As I arrived back home and went to import the photos, I noticed that Adobe had just made available a public beta of Lightroom 4. I downloaded it and the shot above was processed in it. There are a few new features that I like. In this photo, I made use of the ability to locally adjust the white balance via the adjustment brush, as well as some better shadow control. For sake of comparison, below is the same shot processed in Lightroom 3.6.
Processed in Lightroom 3.6
The Source
Yangmingshan National Park in Taipei is known for its hot springs and fumaroles. A lot of the spring water is then piped away, bound for the numerous hot spring resorts in the area. Before the water enters this piped area, it offers scenes similar to the one above.
Face the other direction though and it’s not so pretty. Story of life really.
Piped away. f5.6 1/100 sec, ISO100, 70mm
January 2012 Calendar
Happy New Year.
A new year means a new month which means a new desktop calendar. January’s photograph is one I created a few days ago at a beach a short distance from my apartment. It was pretty cold down there but on the plus side, I had the beach completely to myself and the conditions were right for some black and white landscape photography.
As always, select the size(s) you want and save them to your computer.
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For anyone interested in the photograph without the calendar, whether as a fine art print or to license for any purpose, click on the image below and follow the steps.
51 seconds @ f5.6
Predictions of rain last Sunday kept me close to home all day, although when it hadn’t materialized by late afternoon I decided to head out for some longer exposures on the beach while the light was nice. The original plan was to make use of the last parts of daylight on the sand, and then head around to the harbor area where I need to get some after-dark images for an ongoing assignment for a local magazine. Naturally enough, just before it got dark enough to shoot those ones, it started raining. Before that however, I did manage a couple of shots on the beach.
Above you can see the one that has a bit of potential. There are a few things about it that I don’t like but overall I’m reasonably satisfied. It’s not portfolio-grade by any means but it does evoke a certain mood and sometimes, that’s what personal work is all about.
This next one was a much longer exposure but even with that, the RAW file ended up a bit underexposed. Exposure time on this was 79 seconds, but I’d been aiming for somewhere around 100 seconds. Why did I cut it short?
For the simple reason that it was windy and a sudden gust caught my camera on its tripod and send the whole thing over. Fortunately, I reacted quickly enough to grab a leg and keep the camera from crashing into the sand but only just – I caught it about a few inches off the ground. Because this happened in a matter of half a second or so, it doesn’t really leave any noticeable effect on the image. As long as it’s displayed online, or in a small print, you’d never guess that the camera moved a very long way during the exposure.
79 seconds @ f5.6
November in Taiwan
Calendar time again and this month I’m offering you one of the photographs I shot during last month’s Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. It’s a 30 second exposure shot at f5.6 and ISO100 using a B+W 10 stop ND filter. Hit the relevant size(s) you want at the links below.
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The Way to Heaven - Yehliou, Taiwan (Craig Ferguson)
Last weekend saw the annual Worldwide Photowalk take place globally. In the case of Taiwan though, it very nearly didn’t take place. This was my third year leading the walk and this year for a change, I decided to get out of the city and lead a walk on Taiwan’s north coast, specifically the Yehliou Geological Park. Fall in Taiwan usually brings the best weather of the year so I figured it was perfect for a trip to the coast. The weeks leading up to Photowalk had seen some beautiful weather here, with some of the best sunsets I’ve seen in a long while. Then, 2-3 days before the scheduled date, the rain started. And didn’t stop. As I write this now a couple of days after the photowalk, the rain still hasn’t stopped.
On Friday when it became evident that it was going to be a wet weekend, I sent a message out to my photowalk group mentioning this and also noting that the central weather bureau had issued an extreme heavy rain warning for northern Taiwan. As leader I still had the responsibility to head out to the site on Sunday and ended up being joined by 4 other photographers. I was actually surprised they came because there was torrential rain in the city. It wasn’t even possible to arrange a change of location because everywhere in Taiwan was wet. We got a bit lucky in that the rain actually held off for a couple of hours at the coast which meant we could at least head into the geological park and see if there were any shots to be had. Below you can see a shot I took with my phone showing the basic conditions.
The weather at Photowalk
As you can see, these were not exactly great conditions for coastal landscape photography. It was basically a flat gray everywhere – certainly not the most inspiring conditions for the average photographer. I elected to shoot long exposures and took a 10 stop neutral density filter with me. It at least allowed me to get a couple of photographs that I was happy with. The image at the top of this post used a 30 second exposure at f6.3 ISO100, and the one below was 60 seconds, f11 ISO100. Both were processed in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with these 2 photos. I only made 34 frames all day which was sufficient for these and perhaps 1 other that I’m still deciding about. I don’t think anyone stayed out shooting longer than an hour. I’m quite eager to see what the other guys got when they upload their choices to the photowalk site.
Rocky Bay, Taiwan (Craig Ferguson)
Below The Horizon.
Out for a late afternoon walk close to home the other day and I managed to photograph the above scene. There are a couple of lessons I want to share with you regarding this. The title of this post, It Pays To Wait, is one of them and the other concerns an approach to photography that Stuart Sipahigil wrote about last year that has resonated with a lot of people. Before I get into those, a few details about the photograph for those of you who are curious about that kind of thing. It is of the crepuscular rays after the sun dips below the horizon as viewed looking over the Danshui River and out to sea. I shot it with a Canon 5D Mark II and 17-40mm lens at 17mm. The camera was mounted on a carbon fiber tripod and a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter was used to give an exposure time of 3.2 seconds at f16 ISO100.
It Pays To Wait
I hadn’t really set out to photograph the sunset in particular. Rather, I’d just gone out for a late afternoon walk along the river because it was such a nice day. As the sun started to sink, the sky around it was very clear and the sun itself was just an orange ball. As far as sunsets go, it was actually kind of boring, and I noticed a lot of tourists and day trippers shooting with camera phones and small digicams turned around to instead watch the almost full moon come up in the east. About 10 to 15 minutes after the sun set, the conditions came right and the sky produced the show you can see above. It only lasted a very short time, and I know a lot of photographers nearby were scrambling to get their gear back out of their bags and set their tripods up again. Conditions can and do change very quickly at that time of day, and it always pays to wait after the sun has gone down as you never know what nature has in store. An extra 10 or 20 minutes of patience can make all the difference between a great photograph and a failed photoshoot.
Close To Home
This shot is very much in keeping with the philosophy described in Stuart Sipahigal’s “Close To Home”. Great pictures can be found at your doorstep. It’s easy to look at the work of travel photographers, see their images and think that if only we could travel to Paris or Brasil or Tibet, we too could create great images. Or to look at the work of a landscape photographer and think that if we had the time to hike into the back country or high into the mountains we could produce works of art. Great photos though are available everywhere, and that includes close to your home. I’ve lived in a few different cities in a few different countries and I’ve always found inspiration at my doorstep. Grab your camera, head out your front door and take a walk. Stuart and fellow photographer Ray Ketchum are running the Close To Home workshops starting this month. If you’re interested, check them out.
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Boat and rocks by Selina Ferguson
Last weekend plans for a group photowalk fell through due to a combination of lack of interest, travel time and the weather forecast. Still, my wife Selina, one of our friends and I decided we’d head out to the site of the photowalk anyway for a wander around to see what we could find. We got lucky with the weather – it was raining lightly as we arrived, stopped for the couple of hours we were there and then promptly started again as we were leaving. On site we got a few decent photographs from a great location. Today I’m going to share some my wife took. She has a great eye for photography and often comes back with photos from angles that no one else even considered. She shot these on a Canon 20D and they were processed in Lightroom using X Equals Kodachrome presets for the color ones and Nik Silver Efex 2 custom presets for the black and white.
Rocks at Yehliu by Selina Ferguson
The Ball by Selina Ferguson
Queens Head, Yehliu by Selina Ferguson
Yehliu by Selina Ferguson
May 2011 desktop calendar.
This month’s free desktop calendar is ready for you to download in a choice of 8 different sizes. This photograph comes from a recent trip to Yilan, Taiwan on assignment for a regional travel magazine. After I’d got the shots I needed for the magazine article there was still some daylight left so I was able to shoot a few coastal landscape images. The links to the desktop sizes are below. Underneath those is the same image without the calendar. During the month of May you can buy it as a fine art print or canvas gallery wrap and if you use the code BLUETAIWAN you can have a 30% discount. Prices start from $25. The watermark that appears on the onscreen version will not be on the print.
If you’re a working photographer or an aspiring professional photographer you won’t want to miss Clarion Call 2 taking place in June. I’ll have more details soon but for now you can reserve your place with this link. The first Clarion Call was wildly successful so get in early for the second version.
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