Coyote Ugly

Wondering about the title of this blog post? You'll have to scroll down to the picture section to find out. But first i need to catch up with a few things.

It's time to start planning your shooting opportunities this year. There are a couple of excursions or workshops or whatever you want to call them coming up. 

Gales of November

This premier event takes place the last weekend of October in the best resort facility on the North Shore of Lake Superior, the Rock Island Lodge in Wawa. It's a 4-day workshop to celebrate the natural resources of the fall scenery on the biggest Great Lake. This year's workshop is being led by celebrated photographer Ben Eby, with my support. One of the best scenic areas in North America, fantastic lodgings and service, great leadership, economical price, what more could you ask? Photographers of all skill levels are welcome. Drop into www.photography.to/gales for more information (although we still need to update the 2018 information) and drop us a note to let us know if you're interested: we'll get you on the mailing list for information (no spam, we promise!).

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Summer on the Rock

I'm planning to spend the summer in Newfoundland. I want to rent 2-bedroom accommodations to make it possible for people to visit and spend some time there. All I'm looking for is to share the rental costs. I know a lot of the best shooting locations and events: where to shoot puffins and whales, icebergs and gannets, seascapes and cityscapes. 

Arguably the best local Newfoundland photographer Ray Mackey, is on board too, to guide and help photographers. He isn't free, but economical and a very personable and knowledgeable guy. 

What I envision is that someone might come to Newfoundland for a couple of weeks, spend a week with me and another week elsewhere. There are several great spots to visit, depending on your preference of subjects. 

For what it's worth, my rough plan is to start with a week on Fogo Island, then a month in Twillingate, a week in Bonavista and a month in the Witless Bay area (which is close to St. Johns and from which you can access the entire Avalon peninsula.  On the way home, I plan to visit the southwest corner, Port au Port and Codroy before getting on the ferry. End of June through end of August.

I have 3 or 4 interested people so far. My commitment to rent specific places depends on whether people will come visit (if not, I'll just rent one-bedroom places). So I need to hear from you if you're thinking of coming, we can talk about details directly. Please email me.

By the way, I wrote half a dozen blog posts about my trip last summer, starting with this one: http://faczen.blogspot.ca/2017/07/newfoundland-trip-first-days.html. At the bottom of each page on the left, is a link marked "newer post". If you click that, you'll get to the next one. Have a look, lots of pictures and stories there. Worth a visit.

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Pictures. More pictures.

Closeup

Back in December I told you about buying Helicon Focus, a program to facilitate focus stacking multiple images. Mostly used in the macro world, it leads to some remarkably detailed photos. The most spectacular are insects (although snowflakes are very cool too!).  There are no insects around yet, and I haven't gotten the hang of snowflakes yet. 

But this is a very left-brained technique and it takes practice. So I've been working on it, making some progress. Here are a few shots from the other day. Each one is somewhere between 30 and 70 stacked images. All of these were shot with a Nikkor 105mm macro lens, using a variety of extension tubes.

I lined up a few .410ga shotgun shells in my light tent. Dig the detail! 

These are .22 Short cartridges, sitting on top of a boxful of them. Both of these two shots are done with contrasty hard lighting. The cartridges are 16mm long, by the way.

For this image, I changed to indirect soft lighting and I zoomed in, then cropped even tighter. Look at the surface details on the bullet (they're copper flashed in production to keep them from corroding over time. That's way thinner than 'copper plated').  

Marie and Simone's Visit

Marie Algieri-Goldgrub and Simone Koffman came to visit for a day and we went to the ice races in Minden.

I shot this with my new 200-400mm lens (at 300mm). This is right after the start flag drops and the cars skitter around like insects on a hot plate.
 

I switched to my 70-200mm for this shot of a car losing it and crashing into the ice wall. The driver is looking up the track to see if anyone is about to T-bone him. 

We moved on to 12-mile lake and the ice huts. We went out on the ice on my ATV (well, Marie walked...) to get a better angle. I'm anxious to see the shots they got!

Me and Simone on the ATV. It wasn't really a cold day — say about -8°C — but with the wind out on the open lake, it was chilly. There's very little snow, it rained last week and washed a lot of it away. Photo by Marie, reproduced with permission. 

Here's one of my shots.  

Sometimes you put a lot of effort into a picture and it goes unnoticed and unappreciated. Here's a case in point:

This is a 6-image panoramic, 3 across and 2 high. The resulting image was approximately 90 Mp in size and contained a huge amount of detail. 

While it's true that one shouldn't judge an image by how it was created or how difficult it was, I did a lot of work to make it look like what I pre-visualized.  Here's the original shot, straight out of the camera (but already merged to the pano):

Nothing major wrong with it that a little tweaking wouldn't solve but I decided to put some effort into it. Probably the first thing you'll notice is that there is no green hut in the original, the original is wider, and there's a nondescript wooden hut off to the right. I spent some time carefully moving it where I wanted it and then cropping off the right side and some of the sky. Then I thought, if I have a blue and a red hut, I need a green one, so I changed its colour.

I wanted some texture in the sky and the foreground ice, which I did in Topaz Studio, selecting an HDR-like effect then editing it so it wasn't so strong.

Outing with Larry

Larry called me and said, "let's go looking for Snowy Owls again". This time he wouldn't let me drive (see my last post!). Larry really knows how to find stuff, and he can actually see things!

I took my new 200-400mm f/4 Nikon lens. And my 1.7x teleconverter. Now I have to say, I was looking forward to some exciting sharp images and... disappointment. This is a very difficult lens to use right, especially handheld. After this day, I have to question the use of the teleconverter: it gives you an effective focal length of 650mm. I'm sure with some practice... but for now I'd better save that for when I'm on a tripod, and after some practice.

The first wildlife we spotted were some trumpeter (pretty sure!) swans. Here are a pair of them taking off

Swans should be soft, right? So I softened this one in post-

At 400mm, I was able to capture this flying swan. The autofocus is surprisingly quick! 

Eventually we found a snowy owl on a fence in a farmyard. After talking with the farmer and getting permission, we cautiously crept in and snuck up on the owl without disturbing her. I have the vision of a moose. Moose can't see stuff that doesn't move and neither can I. The bird is right out there, bright white, and I couldn't find it. Larry had 50 shots before he patiently helped me to locate it. Once he did, it was obvious!

Tell me how I couldn't see this. I had to do a ton of work in post-processing to make this come out sharp.  

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Coyote Ugly

Kept you waiting! 

While we were shooting the snowy owl, a pair of coyotes showed up in the back 40. With a huge amount of post-processing, I was able to come up with this shot. 

A beautiful, healthy looking animal. Hunting mice in the field with (presumably) his mate. 

After lunch, we came across another coyote. This one, however...

Coyote Ugly. This guy had mange, his whole back end was fur-less. Sad. I imagine surviving the winter will be a challenge. By the way, this shot required far less processing and shows me what this lens is capable of. 

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Catch you later. And don't forget to email me if you're at all interested in Newfoundland this summer. I'll keep you in the loop.

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Are you Unconsciously Competent?

...musings

Where are you at?

I came across something today that brings back my old days in management. I haven't thought about it for years and not until just now in connection with my photography. It bears repeating.

The Hierarchy of Competence
(graphic © faczen)

Whenever you learn a new skill you follow this path (quoted from Wikipedia):

1. Unconscious incompetence

   The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.

2. Conscious incompetence

   Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.

3. Conscious competence

   The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.

4. Unconscious competence

   The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

   
   

This applies to all kinds of skills. Business and work skills, life skills, personal relationships.

When I think about it, I wonder if I've ever really reached a pure stage 4 in any discipline. I'm pretty close to it but I still have to consciously think about it sometimes. I'm often at that level shooting landscape and travel photography, or post-processing with Lightroom and Photoshop. Many years ago I also used to be at that level playing racquetball and pistol shooting. Maybe writing. Before that, in mathematics and theoretical physics. Maybe not the last one, because those aren't right-brained activities.

I've never broken level 3 skiing and motorcycling, except on rare occasions. My computer skills are there too. I've never exceeded level 1 or 2 when I'm painting or drawing or playing keyboard or guitar.

So why do I think this is important? Knowing where I am is essential before I know where I want to be and what I'm capable of reaching. For instance, I admit that I will never be a competent musician. It makes me think about where I should expend my energy. What's important to me and what I can logically accomplish in the time I have left. Eye opening.

So where are you? What do you do well? What do you want to do well? What do you have fun doing but you'll never be good at it?

If you want to learn more about it, Google is your friend...

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If you haven't gone yet...

You have until February 12th to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario's "Mystical Landscapes" exhibit. Go.

I'm not a museum person. And as my friends know, I abhor cities and it's a stretch for me to venture "south of the 401". But I really wanted to see this exhibit. It featured original paintings by Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, van Gogh, Gaugin, Edvard Munch and even Fred Varley!

I'm trying to be brief here, but I can't. I have to explain that I had the same appreciation that I did when I went to Kleinburg and saw the Ansel Adams exhibit. Or looked at the Group of Seven originals. Speaking of the Group of Seven, the AGO has a Huge exhibit. In fact the whole place is Huge (no, my real name isn't Donald). I spent 3 hours there. I wish I had 3 days. By the way, the lighting and the presentation was exquisite. Sometimes you'd look at a painting and say, "that positively GLOWS!".

I was going to buy the catalogue book at the shop at the exit. I didn't. I should have, because I would have liked to read some of the analysis and history behind the paintings but I didn't because looking at paintings in a book and seeing the real thing are completely different things. When I look at a painting and see how the artist varied the brush strokes and chose the colours, it gives me an appreciation for why the artist made those choices. Looking at a printed picture (or even a full-size art print), you don't get that. You can appreciate the compositional choices, maybe get a feel for the overall tone, but not the blood and sweat that went into the making of the painting.

Two interesting side thoughts. When I was there (mid-week, afternoon) it wasn't busy but there were still many people there. I overheard conversations that I didn't understand at all ("see the expression of loneliness in this image? It's a result of the shape of that curve on the left and the way he toned the colours of the sky into the water...", or "Lismer should have known better. He should have used the darker cadmium yellow at the top and blended it into the pale colour at the bottom. What was he thinking?") LOL. I have no clue. 

But the second thought was this: I think part of the reason I appreciate looking at the originals vs. prints is that the detail appeals to my left brain. The more I think about it, the more I realize how I haven't really left that behind. I know I shouldn't, but I'm thinking about the mechanics of making this art and not the concepts and expressions. I have a long way to go. Besides, the artist him/herself is virtually standing there right beside you looking at how much you appreciate their picture. There's this 'aura'.

I've never appreciated the works of Lawren Harris or Arthur Lismer or Emily Carr until now. I liked Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson, Kreighoff is not my style, but seeing their work in real life... damn, I wish I were younger and could spend more time studying these masters.

Refer back to my "Unconscious Competence" article at the top. I can't paint or draw. But I sure am going to keep trying because I really want to. Harvey, I'll be back.

So GO. Even if you miss this exhibit, the AGO is a phenomenal place. So is the McMichael in Kleinburg. Make the time.

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another peeve... people misusing words. I frequently read "I love bokeh", when they mean "I love how the photographer used a shallow depth of field so that there are out of focus points in the image".

Folks, bokeh means the way a lens renders out-of-focus points of light. You can't "love bokeh". You can say, "I love how the bokeh looks in this picture...". There's good bokeh and there's bad bokeh. Good bokeh is an even, fuzzy circle. Bad bokeh can look like a donut. Generally speaking, the quality of the bokeh is directly related to how much you spent on the lens!

Like saying, "it was so fun" (it was so MUCH fun. Fun is a noun. It can be used as an adjective but not a predicate adjective, it needs to be modified!). I guess it's something being added to the vernacular. Can you use "Photoshop" as a verb? Or "Google"? "Let me Google that for you!"

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I've gone to the Dark Side.

My laptop died. OK, not strictly true, the video card or something in the computer died. Here's what the screen looks like:

Yeah, that dark band in the middle shouldn't be there. And the colour balancing is gone.

My desktop has been exhibiting signs of failure for a long time. I was going to replace it but that would leave me without a functioning laptop. So I decided to use the laptop as a desktop (an external monitor plugged into it works fine) and buy a new laptop. I bit the bullet and got a Mac.

So my new laptop is a 2014 MacBook Pro 15" Retina with a 2.8 GHz i7 quad processor turbo boosted to 3.7 GHz, 16Gb of RAM, 1 Tb SSD and a Nvidia GT750 video card with 2Gb of VRAM. It's screaming fast and will run anything I can throw at it. This computer will be my dedicated Photoshop and Lightroom machine, with an attached 27" monitor, external keyboard, Wacom tablet and external hard drives. 

It fits nicely on the roll-top desk I inherited. The external drives are safe in the cubby holes. Cables aren't run properly yet, there's a way to snake them through the desk. The editing setup will sit on a large pine table off camera right. I'm just waiting for a USB hub that should arrive on Monday to hook everything up. 

The new 2016 MacBooks are one step better but they're at least $1000 more and they come without any directly usable ports! There are two 'USB-C' ports and you're supposed to buy dongles to connect stuff, adding even more cost and complexity (there's a hysterically funny video on YouTube, here). And your apps show up on a touchbar above the keyboard instead of docked at the bottom of the screen. So if you use it with external monitor and keyboard, now what?

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Pictures

I can't do a blog post without pictures, right? I haven't shot much, because I've been trying to configure the new computer. I did head out to try to shoot the Pond Hockey Championships this afternoon: who's ever heard of a two-day event that was on Friday/Saturday and not Sunday? So I headed over to the ice races in Minden. Here are a few images, edited on the new Mac (but without the big monitor. I have to admit that Retina screen is awesome!)

I like shooting the start of a race with a long lens straight downrange from the starting line. They're all lined up in two neat rows then it's as if you had a cockroach infestation and suddenly turned on the lights! They all spread out, jostling for position. I had been approached by the driver of #185 before the race: she told me that her husband was driving car #128 and they were one and two on the starting grid and hoped I would get a picture of them together. I'm not sure but I think #128 won the race in the end. 

The spinning tires of the cars on the ice throw up a mist of ice particles, so it's hard to see any cars other than the leaders. It's also hard for the drivers to see, so windshield wipers are constantly going and every car has a bright light in its rear window. In this case, the cars are shod with rubber only – no studded tires.

The "DeHaze Filter" tool in Lightroom CC is MADE for this. Other than tweaking the black levels (the DeHaze filter fills in the blacks too much), that's the only difference between these two pictures. 

Drivers swap tires before each heat. Sometimes they're allowed to use studs, sometimes just rubber. In previous years they were allowed 'racing studs' in certain races but they rip up the track too badly, so they've been banned now. In the past, a weekend of racing would eat through a foot of ice surface. With this year's mild weather, I doubt there was much more than half that thickness on the track. 

One lap in, the cars are starting to spread out. See the ice fog I'm talking about? 

#128 is starting to build a lead, but #117 is still right there with him off camera at the left. 

In Ice Racing, cars get into and out of all kinds of crazy positions as they spin, slide and drift around the corners. The 'rubber only' races seem a bit sedate, but heats with studded tires have cars screaming into corners at over 100 kph! You can tell which cars have been at this for a while — they're all beat up! 

And sometimes they don't make it! Here car #11 drove halfway up the embankment in turn 8 just before the start/finish straight. If a car gets stuck, the driver stays in the vehicle until the end of the race. A caution flag goes up for that corner but the racers are free to do their thing after they clear the obstacle. 

Ice racing happens every Saturday and Sunday in Minden in the winter. It can be cold, so dress warmly! It's free for spectators and if you make friends with the drivers, you may even get to ride in the passenger seat of a race car during a race (you have to have a DOT/SNELL approved helmet. My motorcycle helmet isn't SNELL approved so I've never managed to get a ridealong).


As I said, I haven't shot a lot of pictures this week, with a trip to Toronto to go to the AGO and pick up my new computer, a day at the dentist (Dr. Ron's back from Antarctica. Let's see if I can get him to give me a sample picture to use in an upcoming post). Then all that 'chair' time getting the computer set up. I have to give it a name, by the way. My old laptop was called "LilGuy" but I'd like to find a more creative name for this one. Suggestions? Hit me with them in the comments!

It's been too warm to shoot freezing soap bubbles. It snowed a little bit but the snowflakes weren't too photogenic. Most of them were just featureless little spots or clumps, but occasionally you could find one that showed its unique crystal structure. 

I messed with this one using Topaz Glow and Star Effects. I didn't get the real crisp focus I was looking for but as long as it keeps snowing, I'll keep trying! 

OK, I lied. Well not really... I woke up this morning to -16°C and thought, "Hmmm. Soap bubbles." They're pretty easy although getting one to survive anywhere except on the tie wrap has eluded me so far.  Watching the crystals grow inside is cool!

Unprocessed. Not even cropped, except I added a touch of DeHaze to bring up the blacks and contrast. 

And here's the same shot with a touch of Topaz Glow and Star Effects! A 5 minute edit. 

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Winter at last!

from the 'sporadic musings' department...

I love photography but I think I love music more.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a musician. How to explain...

There's a certain joy you feel when you see a painting or a photo but hearing a piece of music that moves you is a whole other thing. Pictures don't bring tears to my eyes or that feeling in my heart that music does. Perhaps these are the ramblings of an aging man but I wish I could have expressed myself with music more. I can't play any instrument well. Not keyboard, guitar or bass, all of which I've had flings with over the years, and I haven't been able to sing since my surgeries a decade ago affected my vocal cords (come on. You've heard of "Simon, Garfunkel and Springer", haven't you? So now I just listen and try not to imagine playing.

I so enjoy virtuosity. Your list probably won't agree with all my choices (yeah, you probably WON'T if you're younger than I, as most of you are!) but can you argue when I mention Oscar Peterson? Or Barbra Streisand? What about Stevie Ray Vaughan? Or Tommy Emmanuel? Or specific renditions of certain songs, like Neil Larsen on the Hammond B3 behind Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"? Haley Reinhart doing "House of the Rising Sun" (here) (or "Moanin'" with Casey Abrams), or Jena Irene covering Elvis's "Can't Help Falling in Love" on American Idol (here). I'd better stop now or I'll be listing songs and artists forever!

You realize that writing these paragraphs took HOURS, of course. I had to take time out to listen to some of these songs (I even invested an hour watching a Streisand concert on YouTube, here).

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I love/hate Facebook

There are lots of reasons to hate it. Many of them obvious. I'm not going to dwell on those. I think I've minimized them by limiting my "friends" list to people I know or fellow photographers whose work I admire. I'm active in several groups, but only a handful of them where I've enabled notification, so if I understand it correctly, the bulk of what I see in my newsfeed comes from those. Again populated by people I know or respect (major exception: the Photoshop and Lightroom Group where there are people whom I can help). For the most part, I've learned to simple scroll past posts that I consider nonsense and noise. Occasionally I get drawn it, which is why I hate it!

But Facebook is a resource for knowledge and information. There are countless people out there researching and finding and sharing things that you wouldn't find on your own. Great music and images and stories and learning. One case in point is an article I read today, written by Tavis Leaf Glover and shared by Vincent Versace who has a lot of insight into making pictures.

Here's a link to the article itself. I encourage you to read it, especially if you're a photographer.
http://petapixel.com/2016/01/30/10-myths-about-the-rule-of-thirds/

Here's the comment I made after reading the article:

Good article. ALMOST makes me want to turn on my left brain again, Although I agree that the rule of thirds is hackneyed and there are other ways to compose an image, it serves the purpose of making the photographer at least THINK about composition before snapping the shutter. 

 It's easier to deconstruct an image than to construct one. One has to wonder if the classical artists were consciously using various composition rules when they created their art: I think not. I think they unconsciously or subconsciously recognized how to achieve the desired effect, that's what makes – made – them artists. Today we have the opportunity to see tens of thousands of images and create a mindset that subconsciously tells us what we like and what we don't like and we apply it to our vision as we look through the viewfinder. 

 The article did make me think. It made me finally go out and order Michael Freeman's book "The Photographer's Eye". It reminded me to think about balancing elements and gestalt theory. It put me back on the path of pre-visualization. Give me another 70 years and maybe I'll be an artist. 

One of the things I don't necessarily agree with is Glover's caveat, "get it right in camera, don't crop and waste valuable pixels..." (paraphrasing). That's why I bought a D800. It has loads of pixels to spare. Often I don't have time to compose images in the field (certainly not when it involves living moving things!) so I try to include all the essential elements to extract later.

Now I'm almost afraid to post pictures since I'm doubting my composition ability! Not every picture has to be a piece of art, though. However they all have to tell a story!

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Gales of November

This is another rendering of the pano that I shot in September. This time I edited it using the new "Boundary Warp" feature in Lightroom CC 2015.4. It rendered quickly and beautifully but only from the middle exposures in my bracketed shots.

This is a 360° pano image that consists of 6 original images shot with a 17mm lens on my full-frame D800. I was able to increase the coverage of this picture by about one-third by increasing the boundary warp to 100%. By the way, it's 94 megapixels in size, 22k x 4.2k pixels. LR rendered it in about one minute. I pixel-peeped at 100% and I'm unable to find a visible seam. Colour me impressed. When you blow it up, you can see every grain of sand, every pine needle. That's due to the superb lens and of course, the D800. Obviously you're not seeing the detail here on the blog! I toned the image in Lightroom and used Topaz Clarity to bring out the clouds. No cropping, no other edits.

If you click on the image it blows up only to the 800 pixel width that I rendered for this blog. However I have also uploaded a larger version here. Still only 4000 pixels wide (to keep it a reasonable size) but depending on your browser, if you click in the picture, you can see some of the detail.

The October 20-23 session is FULL. Amazingly fast! So fast that planning is under way for a second session a week later, October 27-30 (we still can't wait for November!).

It's an inexpensive outing in a spectacular place. Check it out.

As I write this, I haven't yet updated the web page to reflect that fact, and David hasn't put the booking page in place for the second weekend. I need to know who's interested in coming so we can make it happen, so please take a moment to email me and tell me if you're thinking about it. I'm giving some thought to gearing the second session more to 'intermediate' than to 'advanced' photographers, so more tutorials, more hands-on coaching. What do you think? Tell me!

Most of the information, other than dates, is exactly like the original weekend session, which you can read about here: www.photography.to/gales.

update: It's official and the site is up! Go have a look!

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Winter's here

I was going to say it's a weird winter, but it's just a little late. Last day of January as I write this, and  ice fishing – the mainstay of the winter economy up here in the Highlands – is just getting underway. Another snowmobiler died yesterday when he went through the ice so we all have to think about being careful out there.

Ice racing is happening in Minden. I spent an hour or so there yesterday and if you can, you should drop by. It's at the fairgrounds on Bobcaygeon Road. It's hard to capture the feeling with still photographs, you have to experience these guys driving faster on an ice-covered track than most of us can on dry pavement.

The lines on the ice surface give this a sense of motion, even though the shot was taken at 1/1000 second to freeze the action. 

The driver in the orange and black car at right was head-and-shoulders better than anyone else on the ice. In fact, he held back at the start line, giving everyone half-a-lap lead and not only won the race but pulled over near the end to let people catch up and unlap themselves. I'm told it was Tom Prentice, but I don't know for sure.

Some drivers weren't as good, or at least were driving beyond their abilities. Good thing they had snowbanks! I saw one car climb halfway up an embankment but nobody had an accident while I was there. 

Fender benders don't count. Imagine driving 100kph on a pure ice track, competing for position and trying to pass (or not be passed) in a chicane, while sliding sideways in a full 4-wheel drift. These are street studs, by the way, not racing studs (which are much longer). It's interesting that these are the exact winter tires I have on my car (less the studs)!

This is one of the drivers. I'm sorry, I didn't get his name but I thought the picture is compelling. So I don't know who he is either! Made you look. He said, "I thought you were taking pictures of my car, not me!" I was... He said, "be careful not to scratch the paint on my car!" LOL 

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Picture of the week

I ventured out on the ice on 12-Mile Lake a couple of days ago, on my 4-wheeler. I was assured by people who seem to know, that there's an 8" (20cm) thickness of hard water, almost enough to support a car, but some spots are thinner than others, wherever there's moving water. After 8 years here, I basically know where that is, but still I was being cautious. That's my ATV in the photo.

I want to comment on the composition. As you'll see below, when I shot the image I had the horizon in the middle but that's because when I shot it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to add drama by including foreground or feature the sky. So I left room to crop. 

This is one of the original images, SOOC ("Straight out of the Camera"). This was one of five, in fact it was the darkest one because I had my exposure comp set for +1. The finished one was an HDR merge in LR, some toning adjustments including de-haze, small crop to move the horizon, graduated screen toning and colour temperature/saturation adjustment on the sky, some spot toning on the ATV and hut, burn in on the bottom ATV tracks, that's pretty well it. Oh, and a small vignette because Ansel Adams said that a picture isn't finished until the edges are burned a little. About 15 minutes in LR, never took it to Photoshop. 

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