Flowers, Angel’s Rest Trail

Flowers on Angel’s Rest trail. A very popular hiking spot in the beautiful Columbia Gorge. It was a damp rainy day in the middle of summer. That’s why you see water droplets on the flower. I liked this flower for the striking colors. Shot with Nikon D80 with Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. No modifications besides cropping.Z

Sunset at Flathead

Sunset at the Flathead Lake. We were taking a cruise in the lake while this photo was taken with Nikon D90 and Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. I have used a Brilliance/Warmth filter to enhance the orange glow in the sky and also done some retouching to adjust the color of the sky.

Northwest Forest

Northwest Forest. This is a post-processed photo, to increase dynamic range called high dynamic range (HDR). Human eye can see approximately 20-24 F-stops worth of light intensity variation while most digital cameras can only capture 8-10 F-stops. What it means is what we see in a real scene can never be captured on a digital photo as it is. But with computers we can combine multiple images captured at various settings (called bracketing) and increase the dynamic range. This technique is most useful when shooting a subject with bright background like sky, snow, beach. In a normal photo, you either get a very bright overexposed sky and properly exposed object or very dark object and properly exposed sky, but never both. HDR image can depict both objects properly exposed by combining these two (or even more exposures). Notice in this photo that I’m pointing the camera directly at the sun, but still the tree barks, leaves etc. in the foreground are properly exposed. In a normal photo you would see them completely black in such case. Table Rock Trail (near Molalla, OR), Summer 2010.