Andreas Feininger

Andreas Feininger is one of my favorite photographers. He was a staff photographer for Life in the 1940s and '50s, and did impressive work with extreme telephoto lenses and showed tiny objects larger than life. You can find some of his work on Google Images, in the Life archives. Any of his numerous books are worth owning, and the concepts he explains in his technical books remain relevant, for the most part, even 50 years after they were published.

Fall Colors in Greeley, Colorado, November 1, 2008

Fall colors against a building Greeley, Colorado, November 2008. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

Scenes with contrasting organic and geometric shapes are certainly fun to explore. This building, since demolished, provided a good backdrop for the leaves. An additional element, the shadows, provides a third layer. Colors are a bit muted in this treatment, but I think it's fitting. Inside the windows we find some blue for additional contrast with the warm tones. Generally speaking, I like the arrangement of shapes within the frame, except for the shadow in the middle right that cuts across the window. And the lonely branch on the bottom left. Now that I mention it, that bottom left originally had a dark shadow crossing it. Jay Maisel, of the "Light, Color, Gesture" school, teaches that those corner issues are weaknesses, so I selective lightened it. Even so, that corner isn't quite finished, but I'll come back to it, and probably get rid of the thin branch while I'm at it.

Nikon color goodness in Camera Raw

An update to an earlier post about getting Nikon colors in raw converters other than Capture:

It turns out that in July Adobe released camera profiles that give Camera Raw colors very similar to those from Nikon Capture (and by extension Nikon cameras in general). The results aren't exactly the same as what Capture outputs, but by my subject quality factor testing they are pleasing and are now part of my normal workflow.

Nikon-specific profiles in UFRaw

UFRaw by default produces rather different output than Nikon's in-camera rendering. Looking through my files after a shoot, I found myself disappointed that the color from UFRaw lacked the contrast and saturation of the preview JPEGs.

After some fiddling with UFRaw's settings, I found references to Nikon's own color profiles being useful. If you have a copy of Nikon Capture (even the demo will work), you can retrieve the temporary profiles it produces from an NEF. Use that profile as your input and presto — rendering just like Nikon's.

The problem is that Adobe Camera Raw uses yet another approach, and I can't specify an input profile like in UFRaw. So I must tweak my Camera Raw defaults until I get something approaching the Nikon rendering. And so far it's proven a bit tedious…

Evening Leaves, Chadron, Nebraska, July 9, 2008

Evening sun backlights leaves in Chadron, Nebraska, July 2008. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

I was drawn to these leaves that were glowing in the evening light. With a long lens to frame them, this scene is all about the shapes of the leaves and outlines of the stems. I like the texture on the middle left leaf, which shows some of the detail in the intricate veins.

Custer County Aerial, June 20, 2008

Aerial view over Custer County, South Dakota, June 2008. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

I was excited to have an opportunity to photograph from a helicopter, and took a few interesting photos in spite of the high angle of the sun, which reduces shadows on the ground that might reveal the texture and character of the terrain more effectively. In this light, you have to look for more elements with more obvious contrast. I like the combination of straight lines and curves created by the Cheyenne River, and repeated in a less organic way by the cleanly divided field.

Sunset over Cherry County, July 3, 2008

Sunset over Highway 20 in Cherry County, Nebraska, July 2008. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

While driving on Highway 20, I was taken by an irresistible impulse to photograph the sunset. There was enough haze in the air to dim the sun at its low angle. I adjusted the tones to open up the shadows. This is a single-point perspective arrangement, and I always like being able to throw in some power lines marching into the distance. The water tower and radio tower on the right create the balancing elements. I like the yellow-orange gradient across the sun.