Category Archives: Landscape Photography

Look Up and Imagine

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140629_Leafy Texture by © 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1. XF18-55mm @ 55mm, f/4.5, 1/350 sec, ISO 1600

Over time, I have learned to frequently look up and see.  On a hot day walking along Lake Galena, I looked up and saw the bright sun shining through these maple leaves.  In the bright sun, the leaves looked pretty flat.  At the time I took this image, I thought about adding a texture.  So off I went looking for something interesting.  I found an old cherry tree covered with a thin green fungus.  The texture caught my eye.  I combined the two to come up with the above image.

For reference, the texture image is below.

140704_Texture Background by © 2013 Karl Graf.

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Exercise in Color Composition

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140628_Color Composition by © 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1, XF55-200mm @ 105mm, f/11, 1/60 sec. ISO 200

This image is an attempt to just work with color and composition.  The deep pink and the adjacent dark green provided a strong color contrast as did the bright yellow and the adjacent dark green.  The round clump of pink flowers in the upper right corner was balanced somewhat by the white flowers in the lower left corner.  The diagonal strips of yellow and green provided the center focus.

 

 

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Last Day of May

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140531_PV Park Vert Pan by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1, XF55-200 @ 55mm, f/11, 1.2 sec, ISO 800

Today is the last day of May.  It was a beautiful late Spring morning.  I could not help but to get up early and walk along Lake Galena in near by Peace Valley Park.  My eyes were not picking up interesting subjects.  I used a technique recommended to me by Tony Sweet to just start panning and shooting to get going.  I have learned to consistently fall back on this technique to get my “juices” flowing.  It was a nice morning.

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Spring: Ginko and Cherry Tree

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140509_Ginko & Cherry Tree by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji XT-1, XF55-200mm @ 90.4mm, f/8.0, 1/800 sec, ISO 500

This image was taken looking out our dining room  window.  I noticed how the emerging leaves of the Ginko were contrasted against the deep pink of a flowering cherry.  I varied the depth of field to get a pleasing combination of sharpness of the Ginko and a blur of the background cherry.

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Spring: More Cherry Blossoms

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140604_Cherry Blossoms_Texture by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1, XF 18-55mm @ 42.5mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec, ISO 800

I simplified this image by isolating one clump of blossoms and shooting against the deep green grass background.  I used Color Efex Pro to extract detail in the blossoms without affecting the background.  I finally used a simple texture on the background.

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Spring: First Cherry Blossoms

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140503_First Cherry Blossoms by © 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji XT-1, XF18-55mm @ 35.8mm, f/3.6, 1/480 sec, ISO 500

What would spring be without cherry blossoms.  This image was taken on the first day that the blooms popped out of the tight buds.  We have seven flowering cherries in our yard.  They are my favorite spring highlight.  When the cherries bloom, spring is really here.  I worked the aperture setting to come up with the optimum setting to capture the sharpness of the first group of flowers and blur the background flowers.  They were hard to separate with a standard length zoom lens.

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Spring: Raindrops

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140501_Redbud & WaterDrops by © 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji XT-1, XF60mm F2.4R Macro @ 60mm, f/4.0, 1/210 sec, ISO 400

We have had a downpour of rain for the past two days.  One good thing about rain is raindrops.  So, this mornings shoot focus was to try to capture them.  The day was cloudy so I could not capture the sunlight starbursts or the bokeh.  It was still a nice morning walk and shoot in the garden.  It was a gift.

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Spring: Looking Through

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140430_Japanese Maple Trunk by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji XT-1, XF55-200mm @ 156mm, f/5.6, 1/75 sec, ISO 200

Experimentation … does this work?  I am not sure.  The intended subject was the trunk of the Japanese Maple as viewed through the emerging red leaves.  The RAW image was very flat.  When I added contrast, the colors of the leaves and grass made the overall image look gaudy.  I toned it down with a B&W layer at about 50% opacity.  It still looks too busy for me.  Next time I will try a shorter depth of field, get closer to the leaves and focus on a smaller area of the trunk.

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Spring: Dawn Redwood Cone & Forsythia

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140429_DawnRedWood & Forsythia by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1, XF55-200mm @ 200mm, f/4.8, 1/1500 sec, ISO 200

This image follows the approach shown in my last two posts.  Here I used the bright yellow of the flowering Forsythia along the back fence line as a background to force the viewers eye to the small 1/2″ Dawn Redwood Cones.  There is something interesting around every turn in our garden.

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Spring: Garden Shed & Red Bud

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140428_shed & red bud by 2013 Karl Graf. Fuji X-T1, XF55-200mm @ 50.5mm, f/11, 1/340 sec, ISO 200

The pink of the Red Bud always attracts me.  I used the emerging buds to frame our white garden shed. I used NIK software to add additional blur and defocus the foreground while leaving the shed “as shot”.   Typically I focus on the details of individual flowers or plants.  This and my post from yesterday, I focused on using spring color as a foreground or background to frame and bring focus to another object.

 

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