Nat Coalson's Photography Blog

Near Crested Butte, Colorado.

Here’s a photo I made today in the White River National Forest, Colorado.

Last weekend Bret Edge and I led a photo workshop in Jackson Hole, mainly within the Grand Teton National Park.

Prior to the workshop, I had a chance to do a bit of photography on my own. Here’s one of the resulting photos, of String Lake and Teewinot Peak.

Click to see the large image.

Feel free to provide comments and critiques! Thanks for looking.

A few weeks ago, I visited Cape Cod and had a great time shooting around the coast, harbors, lighthouses, etc.

While I was out there, I was thinking a lot about Lightroom 3 beta and how I might improve my workflow and the quality of my image files. I captured a whole bunch of frames to put Lr 3 beta to the test. Here is the first example.

This is Nauset Light, in Eastham. I arrived about 45 minutes before dawn. (I like to shoot lighthouses before sunrise or after sunset, when we can actually see the light!)

1.6 sec at f/16, ISO 250
Canon EOS 5D mark II
Canon EF 24-105 at 35 mm

The first image is the original capture. The second is the final image, processed entirely in Lightroom. Lens Corrections, white balance changes, sharpening, improved demosaicing on the raw capture… I was really impressed with what Lightroom could do with this capture. One more example of a photo that may never need to see Photoshop

Let me know what you think!!

Here’s one shot from my recent journey through Cape Cod. This is Nobska Point Lighthouse, in Falmouth Mass.

This is the first photo on which I’ve used Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5 and the new and improved “HDR Pro”.

The HDR Pro script in PS CS5 did a pretty good job of making the blend, which I then finished processing in Lightroom as a TIF. In Lightroom, I also used the Lens Correction feature, which works great.

What do you think? Comments and critiques always welcome!

One of my photos is in the finalist selection for Outdoor Photographer’s Colors of Nature contest… please vote for me if you can do so with a clear conscience, and you don’t have one of your own in there, of course,  :biggrin:

Thanks!

I recently completed a job for SCW Art Consulting in Durango, CO. They commissioned five large prints of photographs I made in various places around Colorado. The prints will be installed in a new hospital being built in Lakewood, CO. My thanks to Sarah Giuliano and the team at SCW!

Here are a couple of selects from my recent trip to New York City. I am processing the photos now and will post the full collection on my web site soon!

In preparation for the new year I’m releasing several calendars of my photographs; the first one is available now from Cafe Press. A couple more calendars are in the works and will be available for purchase during the first week of December.

A question from a reader of my Lightroom 2 book:

“Dear Mr. Coalson,
I just recently purchased your book, Lightroom2. I notice that many of your beautifully printed images are done with small aperture settings.

For years, I have shot many landscapes at f22. This seem to go against the grain of conventional wisdom. Many serious photographers refer to a sweet spot in the lens, about f8 or f11.

I shoot with Minolta professional glass; all of my lenses are 2.8s. now I’m using them digitally with a Sony A700 body.

What is your opinion?

As I develop a work flow, I find myself unsure of how much to stop down my exposures on landscapes. I want to keep as much as possible in any given scene in sharp focus.”

My reply:

“Thank you very much for your email, and for purchasing my Lightroom book.

I will be happy to answer your questions re: apertures.

What we’re dealing with here is depth-of-field (DOF). DOF refers to the range of “acceptable” sharpness (or maybe better said “perceptible” sharpness) within the photo. The lens settings for focal length and aperture determine the DOF, based on the distance at which the lens is focused. Read more…

I’ve been seeing a lot of tips floating around about photographing fireworks. Many make it seem difficult and mysterious. Time to get back to basics.

• More light = shorter exposure. Less light = longer exposure.
• Capturing fast action = shorter exposure. Blurring long motion = longer exposure.

… where “exposure” is a combination of aperture and shutter speed.

With fireworks, the action is relatively fast, and the light is bright. For this reason, in most cases, you don’t want super-long exposures! Keeping your shutter open for 30 seconds will leave you disappointed. (The exception would be if you have opened the shutter onto a black sky and are waiting for the fireworks to go… in this case, a black sky will register little or no light onto the exposure, so having the shutter open is fine while intermittent flares are going off.)

But when the bombs really start glaring, you need faster exposures to capture them. Otherwise, you will end up with a blurry mess of overexposed shots.

With that in mind, here are my tips for shooting fireworks, using a digital SLR: Read more…

I just returned from a week-long trip to Oregon coast and northern California redwoods. I traveled with my good buddies Jim Talaric , Monte Trumbull and Jim Barber… and we all had a great time.

This was my first time shooting in the area; even after doing a lot of online research, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

As is the case with most nature/landscape photography, weather is everything in coastal areas like this. Fog, clouds, sunrise/sunset times, chance of rain etc.  will totally dictate what shots you can get, and where. Plan to get wet, and plan to keep shooting.

As usual I traveled with my laptop, using a temporary working Lightroom catalog for the trip. (More about this in my Lightroom book …) Everything worked great.

I came home with nearly 1,000 captures; from which (mostly during the trip) I have edited down to around 50 "keepers".

Here’s one shot, from the first night in Oregon. This is sunset at Ecola State Park, looking south toward Indian beach. A really beautiful place. We had varying light, people coming and going, and a tide that was not perfectly suited to our work. However I came away with a couple fo shots I’m happy with; this is one of them.

This image was processed [minimally] entirely in Lightroom.

Comments and critiques always appreciated!

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, California

Redwood National Park, California