A Balloon Festival with no balloons

I’ve planned a trip to Winchester, VA a few months ago. I booked a hotel for a couple of days and made plans to visit Skyline Drive and the annual Winchester Balloon Festival. We arrived at our hotel on Thursday and visited Skyline Drive after getting checked in. We were hoping to photograph the beautiful fall foliage along Skyline Drive. We were disappointed because there was about 10 feet of visibility due to the thick clouds that were lingering around the mountains so needless to say the photographic opportunities were nil but we had high hopes for Friday.

We woke up at 4AM to be able to get to the mountains in time to catch the sunrise. We were disappointed once again with the thick cloud cover until we got a break in the clouds. It only lasted about 20 minutes, just in time to get this image:


The clouds rolled back in quickly but I wasn’t ready to quit shooting yet. I couldn’t really shoot anything wide because the lack of visibility so I decided to pull out the 400mm and snag these shots:




We later stopped for breakfast at a restaurant off of Skyline Drive. The food was good but the architecture was better. Here is a shot of the restaurant’s ceiling:


We decided to make our way to downtown Winchester. It was a gloomy day but at least we were under the clouds and not literally in them. Here are a few shots I made while in town:






Yummy Thia food.


Saturday morning was the big morning. THE HOT AIR BALLOON LAUNCH! We arrived at the Balloon festival at 7AM ready to capture the big hot air balloons. We left at 8:30AM after they announced the balloon launch was cancelled due to the weather. BUMMER! :-(
I did sang a few non-balloon photos at the festival:




All the aniticipation and planning went down the tubes. It was time to head back home. We drove down Skyline Drive and I managed to get one more decent photo:


There's always next year.



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Accent Lighting

Accent lighting can add a nice three dimensional touch to any shot but it can be challenging to properly execute. The goal is to create a soft light that can be contained to a certain area. Soft light usually spreads everywhere thus making two light sources appear flat. So how do you create soft light that's also controllable? Grids!


For this shot of Heather, I used a Beauty Dish with a grid on it (camera left) as the key light, and a stripbox with a grid (camera right) for the accent light.
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Seascape Techniques

I posted some seascape images in my last Blog post . For this blog entry, I'll list some techniques and equipment I used to capture them.

Exposure
Getting the correct exposure is vital with any type of photography and seascapes are no expcetion. I like photographing the sea when the sun is near the horizon. This is the time when the drama happens. The colors will be vivid and bold and the colors will be reflected off of the water.

Keep in mind that the expsoure will be tricky because the sky will be bright and the foreground will be dark. It will be difficult to show detail in both the sky and foreground because the range of light will often be greater than what the camera can handle. You can overcome this by either using a graduated neutral density filter or braketting the exposure and bledning the exposures in post processing. (I'll post the step on how I do this later in the week) To bracket the exposure, place your camera on manual exposure. I like using a small aperture (f/11-f/22) to increase the depth of field. Use the lowest true ISO your camera can go to. Adjust the shutter speed to get a decent base exposure and then just vary your shutter speed up and down + - 3 stops.

Composition
Rule of thirds! Enough said! Actually I'll expand. Try not to split the horizon and try even harder not to place the sun smack dab in the middle. This will create a bullseye effect and the viewer's eye will focus in the center and stay there.

Keep the horizon level!

Look for an interesting foreground obect(s). (Rocks, drift wood, shells, jetty, or bring your own starfish.)

Try getting low. Avoid having the camera aimed straight and at eye level. Remember that you're creating art and not just recording events.

Focus
Use one focus point and place that focus point on the lower thirds, usually on the interesting foreground object. Once you have the focus locked, set it to manual so it won't refocus as you bracket your shots.

Color
In most cases Auto White Balance will do just fine but try experimenting with different Kelvin values. In most cases Auto White Balance will try to correct color, so if there is a very warm sunset, AWB will overcompensate and add more blue to try to "correct" the color. If accuracy is vital to you, using a calibrated gray card is a good way to make sure the white balance is accurate. Keep in mind that shooting in RAW is extremely beneficial not only for exposure forgiveness but also for nondestructive color adjustments.

Equipment Considerations

• Sturdy tripod and ballhead - ensures sharpness
  
• Cable release - ensures sharpness
  
• Graduated ND filter - Balances contrast of bright sky and dark foreground
  
• ND filter - slows shutter speed to capture motion in the water
  
• Lenses - Various focal lenghths for various looks. Typically wide angle works best. Lens with large aperture and IS are not necessary.
  
• Circular Polarizer - boosts saturation, darkens skies without darking white clouds, reduces glare off of water, see underwater objects normally unseen without polarization.

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Sand, Sea, & Sky

Next Tuesday's class (October 13th) will be on the topic of shooting seascapes and fall foilage. Here are some seascapes I've shot in the past. We'll talk technique in the class.






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Old Fashion Bubbles

Here's a shot of Andrew playing with bubbles. I converted the image to sepia.
Remember, when shooting children or pets, get on their level. Read more!

Check out Firg's site

I'm a guest blogger today at Firg's site: CLICK HERE Read more!