What a great morning we had today. Humayun drove up from Cantberra last night and we headed off to a beach near North Narrabeen at 4:30 this morning for a photography session that we often plan for.
We'll put up some beach shots as well after they're processed, but here are some of a girl we came across doing some modelling for her friend's scholastic project. She kindly agreed to us capturing some images of her. What a natural and beautiful model she was. We'll be sending a selection back to her as a thank you.
Firstly, four of mine in the natural morning light - Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105mm f4L and 200mm F2.8L:
A couple more from today - (2nd trip there in two days) - Humayun working away off to the right of the first image of this set. There - I've done it and finally captured the elusive "H". LOL
Wow, jaw droppingly good Chris. The second last photo, with the water streaming off the side of the rocks is gorgeous.
Glad to see you two getting some R&R.
I worry about you both so much. (insert hugz smilie here)
Well done
I especially like the girl standing and the ND shot !
Some awesome colors in the others.
I was wondering where H had gone to!
Well done!
frank
Firstly, thanks for a tres uber awesome weekend, mate. We've been planning these outings for eons and I'm glad the planets aligned (muhaha) and we got to have some fun.
Your photographs of our new friend are beyond words. As I said to you, I am envious and jealous that they weren't made by my own hands -- particularly the black-and-white -- exquisite is a word that comes to mind. You must get them printed, on 30x20" canvas, and hang 'em up.
The light at that time of day, within the first 30-45 minutes of the sun coming up (or towards sunset) is magic and so conducive to making flattering portraits.
I am so happy to see you use that landscape eating machine to capture some stunning imagery that will, once again, look remarkable in print.
You'll recall I kept pointing out the mini-waterfall rock shelf image as it kept catching my eye. The final result shows that I was right -- others agree with me in its aesthetic quality.
Thanks so much everyone for the kindest comments. I had a photographic/musical ball with Humayun this weekend. A long time coming, but as Humayun says - the planets lined up. LOL. Thank YOU, good friend. Your knowledge and ability, and the willingness to impart it in others, is quite incredible. I also thank you for the continued loan of your 200mm F2.8 L until I manage either one of these or a 70-200 2.8L with stability down the road a little. I promise to take great care of it.
Humayun absolutely convinced me this weekend to drop Aperture and Lightroom for DPP. What a great piece of software that's so completely in tune with the Canon hardware it is designed to implicitly work with. Simply wonderful, and it justifies having the 5D Mk-II.
While I'm very, very happy with some of these 8 shots, I still have nearly 700 more to really go through from this weekend. I'll see if I can post some up soon.
Hopefully Humayun will post some of his from the weekend right here along side. They are going to be spectacular!
Rather than messing about with sliders and knobs and endless amounts of jiggerypokery, you are presented with but 3 tabs with a limited set of options. The point being, that it forces you to get things right in the camera in the first place. Then, simple things like white balance, contrast, shadows, sharpness, etc., (not to mention very specific tools for distortion correction) can be applied with simple clicks and obtain immediate feedback. Yes, a few things could be better, such as golden ratios and rules of thirds being explicitly displayed when cropping and so on, but, it's about as good as it gets for free software. If an image needs extra work which requires masking and so on and so forth, then, it's a simple matter of outputting a 16-bit TIFF directly to Photoshop, and playing to ones' heart's content.
As I've mentioned before, we spend lots and lots of money on top shelf hardware and pristine glass, why should software that is /not/ designed (fit for purpose) be used to the detriment of our images and be the weak link in the chain? There's really no excuse for it; how anyone (with good gear) can handle LR/ACR/XYZ completely aping skin tones and highlights, all for the sake of workflow and keywording, is really beyond me. Or, perhaps I'm just really anal?
It's 4:30 and we're off to the beach again for another shoot this morning. What a weekend with 6 hours sleep since Thursday. LOL
Chris, some great pics you have presented for our perusal
