Beach Rainbow
Woke up this morning to an amazing sky. Fired up the new Canon 5d and shot this one handheld off the balcony.
photo blog
B&W conversion – Viveza Silver efx
So dave has 10+ years in photoshop…me, I use it for stitching panos and nothing else. I use aperture and new tools like viveza. Super simple and great results…I think…Both of these were taken along the beach in Nicaragua with my D300 and my 18-200 lens…
Michael’s version above using Viveza Silver efx
dp’s version using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS4
Nik Software VS Photoshop Round 1 – Landscape
Michael’s version using Nik Silver Efex Pro software for Aperture.
dp’s version using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS4
B&W Styling
So I’m on a mission now to figure out that style you showed me last week Michael. Started playing around with a few images to see if I’m on the right track. Thoughts on these? Did about 5mins of adjusting in camera raw and then I duplicated the b&w photo in photoshop, converted one to a quadtone, brought it back over to a RGB version, overlayed the layer as “soft light”, brought opacity down and then added a bit of noise. About 7mins per photo for the effect. Am I close?
Gaucho in Chile ready to cut up some beef.
Grape sorters working in a vineyard in Argentina.
Vineyard Shots at Sunrise
Vines of Mendoza Private Vineyard Estates
Woke up at 5:30 on Saturday morning (after too many Fernets the night before)…but the sky was crystal clear so I got out of bed to take these shots…both taken with the D300 and 50mm 1.4 lens (love that lens — super fast and tack sharp)
The Vines of Mendoza featured in Newsweek
This has very little (nothing) to do with photography, but I am very happy about this nice press piece about our development…so I thought I would share…
A Very Private Label
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jan 26, 2009
Any host can pour a great vintage at a dinner party. But how many can say, “Try this 2007 Cabernet-Syrah blend from my private estate in Argentina”? A growing number of dabblers are buying pieces of vineyards and making their own wines. Private Vineyard Estates, a 265-hectare project in Mendoza’s Uco Valley, allows wannabe winemakers to fulfill their dreams by capitalizing on the region’s low-cost, high-quality production infrastructure. “The response has been phenomenal,” says Michael Evans, a former U.S. tech executive who founded the company in 2006. “You can create better-tasting and better-priced wines in Argentina than in any part of the world.”
For $145,000 per hectare—a bargain compared with the $720,000-per-hectare starting price in Napa—an amateur vintner can choose the grapes, formulate irrigation and growing techniques, and even create the artwork for the bottles’ label. Evans’s company, The Vines of Mendoza, handles the harvest, production, bottling and shipping. More than 50 U.S. and European owners have already planted grapes and are eagerly awaiting their first yields, including Wolfgang Puck, who plans to sell his Argentine vinos at his U.S. restaurants.
At least two other Mendoza-based companies are offering similar services: Villa Dolce Vita is constructing a “wine lifestyle” community with Mediterranean-like homes, each with its own vineyard. And Santa Maria de los Andes has plots ranging from one to seven hectares available for private houses and vineyards in the Luján de Cujo region. Nothing beats uncorking a bottle of one’s own.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/180060
Little sunset wave action
This last week in So. Cal we’ve been hit with some pretty good surf. Been shooting tons of surf, sunset and wave photos. Can’t help but love the shape of the wave on this one. Posted a few more on my surfline profile. What do you think?
Have any from down south Michael?
Subtle sharpening can make huge improvements on your photograph
Based on a recent comment from Michael on sharpening, I thought I’d do a quick demo to show how sharpening can make a photo really pop. ESPECIALLY when it comes to hair and eyes. Yes you can and should use some sharpening within your camera so you don’t have to do it post…sure. But sometimes doing a little photoshop magic can really help. Here is an example of how I used a few skills in PS to get the look that I wanted.
What do you think Michael? Ready to learn some PS yet?
Lightning crop at 100%
100% crop from the lightning post. Not too noisy…its Nikon afterall (if I only had the d700!). Shot at 200 ISO
Lightning Strikes Back
We were in Arizona for the weekend during monsoon season when I got this shot. For hours I stood in the rain under an umbrella as it poured trying to get a few good ones of the lightning storm. My wife thought I was crazy sitting out there but I didn’t care! The storm was crazy and I wanted to capture something. One of the shots I found most interesting was this one with the lightning going through the bottom and through the top of the clouds. Kinda cool.
Shot with Canon 5d, 24mm, 320 ISO, f5.6 at 30 secs on a tripod.
Post processing – Came up with a bit of noise in the cloud area which I wasn’t happy about. Fixed easily in Photoshop by converting image to LAB mode and then slightly blurring the A and B channels around the noisy area. Then I converted back into RGB space and saved.
Below is another shot I thought turned out ok. Did this one with same lens using 100 ISO which eliminated the noise, f7.1 which gave a bit more focus and at same exposure time of 30 secs.
Thought this may be a good one for stock so I posted on Shutterstock, Crestock and iStockPhoto.
