The view outside our vacation cabin in Wolfeboro, NH. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 200, f/22 at 1/90, 1/20, and 1/6 second

The falls, leading up to Castle in the Clouds. Wolfeboro, NH. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 20mm ISO 100, f/11 at 1/4, 1, and 4 seconds

EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/125, 1/30, and 1/8 second

A few weeks ago I was driving up to see Lynne after work, and I happened to have my camera with me. There's a back road to her house from the highway that's a little less direct, but cuts through a swamp that has a very "New England" feel to it. I've photographed it before, but never felt like I did it justice. There was a nice sunset as I was coming off the highway, but what really surprised me was just how foggy it had gotten, especially in the swamp. The combination of the sunset, reflections, and how the trees slowly disappear into the fog all come together for quite the shot. I'm very happy with this one, and I've sat with it open in Photoshop for atleast a week and a half, making small tweaks to color and saturation. I'm quite pleased with the final product. It reminds me a little of the cover art from Opeth's Blackwater Park album, but with more color. On a related note, I ordered some prints from SmugMug here, and I'm quite thrilled with the results. I ordered a 12x18 metallic print (the metallic finish really does justice to the HDR, it's pretty great), a large Aluminum print (super glossy, and very easy to hang) and I was most impressed with the quality of the 20x30 Giclee canvas print. Having worked in a print shop, and having done all of my prints up to now has left me with a fine eye for detail and color, so I was a little anxious to see how Smug Mug would hold up. They met or exceeded my expectations completely. I will be ordering a print of this one soon, the question remains... what finish to pick? :) EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM @ 28mm ISO200, f/13, 3 30 sec exposures through auto bracketing

Today we take a peek at the first of hopefully many photos from our most recent trip to Stonington Maine. The area was beautiful, and for the most of it, we had good weather. When it wasn't raining, it the sun tended to be very bright. Maybe it's the locations, but I've never had so many problems with lens flares before in my history of photography! Trey Ratcliffe of www.stuckincustoms.com seems to leave his flares in. Maybe he likes them, then again I've seen some of his more photoshop centric tutorials and his skill isn't with PS as much as it is with a camera and photomatix. Either way, I plan on removing what I can. The one small red hexagon that showed up in here was a bit of a pain, but over something innocuous enough, most of it was just blending color, not repainting. Some other shots that I was very excited about got some bad streaking, but they're rainbow streaks, and we'll cross that bridge when I get to it though!! Wide angle lens hoods are no match for coastal sun apparently! This one was taken along the walk from our vacation house to the "center" of "town". I put both words in quotes because it was such a little fishing village, neither word is appropriate! Lynne has said before that she wanted to be placed in some pictures like a Where's Waldo. She was unaware that I was taking a picture of her at the time. Lucky for her this one came out great. Talk about some fun clouds! The remnants of some rain clouds were drifting away on the right there (that darkness isn't a result of my processing). EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/180, 1/45, and 1/10 second

Lynne and I were back in lovely New Hampshire a few weekends ago, and while driving around, I spotted this magnificent gate. It was part of a residential house, and was very odd given the neighborhood it was in (there was a nice horse farm right up the road, which I'll be showing shots from soon, I hope). Anyway, my real estate work has made me more brazen in my pursuit of the perfect shot. There were some undesirable objects in the way, and rather than photoshop them out later, I moved them. Low tech, but very effective! There was some front lawn trespassing after this shot, but nothing invasive. Such a cool looking house too. If any of those turn out, they'll get posted too. I really liked the varying light and shadows cast by the trees, and the light coming through the door. It kind of reminds me of something from True Blood, specifically Sookie's coma/dream land. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 200, f/11 at 1/15, 1/60, and 1/4 second

When I originally uploaded this photograph, I liked what I had. But the more I looked at it, I saw I had over processed some areas, namely the tree line. In fixing the trees, I found a minor change that gave more natural tones to the water area, and I was able to get some of the black out of the sky. I really like this image, and I’m glad I fixed it finally! The original can still be found on my blog. The following text is from the original posting. Today we have another photograph from the Swift river, in beautiful New Hampshire. This was taken after my wading trip through the river. I think I actually like this one more than my wading shot, which (given my luck) figures! This was mostly one raw file, with a second one used for some detail in the darker areas in the foreground. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO200, f/5.6 at 1/250 sec exposure

I'm always thrilled to go back and look at this picture. The areas around Franconia Notch were truly inspiring! I've since remastered this, as I went a bit overboard with the Lucis. I've since stopped using Lucis, and now use Topaz Adjust. It has a much more serene, natural look to it now. The enhancements to Photomatix in the meantime mean that this handheld shot is a full three exposure HDR, where as before I'm almost certain it was a 1 shot hdr. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 22mm ISO 400, f/10 at 1/125, 1/30, and 1/60 second

This photograph was taken in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. It is one of my earliest HDRs that I was thrilled with, and still stands as one of my favorite photographs. There's also a fantastic pancake house right up the road where everything made is grown on this farm.

For the past few months, driving around Rowley, I've been noticing the wonderful abundance of swampland they have. I've wanted to capture them for a while now, and over the weekend, I not only found 2 decent viewing spots of a good area, but there were some great sunsets! This is from my first evening, which had better sky coloring than the second. As a side note, I'm now using Windows 7, and I finally upgraded to the latest Photomatix. I've also made the switch from Firefox to Chrome. I highly recommend all of them! Now if only CS5 would come out and complete my upgrade!!! EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 100, f/11 at 1/8, 1/2 and 2 second exposures

Another from my flooded Wrentham field. In case you're new to my photography, I love my 10-22 lens. It might have been more expensive than I would have liked at the time, but damn is it a great lens. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 22mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/4, 1/15 and 1 second exposures

Another photograph from a fruitful outing in Roger Williams Park Zoo in quaint Rhode Island. I had no idea what the heck this structure was, but some judicious use of Google has turned up that it’s a Bandstand. A pretty ornate bandstand, if you ask me! And if it enhances your enjoyment, know that I was probably stepping in goose poop while I was framing this shot. A note from a technical standpoint. My 30 day free trial of Topaz Adjust ran out, so I am proud to announce that I purchased a copy. Use coupon code STUCKINCUSTOMS ala the fantastic Trey Ratcliffe to save 10% on this fantastic piece of software. I think I’m done with Lucis, which was a much more expensive piece of software. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 22mm ISO400, f/14 at 1/320 sec exposure

Last week Lynne and I were awake at 4:30 AM on Saturday. No, we were not still awake from the night before. We were getting ready to drive to Providence, and help out at the 2009 Free to Breathe fund raiser 5k run / 1k walk for Lung Cancer. The run/walk is organized by Mr. Daniel Ouellette and his wife Sheila. Aside from waking up well before dawn, the day was surprising fun, and the event was quite successful. The mayor of Providence showed up to commend the Ouellettes with certificates for their contributions to the community and the charity. The weather was quite nice, and although it was overcast at times, once the event finished up, the sun came back out in full. The walk took place in beautiful Roger Williams Park Zoo, and I had a chance to steal away and step in lots of goose poop (read: take some nice October foliage pictures) around their scenic park. Nothing too fancy here in terms of post production. Some detailed masking, and some minor color corrections. My original exposure was pretty fantastic, so this one wasn’t very hard to pull good detail out of in one pass. EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 18mm ISO400, f/13 at 1/200 sec exposure

This photo is responsible for my new section of photographs, entitled Miscellaneous and Manipulations. As you can probably guess, this is a manipulation. While I'm frequently asked how much I change in my photos, I can always answer "I don't manipulate, I enhance". The HDR processing, the Topaz, the microcontrast adjustments in photoshop... all of these processes enhance details and colors that are already present in the image. Aside from a few spots (dirty camera sensor, aberrant digital artifacts etc) I avoid wholesale manipulation. Well with that in mind, I do feel bad sometimes that I never stretch my Photoshop muscle to its potential. So when I was processing this photo, the moon was present in the sky. Of course with an image shot with a wide angle lens, it was a fairly small ball. Being a sci-fi fan, I started wishing that the moon could be 100x larger in the sky. A day or so of searching for royalty free images of the moon later and this is what I came up with. It reminds me of an opening scene from a Final Fantasy game, moon larger than life looming over a castle in front of a lake... Maybe someday I'll have a good castle photograph to manipulate :) EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 20mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/90, 1/20, and 1/6 second

A remastered version of an old favorite from New Hampshire. My previous version was over processed, this more natural interpretation of the original negative is much more pleasing to the eye, especially when blown up.

An image from before my forays into HDR photography. Taken at sunset at the Stony Brook Audubon Reserve near my home in Norfolk MA.

This is a great example of working with what you have. On first inspection of the file, I didn't think I had a workable exposure. With a little persistence and some quality post processing, I was able to come out with something quite nice. This was taken at sunset in New Hampshire, overlooking a Christmas tree farm.

A lovely print from a trip Lynne and I took to Newport RI. We were there because her good friend Sheila was getting married to some animal named Dan. It was a great wedding and we had a blast with the bride and groom all weekend. I didn’t get to take many photographs that weekend, but I did catch this one. After some HDR work and some intense layer blending, I’m pretty happy with this one.

It was overcast when I took this one, and I had to do some extra post work to get it to somewhere that I liked. I think I did a great job framing it, if only I did as good a job exposing it too! Oh well, that's why we have Photoshop sometimes, eh?

Another pre HDR. This image was made by layering exposures together. I took a longer shutter time for the water, and a shorter one for the sky. No fancy photomatix needed, just some old fashioned masking in Photoshop!

Shortly after getting my DSLR, I went on a photo safari with my dad and my brother. While they were trying to get a picture of a HUGE swan (seriously, it was bigger than me) I snapped this shot. The cloud cover was perfect, and I didn’t even notice the bird in the middle until afterwards. Taken with a circular polarizer, I really didn’t have to play with color much in photoshop. My original print of this was VERY dark on the sides, but I’ve since revisited this and lightened the leaves. You can't see the huge swan, by the way. This was taken in the Stony Brook Audobon Preserve, in Norfolk MA. EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 27mm ISO 100 f/7.1 at 1/100 Second

Civil War Memorial, Washington DC Directly to the east of the White House is the Treasury Building (expect a picture). A little ways in front of the Treasury is a rather interesting Memorial to the Civil War. I got a number of pictures of the Memorial itself, so don’t be surprised if I upload a pic or two of it later. The monument had two levels to it. The upper portion had inscriptions, and the lower level had some awesome statues of soldiers in uniform. It was 5:30 (thank you camera timestamps!) and being as how the monument was technically on Pennsylvania Ave, it was time to go. A very boisterous policeman told everyone the park was closing, and as I turned to leave, I spied this shot of the Washington Monument. This is a layering job, with some slightly HDR enhanced areas, but mostly just lots of good old fashioned photoshop layering exposure goodness. I really like the depth I caught in this. Not only does the statue seem to pop out, but the Monument in the distance really gives depth to the background. EF-S10-20mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 13mm ISO200, f/7.1 at 1/160 sec exposure

Another image from the trip to DC. This one was taken on our first outing into DC proper. The weather was great that day, and we got to some great places right as the sun was setting, so the light had that magical twilight-ish quality to it. This image practically made itself, but I still used some Topaz Adjust on it to make the detail pop a bit. I got some great shots around this memorial, so I’d be surprised if this was the only shot I uploaded. Expect to see more of it soon. “It is evil things we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution.” – Neville Chamberlain 1939 EF-S 10-20mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 16mm ISO200, f/7.1 at 1/125 sec exposure

EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 10mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/15, 1/4, and 1 second

Another shot from our trip to Stonington Maine. The sun was so bright in most of my coastal shots that I had some terrible lens flares all over. Most of my photos were unusable as such. This was one that I was able to salvage. My mentor, Trey Ratcliffe likes to leave flares in his photographs, but I tend not to. I did leave some rainbowing in, as it was beyond my skill to fix and most importantly, didn't look terrible. This photo was also made salvageable in thanks to the new de-ghosting features in the latest updates of photomatix. Nothing like having a super sharp tide crash in HDRs :) EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM @ 15mm ISO 100, f/22 at 1/125, 1/30, and 1/8 second

A photo taken literally in my own back yard. There's a tree visible from my kitchen window that had a vine growing on it. I took a 5 Exposure HDR of this one, the lack of noise in the background is entirely thanks to the extra over exposed shots.

We recently had a crazy rain storm around here, and many places had some severe flooding. Lynne's area got it bad, many roads were shut down, and it was amazing just how many houses had brand new lakes in their front yards. This was taken in my neck of the woods though. In Wrentham, there's some large fields with a nice country road winding between them. It's a nice back route that I love to drive, especially at night. Back when I had just purchased my DSLR, it had flooded, and I never got anything I really liked. Well I decided I wouldn't let another flood go to waste. Using an app on my iPod Touch I figured out when sunset would be, and I went out there with my tripod and gear. Turns out sunrise would work better with what I was shooting, as the sunset was at my back for most of what I shot. It still gave a nice color gradient in the sky, which is never a bad thing to get naturally. EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM @ 45mm ISO 100, F/22 at 1, 4 and 15 seconds.

A Sea of Stars

A digital manipulation of a photo I took at sunset overlooking Hood Pond, in Ipswich. This Pond is accessed by Rowley Road, which was mentioned in HP Lovecraft's "The Thing On The Doorstep", as it runs towards the area of Ipswich known as "The Neck" (which didn't exist in 1933), but is where Lovecraft described the fictional village of Innsmouth. My original photo was lacking in detail some, my exposure wasn't fantastic in the shadows. But the composition, the fishing boy, and the sunset made it a great "if only" photo. I took Lovecraft's "The Stars Are Right" idea to heart and layered in a cosmic shot and did a little re-coloring and applied some manual grunge. I quite like the final result! Hood Pond, Ipswich MA

Looking for the ghosts of Livermore

Abandoned trail in the White Mountains of NH. Approaching the remains of the abandoned Livermore logging community.