A beautiful country exposed.
Archive for April, 2010
American Modernist Garden
15 years
by admin
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This is the American Modernist Garden at Hamilton Gardens (in Hamilton, where else).
American Modernist Garden
Hamilton Gardens is so out-of-character with the rest of Hamilton. The gardens are well laid out with a lot of class. A very pleasant place to spend time. (Hamilton itself is none of these.)
The picture was taken on one of the busiest days of the year, 2nd January, and it took some waiting to find a gap between the people.
The picture is processed in a slightly different way. It used 3 RAW files which were processed in Photoshop using a technique to bring out the detail – it goes like this: duplicate a layer, Invert; blend mode Vivid Light. Apply surface blur. Copy results to a new layer, which is blended with Soft Light mode.
This was done for each of the 3 RAWs, to create 3 jpegs. These were then processed with Photomatix and tone-mapped to give a normal HDR.
Back into Photoshop for some more tweaking – Hue and Saturation/Colorize mixed with Soft Light. Followed by Selective Color adjustment.
Dawn on Klondyke Road
15 years
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Klondyke road is this gravel road that I have mentioned before. It runs from Port Waikato to Onewhero, about 12 miles. Here’s a shot I took some while ago on a dawn outing.
Dawn on Klondyke Road - click for larger version.
Most of the trees you can see are all Pine trees, grown for forestry.
The processing again uses some Calvin Hollywood tricks, mainly to bring out detail and adjust the color. I’m getting more used to what you can do with his techniques and recommend his tutorials.
Autumn is coming
15 years
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Autumn Colors - click to enlarge
We’ve had a great summer here, very little rain and warm. But autumn (fall) is coming and the trees are turning.
This used the normal processing, plus some new stuff. Normal : 3 shots with Canon 450D, process and tonemap with Photomatix. New Stuff : using some techniques learned from Calvin Hollywood : Detail Enhance, Calvinize, Selective Color enhancement.
These are just some trees in a local park. In the next few weeks I hope to get some shots of Autumn Beauty from further afield.
Hunua Falls
15 years
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Took a trip to Hunua Falls the other day. As we’ve been having an extended drought the falls were much smaller than usual but still very pretty.
Hunua Falls - click to enlarge
This place is great if you want to do some bush walking. There are a variety of tracks.
Bush Walk - click to enlarge
As far as processing goes, I’ve been using some techniques I’ve learned from Calvin Hollywood (who, despite his American-sounding name, is actually German!). He does an excellent tutorial called “Calvinize” that explains many of his techniques. Many are aimed at portrait photography, but several are universally applicable.