#azimuth 267

[thorsenmark]

A Day of Quality Time at Mono Lake by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A view looking to the west along the shoreline of Mono Lake. The setting includes a look to a nearby cluster of tufa towers. My thinking in composing the image was to zoom in with the focal length such that most of the formation filled the image while including the lake and hazed filled skies above as kind of a minimalist backdrop for this setting. That would draw more attention, in my mind, to the tufa formations. Mono Lake-22

[thorsenmark]

Man Made Power and a Low Key Mountain Setting (Ross Lake National Recreation Area) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A combination of titles for this image. One is from this one I came across a few years ago on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/the-o/6177849668/in/gallery-1472333...). The other is from one of the Nik CEP 4.0 filters I used for this image. It's actually a recipe of a number of filters, but the Low Key filter is one that really brought out the look I felt best captured this mountain setting. With the bright sunlight coming out this late morning, I decided to once again try out a techniques of using an HDR capture with my Nikon D800E with multiple in-camera exposures. I then brought the image into Capture NX2 for a majority of the post-processing work before exporting a TIFF image to Nik CEP 4.0

[thorsenmark]

A Day of Quality Time at Mono Lake by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A view looking to the west along the shoreline of Mono Lake. The setting includes a look to a nearby cluster of tufa towers. My thinking in composing the image was to zoom in with the focal length such that most of the formation filled the image while including the lake and hazed filled skies above as kind of a minimalist backdrop for this setting. That would draw more attention, in my mind, to the tufa formations. Mono Lake-22

[thorsenmark]

Mountain Peaks Beyond the Evergreens (Black & White) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: For this image, I decided to try out this "Ansel Adams Look" I'd read about in Jason Odell's book on Capture NX2. The idea is to work with the LCH editor, making some adjustments, and then use a Black point and White point before converting to black & white.

[thorsenmark]

You Asked for Something Beautiful...Nature Provided It! by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A view looking across Talkeetna Lakes at one of the many overlook points while walking the trails there. This image was a simple matter of capturing that reflection off the lake waters of the trees and forest from the other side. Composing the image was a matter of deciding how best to line up the shoreline, in my opinion. As the the skies were kind of blah with the noontime sunlight, I decided the best option was to balance the image and split it. I found a medium light point in the trees to have a good enough shutter speed for processing the image later in DxO PhotoLab 3. WIth that, I did some adjustments to contrast, brightness and saturation while playing around with ClearView and a few other tools.

[thorsenmark]

The Immense Vastness of Canyonlands National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A look amongst many while standing at the Candlestick Tower View Point and a view to the west. By including some near and far canyon walls, I found it allowed for a sense of depth...across this immense canyon as part of the Island in the Sky District. As I've come to understand, this district in the national park is itself on a tall mesa that has rather obvious sheer sandstone cliffs of over 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain...which I found quite easy to take in from these overlook points. Anywho, I found angling my SLR camera slightly downward helped to bring out this vastness I was taking in. I later used some CEP filters (Low Key, Polarization and Graduated Neutral Density) in Capture NX2 which seemed to best bring out the look I wanted for this late morning image.

[thorsenmark]

Joining Me on My Adventures in Nature in White Sands National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the Alkali Flat Trail with a view looking to the southwest across the white sands and dune formations present in this part of White Sands National Park. My location was coming down from a dune ridge, so I had a view, looking down and then across to a nearby dune ridge with the more distance San Andres Mountains as a backdrop. What also drew me into the image was the way the cloud formations had a particular look above a certain portion of them.

[thorsenmark]

An Official Vacation Guide to White Sands National Park! by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While walking along the Alkali Flat Trail with a view looking to the west across the white sands and dune formations present in this part of White Sands National Park. Using some high ground I was located on, I felt I was able to create and capture a more sweeping look across this portion of the national park. Not too far away, were more dune ridges and finally the more distant San Andres Mountains.