Posts Tagged ‘landscapes’

Dachshunds and Autumn Leaves

©TimeLine Media - dogs and autumn leaves

“When autumn leaves start to fall…”

Our backyard is in need of some maintenance. We are lucky to have so many nice shade trees in the summer, that turn to beautiful golden trees in the fall. Now we have to get a much of these off our lawn before it kills our grass! Luckily, we have two helpers that are visiting us for the week, and we need all the help we can get.

©TimeLine Media - dogs and autumn leaves
©TimeLine Media – dogs and autumn leaves

Yes, they may not be much helping moving the debris to the pickup point at the front of the house, but they do give you some nice company while working. And they don’t mess up any leaf piles too much!

©TimeLine Media - dogs and autumn leaves
©TimeLine Media – dogs and autumn leaves

They were so good, we took them on a walk afterwards. So many new surroundings to explore, and of course, more leaves to inspect.

©TimeLine Media - dogs and autumn leaves
©TimeLine Media – dogs and autumn leaves

I am confident they were also keeping any reptilian creatures in the woods away from us! Hope you are enjoying the not too cold autumn weather. There are still photos that I am working on, so I will be busy the next week completing those. We have finished the editing and sorting of our largest ballroom dance events, and you can see all those photos at the proofing website.

©TimeLine Media - dogs and autumn leaves
©TimeLine Media – dogs and autumn leaves

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Panoramas – Tech Thursday

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from a dSLR

Event Update

Just a quick update on the Paragon Open photos. The editing is completed, and the upload has started at the website. It should not be much longer before they are viewable. The website needs to process the photos – create all the thumbnails for color, black and white previews, and setup all the ordering pages. By this afternoon, all the photos will be available here:

http://proofs.timelinedc.com/

Fall Photography

Around this part of the Mid-Atlantic, the autumn colors are in full swing. It is a beautiful time to drive and walk in wooded areas with the yellows, reds, and oranges on all the trees just before they fall. It is always difficult to determine when would be the best time to go out to take photos. Unfortunately, our busy schedule did not let us go at the optimal time.

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from the iPhone
©TimeLine Media – panoramas from the iPhone

In the photo above, there were still more green than bright fall colors in the leaves. From the overlooks on Skyline Drive, the panorama feature on your smartphone is one of the best ways to capture the grand views on top of the mountains. The biggest challenge for me is to keep the horizon level straight! I had to crop this photo after capture to straighten the view, but my shaky panning also did not keep the mountain level straight through the frame.

If you have a dSLR with you, the colors will be more saturated, and you can manipulate the RAW files much easier in post. Here is a photo from another overlook made from 3 separate frames. The images were then combined in Adobe Photoshop using the “File: Automate: Photomerge” function. I did not have to input any other information, and the program easily spit out a nice panorama! Having RAW files, you can make sure all the images in your panorama look the same prior to combining them, so it looks like it was snapped in one pull of the shutter.

©TimeLine Media - panoramas from a dSLR
©TimeLine Media – panoramas from a dSLR

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Pier Portraits

©TimeLine Media - pier as a setting for portraits

Piers are often used subjects in photography. There are many aspects of their setting that automatically make photos better. Obviously, piers extend over bodies of water or hills that descend quickly underneath their foundation. This solves one problem in most photos – a busy background. Eliminating distractions in your frame is difficult in most settings. There are always things on the ground. Or they are in the back of the frame, and in front of your subjects. This can be distracting.

©TimeLine Media - pier as a setting for portraits
©TimeLine Media – pier as a setting for portraits

Pier portraits are easy to setup. On a pier, usually background elements are very far in the distance compared to your subjects. The sides have almost nothing in the frame as the ground is also very far below your subjects. Even without using an open aperture, these parts of the photos will fall into a pleasing blurred background due to compression. They are too far from the lens to be rendered sharply much like using a wide open aperture.

©TimeLine Media - pier as a setting for portraits
©TimeLine Media – pier as a setting for portraits

Another aspect of pier portraits is that the pylons on the sides automatically give you leading lines. Having these directional cues in your photos help draw viewer’s eyes to your subjects. Subjects will automatically be in the right position since they always walk between the pylons! Yes, this technique can be cliche for some, but it is very easy to execute. Similar techniques can be done on railroad tracks, but the distracting background elements can be harder to deal with depending on your particular setting. Let me know how it works for you!

©TimeLine Media - pier as a setting for portraits
©TimeLine Media – pier as a setting for portraits

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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