Second day of shooting

Scott, Gary (one of the pros), Nikki and I headed out this morning to do some more shooting. I have not looked at the shots I captured yet, but I know they are going to be awesome once I edit them into HDR format.

Yesterday Scott showed me how I shoot to prepare for the HDR process. HDR mean High Dynamic Range and it is a way of processing images that will pull more of the digital information from a minimum of three different exposures of the same image.

He taught me to shoot a minimum of five images to give a higher quality end product and I have been shooting that ever since. Anytime I grab captures where there are no people involved, trust me, I am going to be shooting this way.

Most of the images I posted yesterday were HDR processed. I even went online and purchased the software needed to do this. I cannot believe how much it makes my images "POP" and I simply love it!!!

So, this morning we went back to the same waterfall I posted yesterday. But let me tell ya, the image is not even close to what I captured yesterday. We got there when the sun was in the right position and the colors of the rainbow was stunning. It looked like a painter had taken his brush an painted the colors on.

Scott taught me about the use of a polarizing filter and reminded me, again, to use my lens hood.

Mind you, this guy knows his stuff. How can I not trust his judgement. We started talking about filters and he told me that a polorizing filter is the only thing he has on his lenses. He does not have a skylight filter on any of them. That drops the quality of the image down unless you have one of the high quality, German made one from B+W. He said I should take any skylight filters off my lens and stomp on it.

I got some great shots of the rainbow and we moved on.

At our next stop, I pulled out my lens with the skylight filter on it, promptly pulled it off and handed it to him. He put it in his pocket and said we would have a "stomping" ceremony later on.

One of the things that just strikes me as a bit odd was several times last night Scott made a comment, in a shocked tone, that I actually listened to him. He must have said that three times last night when I showed him some of my edited work. That really struck me as a bit odd.

Mind you, this man is VERY, VERY, VERY successful and knowledgable at what he does. He has been doing it for 37-years, like I said, why in the world would I NOT listen to what he has to say??

Since there were only four of us in our group today and we took two vehicles, Nikki road with Scott and I road with Gary. At our last stop, Nikki and I were left on a bridge to shoot while Gary drove Scott back to his truck.

Both Nikki and I are in the same place with regards to still trying to wrap our heads around the fact that we are here. She shared with me what Scott had told her and that was that, "She is good enough. He choose her image and when she thinks she is not good enough, she just needs to stop thinking like that."

I know that now I am puttng that out there, I'm going to be hearing that from a lot of you!! That's okay. That's what I need to hear.

Today after lunch we sit down and start learing Aperture. I'm looking forward to that. The we go back out for the evening shoot. I'll post some more of my images later tonight.

Again, please keep the comments coming. DON'T LURK!! I want to hear from you. :-)