Landscapes

Original Post: 02MAY2017

It has been a while since my last post. Many months actually but here is my latest.

I have been working on landscapes. Only a few but I have been working on technique that will make the images pop. It isn’t a new concept. I’m talking HDR. Not like the iPhone HDR or those really over cooked HDR photos.

This image was a stack of three pictures. The first one was taken to get the highlights of the sky, the second was taken to gather all the mid tones of the building and boats and the last one was to get all the shadows.

I like to use Lightroom to edit and stack the photographs. I didn’t do much editing to this photograph. I kind of just stacked them and called it a day. I could have made more adjustments but I wanted to keep the natural feel that I captured with my eyes.

Below is another stacked image.

This was a shot that I took while I was in San Diego. This was the first image that I stacked and gave me the motivation to keep trying to take more landscape photos.

In my next post I will show some of the images from my recent trip to San Diego, CA.

I will also be on a trip to Greece and some locations in between. Look out for those.

Enjoy!

Landscapes & Still Life

Original Post: 30JUL2016

Like any true photographer you sometimes become stagnant on shooting your style. And by you, I mean me. Not because I was lazy, but because it is really difficult to photograph the same people in the same small town. I need to travel to the big cities a lot more frequently.

In the mean time I needed to try something different, I needed to try to take some landscape photos.

I usually look at landscape photography as something anyone can do. Anyone with a point and shoot and a beautiful scene. There are hundreds of those online, a quick google search can show you all of them. All the sunsets and all the mountain sides, beaches and sunrises. And they are beautiful. I love them. But it is something that I don’t want to photograph particularly. What am I to do?

I go ahead and test out some landscape photography…

For this particular shot I was driving back from Bellingham, WA after shopping at the farmers market and visiting vintage thrift and second hand shops. Yes, I am that person. As I was driving, I was on the phone with my mom (hands free!) and immediately had to tell her that I would call her back. “Mom, I got to go, there is something I need to photograph!” Click.

I got out of the car, posted up my flimsy tripod and started to take shots. I realized that shooting landscapes is a little more of a challenge. I took several photos. I shot with my 50mm and I didn’t like how they came out. So I reframed and moved some. I switched to the 85mm and moved some more then I nailed this shot.

It was a rewarding feeling when I got to look at the photo in post processing. Choosing the right one from many taken is always a difficult and long process. Editing is another, but, it gets easier because you find a style that matches you and you go with it. For this one particular picture, the contrast was so perfect that I looked its best in black and white.

Then there is still life…

“Still life” is slightly different from landscape in the sense that, for me, it is almost close to being street photography. It is something that is happening at one moment in time and you happen to be around to take a shot of it. The only difference is that there aren’t any people in the picture to consider it street in my terms.  But a person wouldn’t have made a different to this picture. In the end it might have taken away the impact of this one. It would have take the focus away, of this beautiful abandoned grill.

So far you have seen photos of Japan and on this post you have seen some from Washington. I plan on showing more of my other travels and my other projects separate from street, still, and landscape photography.

-Franco Pisano

P.S.