Full Moon Again

I knew the moon would be coming up 'over there' across the bay and was pleasantly surprised as it rose near the historic Cement Ship in Aptos.

I love how the world impacts people. All around me as the moon was rising people were stopped in their tracks, sounds of awe falling from their lips, big smiles at the beauty right before them, right before me.

Capitola Full Moon

Roughly 12 times a year, the moon rises as the sun sets, light bouncing off the lid of the sky, off the face of that giant rock pushing and pulling fluids in seas, lakes and craniums.

Capitola Wharf HDRi to LDR

Capitola Wharf in the late afternooon, foreground in the shade, wharf in direct sun, 6 images combined in Photomatix Pro. I layered in the foreground water from the best image.

HDRi Image, Macy in Capitila

I shot 9 images 1 stop apart in auto bracket with a Nikon D200. Selecting 5 images from the set I used Photomatix Pro to create an HDR image then Tone-Mapped it with the same application. Macy had moved just a bit so I brought in an image of her face from the set and masked it in. Also used Photoshop CS3 to ramp up the tone and saturation, used the healing brush to remove some lens flare.

What I'm coming to love about HDR imagery is being able to get so much more visual information into the image. I feel myself looking at scenes differently, imagining what can be conveyed and shown to share a feeling or thought.

Macy Bleu

The first time I photographed Macy Bleu was 2 years ago, she is my friends daughter. I had the thought to photograph her every year until I can no longer see which means when I'm 80 she'll be 48 and we'll have created an amazing set of images together.

We started in the studio and then went out to Capitola to explore. Here is an image from the shoot processed through an HDRi workflow. More on all of this in another post.