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Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog

Exploring the World of Outdoor Photography with Tips, News, Imagery and Insight

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog
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It’s No Coincidence that Fall & Fuji Begin With The Same Letter

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on November 15, 2019 by DanNovember 15, 2019

Ah… Autumn, or as we usually just call it, Fall.

That splendid time of year, when the entire hemisphere changes color, suddenly shifting from the serene and timeless shades of green and blue, to the visually overloading hues of red, orange and yellow.

That time when we photographers become increasingly active again after the dog days of summer, which usually means back to school, back to work and sitting at the computer editing all of those photos we shot during our recent vacations.

Every photographer loves fall, at least all the ones I know. We’re endlessly enamored with the explosion of visual warmth all around us, which provides us with bountiful harvest… which is what fall is all about anyway, right?

But did you realize that Fall and Fujifilm begin with the same letter?

Is this mere coincidence? I think not. The original founders of Fuji Photo Film obviously considered very carefully what to name the new company back in 1934.

With the goal of manufacturing high quality photo film that would help people translate their creative visual ideas into lasting and memorable pictures, they choose a name that was synonymous with english worlds like unique, unparalleled, unmatched, unsurpassed, and superlative. 

Those are all words I would also equate with the magnificent, colorful brilliance that we experience each year with the peak of autumn. And, since many aspects of Japanese culture revolve around deliberate precision, we can then hypothesize that…

Ok… so I’m reaching with the whole letter “F” thing. It sounded good at the time, but whatever.

Whether to not it’s pure happenstance that those two words share the same first letter, Fall and Fuji are indeed synonymous, at least for me.

My own creativity is sparked to great excitement with the onset of Fall, and I experience a wonderful sense of artistic expression when I head out into the world with my Fuji camera.

With the diverse color palettes that are represented in the film simulations, and other useful tools like Highlight/Shadow Tone, Color, Miniature Mode and the classic precision of the Fuji lenses, I’m able to experiment with an incredible sense of liberation and create a wide range of looks in my photography.

Of course, every camera is capable of taking beautiful fall photos, not just Fujis, but these are the tools I use, and I’m thrilled to immeasurable heights when I see what I’m able to produce with them.

These photos are a selection of my favorite fall images from this season, which is now done here in Alaska. As it often is, it was beautiful, but brief, and I managed to get out a handful to times to document the season with my X-T3.

I hope you enjoy looking at these images, and I hope you had (or are still having) a fulfilling season of fall photography wherever you live, whether you shoot with Fuji cameras or not.

Oh, and if you do shoot Fuji, there are some great rebates going on right now. Even the X-T3 is on sale, as are many of the lenses. 

 

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Posted in Featured Images | Tagged Alaska, autumn, fall, foliage, fujifilm, Fujifilm X-T3, landscapes, nature photography, outdoor photography, photography | Leave a reply

A Look at the New AI Structure Tool Inside Luminar 4

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on October 1, 2019 by DanOctober 1, 2019

 

Luminar 4 is right around the corner, and as I mentioned in my recent post, it’s coming with some brand new tools, including the much talked about AI Structure tool.

In addition, Luminar 4 has reworked the user interface on the main editing screen, and they’ve made it even easier to grab the tools you need and make the necessary adjustment to make your photos stand out even more.

In this post, I’ll show you a few image examples that show off the new AI Structure tool and highlight the easy-to-use technology that’s become a signature aspect of the program.

1. Cyclocross Racing

In this first image below, I made use of the AI Enhance tool, which offers two sliders, AI Accent and AI Sky Enhancer, to lighting the overall photo and bring up the shadows. Then I used the new AI Structure Tool to bring out the details in the background, without over sharpening the main subject.

I see AI Structure as being an incredibly useful tool for a wide array of subject matter. It solves the problem that you often have when making global sharpening and clarity adjustments.

In most cases, your global adjustments will apply an equal amount of sharpening and edge contrast to your foreground subject, and this doesn’t always look very good, especially if your main subjects are people.

AI Structure analyzes the entire frame and applies sharpening and clarity to your background, while mostly leaving your foreground subject alone. This prevents artifacts and other weird looks, and it helps keep you subject isolated nicely against the background.

After that, I boosted some of the blues with the Vibrance tool. Overall, it’s just three simple slider adjustments in order to add a slight, but noticeable bump to the visual effect of the image.

2. Mountain Bike Racing

For this shot, I took the opposite approach. Instead of sharpening the background, I went the other way with the AI Structure slider. My main subject was already razor sharp, with lots of muddy detail, so I want the background to compete with that.

By applying a negative amount of AI Structure, I softened the background textures, so that the trees and foliage become more of a wash of color and less of a distracting puzzle. This helps the rider stand out much more clearly in the frame.

Since the overall image is pretty dark, I also made an AI Accent adjustment and used the Dodge and Burn tool to lighten up her face. The result is a much more dramatic and clear photo that took just a few minutes to tweak.

3. Landscape

In this third example, I used AI Accent again, and Luminar’s Landscape Enhancer tool, which include the Dehaze slider, as well as Golden Hour and Foliage Enhancer. That’s one nice thing about the Luminar 4 interface, they’ve grouped tools together in a logical way instead of having every tool be separate. This reduces the amount of time you’ll spend looking for adding tools to your workspace.

Using the AI Structure again allowed me to bring out the glacier details without over sharpening the small bush in the foreground. Even with a landscape subject, the algorithms that this smart tool uses does an effective job of isolating the foreground and applying just the right amount of definition. 

Conclusion

There’s no question, Luminar’s new AI Structure tool is a powerful new brush in an already capable box. It allows you to achieve a very pleasing amount of separation between foreground and background, and it with most instances, there’s a miniature amount of halo-ing and other artifacts that often show up when you make large moves with the clarity and sharpening tools.

In addition, the new interface in Luminar 4 is very easy to navigate, and as I mentioned, it smartly groups commonly used tools together. In Skylum’s continuing mission to make Luminar a very easy-to-use program, I think this new interface makes some pretty good compromises and it looks very clean.

And, with the power of Luminar’s smart AI tools, which I find myself using quite often, Skylum has further expanded on their mission of giving people a way to make their photos look great in a minimal amount of time.

If you want to see examples of the other new tools that are coming, including AI Skin Enhancer, AI Portrait Enhancer and the radical new AI Sky Replacement tool, read this recent post. 

Luminar 4 is due to be released this fall. It works as both a standalone program or as a plug-in for both Mac and PC: You can either use it with the Library module to organize your entire photo library, or use it inside Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Apple Photos. It works great either way.

If you order through this link, you’ll get a special discounted price on either the new version, or the upgrade. 

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Posted in Reviews and Recommendations | Tagged creativity, landscapes, Luminar, outdoor photography, photography, Reviews and Recommendations, software | Leave a reply

The Science and Creativity of Using Color in Your Photography

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on September 10, 2019 by DanSeptember 15, 2019

I’ve long been fascinated with the concepts of how our evolution as human beings plays a part in our artistic tendencies and creative habits.

Throughout the span of human history, we humans have expressed ourselves with artistic representations and depictions of our lives and our world, and a significant element of our creative endeavors is geared around the use of color.

As with many of the behaviors and tendencies we exhibit our lives, our use of color is closely tied to both our biological evolution and our cultural history, which reflects thousands of years of evolution.

As early humans began migrating and exploring much more diverse and complex environments, we were suddenly faced with a vast increase in the amount of visual information we were taking in. This required a dramatic increase in visual processing power. Here’s a geeky, yet fascinating paper that talks about the correlation between our visual specialization and brain evolution. 

Consequently, our brains grew much more powerful to the point where 30% of the of neurons in our cerebral cortex are devoted to visual processing, and 80% of all visual processing done in our brains is devoted to color recognition.

Color recognition played a big part in our big brain evolution, and in fact, it’s one of the most fundamental aspects that separates us from most other mammals.

Where the majority of mammals on the planet can only recognize two of the primary colors in what we know as the visual spectrum, we humans evolved with what’s called Trichromatic Vision. Possessing three types of cone cell receptors in our eyes that are geared towards recognizing the colors red, green and blue.

RGB. Do these letters sound familiar?

The man difference is that evolved with the ability to easily recognize the color red. Given that many of the things in nature that are red are either things we can eat or dangerous things that we tend to avoid, our ability to quickly spot red played a huge role in helping us stay safe and well fed.

Combining Biology with Culture

In addition to our genetic evolution, we humans are also heavily influenced by our rich cultural history that spans thousands of years of civilization. Color has always played a large part in our cultural traditions and moods, and when you combine our biological and societal history, it’s easy to see the important role that color plays in nearly every aspect of outlives.

USING COLOR to EVOKE MOOD

There is multitude of ways we can use color in our photographs to evoke certain moods and visual response from our viewers. Here are a few essential tips to get you started.

Blue

Technically, there is almost nothing in nature that is the color blue. However, due to the ways that we perceive the scattering and diffusion of short blue light wavelengths, we associate blue as being the color of the sky and the ocean. And glaciers.

For this reason, blue is perceived as being a noble, highly dignified color that projects feelings of calm and tranquility.

Green

The predominant color of nature, grass, and vegetation, green evokes a timeless feeling in your images.

If you combine green with blue, you’ll create a serene, subdued image that projects endless tranquility.

Red

Red is the color of blood, the distinctive marking on a black widow spider and things like berries, apples and ripe tomatoes. Red incites energy and an immediate sense of heightened emotion.

As I mentioned above, our ability to see red so clearly marks one of the fundamental characteristics of our advanced human visual systems. Using a small splash of red in your photos will catch the attention of your viewers and draw them right into the image.

For this reason, red is very eye catching in photos. You can’t avoid looking at the red thing, even it’s just a small part of the image. However, due to a specific chemical depletion in our cone cells that occurs when we view large amounts of red for a long period of time, too much red will incite eye fatigue, and create weird optical illusions.

This isn’t to say that you should never make photos with an all red color palette, you just need to do it sparingly and use an effective composition. If it’s done right, it can generate a powerful viewer response.

Note, like red, orange can also be used as an effective spot color.

Yellow

Yellow is the brightest color in the spectrum, and it’s the most stimulating and fatiguing color to look at. Even more so than red.

Things in our world that are yellow are meant to be looked at, like school busses and warning signs. For this reason, you can use yellow as a spot color and visual target to draw your viewer’s eye right into image.

Pink

Lying between hot red and cool violet on the color wheel, pink is perceived as a warm color. You’ll find that you can be very bold with pink. It commands a lot of attention but it doesn’t incite the same level of eye fatigue as red does.

In landscapes, pink is often the color of sunset light and it can add a lot of richness to your photos, even when used in large amounts. I love using pink in my photographs, especially my mountain aerials.

You’ll find that orange behaves much like pink in the sense that you can use it in large amounts without inciting eye fatigue.

COLOR COMBINATIONS

You can combine colors in your image to achieve powerful visual effects. Anytime you use primary or secondary colors together, or if you use complimentary colors together, (opposites on the color wheel), you’ll create please images that retain the viewers attention.

These kinds of colors are highly attractive to us, and so we want to see them. When used correctly, then can command an equal amount of attention, and this creates strong visual relationships that draw our eyes back and forth across the image.

With all of the colors in our world, there is an endless variation to how you can arrange them in your photography. As with any compositional technique, it takes practice to get a feel for what colors work well together and how to position them in your frame for maximum visual impact.

Keep in mind, there are no hard and fast rules here, so feel free to experiment with your use of color and see what works for you in your quest to communicate your creative ideas.

Watch the companion video to this blog post and see more image examples of how I use color in my own photography. For more compositional ideas, be sure to check out my eBook Making The Image: A Conceptual Guide To Creating Stronger Photographs.

 

 

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Posted in Creative Tips | Tagged color, Creative Tips, creativity, instruction, landscapes, outdoor photography, photography, photography tips | Leave a reply

How Much Should You Rely on Luck In Your Photography?

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on August 19, 2019 by DanAugust 19, 2019

My latest YouTube Video Tutorial is now up! In this lesson, I discuss the element of luck in photography and how much it plays a role in our image making process. Whenever I get an awesome shot, and I’m sure … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal and Pro Insight | Tagged creativity, landscapes, outdoor photography, photographers, photography, photography insight, video tutorials | 1 Reply

Using Shallow Focus for Increased Visual Impact in Your Landscape Photos

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on July 9, 2019 by DanJuly 9, 2019

Often times, especially when photographing landscapes, we often shoot with a wide depth of field, or we use Hyperfocal Distance techniques in order to achieve maximum edge-to-edge sharpness from front to back. This technique works so well with grand vistas that … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Tips, Featured Images | Tagged Creative Tips, creativity, landscapes, outdoor photography, photography | 1 Reply

A Variety of Outdoor Images I Shot Last Week

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on June 24, 2019 by DanJune 25, 2019

Ah… summer. Long days and late evenings, when playing outside until sunset means getting home well after midnight and eating dinner at around 1:30AM. Welcome to my life during the month of June in Alaska. With such a diversity of … Continue reading →

Posted in Featured Images | Tagged Alaska, glaciers, Knik Glacier, landscapes, mountains, outdoor photography, photography | Leave a reply

June Special – Save 20% On My BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE eBook

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on June 3, 2019 by DanJune 3, 2019

Now that June is finally here, we can pretty much count summer as being officially underway. For us Northern Hemisphere photographers, summer means bountiful landscape photography sessions and long days exploring outdoors with our cameras. For you Southern Hemisphere people, … Continue reading →

Posted in eBooks, Publications | Tagged Alaska, Creative Tips, creativity, eBooks, instruction, landscapes, mountains, outdoor photography, photographers, photography | Leave a reply

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