Neal Osborn
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Anyone familiar with the Tampa/South Florida Gulf area?
I have a question about the Kwan fly for your area. Brown is often mentioned as a productive color. Here are some samples from last night – your/others opinion on the color schemes would be appreciated before I tie more.
Kwans – I am thinking the two on the right most column have a good look and two-toned brown/white/sea-yellow body. The middle column are more brown/rust and the left column more green/yellow. What is better for the Tampa area?
This color combo also looks pretty good?
Anyone have experience with the Kwan pattern tied on a 60 degree hook? Here are a few examples – I’ll bet this would be effective with the weighted eyes and would help the fly to ride hook up and prevent weed snags.
The Schminnows on the back left. White, green, rust/brown, and black.
Others – just having fun filling up for the trip.
DT special variants with Tuffle Eye heads and big flashy eyes.
The other players
Morsie,
I agree that the new adjustment brush and graduated filter in Lightroom 2 are very useful. They save a lot of time by not having to switch to Photoshop with complex layer masks. However, I still use PS over LR for most of the real touchups because LR doesn’t allow for fine manipulation and tends to give baked results.
Have you downloaded the free WOW presets for Lightroom by Jack Davis? You can get them here http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=33. There are a ton of develop presets and 10 adjustment brush expansions. All very helpful in the workflow.
Lauren: I didn’t mean to hijack your post by talking about Lightroom. But this might be helpful for you as well since you have LR2.
Lauren, you are going to be “locked-and-loaded” for your trip out west. I am always cautious when discussing landscape photography because, as you know, I focus mainly on macro photography. Most of my knowledge on landscape comes from Richard Bernabe. A full day hands on session with him was an excellent learning experience. I have yet to shoot scenery with the D300/12-24 (that’s on my to-do-learn list, LOL). Nice shots so far, especially that fish eye from Corey.
Here are a few landscapes from Glacier (GNP) Montana. These were taken with the D50 and the 18-200 VR lens.
The pseudo tilt-shift technique in PS can produce very striking effects “IF” you shoot from the correct camera angle – above and looking down.
I like to play around with film filters – this one is a Kodachrome rendition – kind of old-school effect.
Others
These are from the Badlands, SC (edit: I meant, South Dakota)
Painted desert (the saturation is as-shot, no manipulation – that place is God’s country beautiful).
Lately, I have been having fun shooting the lightning storms here in town.
Don’t forget the small stuff!!! 😉
The storm has arrived, LOL. The Gods must have read the title of my post . . .
I was planning on doing some fly shots tonight but unfortunately the rain storm decided to pound my window with a full on leak, aagghh. Now I’m cleaning up a dripping mess (guess the fly desk will have to stay messy for now). I love a dirty desk full of finished flies.
Bob, the boxes are filling up quickly ::) Those Shminnows are a blast to tie; easy pattern that produces a full box quickly.
The Desk 🙂
The freaking leaking window >:(
I get nervous when a lawyer ventures in to business analysis. LOL 😉
Your points are well taken Zach, let’s hope this doesn’t turn in to a political rant. Whenever (always) we talk about money and financial structure in the fly fishing niche industry things quickly turn to an anti big-business conspiracy rhetoric. However, all said, things are getting pricey.
The new 8-10wt green Tibor Spey is out!!!! http://www.tiborreel.com/spey.html. Tibor Company is obviously listening to the public and making this reel smaller. I want one badly, aagghh!!! That 8-10wt on a saltwater Z axis would be incredible.
Once again Tibor – if you are reading this post . . . . you make this reel in the 4 – 6wt range in that style and color and I will buy it site unseen. 😉
I “wish” I needed a new reel in the 8-10wt range ( ::))
. . . get an assistant to hold a scrim ;D
Morsie
Damnit Morsie, don’t give away all the secrets 😉 LOL.
Joking aside, the scrim is a wonderful tool for these shots. However, assistants are hard to come by, aagghh.
Bryan,
I think your shots are wonderful. Nice tonal range and the shadows/highlights appear complimentary. Like you said, a bit over-saturated/contrasted but there is a “peaceful” quality to the shots which I enjoy. They remind me of a calm enjoyable fishing experience instead of the high key, pop photos which are becoming more popular in the industry.
I love this post Morsie. Great topic. I agree with Will that your pictures have a certain clean simple quality that is soooo hard to produce under the big orb. Very respectable work. Same goes for you John. Also, David and Richard have posted great works worth mentioning.
These direct sun/light shots are very challenging for me, but it has been a personal goal to master the technical nuisances involved in the “hot shots”. The greatest hurdle has been maintaining tonality throughout the shot when there might be 8-10 stops difference between highlights and shadows. For me it came down to studying the art of high-sync flash at fast shutter speeds with multiple strobes. The high-sync flash function on Nikon TTL or manual is impressive but learning to unleash it’s power is a different story. Situations that negate flash (i.e. open ocean or landscape) are a whole different set of challenges.
I agree with Morsie that the wasted shots outnumber the keepers, and you need to shoot many different exposure patterns in one set. I can’t imagine doing this kind of shooting on the water like you guys – that is a lot of math and thinking while the other guy has “fish on” and all the other variables involved with landing a fish and avoiding water damage on the camera. My pulse would be like 150 bpm!
Here are a few recent examples of shooting Full Monty.
Cayman
This is from Chicago last week. I was doing some street photography and just had to get this shoot of the Hancock building as the sun was directly overhead. The challenge was capturing the nice fill light from camera right at the base of the building while maintaining tonality from top to bottom without blowing the highlights at top or underexposing the shadows at the bottom. I must have looked like a weirdo trying to adjust the knobs in a flurry.
King Louis – a 4 lb miniature poodle. Hand held shot (and hand held dog, hahaha) with high-sync flash. The sun is behind the dog which produces a great hair light effect as long as you can compensate with correct flash en fos.
I agree with David. The Lexar Firewire 800 CF reader is one of the best purchases I’ve made recently. Now I am full RAW because they upload so much faster.
