My fishing buddy AJ and I went to Kenosha Harbor today to check out the salmon fishing there. He's been there before, but I never had the chance, so I decided to tag along. He has a Wisconsin fishing license, but I don't, so I did not fish. Instead, I took the opportunity to take some photos of the harbor. I've been wanting to take a good camera with me fishing, but it was just more weight to carry around. So I have been taking photos with my cell phone instead. But today, I brought along my Fuji S5 Pro and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens and a tripod.
It was a very windy, cold and overcast day (it had rained hard earlier in the day) and the waves were really high. Perfect for photos! I love using the HDR technique (High Dynamic Range) in stormy conditions as it adds more "drama" to the photos. But the moving waves and wind threatened my five exposures to be able to be combined easily into one. Still, I decided to go for it and I'm glad I did.
With some manipulation of the HDR software, plus Photoshop and Lightroom work, I was able to get some rather decent images.
I was curious to see if fishing up in Kenosha was worth it or not. To get an "out of state" license, the cost is rather steep. But I had read that more salmon are stocked in Wisconsin, so I wanted to see for myself if this was true. While out there, I saw two fish literally jump out of the water! AJ said he saw one do that too. Then, AJ hooked into a fish... but lost it in the battle to bring it in! We were both heartbroken, but determined to eventually catch one from shore. AJ has caught one from shore before, but I have not. I've only been lucky catching salmon while trolling on a boat.
The experience taught me that perhaps it might be worth getting a Wisconsin fishing license. The drive is just over one hour from my home, almost twice the distance as Waukegan Harbor is for me. But if my chances increase due to a higher stocking ratio, it might be worth the cost of the license, the gas money and the drive time.
Enjoy the photos!
Be sure to click on each image for a closer look.
2 comments:
Hi Russ. I took one of your classes and this is where I first learned about HDR. You mentioned that movement can be a concern with HDR. I have found that taking a single raw image, and then changing the exposure in photoshop works just as well as the pre-setting. I can do 3, 5, 7, or more exposures if I want. Just a thought...
Mel:
Thanks for checking out the blog and for trying something different.
While you can make the various images brighter or darkener within Photoshop and then try to combine them to create a fake HDR image, it's still not the same. The reason is that if the original image is missing details due to overexposure or underexposure of areas within the original shot, you can't recreate those with Photoshop. It just was never recorded originally. Check out the "before and after" images of this blog post: http://russlowe.blogspot.com/2009/06/photoshop-class-hdr-photography-high.html
You'll see that the outside details were never really recorded properly with the original shot. Even if you were to drop the two exposures made within Photoshop to -1 and -2 EV, you'd still not have an image outside of those windows. But shot at -1 and -2 EV from the camera, you'd actually have the outside image recorded.
Same thing with the overexposure images. Look at the plants on the far right. If the original is too dark in the shadowed areas, it would be very difficult to get the same clarity you see in the "after" image in the HDR.
Hope this helps.
Russ
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