An HDR shot I attempted because I wanted to capture something decent with this view, but the lighting of just a single exposure wasn’t right. The grassy area and trees in the foreground, which I ended up cropping out anyway, where just too dark and the clouds above me (also cropped) weren’t helping the overall balance.

Still, I was really stunned with the level of detail that I still managed to capture in the valley at the base of the mountains, and even the ridges in the slopes as well. I did more work than usual in post and with TopazAdjust to bring out some detail and take out some noise, and was very pleased.

Of course, it’s hard to get a feel for the image with this currently resolution, so click on it for a link over to Flickr and select the option to see it full size.

I learned quite a bit from my first migration earlier this year, but fortunately this move isn’t going to be as large as the first one.

Caution: Kinks Ahead
At the end of it all, moving to WP is going to be a big plus for this site and blog. I’ve already spend a good number of hours getting the test site ready by moving all the site pages and styles over, but I still anticipate the normal move-related issues once this switch is flipped.

I’m hoping to cut everything over late tonight and start fixing the first issues this week. By the weekend I hope to have everything ironed out and the newly renewed stream of photos coming in through the feeds again.

Thanks,
– Kris

An HDR look at the same building in Ephraim, Door County that I shot a close-up of earlier in the year. A rustic and colorful structure that’s begging to be photographed in high dynamic range if there ever was one.

Looking down from the 20th floor at the Hyatt Maui Regency early in the morning.

Another HDR shot from our own little driving tour around the West Maui Mountains during the week of the Maui Photo Festival. The type of photo you really just can’t capture in a single exposure.

Here’s another HDR image I put together from the same short photo shoot as this one.

This image is obviously more lifelike, with the previous image having a more artful feel to it (courtesy of work done in Topaz Adjust).  It’s been exciting for me this last month or so as I’m learning more on the post production side, and enjoy having the flexibility to take similar shots and work them into completely different results.

I never thought it would be this easy to awaken the artist within, as Rick Sammon puts it.

One of HDR images I put together from the few hours last weekend in Door County when those grey clouds in the photo weren’t dumping buckets of rain on us.

Still haven’t made it to a dozen HDR images in practicing, but so far I’m really liking the results.

Another one of the aerial shots from my new photoset, Above Door County.

One of the draws for me in doing aerial photography is getting to see places we’ve visited from a much different perspective. We visited Cana Island back in April and took the photos below, but seeing it from this high up just finished the set.

You can check out more photos in my Cana Island Lighthouse photoset on Flickr, too.

That is, until the rains came and washed out my first scheduled attempt. I managed to get another flight the following day with a small break in the weather, and I’m wrapping up the edits from the photos I took on that little excursion.

My First Aerial Shoot By Plane
Although this was my third serious attempt at a shoot from high above the ground, it was my first from an airplane. The previous shoots were with Blue Hawaiian Helicopters over Maui, once with the doors on and most recently with the doors off arranged by the great folks at the Maui Photo Festival. That reminds me, I need to write up a similar post about what it’s like shooting out the side of a moving helicopter looking straight down with nothing but a seatbelt. What a rush!

Anyway, back to the recent flight. I went up with Dave from Grizzly Scenic Air Tours, based out of Ephraim. The Grizzly folks were a great couple of guys and did everything they could to make sure I was able to get a flight in that weekend with the weather being what it was.

It was a small two-seater airplane, which was the first difference I noticed from the helicopters I went up in previously. At first glance, it looked pretty cramped, but I actually had more room to move around and switch cameras than I did sharing the back bench of a helicopter with 3-4 other passengers.

The other benefit of such a small aircraft was the one-on-one communication with the pilot and being able to customize the 70-minute flight to my needs. Dave was great at making sure I knew what there was to see throughout the entire peninsula and taking me to the better views.

The Downsides
Now, to the things I struggled with during this flight, through no fault of the pilot or the plane, have you.

• Shooting through the window – the option to fly door-less with these guys is available, however, with the weather what it was and the time of the year, the temps were too low. I’m hoping to go up again around the May timeframe, so it’s something I’m looking into again.  The window on the door wasn’t that big, at least compared to a door-less helicopter, so that was a limiting factor, too.
• Plane Stability – I’m probably not the first to observe that, as far as taking aerial photos go, helicopters tend to be a lot more stable than a small airplane. Combined with the weather and the high winds in the area, we were bobbing up and down a little more than I had anticipated. That, and shooting a lot through my telephoto lens even made me a little airsick near the end. Just more experience for me to take with on the next flight.
• Move Along, No Hovering Here – Along the same lines of stability, I certainly missed the flexibility to hover over a subject to better compose and capture a shot like we did during the helicopter tour in September. That added more pressure on me along with the clouds (mentioned below), but I took it in stride and did the best I could. In addition to not hovering, I also felt that the speed was a little faster in the plane then the helicopter, which makes quite a bit of sense considering even basic aviation principles.
• The Clouds – As you can see from one of the shots below, the clouds had let up enough for us to fly, but they were playing havoc with my exposures. While I’ve come a long way with adjusting on the fly for changing lighting conditions, it still was tricky with light that was changing so often, working with fast shutter speeds and not a lot of time to get the shot I wanted. I ended up bumping up the ISO in a few places and working with the exposure compensation, but having a more professional camera like the Canon 5D Mark II would have been a big help in some of the noise and blur I was getting. Someday.
• A Focal Gap – I ran into another unforeseen problem on my part, leading to more knowledge for next time. I shot with two camera bodies like last time, my 20D with a 70-300mm telephoto and a my Rebel XSi with my newest lens, a 24mm f/2.8 wide angle. What I soon realized after starting to shoot was that I had a fairly large gap between my wide angle and telephoto selection that proved detrimental to some of my composition efforts. I shot with the same pair of gear on Maui, but we were able to get closer to the ground below in the helicopter to where my 24mm frame was full of all the wonderful Aloha goodness done below us. Time to rethink the gear selection for the next trip.

On to the Goodies
That list of downsides is more educational for me, and maybe others, to learn from in future attempts. As it’s been said before, we learn more from our mistakes and failures than our successes, so calling them out and having them to revisit later is helpful for me.

Moving on to the good parts of the flight, it was a great scenic tour and something I’d recommend to anyone who frequents Door County and wants to see it from a whole new vantage point. The guys at Grizzly Tours have a few flight options to fit just about every need, and as they did for me, they’re happy to customize to any special requests you might have.

A few of my hopes coming into this flight and photo shoot were to see the full autumn colors from high above and to see some of the lighthouses, towns, etc. that we’ve visited on our previous visits. Photography aside, those goals were more than accomplished.

I also learned there was even more to see than I knew coming in. For starters, there were more bays, lakes, and harbors than I had thought, and bluffs like the one below were quite a sight from the air after standing near the edge of a few of them.

On top of that, Dave mentioned there were 27 islands that surround the peninsula, and they even have tours for visiting those and even shipwrecks, too. Needless to say that has my interest piqued for another flight in May, and I’m fascinated that there’s so much to shoot that one or two 70-minute flights couldn’t even cover everything.

A More Photos Left to Go
I tried to go through my best shots from the flight for this post, but the truth is I still haven’t gotten through all of them.

All of these photos, plus some that I didn’t show here, can be found in my Above Door County photoset on Flickr. As I get to the last few photos that need some TLC in Photoshop, I’ll be adding them there as well.

Enjoy, and if some of these notes helped you out or you have aerial shots of your own, please let me know. I’m also trying to carve out time for writing a similar post about the doors-off helicopter tour, which of my three aerial shoots has been my most successful, by far.

We’re here at Buffalo Wild Wings watching the Hawks game, and I have my Dell Mini with me so I was inspired to post a quick hockey pic from last season.

Unfortunately, our captain and today’s photo subject, Jonathan Toews is missing his 4th game in a row with concussion-like symptoms, but hopefully he’ll be back soon.

The good news is the Hawks just scored on the power play (finally!) and we’re up 2-0 in the middle of the 2nd period against the Habs.

Let’s Go Hawks!