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Saturday, February 25, 2012

MISSOURI RIVER MAJESTY

Purple River Majesty, Rocheport MO

Nini and I took the dogs to our new sunset location the night before last and were lucky to see a beautiful Missouri River sunset.  This little sandbar is just below the Katy Trail outside of Rocheport Missouri.  The Katy Trail is a 240 mile state park that runs along the old M.K.T. railroad line (Missouri-Kansas-Texas).  To access the sandbar you have to climb down a steep dirt cliff, but there are plenty of tree roots to help lower yourself down.  The dogs were down in a skip and a jump.  One passer by said, "How in the heck do I get down there?  That's the best beach in Missouri!"  We had a fun time watching the sunset on the best beach in MO.
Despite an awesome view of the sunset, I struggled for a long while to find a composition I liked.  But we arrived 45 minutes before sunset and I had plenty of time to try out different compositions and ultimately settle in on a few that I liked.

This is a three exposure HDR and the exposures are 1/4, 1 and 4 seconds (two stop increments).  I've discussed my technique for capturing multiple exposures for HDR in previous dailies (http://smu.gs/xyAvva), and usually I like one stop increments in my exposures.  But in this case I was far from this camera and firing it by remote while I was taking hand held photos with my other camera.  So I couldn't change the exposure by one stop to give me my complete set of six that I usually like to work with.  Before I could adjust the exposure and get my other three exposures, too much time had passed between exposures for me to include them in the HDR, mostly because the clouds had moved completely.  I think this photo turned out a bit noisier than usual as a result, but nothing Lightroom couldn't handle.  It's important to be able to work fast when shooting for HDR, and after practicing for a while now, I can get through my routine much quicker and more precisely than before.  As always, practice makes perfect.

CreativeLIVE is LIVE today and tomorrow, and it's free.  The workshop is "Bellies and Babies with Sandy Puc."  You can go to www.creativelive.com/live but I recommend the low resolution link here:  
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/creativelive-lowres
I like to keep these on in the background and pick up as much as I can.  You can even carry the workshop around with you on an ipad, pod or phone.  They replay the day's workshop each night too.  Even though this one is about baby photography, and I'm not especially interested in that (yet), I always learn something from CreativeLIVE workshops, especially about the business of photography.  Already I've learned some business, lighting, and posing tips from Sandy's workshop.

Photo taken Feb 22, 2012

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