Road shots

    About a week ago it was opening day weekend at Lookout Mountain and my brother and I as well as all the cousins headed up to the mountain to go snowboard.  The higher elevation we gained on the drive up produced more and more snow the higher we got.  With the excitement of this early season snow fall, I brought my camera to shoot some scenery on the way up. 

     Shooting from a car, while going 65 mph was a little harder than I imagined. You have to have everything just right and on point, to be ready for that split second when some amazing landscape arises. It will be there for a second and then it will be gone, so you always have to be ready to "get the shot."  The lighting is always changing along the road, coming in and out of shadows, going through sun spots, rolling through fog, and any other obstacle that could alter your perfect lighting situation.  Therefore, you have to be on point and ready to change your aperture in a split second.  If you happen to mess that up a little bit, it's not that big of a deal cause you can always fix the exposure in photoshop.  The hardest part for me was being ready with the shutter speed because if you mess up the shutter speed then your photo could turn out a little blurry (out of focus) or could simply end up way to dark, beyond the level of fixing in photo shop without making it grainy.  It took me a little bit to figure out but for the most part I got them in focus with descent lighting.  The one that got a little out of focus was photo #9. Photo #8 was also a little weird on the right side of the photo.  On photo #9 and #8 I should of shot with my shutter speed a little faster I will talk more about those below.  Anyways, thats what I got for road shots for this week.  Getting road shots is a quick, simple way of getting some amazing landscape photos without using a lot of energy.  I look forward to trying this more in the future once I am on the road and traveling a little more. 

     I shot most of these at around 250-350 shutter speed and the aperture I kept pretty low to compensate with the fast shutter speed(to brighten up the pictures a little) because it was foggy and dark in certain areas.  I left my ISO at 200. As far as the actual editing goes, from now on I am going to start explaining the photo and how I edited each photo below each photo.  Just giving everyone the heads up so they know what to look for in the future.  Thanks and hope you enjoy!

America! This photo I obviously desaturated, I bumped up the clarity all the way and a little bit of the contrast to make it a little darker in some areas.  I cropped this photo quite a bit also, took out the road and couple other things.  There was also a pole to the right of the sign that I took out with my clone stamp.   I really like how the fog is behind the Veterans Memorial sign, with all the white fog behind the sign it makes the sign pop out more.  I also like how the fog comes through the picture at an angle and then in the upper left corner a part of the mountain line still comes through. 

I think this picture is still pretty cool looking but it's definitely not one of my favorite out of all of these.   It's just pretty simple, nothing really makes the picture supper awesome and different.  In saying that its simple, I kept the editing simple, turned the clarity all the way up and put the contrast up a little bit.  I cropped the top of the photo a little bit.  Then I moved the saturation down just enough to make some of the dominant colors pop out. 

This photo was my favorite by far out of all of them.  The reason why is because its different, doesn't look perfect by any means, and the photo was awesome even before I opened it in photoshop.  I turned up the clarity and that was about it except adding some hue on the left a little bit.   The white film look hue over the sign on the right was there just from the reflection off the window or something and I really like how that came about.   To add to it, I took my paint brush and painted red, with my opacity around 6-10.  I did that on the upper left and in the middle some.  The reason I did this is because there was already that natural white hue on the right of the picture so I figured I would just add some red hue on the left to contribute to the photo and make it a little film like. 

On the editing side of this one I pumped the clarity all the way up and the contrast a little.  I cropped the bottom of the photo a little bit.  I like how the sun right above the tree line blows out the sky a little bit and comes through the trees and brings out some of the green in the trees at the top. 

On this one, I messed with the temperature of the photo and made it a little greener.  Turned the clarity all the way up and some contrast.  This is probably my favorite of these three tree ones because the sun really blows out the top of the trees on the left and the sky.  Since that blows out the sky and some of the trees it makes my focus go to the white snowy  trees.  The green sun flair also adds to this photo. 

On this photo I turned down the vibrance some to get a darker feeling to the photo.  It makes the water  look more eerie and mysterious.  I bumped the clarity up all the way on this photo.  At first I thought I didn't like how the tree to the right is blurry but the more I look at this photo, I don't mind it as much because if the tree was fully in focus it could take some attention away from the lake which is the main focus.

I really like this one but  the whole picture turned out a little blurry as a result of  not having not a fast enough shutter speed.  I should of shot this at 400 shutter speed and if the photo turned out a little dark, I always could of fixed the exposure in photoshop. Besides that though, I bumped the clarity up a little bit on this and then I turned the vibrance down a hair.  

Turned the clarity up, vibrance down a little. Saturation down a air.  Cropped it a little. I like this cause it has a little bit of everything in it.  The mountains, with snow, river, bushes, trees, etc. It's as lovely as a dove.

My inspiration is Essex Prescott and I am going to explain why. . . He is pretty good at taking landscapes, I mean he could touch up and perfect a few techniques in landscape but for the most part they were good enough to inspire me to try and snap a few along the road.  Check Essex's stuff out before it goes out of style. 

www.s6photo.com