There aren’t many bad photos of the Florida coastline… and when the clouds come in and get stormy, everything gets a touch more dramatic. There’s a part of me that wants to be in a Florida hurricane, but I don’t know why… That’s like saying there’s a part of me that wants to be part of the Black Death/Plague. And, maybe there kinda is. Maybe that’s what the Coronavirus is like… yep, I think of the Florida coastline, and then I think of Coronavirus.
Here’s one of the last cruises I took before the whole pandemic thang. That’s a view of Miami from the water just as we left. It was kind of funny… this cruise was with the Summit people, which are a lot like the TED people. In other words, lots of politically active and passionate people mostly on the left. Anyway, on the night we left, Trump got elected… so then everyone on the boat was just so upset and crying for days and days… it was a wild scene!
I’ve been using Luminar for a while now, along with Aurora HDR, as my main software for processing images. It’s just so powerful and feature packed which makes editing images even more fun than normal. Recently I got hold of the new Luminar AI which replaces Luminar 4 and it’s great. There is a bunch of AI based stuff on the front end which helps you select templates (think presets) which is great for beginners or to inspire some ideas for processing. For those of us who want to get hands on that is still an option and there are a bunch of new sliders to play around with. Check out the vid below where I process a landscape image and if you’re interested in grabbing the software you can do so here. 🙂
Daily Photo – Evening Storm Rolling into Naples
I can see why Florida has a huge appeal to people who are the beachy sorts. I don’t actually think I am the beachy sort… I’m more the mountainy sort. But I’d do that split about 70/30. I certainly don’t hate the beach and I’ve been having a great time exploring all the beaches on the North Island of NZ. Nothing against Florida or anything, but I think I like the beaches here a bit more because they are so remote you hardly see anyone else… makes it easy for a fun skinny dip or two.
It seems kind of lazy just to stroll up and down the beach with my camera at sunset to get the easy shot, but I’m not above being lazy! This was a 3.2-second exposure to smooth out the water just a little bit. Some people will come out here and use an ND filter to do like a 5-minute exposure, which can be quite beautiful too. But I don’t do that because of the aforementioned laziness.
Here’s a photo from the Burlock Coast restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have a great relationship with that company and they are nice enough to let me stay for free. What a deal, eh? In exchange, I give them a bunch of photos, but it’s great because they don’t dictate what I should shoot. I just sort of roam around and find interesting things. This restaurant had so many textures and such cool lighting that it felt like the perfect place for a cool HDR.
Today you’ll see the fun edit of today’s photo of the Space Shuttle on the launchpad at night. I mean, that is, if you are one of our awesome Passport Members!
Processing On the Launch Pad
Here’s another fun edit where I made it extra moody. I also heavily darkened some of the areas that were ugly or distracting. Enjoy!
I almost called this On the Pad, but that didn’t ring quite right. I noticed that while I was editing this photo that I wasn’t using a tripod. I’m not sure why this is. I’m sure I had one with me, but I took it so long ago that I forgot. Maybe I raised it way over my head to minimize the fence. I mean, honestly, who knows.
I took this photo a few years ago after I got off a cruise there in Miami. Isn’t it hard to imagine going on a cruise again? I mean, maybe in a few years when they have all this infection stuff settled… but right now, no way. I know a lot of people out there are having problems with this shit economy, but you can always be thankful that you don’t own a cruise line, hey?
If you’re a rocket enthusiast, then the museums at NASA are a must. I’m a little bit of a rocket nerd so I found it pretty exciting. That, plus being a photo nerd, was a perfect combo. Also, you get a leeway when it comes to using extreme HDR when taking photos of all this epic hardware.
I don’t know how I stumbled across “Off-Book” but it’s one of the funniest podcasts I’ve ever heard. They don’t have a lot of videos, but here is one of them…
Daily Photo – Space Shuttle Launch
I felt really lucky to be invited by NASA to the final few launches of the Space Shuttle. I ended up taking about 5,000 photos because I had no idea what the heck was going on. I had never been to the launch of a spaceship before, so there was a lot of guesswork when it came to the settings. Now that I’ve been to a few, I’m a little less slapdash when it comes to actually getting a decent shot.
While in Fort Lauderdale, I was taking a ton of beach photos but they started to get a little boring. They looked pretty much like every other beach shot, especially during the day time. So I decided to invite over one of my model-friends, Katie Ann to do a bit of posing.
