Saturday morning I woke up and thought, “Blake, you have never HDR’ed the Golden Gate Bridge, successfully anyway!” So I texted my good friend Eric, yep the same guy that I went on the shoot with a couple weeks ago, you know the one that torrential down poured on our perfectly planned photo trip? I figured we just had 10 days of rain, the sunrise had to be good on the first day of no rain, why not go for a spontaneous shoot? The law of “Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong” always comes into play when you plan something, but if you do it on short notice you trick the law of “Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong“! We did just that and boy was it a successful shoot! The last time I shot the Golden Gate for HDR I shot in jpg… Yes I know what a beginner, and do you want to hear the worst part? That was only 9 months ago 🙁 I had a crap ton of noise since the fog was rolling in. This time I shot Raw like a real man… real men shoot raw, that should be a T-shirt!
I think there is definitely a synergy that happens when you go shooting with another bad ass photographer. I highly suggest you find someone to take these excursions with. My wife is the perfect companion, I love her dealry, but bless her heart, she cannot sit through a 4 hour “Blake Is Taking Photos Again”! I don’t blame her, this hobby is really boring! Well until you see the fruits of your labor on the screen of course!
Speaking of synergy, take a look at Eirc at work. He didn’t feel the need to grab his tripod from the car before we hit location #2.
Not Big City Folk
Whenever you are in a huge tourist area, it is always a good idea to get a picture of the tourist hot spot in a clever way. We found these rock sculptures that worked perfect for us to capture the Golden Gate (below) and the city (featured above) in a way no one else would. We should have knocked them down before we left so no one else would get our bad ass pics, but that wouldn’t be good karma, the landshark that made them would probably haunt us in our sleep.
Not So Big Are Ya
Last but not least, the teaser for the week. I figured out how to make a pretty kick ass Graphic Novel look for your images. Of course I am going to share it! I don’t withhold that kind of greatness from my viewers. The catch? There is no catch, you just have to wait until Friday, duh!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
