This shot was taken of a fishing trawler in Wanchese on Roanoke Island, NC. I was there teaching a photo workshop and noticed this unique opportunity to capture an unusual view of the harbor.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my work, I appreciate it.

Dan Waters

]]> http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/uncategorized/blue-fin-puddle/feed 0 http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/outer-banks/published-in-our-state-magazine http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/outer-banks/published-in-our-state-magazine#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 14:35:44 +0000 Dan http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/?p=1002 Continue reading →]]> I was lucky enough to be published this month in Our State Magazine. Our State Magazine is the equivalent of Arizona Highways, only for the state of North Carolina.

Here is the photo that is published as a two page spread in this months, (May, 2012) magazine.

Thank you to Our State Magazine for liking my photo enough to publish it.

This is a photograph of the room we stayed in for the price of a dinner. Money well spent!

Here are some other photographs I took at the Manteo waterfront this weekend.

Iris photographed in front of the bed and breakfast.

The fog rolling into Shallowbag Bay with Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse in the foreground.

It was almost totally dark except for a sliver of orange light along horizon when I took this photo. This is a single 15 second exposure during which time I used a flashlight to paint light onto the tree and the reflection in the water. It was shot with a 16 by 35mm Canon lens set to 16mm. The ISO was 200 in my Canon 5D Mark II camera.

In this case painting with light means using a flashlight to actually paint light on to the subject during the exposure. This is how I created the photograph, Cyprus Sunset. Without using a flashlight to paint the cypress tree, there would have been no contrast between the dark tree and the dark night sky. Using the flashlight to brighten the tree while the shutter was open created the contrast I needed in this photograph.

I am pleased to invite you to a week long intensive Outer Banks photo workshop hosted by myself and local naturalist and photographer Jared Loyd.

http://sceneinadifferentlight.com/outer-banks-wild-photo-workshop

I was just getting into digital photography when I captured these images. Unfortunately I photographed them all in JPEG format instead of raw format. And to make matters worse I didn’t even save the original JPEG images, I copied over them which means I lost a lot of data. Some of these photos can only be printed in small sizes.

I have learned a lot since then and this was an important lesson.

Never ever copy over the original photos out of the camera. Always save the to original photos. As new software emerges and your skills and knowledge improve you may want to go back to the original images, that have all the data that was captured, in order to redevelop your photos.

Sailors Take Warning

On this September morning I had a feeling it was going to be a beautiful sunrise as I drove to Manteo North Carolina. I could see intermittent stars through the clouds, which means the cloud cover was probably not too thick for the sun to shine through. I was headed to Manteo to teach a private photo workshop and was hoping for some nice color in the sky. We were lucky to have this sunrise unfold in front of us. Part of the battle of taking good photographs is being at the right place at the right time, and we sure were this morning. It turned out to be a beautiful morning for photography and we both came home with some great photographs.

I photographed this in the George Washington National Forest. The green fronds of this plant contrasting with the colorful leaves attracted me. The name of this plant is, Southern Running Pine and oddly enough it was used in the early days of photography. This plant produces highly flammable spores that burn very bright. Early photographers collected these spores and dried them out to use as flash powder. I found out about this by reading a post from Joe Kegley on the Carolina Nature Photographers Association form.

As I look back through my older stuff, I find photos I didn’t have the skill to fix up at the time, or photos that have just slipped through the cracks. There are also a lot of those that when I see them again I ask myself what in the world was I thinking when I developed it. As my tastes and skills mature I’ve found a lot of photos that badly need reworking. Over the years the software I use has continually been improving along with my skills. This means it’s now possible to develop images I wouldn’t have considered working on years ago.

Here is one photo I didn’t have the ability or skills to develop correctly years ago. Luckily I photographed the shot in the raw file format which enabled me to take an image with very little detail in the sky and develop it correctly.

Summer Storm was photographed in 2008 and developed in 2011.