Douglas Falls May 2011Revisiting familiar locations and employing new visualization techniques as well as new optimizing techniques is critical to improving your photography. Douglas Falls is one of my favorite locations in northern West Virginia. This interpretation is an attempt to capture the scene as it looks to the human eye, but the camera sensor is limited in capturing the scene in this manner. The techniques used in this capture and processing are what we teach in our workshops and one on one consulting. If you would like to learn more about this please see our list of workshops or contact me about scheduling your free one on one consulting session. Please click on the image or this link for a higher resolution image.
Photography Locations
Elakala Falls with Black and White Interpretation
Elakala Falls Black and White DownstreamIt is important to experment with black and white interpretations of scenes when the color component is not critical and the image is more about light and structure. Flowing water lengs itself very nicely to black and white interpretations. This is not my primary visualization while in the field, but it is one that we need to be mindful of if we are not inclined to view a scene in the eyes of black and white.
"Mountains of Color" fall photography workshop registration is now OPEN
Tree Portrait-Dolly Sods National Recreation AreaHello! I am very excited to announce that the registration for the "Mountains of Color" fall photography workshop is now OPEN. Please review the website and if this workshop looks like one you would like, please register early and secure your hotel or camping accomodations early as spaces are filling up fast. This is one of the golden times to be in the highlands of West Virginia. Not only will we be in the midst of beautiful scenery, we will be learning some great photography approaches and developing friendships with fellow photographers. It is a great fun learning environment. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. I hope you can join us for this great weekend of beautiful photography.
Flamingo Sunsets
In the winter of this year I had the opportunity to visit the Everglades for a week of photography. I journeyed over most of the park from the eastern entrances everyday from pre-sunrise to post-sunset. One location quickly became my favorite after my very first visit. Flamingo is about 38 miles from the east entrance to the park. I wasn't setup for camping so I made the drive every day to Flamingo for sunset.
I was looking for a western exposure to the open water where I had a feeling that magical light could happen around sunset. My first trip to Flamingo was a stark reminder of the the official bird of Florida-the mosquito. They nearly carried me away that night and I never left my Deep Woods Off at home after that. 
The evening was very special as the Florida Bay was dead still and the post-sunset sky glow was reflecting off of the water like a mirror. This evening was colored by pink and blue pastels in the sky. The next evening was a little overcast and didn't provide much in the way of special light. My third evening was specactular. The pre-sunset sky was full of popcorn clouds and a brilliant sun reflecting off of the bay. Then it followed up with fantastic post-sunset sky glow and clouds that really made the trip special.
So it goes without saying that I have found a favorite photo location in the Everglades and will visit this spot every time I am in the area.
I invite you to view the full size images of Flamingo Sunsets at this link.
Autumn in Smoky Mountains National Park
Autumn in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Jeff Ball on Vimeo.
This is a first video experiment with the Canon 5DMKII while on a landscape photography visit to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in October 2009. Capturing and constructing this video has served as a wonderful educational endeavor. I mistakenly recorded the first two video clips in SD and are not quite the quality they should be, but the other clips look wonderful on the large screen. I am also learning video editing through Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0. It crashes frequently on my PC so I am either in need of equipment upgrades or I need to get the Adobe Creative Suite with Premiere or both. I hope you enjoy the video and please contact me with any comments or questions.