Capturing the beauty of the Earth in a colorful and captivating way.
Newsletter 3 Week of October 26- November 1, 2020
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Jeffrey's Weekly Newsletter
Week of October 26- November 1, 2020
Weekly Recap
Sorry for sending this newsletter out late this week but I got back home from Blue Ridge and the Smokies around 11 pm last night and just didn't think sending out an email that late would have been well received.
That being said, last week was pretty eventful. If you haven't noticed, I changed my email to hello@jeffreyji.com so expect to receive future emails from my official email!
Heading to the Smokies this week, we were hopeful of catching some form of foliage. Unfortunately, all of the trees at the lower elevations were green while all the trees in the upper elevations were bare, I believe that Hurricane Zeta swept through and caused all the peak foliage at the upper elevations to fall. While I didn't catch any sign of leafage, I was able to photograph some incredible sunsets, sunrises, mountain fog, and a moonrise I'm excited to share with everyone! My full blog on my travels in the Smokies will be out soon.
This week featured 2 images from Jord Hammond's FFA as well as one shot from Grand Teton National Park
I loved this shot of the rock fortress in Indonesia by Jord. The size and scale and subject isolation blew me away! With this shot, I wanted to pull the rock fortress out from the frame and let it shine. I added a gradient light to the upper left corner using a vivid light blend to shine on the fortress, Then, a shadow on the opposite to give the image contrast. Some color correction to make the tones pop and add warmth, and some dodge and burn and frequency separation to sharpen and further add contrast and you get this.
"Ethereal Mountain"
When I took this picture, I was wading shin-deep in a lake. As the gentle waves lapped around me the sheer size and scale of the mountains really blew me away. As the clouds parted and light came through, rays hit the peaks, illuminating the mountain and giving it an ethereal glow. All of this felt truly surreal and is one of the most vivid moments of my photography journey, considering this was one of my favorite first shots. The edit in this one was quite difficult. It involved a lot of luminosity masking for balancing simply because the light coming through was extremely hash. This was one of the first shots that I have ever taken so I shot it in jog... I know. The colors were god awful and I had to do extensive color curve, color balance, and selective color adjustments just to get it right. Mainly, I lower highlights and whites, add to any areas of a light source, raise shadows, and crush blacks. Some contrast control that I picked up from Max Rive and voila.
This shot comes from Jord Hammond's free for all. Water is so interesting and can be portrayed in so many ways. I wanted to bring out the dramatic nature of these waves and the deep dark depths of the ocean. I started by lowering the global exposure of the shot and crushing blacks to make it darker. A ton of dodge and burn and luminosity masks to balance the exposure and introduce contrast and dimension. A lot of contrast control was also used to bring out the various layers in the waves. Some colorwork and this shot was ready.
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Photographer of the Week
This past week's Photographer of the week was Erich Hong, also known on Instagram as @erich.visuals Get blown away by his soft, enchanting edits with rich tones. This 16 yo creator from Oregon is sure to impress!
Check out last week's Photographer of the Week
Evan Gerstung (@evang_travels)
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No free gifts this week but I'm working on something big and I'll give you a chance to claim some incredible 8k wallpapers and guides for free next week! :)
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A thing I learned this week/ my thoughts:
Did you know that there's a branch of photography called infrared photography? Camera sensors for this type of photography are sensitive to near-infrared wavelengths, producing images with beautiful and vibrant color tones not possible through other means. I encourage you to google it as adding images here may infringe on copyright.
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Plans for Next Week:
I don't have anything big planned for next week but if I go on an adventure, I'll be sure to tell you about it.
