Capturing the beauty of the Earth in a colorful and captivating way.
Weekly Newsletter 8 Week of November 30- December 6
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Jeffrey's Weekly Newsletter
Week of November 30- December 6, 2020
Weekly Recap
Hi *|FNAME|*!
Well, we've reached the first week of December. I can't believe that we are in the final month of 2020. It's been quite the year. This week's been busy with a ton of studying and preparing to come back to Boston in January. Other than that, this week hasn't been filled with too many exciting events. You can go ahead and read some commentary from this week's posts as well as visit Jasper, the photographer of the week, but I've been pretty busy out of the photography world this week.
If haven't known, before I went to college in Boston, I graduated from a high school in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. Because of the pandemic and due to taking online classes at home, I spent a lot of time exploring my state. This set of 3 this week comes from Alabama's Cheaha State Park
Foggy Colors
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On one of the days that I arrived at the park, a thick veil of fog encompassed the surrounding landscape. It was so cool being engulfed in the fog. It really brought out a ton of the fall colors and turned everything soft. On this particular day, there was no point in going to the vistas or checking out the stunning viewpoints. The only option was forest photography. If you haven't done it before, shooting a clump of trees in the forest is actually pretty difficult. There are so many shapes and you really need a keen eye to be able to simplify the landscape and fit all the shapes together into a neat and well thought out image. Here, I started by choosing a subject, the red tree in the distance, Then, focused on getting foreground elements, expressing depth, and capture the messiness of the forest as a whole while maintaining a neat composition. For the foreground, the trunk on the left is nice. It provides texture, it helps frame the shot, and any tree or object layered after it will seem to have depth. The trunks on the right also help establish the right border of the frame and the difference in shape from the trunk on the left helps to convey the messiness and disorder in the forest. More trunks further back help establish depth and disorder but those 3 on the left and right borders bring neatness to the overall image. To create this soft effect, I employed the Orton effect to help me, frequency separation to bring out the foreground textures, and a bit of color work to get rid of the green color cast in the RAW file.
Autumn Jewel
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When you get into an area with fast-moving clouds, light rays are bound to form and move. So, if you ever meet conditions like this, set up your composition and wait for the light. In this shot, I saw a small lake down in the forest below so I set my shot. A dead tree trunk on the left to act as a left border frame as well as a foreground element. I love how the branches point towards the lake to draw your eyes in. The fact it was dead also helped when I added my dramatic editing flare to the image. As the light rays hit the lake, I shot the image and that's about all. Good subject, good foreground, good light.
Dancing Rays
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Even if you understand nothing about photography, you know why this looks good. A lot of rays. The composition was relatively simple. This image is actually a horizontal panorama that I stitched together and warped into a 3:2 aspect ratio. When figuring out the framing, I wanted a central ray with adjacent rays jutting out, like a radial blur with 100% radius in Photoshop. For this shot, I looked for balance or tried to balance the image. You can see the central peak with the largest amount of orange lit up, and then all the adjacent peaks. The shot has a centralized "subject" subject that draws you in, not to mention. the entire WOW factor of so many rays.
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Photographer of the Week
This past week's Photographer of the week was Jasper Nebelsieck, also known on Instagram as @jaspersvisuals (it's week 8 but I forgot to update the story template)
I’ve known Jasper for so long now and I’m a huge fan of this landscape/ cityscape photographer based in Hamburg, Germany
His images are always so clean and well composed with a simplistic yet elegant editing style
His gallery holds a charm that I can’t quite put into words. If you like my work, you’ll definitely love Jasper’s
Check out last week's Photographer of the Week
Will G (@willg_photography)
Gifts This Week
Nothing so far but I am planning a holiday sale in the future.
An Interesting Thing I did this Week:
If you're looking to test your editing skills and want to win REALLY good prizes, World Shooters is hosting FFA starting December 12. They have a ton of prize contests from photo editing to uploading Instagram reels. Check out the competition here. I'll be entered in the cityscape as well as long exposure competitions. However, there's sp much more from portraits to video even. Definitely check it out if you're interested and up to the task.
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Plans for Next Week:
I won't be too active next week but I'll post 3 shots. A ton of studying is in my future. Wishing you guys well!
