Supermoon and Nahant Beach Photos, July 12, 2014

As many of you know, last night was the SuperMoon for the month of July, one of three expected this year (the next one is due on August 10th). A true thing of beauty if you can experience it firsthand, one of the best locations to see the SuperMoon around my region is at Nahant Beach in Nahant, MA. There is an unobstructed view of the horizon and there is a small island named Egg Rock Island, which makes a nice addition to the pictures one may take. Nahant Beach is a beautiful location and if the temps are agreeable and it isn’t too humid it is a perfect place to spend a late afternoon/evening during the summer. I did a series on Nahant Beach last summer for the Shores of the North Shore series at North Shore Art Throb magazine. To check out my 2013 photos of Nahant Beach, simply click here. The following were taken on July 12, 2014. More will be added as time permits so check back often!

This was a variation on the above photo. I thought I would try to liven things up with a bit of tinkering.  The following is a photo I played around with in Google’s Nik Collection using the “Double Exposure” template. Not a great photo by any stretch of the imagination, but I did like how it created a double SuperMoon. Made me think of Arrakis from Dune for some reason. Okay, I watched the superb documentary Jodorosky’s Dune this week so that may have done it. 🙂

More tinkering around with photos from last night.

The Joys of the Google Nik Collection

Hello all,

My apologies for the lack of blog posts of late. While the beautiful outdoors of New England offer up plenty of opportunities for photography, other happenings and events have kept me from going out and capturing the region during the warmer months. Well, that and the fact that I have also been doing a bit of writing for the film blogs at Creative Salem and TheHDRoom. It is at times like these that one wishes they can be cloned to do everything at once.

One thing that I have been doing to keep “in practice” is taking some older photos and playing with them in the Google Nik Collection photo editing programs. For the same price as Adobe’s excellent Lightroom program, the Google Nik Collection gives you seven editing programs that can give your photos a whole new life. The programs are a lot of fun and while Lightroom is still my “go to” for photo editing software, the Nik Collection acts as a great addition to the editing suite.

Pickering Wharf, Salem MA Summer 2013

The above photo was modified with the Silver Efex Pro Program. There are 38 different presets to choose from in this particular program, including the Antique Plate preset used for this particular version of the photo. Of course, within each preset is the ability to fine tune the photo for your desired effect.

The White Mountain Region, North Conway NH April 2013 

This photo of the White Mountains in Northern New Hampshire was tweaked using the “Pinhole” preset in the Silver Efex Pro program. Further editing was done using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom 5.

Salem Willows, Salem MA September 2013

The above photo of a popular fishing dock located down at the Salem Willows in Salem Massachusetts also went through several programs to achieve the desired effect. The first one was another editing program in the Google Nik Collection, Color Efex Pro 4. This particular program offers a ton of filters to choose from. You can also combine filters and create your own preset if you want. In addition to Color Efex Pro 4, this photo was further modified using Adobe Lightroom 5.

South Boston, June 2014

This one was a lot of fun. One morning while I was heading to my destination down near the waterfront in South Boston, there was a layer of fog obscuring the tops of buildings. It provided the opportunity to take some odd photos here and there, which perhaps would translate into a surreal snap or two once they went through the Silver Efex Pro 2 (the above images that used Silver Efex Pro were also modified using Pro 2) program. For some reason or another, the construction in these photos reminded me of Pink Floyd’s Animals, which explains the presence of a pig floating in the sky. In fact, the pig in this picture is apparently a pic of the one the group used during their tours in the late 70s and early 80s (and possibly for the album cover).

This photo was modified using two of the Nik Collection programs: Silver Efex Pro 2 and Color Efex Pro 2. Color Efex Pro 2 has a preset (filter? preset?) that allows you to add fog to your picture. While there was actual fog present when I took the photo, a little more was needed to help the pig blend in. Speaking of which, Photoshop was employed to get the pig added and blended into the picture.

Speaking of adding fog to pictures….

White Mountains Region, Fall 2012

Kangamangus Highway, Fall 2012

The above two photos were the first two I experimented with in Silver Efex Pro 2 and Color Efex Pro 4. The fog didn’t quite come out as I had hoped but it was certainly a worthwhile learning session.

Nahant Beach, Summer 2013

The final photo in this post was from Summer of 2013 in Nahant, MA. The overall image is a bit on the dark side and a fair amount of time was spent trying to 1) Bring out the detail in the moon 2) Make the houses on the hill stand out (they were quite dark to begin with) and 3) Highlight detail in the ocean and on the shore.

Going back and playing around with photos is always a great way to keep your editing skills sharp. Using programs such as the Google Nik Collection is also a great way to see your work in a completely new light and perhaps it may steer you in a new direction on what you will shoot and how you will do so.