Photography of Emil Kepko

I currently have a piece up at the Maryland Federation of Art Member’s show, and since it won an ‘Award of Merit’ (second place, I think…) I thought I’d step through some of post-processing I used to make it.

I described the capture of the shot on this post. To add a bit more detail, the photo at left (taken from the most picturesque Starbucks I’ve ever seen) shows the context. (As an aside, on the right, just off the edge of the photo, was a small cliff and is where I took the 737 landing, about 30 minutes later). I had wandered out on the causeway, about halfway down, with the setting sun to the right, hoping to get the monastery lit up at sunset. I did not have a tripod, so I sat the camera down on the concrete, and adjusted the view the best I could using my lens cap. One thing I didn’t count on was that my neutral density filter, which I had screwed on to increase the exposure time and smooth out the ocean, was covered in dust. Here is the original shot (click to see all those spots).

Yuck! Which brings me to step one in post-processing. I was unable to shoot level, so I first rotated. Then I edited out most of the dust. Big improvement!

I didn’t remove all the spots, because I knew I’d be cropping out some of the water and sky. Next some minor level enhancement to improve balance

And then the hardest step: cropping. My camera shoots in an aspect ratio of 2:3, but the ‘standard’ medium size print is 8 x 10 (2:2.5). You can see in my original blog post that I had cropped it down to 2:4 ratio, emphasizing the monastery and the walkway to the left, defocusing the eye away from all the sky and water. But it’s hard to find that print size, and I wasn’t about to submit an 8 x 10 ratio print, which looks like this:

That ratio throws off the composition. For some reason that I still have not figured out, 8 x 12 prints, which fit the images from my camera, are impossible to find. Frames are even harder! In the end I went with an almost panoramic aspect ratio, which does work quite nicely:

I typically don’t spend much time post-processing (and even this photo did not take too long), but I have always liked this photo, and that tedious work of removing dust spots, all 93 of them, was worth it.

I had grand plans of capturing Mt. Rainier: sunset, sunrise, downtown Seattle in the foreground, etc., etc. In the end, I had only enough time for a quick trip up to Crystal Mountain, late in the morning. Plus I realized all of the locations I had ‘google-scouted’ required either overnight camping or a hike at 3 am. Instead, a short gondola ride offered up a stunning view of Rainier from about 18 miles away. The mountain never did escape the ever-present clouds, so most photos had a flat quality to them, and that grew worse as the morning wore on. The polarizer helped immensely — it’s rare these days that I shoot outside without it. The very first shot I took turned out the best (even though I had left my camera in a high ISO setting. Oops). The clouds looked like fluffy cotton balls, and the shadows on the valley below create nice contrast.

With muted colors due to the clouds, I went black-and-white for all shots and post-processed quite a bit, increasing contrast, structure, etc.

A few B&W Rainier photos here.

I spent a couple of days recently in the Interlaken area of Switzerland. I have some beautiful photos up and around Jungfrau, including the Eiger and the surrounding valleys. Unfortunately, they’re all on a memory card that is lost, floating somewhere somewhere between the Thunersee and the quaint town of Thun.

So I returned with only a fraction of my shots, primarily of Lake Brienz and the beautiful mountains that tower on all sides. I woke up one morning after a front came through, and the mountains were dusted with snow. I zoomed in (300 mm) to the other side of the lake and caught this shot.

A stunningly beautiful area. The photos don’t do it justice.

Interlaken photo gallery (opens in new window)

The highlight of my Beijing trip was a visit to the Great Wall. I researched the various locations quite a bit (Great Wall Forum is an excellent resource), and decided on Jinshanling, about 2 hours northeast of Beijing. I had initially wanted to hike east to Simatai, but upon arriving in Beijing found out it was closed for restoration. Simatai is off in the distance along the ridge line in the photo at the top. I hired a taxi for the day, and was blessed with a cold front that had passed through the night before, blowing out the infamous Beijing haze. Clear skies, and puffy white clouds: the perfect backdrop.

I was up on the wall by 10 am, and although the late morning light wasn’t ideal, use of the polarizer reduced the harsh glare and mellowed out the light. I went west towards Xiwuyanlou, along a portion of unrestored wall. The view from there was stunning, and not another person around. Just wonderful.

I then walked east towards the restored section. A self-described “Mongolian farmer” followed me around at this point, but for the most part knew enough to stay out of the way (that’s her walking ahead of me). I eventually wandered back down the hill where my taxi driver, with bottled water in hand, waited. I’ve heard stories about other sections of the Wall, especially Badaling, the “Disneyland of the Great Wall,” and was glad to have experienced the Great Wall alone.

Jinshanling Gallery.