Six are from middle Tennessee, three from Oregon, and one from Florida.

Still, I did come home with some photos. (For me, spending time behind a camera is part of the relaxation process, after all.) Here are a few of my favorites from the trip.

On our first morning there, as Dee Dee and I were walking the beach at dawn, we were lucky enough to hook up with this Great Blue Heron. He pretty much ignored us, focused on catching his breakfast, while we focused on him and the gorgeous sunrise.

I chose to render the bird as a silhouette, so I could also capture the colors of the dawn sky and the reflections on the water. I used the Tamron 70-300mm VC lens, handheld, at ISO 200, 1/320^th second at f/5.6.

I was determined to make this a relaxing trip, and not push myself to create a lot of photographs. For once I wanted to just hang with Dee Dee and soak up some beach vibes. But I couldn’t resist shooting some scenics from the balcony of our condo. Besides, being 10 floors above the beach really does provide a nice “bird’s-eye” perspective.

One of the things I love most about the Florida Gulf coast is its color palette. The emerald hue of the ocean here is one of the area’s signature features. But there’s a lot more than that going on. The pastels in the morning and evening skies, the clouds when weather moves through, and especially the interplay between the sky and the water at those times – that stuff fascinates me.

I even did a few panoramic photos from up there on the balcony. This one was stitched from 5 vertical frames.

And this skinny little shot is actually a huge file made from 16 vertical frames, shot with the Tamron 70-200mm lens. It’s hard to tell from this screen version, but the detail in this picture is amazing.

If anyone needs a 17-foot long print of an ocean sunrise (maybe for a hallway?), I got you covered.

With that in mind, here are a few recent favorites from my own current “adopted” place: Montgomery Bell State Park, just outside Dickson, TN.

I photographed this scene from the shore of Lake Woodhaven, with a Tamron 28-75mm lens. Later, back in the office, I used Nik Color Efex Pro 4 to optimize the original Raw file. I’m not usually a big fan of filters and special effects, but I have to say this latest version of Nik’s software is absolutely amazing. I was able, quickly and easily, to make this image look the way I had originally seen it, and felt it.

Specifically, I used the Graduated Neutral Density to darken the sky a little, the Brilliance/Warmth and Pro Contrast filters to fine tune the colors and contrast, and the Darken/Lighten Center filter to burn the edges slightly.

A few minutes after shooting the previous photo, I spotted a thistle flower on the far side of a meadow. Its bright pink color caught my eye from 50 yards away. A few weeks ago there were thistle flowers all over this area. But now there was only one, so of course it stood out among all the brown around it. But when I got up close, I wound up ignoring the flower after I noticed this grasshopper on the stem just below the blossom.

Judging from the dew, the hopper must have spent the night there, with that back leg hanging on to the adjacent stalk. (?!) I used a Tamron 60mm macro lens, and a flash (Nikon SB-900) to help separate the bug from the background.

I’ve always liked the look of these seed heads when backlit. It’s a subject I keep revisiting. This particular patch of weeds was on the shore of Creech Hollow Lake, and photographed with a Tamron 17-50mm lens.

I’ve trained for many years to reach the level of craftsmanship where I can capture the way a landscape looks to me. But lately I’ve also been trying to create images that show how a subject feels to me. And sometimes a literal rendition is less effective than an abstract approach.

When I photographed these reflections on the surface of a shallow creek, I was thinking it might look nice printed on a large canvas.

(By the way, I’m now offering to readers of this blog a 20% discount on any print ordered through my website. Just enter the coupon code “blog” at checkout.)

There’s a common misconception that nature photographers spend all their time on the road, traveling to exotic locations. But the vast majority of my photos are created within a few miles of my home.

Don’t get me wrong – I love to travel. Exploring a new place can be an exciting, inspirational experience that really gets the creative juices flowing. But I just don’t have time to travel all that often. So if I only produced photos while on the road, there wouldn’t be many pictures in my files. And more importantly, my pictures probably wouldn’t be very good.

Because photography, like any craft, takes practice. And by “practice” I mean time spent doing it. So if you only pull out your camera on vacations or photo workshops, you’re never going to master the craft.

If  you want to become a better nature photographer, you need to find a place close to home – a place you can get to quickly and easily, preferably in time for sunrise and/or sunset. A place where you can do nature photography on a regular basis. Whether it’s a local park, a patch of woods, a country road, or the back yard garden, find a place to adopt as your own personal photographic stomping ground.

As you visit an area over and over, not only do you give yourself a chance to learn the photographic lessons – exposure, composition, all the camera controls, how to set up a tripod without thinking about it, etc. – you also can’t help but learn more about nature.

That is, you’ll learn how the landscape changes with the time of day, the weather and the seasons. You’ll know when and where the various flower species bloom, and the habits of the wild creatures who live there. This is the kind of knowledge that makes you a better nature photographer.

But the greatest benefit to “adopting” a particular place is that you eventually learn to see past the obvious. Past the clichés. When you’ve photographed a place repeatedly, in every season and all kinds of weather, you eventually have to make a choice. Either keep making the same pictures over and over, or learn to see in a different way.

Instead of the forest, you start to see the trees: their shape, and the texture of their bark. That old field becomes a photographic treasure trove of flowers, insects, lines and patterns. Instead of shooting the pond, lake, or stream, you start focusing on the way the water splashes against a boulder, the reflections on its surface, or the leaves floating near the shore. You get the idea.

Trying to see the same old place with fresh eyes, again and again and again, can be a real challenge. Some people learn to do macro photography. Some start doing abstracts. Some become connoisseurs of light.

But the point is, adopting a photographic destination close to home eventually forces you to look closer, to stay longer. Which in turn helps you become a better naturalist, a better craftsman, and a better artist. You’ll learn to photograph what you feel, as well as what you see.

Most of what I know about nature photography, I learned in a city park. It was only 5 miles from my home, and I explored that place with my camera for over 20 years. (And eventually published a coffee-table book about the park, called “The Warner Parks: Nashville’s Natural Legacy”.)

But a few years ago, I moved to a different town, so my present adopted place is Montgomery Bell State Park, again about 5 miles from my front door.

Through this month (September 2011), The Renaissance Center in Dickson, TN is hosting an exhibit of my work, entitled “Beyond the Obvious: Intimate Landscapes from Montgomery Bell State Park”. Please check it out if you’re in the area, and/or visit the ever-expanding Montgomery Bell Park Gallery on my website.

I came across a patch of these plants the other day at Montgomery Bell State Park. I had no idea what they were, but I was intrigued. They covered a patch of meadow about 20’ in diameter, each plant between 1 and 4 feet tall. It was like a miniature bamboo grove!

Drawn to the rich green colors and the patterns of the vertical lines, I wanted to create some photos that captured the feeling of being in the middle of this tiny little forest.

So I positioned my tripod at about waist height, with a Tamron 70-300mm Di VC USD lens on my Nikon D300 camera. I chose this lens because I wanted a limited field of view and shallow depth of field, in order to make this small area look larger. In other words, I wanted to get inside this little patch of plants, visually.

As I moved around, looking at different compositions and framing, I was amazed at the infinite photo possibilities. With complicated, intricate subjects like this, even the slightest change of camera position creates whole new sets of spatial relationships and patterns. I try not to over-think when I’m searching for a good composition. But I do spend a lot of time looking at different possibilities, until I find a composition that just feels right. (Please don’t ask me what that means. Like I said, I try not to over-think it.)

But even after deciding on a composition – the camera position and lens focal length adjusted just so – I found that, by simply focusing on plants at a closer or further distance away, I could come up with entirely different photographs.

The image below is exactly the same scene as the one above. Except that it’s an in-camera multiple exposure, each exposure focused at a different distance.

So the effect is that many more of the plants are “in focus”, yet at the same time each is overlaid with an out of focus version of itself. I like the way this one feels – sort of soft and ethereal – though I haven’t decided yet whether it’s my favorite.

What do you think? If you have an opinion on which of these photos appeals most to you – the 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd – I’d be interested to know.

By the way, a phone call to the friendly staff at Montgomery Bell State Park revealed that these plants are called Scouring Rush. Also known as Horsetail. The scientific name is Equisetum hyemale.

Today I delivered some new prints to the Tennessee Artisan Market. These four images are the first in my newly-created Montgomery Bell State Park Collection.

Each print is 18″ x 24″ (including text), handmade by no one but myself, using archival inks and papers, and includes a Certificate of Authenticity.

The prints are offered unmounted, so they can be matted and framed as desired. And the price is only $135!

Though I try every year, I don’t think I’ve ever really captured, with my camera, the way they feel to me. So for this image I did something a little different.

Since I wanted to emphasize the color, rather than the details, I did a double exposure – one sharp, the other slightly out of focus – to make the tree “glow”. Then after the usual optimizations in Lightroom, I used Nik Color Efex Pro’s Glamour Glow filter. That got the Redbud looking the way I wanted it. Then I used the same program’s Foliage filter to warm up the background colors for contrast, and the Darken/Lighten Center filter to burn the edges.

My goal was to show how spring redbuds feel to me, more than how they look. I think that sometimes a literal interpretation of a subject is not necessarily the most honest interpretation of it.

Style Browser
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who likes to use “auto” settings, as a rule, whether in the camera or the processing software. But Silver Efex has an “Image & Style Browser” which shows thumbnails of your image, processed in various ways: for example, Neutral, Push Processed, Pull Processed, Infrared, etc.. Any of these effects can be achieved by using the extensive controls built into the program, but these preset options can show you some of the possibilities available.
I’ll often start with one of these options, then modify it, according to taste. They provide a good jumping off place. And sometimes, as in the image below, they can lead you to places you never would have thought to go.
One of the settings in the Style Browser is called Antique Solarization. For most of my images, this effect doesn’t really work. But I like what it did, here, to what was previously a rather boring winter scene.

Color Filters
When I was shooting black and white film, I’d carry a bunch of color filters in my bag. Sometimes I’d even remember to use one. Here’s the deal: with black and white, a colored filter will make everything of its own color, lighter. For example, a green filter makes grass appear as a lighter shade of gray than it would otherwise. At the same time, filters make their opposite colors look darker. So a yellow filter will darken a blue sky.
Silver Efex Pro’s color filters offer us the ability to fine tune the image with a degree of precision we never had with film. There is a slider that controls the hue of the filter – its color – and another slider that controls the amount – or strength – of the filtration. Between the two variables, the possibilities are virtually endless. Take my advice: just spend some time playing with these controls. You’ll be amazed at what you can do.
For this photo, I used a strong green filter to help separate the tree from the cliff behind it.

Structure
As you look at the Control Panel in Silver Efex Pro, one of the first sliders you see, right there with Exposure and Contrast, is something called “Structure”. Unlike most of the other features of this program, this one is not directly analogous to traditional black and white darkroom controls. But the Structure slider is a powerful tool. It controls local contrast. In fact, if I were naming this control, I’d call it the “Texture” tool. It lets you control the edge to edge contrast between pixels, so you can basically enhance or minimize the apparent texture of the subject.
Notice how I was able to bring out the texture of the flower petals in this Morning Glory photo.

There is much more to Silver Efex Pro than I can cover in this blog post – cool features like the film simulation modes, the Zone preview capabilities, and of course the Control Points, which take dodging and burning to a whole new level.
Bottom line: speaking as someone with extensive experience in black and white darkrooms, Silver Efex Pro is the most intuitive and powerful method I’ve found, to create black and white images from digital files.
As I write this, Nik has just announced a new version of the software, Silver Efex Pro 2, which I’m looking forward to using. To learn more, and view lots of good tutorials and video lessons, visit the Nik website at http://www.niksoftware.com/learnmore/usa/index.php.