Josh Bradley Photography » Nik

Curtain Call

josh — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:52:00 +0000

So I have been quite hear as of late and believe it is not for lack of material, just so busy that the blog has suffered a silence. But there is a lot in the works, and I mean a lot! Mostly I am getting ready to move so things are really going to get hectic on the blog and with life in general until I can get settled in at the new place. But fear not, it is my hope that within a few weeks you will see a new addition to the blog for the traveling photog. Details are still in the works, but I am waiting for just one piece of equipment to arrive and then I will be off and running.

The shot above was from a dance recital my daughter was a part of, above is one of her great instructors. The light was hard coming of the stage light and made deep shadows, but it just worked at that moment.

Captured Nikon D700 70-200 f2.8 II on Lexar digital film.

Inspired for B&W

josh — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:56:44 +0000

So recently I saw a post from Kirk Tuck and it got me thinking about something B&W portraits. At which point it got me thinking about a blog post that Sabrina Henry did a while back about going back and review old photos and adding a new look to them. So with the double inspiration I dug back in the files and found these shots of my good friends Jeff and Misty

Has a great time shooting these, we found the great old door in the back alley parking lot of a local pub and stayed there for the better part of an hour shooting.

The conversion for this was done in Silver Efex Pro

Captured with Mark IIN 16-35f2.8 II on Lexar digital film

Time She’s a Slippin’

josh — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:19:04 +0000

So a funny thing happened yesterday, I found myself in Santa Barbara at the local Samy’s standing at the counter asking to see an Olympus. That is right folks not only have I committed the sacrilege of switching camera systems from Canon to Nikon, but I now have an Olympus E-P2 in my bag as well… (I am sure the hellfire and brimstone will rain down shortly). So why did I get this camera? The long and short of it is that I saw what this thing was capable of thanks to my buddy Ray Ketcham and a another amazing photographer out of Texas, Kirk Tuck. The images with this little dynamo sparked a creative project that I am hopefully going to kick off very shortly assuming I can get my hands on a few more pieces of equipment needed. At this point my buddy Jeff Lynch is probably rolling his eyes, saying that the gearlustitis is in full swing again, and he would be right. One thing I have mentioned before on the blog and one that I know other photogs know is that one camera may not be able to do the job to get you that creative vision you had in your head… So to that end the newest tool in the arsenal of creative vision is primed an ready to go, now if I could just manage to read the instruction book

Captured with Olympus E-P2 14-42 3.5-5.6 on SanDisk Digital Film

P.S. There is going to be some format changes coming down the pipe, soon so if you see the blog in disarray late at night that is me trying to relearn html coding using a sledge hammer…

Last Stop ~ No where

josh — Sat, 22 May 2010 04:33:41 +0000

Last Couple from the road trip home. The Ranch House Cafe was on a stop somewhere past Roswell, NM. A few buildings and the sign was all that was left of this road stop. The cafe looked like it was out of commission for the better part of 10-15 years.

The old cabin was along the route home, had to shoot from the car because the wind storm that was coming in was pushing 40mph + winds that made getting out of the car not a hot idea. Unless I wanted to have my teeth whitened by sand blasting.

Captured with Nikon D700 70-200f2.8 on Lexar digital film.

You’ve got Mail

josh — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:37:51 +0000

So traveling home from TLS I decided to head to New Mexico and cruise around to see what I could find. And I found Encino, NM. Neat little place with some of my favorite subjects old building and signs.

First place that caught my eye was this abandoned Post Office. Great part, it still had a working mail slot.

Just down the street was an abandoned motel with and I quote “Lo Low Rates” Probably why they went out of business.

More from the road trip home tomorrow…

Captured with Nikon D700 24-70f2.8 on Lexar digital film

Gorman Falls Pt. 2

josh — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:29:27 +0000

Ok true there was no real part one, but remember that post about falling for falls? Yeah that was part 1. So I have been slowly getting through the last of my images from Texas, and I found a few more from Gorman Falls that I wanted to share. At the same time I am eating out how it is to do posts from the iPad, which so far is easy.

Loved the sunlight streaking through the water on this one. Only issues was that the warm glow of the morning sun had turned to a blazing white. So I dropped the image into the Brilliance/Warmth filter and added a touch of warmth to the water to bring back that glow.

Lastly, a non- hydro shot. The vegetation in the canyon is amazing. Jeff is not kidding in his posts when he says it’s a rain forest down there. This was a straight shot from camera the greens are amazing.

Captured with D700 70-200f2.8 w/ Vari-n-duo filter on Lexar digital film

Black and White Water

josh — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:38:37 +0000

From last weeks amazing time at Pedernales Falls. Had a fair share of some serious technical difficulties as of late with my computers, but I am typing this post on my new new and improved computer, so hopefully no more problems. And if you haven’t been over to his blog since he got back home you need to head over to Jeff’s site and see some of the spectacular photos he captured while we were out and about. More to come sooner than later from the trip.

Captured with Nikon D700 70-200f2.8 w/ Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo filter

Finished in Silver Efex Pro

Window Art

josh — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:59:22 +0000

So this is a shot back from when I was in New Mexico in January that never made it onto the blog back then. But since I am getting ready to head that way again on my way to my buddy Jeff Lynch’s Texas Landscape Safari next week, I decided to go back through some images to see if there were places I wanted to go revisit. I found this image in the archives and realized that I had done nothing with it at this point. So I started playing around and decided on a solution to make a neat image.

So first off I decided to start this out as a 1 shot HDR editing the image in Photomatix 3.1, and got what you see below:

So it is overdriven and has some funky halos and blues going on not to mention a TON of noise that got introduced in the process. So I went from here, convert the layer into a Smart Object and started the real work.

Step 1 was to drop the image in Nik’s Dfine 2.0 to axe the noise from the image.

Step 2 was to go into Nik’s Silver Efex Pro and finish the image how I wanted. Up top is the final result.

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

B&W Spring

josh — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:48:29 +0000

One more from this past weekends adventures. Saw this single Oak tree with leaves that were extremely bright compared to the surrounding trees so I did what I thought was best and photographed it

Captured with Nikon D700 24-70f2.8 on Lexar digital film – finished in Silver Efex Pro

Fences and Flowers

josh — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:39:46 +0000

Another adventure from the weekend of roads less traveled. This was on another road not too far from the one I found last weekend that had so many great things to photograph. Lots of the smaller wildflowers were out in bloom and it made for a great drive. Found this bunch of flowers with the fence and the tree way up on the hill and tried to find some way to make them all work out in the photo. Used a .9 Split Grad filter to bring the exposure down on the clouds. Finished is out with a touch a Viveza 2 and Color Efex 3.1 in post.

Simple B&W close up of the post. Just had to get a B&W in been really enjoying creating B&W images lately.

Captured with Nikon D700 24-70f2.8 on Lexar digital film