November 14, 2012 12:35pm by Todd Sisson

Wednesday Wallpaper | Looking Southwards, Waikaia Bush Road

ipad wallpaper Waikaia Bush Road Central Otago

Alpine tussocks from Waikaia Bush ‘Road’, Central Otago New Zealand. Photography by Todd Sisson

Howdy Kiwi-bloglings!

This one is a bit of a rule breaker – putting out of focus elements into the foreground of an image is usually a no-no and instant death knell for an image. I am such a bad-ass rebel that I find myself doing it quite often, typically with poor results. This one works for me though, as it creates a stark delineation between the pillowy soft foreground and the contrasty background. As a bonus I have uploaded it in absurdly large format to keep kyotolaw’s retina Macbook happy 🙂

I noticed a couple of gear related comments on last week’s post, I thought I would respond here:

HDR – although we don’t employ HDR software such as photomatix we do extensively lean upon ‘extended dynamic range’ techniques to create more balanced exposures that retain a natural appearance. We used to blend exposures quite a lot but we are finding that the latest generation of Nikon cameras combined with Lightroom 3 are delivering near HDR tonal range from a single exposure. I have posted on this here on my neglected blog.

Cameras: We use Nikon DX and FX bodies these days – the D800e is getting the most use these days. Just to confuse things, we shot the Canon 5d mkii for several years (this was made on the 5dii) but have returned to Nikon upon the release of the D800.

If you have any further queries just contact me via the website.