Category: Michigan Page 31 of 37
Since Spring Break is over, I have been busy planning our summer road trip. I was looking for an app or website that would help me with this planning; something that could help me choose an order for stops and let me know if the distance between stops was unrealistic. Well, after a quick Google search, I found exactly what I was looking for. Furkot.com does all that and more (and no one is paying me to say this). Furkot can help you find lodging in your chosen destinations or at certain intervals throughout your trip that you can customize. It will also help you plan your meals and activities once you’ve finalized your stops. If you are planning a road trip, you’ve got to check out Furkot!
About this Photo:
This photo was taken near the Little Sable Lighthouse at Silver Lake State Park near Mears, Michigan. This shot was taken right as a snow storm was blowing in off of Lake Michigan. It was a single RAW exposure with basic edits done in Lightroom.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 handheld
Date Taken:
April 1, 2016
Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr!
I have visited the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore many times. As a child, the “Dune Climb” was something to be done every few years. One time, in my college days, I tricked Ashleigh into doing the entire hike with me all the way to Lake Michigan. “Just one more dune,” I would say, and eventually we made it to the lake. We also one time had the good forture of being able to have a fire between Lake Michigan and the first large dune near the Lake Michigan overlook, which was really special.
About the photo:
This photo was taken from the Empire Bluff Trail, a really great trail just south of Empire, MI, with a picturesque view of the dunes, Platt Lake, and at least one of the Manitou Islands. It was pretty cloudy the day we were there, which allowed for nice, even lighting.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.
Date Taken:
March 30, 2016
Thank you for reading. You can see my best work on 500px and can also find pictures of the “trying my hardest to be good at this” type on Flickr or Pixoto.
Also, be sure to like the Go See Do Facebook Page, and follow Ashleigh on Instagram and Flickr! Check out our Gear page to see inside our camera bag!
Towards the end of the #igtravelchallenge for March I was given the prompt “Its still winter here”. I was very happy to announce that it was spring in the lower peninsula. Well, just a few days after that post, I was celebrating spring break in West Michigan. One morning, towards the end of the week I woke up to this. It was beautiful so I had to go out and take some shots, but it was also freezing and I was not happy about that. Especially because The Weather Channel recently announced that March, April, and May were supposed to be unseasonably warm. Does this look unseasonably warm to you? I am happy to announce, that Mother Nature has realized her mistake and we are back to the beautiful spring weather I was expecting!
About the Photo:
This was a single RAW exposure with basic edits done in Lightroom.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, handheld.
Date Taken:
April 2, 2016
Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr!
Every spring, butterflies abound at the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids! I’ve always wanted to visit during Butterflies are Blooming! In the caterpillar room, you can see caterpillars crawling and forming their chrysalides. Then, walk into the tropical greenhouse where 50 different species of butterflies soar high and stop on the flowers for a quick drink. You could see Monarchs, Golden Birdwings, and Common Morpho who is tan on the outside and bright blue on the inside. In the gardens, the flowers weren’t yet blooming, but it was a good time to explore the sculptures without the heat and the crowds.
About the Photo:
Shooting butterflies is a great learning experience for photographers. If you want to learn to shoot in manual, small, fast moving subjects are a great way to learn! A zoom lens with fast shutter speeds and high ISO are needed to freeze the motion and capture the tiniest details. This was a single RAW exposure, with basic edits done in Lightroom. This was shot at ISO 3200, which with my entry-level DSLR is quite noisy, so I did a lot of noise reduction as well.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lens handheld.
Date Taken:
March 28, 2016
Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr!
The Nik Collection is Free! The Nik Collection is Free! I’m so glad that I didn’t buy it.
For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, the Nik Collection is a suite of half a dozen plugins/applications that specialize in making various aspects of photo editing easier or faster. Most people use them as a plugin in Lightroom or Photoshop, but they can also be used as standalone programs.
Initially, the cost to own the full suite was $499. Google aquired the Nik Collection as part of a larger software acquisition and the price went to $149. A few weeks ago, they made it completely free, and issued refunds to everyone who had purchased the product in 2016.
If you are just getting into photography and are not ready to put up the cash for Adobe Creative Cloud, I would consider starting with the Nik collection; do your basic adjustments in Viveza and then move into the other applications for more specialized tasks. It is no replacement for the Adobe products, but it would be a fun way to get into editing your photos.
You can download the Nik Collection for free here: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
About the Photo:
Ashleigh and I were off work last week and took several little day drips. This picture comes from our visit to Silver Lake State Park. Silver Lake is a big Michigan destination for ORV and dune buggies, and is really quite a fascinating site to see.
I used Color Efex Pro 4 (Nik Collection) to get the detail in the sand. I applied radial blur into some of the cloud highlights to emphasize the beaming down of light that was already somewhat present in my initial capture. I combined these layers and my edited raw file in photoshop using layer masking.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.
Date Taken:
April 1, 2016
Thank you for reading. You can see my best work on 500px and can also find pictures of the “trying my hardest to be good at this” type on Flickr or Pixoto.
Also, be sure to like the Go See Do Facebook Page, and follow Ashleigh on Instagram and Flickr! Check out our Gear page to see inside our camera bag!
The Empire Bluffs Trail at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is considered a moderate trail and after our hike, I totally see why. The trail has several steep ups and downs that definitely got my heart pounding. We saw a couple of families hiking it and the kids had a lot of fun running up and down them! But, the view at the end made all of that worth it! It was a kind of dreary day, luckily the clouds were interesting enough, but the water was a beautiful teal-blue that I have never seen outside of the Caribbean! Don’t worry, I’ll post a color shot later!
They say cloudy days are good for photography, and overcast does lend itself to more even lighting than you would normally get going out and shooting in the early afternoon. The bad thing about a cloudy day is that dreary skies don’t usually make for good landscapes. A solution? Turn it black and white. It deemphasizes the drab sky and puts the focus on your subject matter.
About this photo:
This was a single RAW exposure with basic edits and B&W conversion done in Lightroom.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens handheld
Date Taken:
March 30, 2016
Thanks for stopping by! If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page, follow me on Instagram, and Flickr! I have to give a shout-out to Instagram user @wanderingz for the inspiration to check out this trail! To plan your trip to Sleeping Bear, visit the National Park Service website!
I like this one.
Ashleigh and I walked around Howell Nature Center a few weeks ago because we were interested in doing some wildlife photography. I should be clear in saying that these animals are living in captivity, so maybe not wildlife photography in the traditional sense, more like zoo photography.
Most of my photos for the day were pretty blah, but I did get a few great shots of an eagle. This may be the best one.
About the Photo:
I was shooting in shutter priority. What?!? I never shoot in shutter priority. The thing is, this guy was moving so fast it was all I really cared about. The picture was taken at 200mm, f/5.6, ISO 3200, 1/1000 of a second. That shutter speed was not necessary for this frame, but I got a few others that only turned out because I was shooting so quickly.
Camera Gear:
Nikon D3100 with 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lens.
Date Taken:
March 6, 2016
Thank you for reading. You can see my best work on 500px and can also find pictures of the “trying my hardest to be good at this” type on Flickr or Pixoto.
Also, be sure to like the Go See Do Facebook Page, and follow Ashleigh on Instagram and Flickr! Check out our Gear page to see inside our camera bag!