henwin wrote:Rick F. wrote:Let's face it: Some tours are better than others. This one was spectacular, from start to finish, and it had everything: Historical sites, exceptional scenery, and winding, climbing, and diving roads throughout, with smooth surfaces and minimal traffic. In fact, it would have been perfect but for the fact that Churchville had run out of their famous apple butter. But I'm quibbling already…Rick F.
WOW! What a travelogue I'm extremely impressed, like everyone else. Your pics are quite something. But as a photog, myself, I'm always curious about how others have achieved their often spectacular looking results...therefore, I've got to ask: did you manipulate the colors at all, do any special processing to them (and if yes, what)? What camera/lenses do you use?
I actually have a photo in Dale's (Coyner) book (Motorcycle Journeys Through the Appalachians)--I've known him for over 20 years! It's on page 290. But you've given me an idea...wifey's going to be out of town starting in late June. Time for some day trips and short overnight trips??? We'll see.
Again, many thanks for some wonderful writing, not to mention, photographing! +100
Henry,
I've very glad that you enjoyed the trip report and photos so much--thanks for the compliment!
Regarding the photos, I got bitten by the HDR bug a few years ago, after many years of regular film photography and then digital shots. In some respects, it's like using a really powerful polarizing filter, but it really goes a long ways beyond that. The basic idea is to take 3 photos at -2, 0, and +2 stops. That way, you capture both shadow and highlight details along with the regular mid-range information. But then you have to combine the 3 photos into one. A few cameras will now do the whole works automatically, but otherwise you have to use software.
PhotoShop has rudimentary HDR capability, but I quickly graduated to Photomatix Pro, which is easy to use and not expensive. If you want to experiment along these lines, I'd be glad to send you the settings I generally use. It's a lot of fun to experiment, although you can spend a lot of time in the process. Their website has some excellent tutorials.
As for whether the photos look "real" or not, I freely admit that mine tend to be a little over the top. I think they come closer to capturing the "real" colors, for vivid scenes, than standard digital camera settings produce, but my preference tends to go further. The results are usually pretty dramatic, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
I use a Canon SX40 IS "super zoom" camera. It has all the manual controls and features I want (plus many others), and it's small enough to be convenient. Also, with a 40x zoom lens, you can get decent-enough quality pictures at anywhere from 28mm to whatever 40 times 28mm is--in other words, quite a range. It also has pretty high quality video and audio, for those times that a movie would be nice. Oh, and you can set it to automatically take 3 exposures at -2, 0, +2 stops, making the HDR aspect easy. Using a tripod gives the best results, but I hand-hold almost all of my photos and let the Photomatix software take care of aligning the images. Finally, I use the "vivid" color setting on the camera.
As for the end of June, sounds like you'll have a great time touring. Dale's routes have all been excellent. Other good candidates are the RoadRunner Magazine tours and MadMaps. Have a great time, and be sure to post some pic's of where you go!
Rick