Today’s post is also from Joshua Tree National Park, but this one actually has a Joshua Tree in it!

As you can see, Joshua Trees are strange looking things. It is a plant from the Yucca family and is also known by the name of Yucca Palm, Tree Yucca or Palm Tree Yucca. When you touch the tree, you will be surprised at how “solid” it feels. It is a very “dense” and heavy wood and you can tell when you touch it.

The tree seems to only grow in the Mohave Desert parts of the park, in the higher (northern) elevations.

The other thing that stands out in Joshua Tree National Park are the large number of rocks and boulders. This picture shows a typical cluster. Those rocky cluster make excellent rock-climbing areas and when my son and I were there we saw a large number of rock climbing groups throughout the park.

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At the end of the Salton View Road in Joshua Tree National Park is a lookout called Keys View. No it has nothing to do with the Florida Keys, they are clear across the country no where near here. In fact there is barely any water here as Joshua Tree National Park is desert. There are two types of desert actually: Mohave Desert in the northern, higher elevation part of the park and Colorado Desert, in the southern, lower elevation parts.

The only body of water in the neighborhood is the Salton Sea, which you can see in this pictures just beyond those mountains. Like Mono Lake, it has a high salinity level. The Salton Sea lies directly on the San Andreas Fault and, like Death Valley, lies below sea level.

Joshua Tree National Park is quite beautiful although hot. My son and I visited here to go do some hikes and take photos and went in May thinking we’d beat the real heat. Well no such luck, it turned out to be the hottest May in years and we got temperatures around 100F (37.8C). It is a dry heat which I find infinitely more bearable than humid heat, but one sure ends up drinking a lot of water!

This shot is my usual HDR shot with 3 bracketed shots and processed in Dynamic Photo HDR followed by some tweaking in Lightroom.

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Here is another shot taken at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands.

You can’t help but love this place with its 19 working windmills. It provides such a wonderful “Dutch” scene. What could be more stereo-typical than this? Perhaps a winter scene, when it’s all frozen over and people are out skating the canals.

On this occasion I visited with Linda who had never been to Holland before. The drive to Kinderdijk takes you past some glorious Dutch countryside. Parts of the road is right on top of the levees, which are called “dykes” in Holland and are built to keep the water out. This is also where the windmills come in as they were designed as pumps, pumping water out of the lower lying lands. They still work at Kinderdijk and it is quite normal to see some in action when you wander around here (although there is no real need for them as a pump, they turn mostly for the tourists these days.

This shot is not an HDR, but a single image treated with Topaz Adjust. I tend to apply the effect on one layer, then blend copies of the original image together to get the effect I want. This provides me with a lot of control and avoids that “grungy” look you can get so easily with Topaz.

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Sand Harbor is a piece of Lake Tahoe’s North Eastern coastline. There is a sandy beach there, but it is of particular interest to photographers because of the boulders that lie around in the water. They can make for some fantastic photographic subjects.

This shot was taken just about at sunset, which had the sun disappearing over the mountains on my right. It caused these rocks to be bathed in beautiful soft light. I was quite happy with this as I had to scramble down to this area from the road. Not particularly smart when carrying tripods and some expensive gear.

Anyway, I made it without a mishap and got this picture for my efforts.

As usual, it is an HDR comprised of my usual 3 shots. I used Photomatix (with some “gentle” setting to minimize noise), then opened in Photoshop and blended it with a layer that has some Topaz Adjust treatment to it. This all let me get great detail, nice color and minimum noise. The little noise that was there, I got rid of with the new noise reduction tool in Lightroom V3, which I find very good.

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As promised, here is a shot with the wonderful fluffy clouds that were so abundant on this trip. As I said in my last post, previous trips to Mono Lake had all been cloudless so this was a real treat.

The reflections were SO intense they almost look fake, but I can assure you they are not. This shot was taken about 6pm, which was 2 1/2 hours before sunset. Linda and I actually went here to scope out where to be at sunset, but the conditions were so nice we pulled out our cameras and took a series of shots. There was no wind at all which is why the reflections are so intense, the water was like a mirror and because it was still quite light, the overall effect is quite spectacular.

Linda and I actually did come back at sunset, but there was nothing going on, wind had picked up and there was no color whatsoever. Conditions were so “blah” we didn’t even get out of the car, so were happy we got these shots a few hours earlier.

This shot is a single picture with some treatment in Topaz Adjust. I applied Topaz to one layer, then blended the other, original, layer to get the look I wanted. I find this lets me control noise pretty well.

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Linda and I managed a quick visit to the Lee Vining area and got to visit Bodie and Mono Lake.

My previous trips to Mono Lake always seemed to coincide with rather uninteresting weather and I never really got the shots I had imagined could be had in this wonderful location. This time however, the weather was much kinder. As you can see from the shot below, there was no wind and there were clouds. I’ll post another shot tomorrow where the clouds are more pronounced, but today’s shot is one of calmness.

The time was about 10 minutes before sunrise (which occurred at 5:37am that day). I have this cool little iPhone app that tells me when dawn starts and when sunrise (and sunset) occurs. So I knew exactly when the sun would appear and I was ready.

This is actually an HDR, comprised of 3 shots. Processed with Dynamic Photo HDR, which produces much more “natural” photos than, say, Photomatix. It also produces a heck of a lot less noise, one of the real problems with Photomatix I find.

While I would have liked to have seen a little more of the clouds, I am happy with this shot. Everything came together for me. The composition, the reflections, the colors and, perhaps most importantly, the overall “mood” of the scene.

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When walking through the back streets of the picturesque Dutch town of Gouda, I spotted this lonely bike, leaning up against the wall. It struck me that bike’s blue color complimented the colors of the cobblestone and the wicker basket sort of blends in as well.

I also knew that the textures of the sandstone wall and the cobble stone pavement would look great in HDR so I couldn’t resist snapping a series of shots. Here is the result.

Bikes are everywhere in Holland of course and Linda and I, not being used to so many of them on the street, had to be on a constant lookout (they are silent too by the way).

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Gouda is of course famous for its cheese. Being a huge cheese lover, I can say with some authority that Gouda cheese is just wonderful. If you can get hold of the crumbly aged stuff, you’ll be in for a treat, I promise.

The town of Gouda is also a gem. It has a very picturesque town center that just oozes charm with its cobblestoned streets, gorgeous old houses and the old market square, which isn’t square but triangular.

Right in the middle of this “square” stands the old town hall pictured below. The building dates back to the 15th century, 1450 to be exact. An amazing 560 years old! Perhaps most amazing is the fact that council meetings are still held there.

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Portrait FX is an extensive collection of Lightroom presets specifically designed for the portrait photographer.

The package is put together with flexibility in mind, allowing many presets to be combined, resulting in an almost endless line of possibilities. The presets provide not only toning effects, but also address skin qualities, lighting, softness and contrast. Also, a series of adjustment brush presets are included in the package rounding off the capabilities with tools for fine-tuning.

Some of the preset effects are soft and subtle, others are more colorful and dramatic. The possibilities are only limited by your creativity and experimentation.

There are 54 Develop Presets and 12 Adjustment Brush Presets in total. The Develop Presets come grouped into 5 groups:

• Portrait FX (11)
• Toning FX (18)
• Soft FX (6)
• Skin FX (8)
• Lighting FX (11)

The Adjustment Brush Presets include brushes for eye enhancements, touching up make-up, softening skin, whitening teeth and eyes, even a black eyeliner.

Some examples of the Develop Presets

And here are some of the other toning presets.

Then combine these toning presets with the presets from other groups to get any number of effects. You can soften the skin, lighten the skin and play with lighting angles with presets from the Lighting FX group.

Some examples of the Lighting FX presets mimic lighting sources located left/right, top and bottom of the main subject. Great to brighten up parts of the portrait or accentuate (or tone down) exiting lighting effects.

Other presets include contrast boosts, skin softening and skin lightening. A complete list is as follows:

Package Details

The entire package costs $24.95 and is available as a download. Checkout is via Paypal and is not only safe and secure, you do not need to have a Paypal account and can pay with any major credit card.

Order now Portrait FX for only $24.95 

Please note that as this is a software download, all sales are final. No refunds.

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Today marks quite a milestone for me! The amazing number of 60,000 downloads of my free Lightroom presets was passed. I am humbled and elated by this figure.

The most popular preset is the “Warming Vignette” which earlier today stood at 13048 downloads. The next most popular one is the Steel preset with 7437.

What is perhaps even more impressive, at least to me it is, is the fact these presets were downloaded by people all over the world. In fact, 129 different countries to be more precise. Countries like US, France, Australia and the UK are perhaps no surprise, but that people from Angola, Nepal, Madagascar, Macau, French Polynesia and the Maldives found their way to my website, simply amazes me. Just goes to show how small the world has become and how easy it is to navigate the world from behind the computer screen.

Here is a map of all the places people visited from. Every red dot represents a location, the larger the dot, the more people from that location.

Thank you, thank you to all who downloaded these presets. I hope they provided you with a lot of fun and helped you process your images a little bit quicker.

As a result of this amazing results, I will be posting a package of Portrait presets. Doing the finishing touches right now and they should be up by mid-July.

Albert

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