Why It's Good To Meet New People

Last week as we were discussing where dA Crazies would be going for the Saturday Sunrise Shoot this week and Kenway mentioned that he was contacted by an Australian photographer who was interested in shooting with us. We were originally planning to go to Hauula Beach Park, but Kenway said he had to pick up the photographer from Waikiki and thought shooting at Sandy Beach would work out better. No one objected and I was curious about this photographer who contacted Kenway. Kenway provided a link to the photographer's flickr page and I was floored by the images there. The photographer's name is Kiall Frost and he's only been shooting for about two years. 

Kenway came to pick me up at 3:45 am and then we picked up Reid at 4:10 am. Then we headed to Waikiki to pick up Kiall...I had a bunch of questions that I wanted to ask Kiall. When we got to Kiall's hotel Kenway introduced everyone and then we headed towards Sandy Beach. After the initial small talk subsided I asked Kiall how long he's been shooting (and was pretty shocked when he said only since 2011) and how he processed his images. Kiall said he uses Photoshop CS6 and that he uses luminosity masks. I didn't know what that was, but Reid was familiar with it and asked Kiall if he follows Tony Kuyper. Kiall said he purchased Tony Kuyper's luminosity mask actions and uses them on every image he processes. 

When we reached Sandy Beach we saw someone walking from the parking lot toward the rocks on the right side. We didn't recognize the car so we figured it wasn't one of dA Crazies. There was another car parked there but we didn't recognize that one either...except Stacey came out of it to greet us. We were all shocked to see that Stacey was there before the rest of us. A few minutes later Norris, Vernon and Jeffrey showed up. Kenway introduced Kiall to the guys and then we headed towards the rocks.

When we reached the rocks everyone started to position themselves for the sunrise but I noticed that Reid had gone over to talk to the guy who we saw walking from the parking lot earlier. I walked over to see if we knew the guy and it turned out to be Alvin, one of the "I Wanna Shoot So Badly" group members, and he was there to shoot the sunrise too. Alvin is a fun guy to hang around with.

I tried to get into shooting mode but couldn't decide where I wanted to shoot from or what I wanted to shoot. The cloud cover wasn't too bad and there was some color in the sky during the Blue Hour, but I just couldn't get myself to take that many photos. I think I shot less than 130 frames and a big chunk of that was from the group shot. At some point Derrick, Leighton, Scott and George showed up and we ended up with one of the largest gathering of dA Crazies to date.

Since I wasn't in the mood to shoot I ended up talking to Jeffrey about growing as a photographer and mentioned that Kenway wanted to try this thing where each of us share one RAW file with a few of the others and have them process the image as they saw fit. Jeffrey liked the idea and we talked about the possibilities. 

It was getting close to group shot time and it started to drizzle on us. I was hesitant to set up, but the drizzle let up and I got ready for the group shot. I had a few of the guys help me get the exposure set for the OCF and then I had the group come together for the shot. I managed to get a few shots of the group before they got too hungry. And wouldn't you know it...the sun came out after I did the group shot. Typical. We headed off to Zippy's for breakfast . 

At breakfast I came to realize the reason I couldn't concentrate while we were at Sandy Beach was I couldn't stop thinking about luminosity masks...I had to find out what that was...and I couldn't wait to get home so I could do a Google search and start learning about it. I also wanted to find out more about that Tony Kuyper guy.

When I finally got home, cleaned and put all my photography gear away, I got on the computer and did a Google search for luminosity masks and guess what...Tony Kuyper's web site was the first hit. I took a quick look at his site and then went down the Google search results and checked out the next ten or so web sites to find out what I could about luminosity masks. 

Most of the other web pages that were talking about luminosity masks all mentioned Tony Kuyper and linked back to his web site, so I went back to his web site and started reading the information there. It seems that it's this tool or process that gives some photos that certain look that I haven't been able to accomplish through my post processing techniques. The fine control over contrast and tone that you have with luminosity masks appears to be what allows other landscape photographers the ability to process their images to have that certain glow about them.

On his web site Tony had available many tutorials, actions and videos available for purchase. I ended up buying his complete package and am currently watching the videos and reading the pdf tutorials. I haven't tried to work with luminosity masks yet, but I'm really excited to see where this process will take my photos...hopefully it'll be to the next level.

So, if Kiall hadn't contacted Kenway to say he wanted to come out shooting with us, I would have never found out about luminosity masks (well, I might have found out about them eventually, but who knows when that would have been). I am so grateful I had the chance to meet Kiall Frost and learn about luminosity masks. Meeting new people is a good thing...a very good thing indeed.

June 25, 2013 - Update: This is my first attempt at using luminosity masks...this technique gives you really tight control of the tonal range in the image, but it's very time consuming and the learning curves is kinda steep. Just need to remind myself that I won't get good at this technique right away...need more time to learn to use it properly.