James Stephens

Please take a look at my new nature photography website, http://www.natureimages.info.

I have always had a fascination with nature as well as a passion for photography; the images in these galleries are the result of the union of those interests. My goal is to create simple and artistically successful images documenting living things in their natural setting, and as much as possible behaving in interesting ways.
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For a little more than a year now I’ve been taking photographs of the Institute For Advanced Study campus as part of a website redesign for the School of Natural Sciences which was launched recently.
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Recently I’ve been experimenting with HDRsoft’s tone mapping plugin v1.0.1 for Adobe Photoshop CS2. The plugin is designed to increase detail in shadows and highlights and from what I can see it does a very good job …
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I took some high ISO indoor shots at the weekend inside Walnford Grist Mill, near Allentown New Jersey. Light levels inside the mill were very low and although I did have my tripod to hand I made a decision to jack the speed right up to ISO 3200 and take some photographs handheld. You might be wondering why …..

Walnford Grist Mill, New Jersey
Canon 5D with 24-105 f/4L IS lens @ ISO 3200
(noise reduction using Neat Image)
(click image to enlarge)

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Since the introduction of the Canon EOS 5D last year, there’s been a surge in full frame usage and a lot of subsequent discussion about vignetting with various lenses on the 5D in forums, newsgroups etc. Some people are very upset at the vignetting they are seeing. I’ve been doing some thinking on a way to correct the problem …
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A couple of days ago I was out walking with a friend in the English South Downs and took a shot of sunlight filtering through clouds onto a distant landscape. At the time rays of sunshine were visible but when I opened the image in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) they seemed to have disappeared. This post details how a couple of simple adjustments were made to the image to bring it back to life.
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This post describes a simple and effective technique for producing an image with higher dynamic range from two differently exposed images using Adobe Photoshop CS2. It is amenable to use with jpeg images so you don’t have to shoot in RAW to use it.
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A recent post covered a number of useful controls in Adobe Photoshop CS2’s Camera RAW (ACR). I have to say that left a bit of a dry taste in my mouth and so I thought it might be fun to work through an example image.
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There has been a request for panoramic photographs of the campus here at work. This is a branch of photography I’ve never tried before but after researching the topic and producing the following six-shot composite as my first attempt I am motivated to try this more often.

Panoramic Of Fuld Hall + Bloomberg Hall
Institute For Advanced Study
Canon 5D with 24-105 f/4L IS lens @ ISO 320
(click image to enlarge)

The full image is 12688 x 4111 (52 MP) and would print 42″x14″ with no discernable loss of quality.
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If you are having difficulty learning Photoshop, or just want to expand your knowledge a little, checkout the Photoshop Workbench section of http://www.radiantvista.com/.
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