Ryan Jordan

Orbs at Flathead Lake

I spent all of last week camped a few feet from the lapping waves of Flathead Lake's east shoreline on Melita Island. Sun and moonrise viewed from my tent were highlights of my mornings and evenings. I continued to shoot with the Olympus E-P1, which I've had in hand now for a few weeks and am learning that the stock m.Zuiko 14-42mm lens leaves a little to be desired – but it does capture enough color and detail information in RAW images that can be manipulated in Photoshop to create pretty shots, like these.

All images below were taken with the Olympus E-P1 and m.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 at ISO100, no image stabilization, and on a tripod.

Flathead_lake_sunrise

Above: This is the view from my tent. You can see the tip of Wild Horse Island on the left horizon. Fires from Canada contributed to the color haze (f/22 1/6 sec).

Flathead_lake_moonrise

Above: Moonrise on the east shore of Flathead Lake, near the beach where I was camped. f/3.5 30 sec.

Flathead_lake_sunset_2

Above: Sunset over Swim Beach, Melita Island Summer Camp, Montana BSA. f/22 1/2.5 sec.

Flathead_lake_sunset_HDR

Above: Sunset from Melita Island's western shore. This is a series of five images bracketing the range EV-2 to EV+2 and merged to HDR in Photoshop CS4. All were taken at f/22 with long exposures – 5 seconds or longer – to smooth out the lake surface and soften the reflected light. My next steps in working on this image to prepare it for print will be to selectively merge layers with semi-masked skies that are overexposed to eliminate the bright sunset artifact in the middle above the horizon.