David interviewed by Liana Lehua
Who is David Orias? I’ll tell you. He’s just another of our ANPW contest winners who we get to know a little bit about before our trip to Yosemite here.
The location of the photo was at Mono Lake, California but I live in Santa Barbara.
Website: http://www.redbubble.com/people/DavidOrias
Main camera used is a Canon 1 Ds Mark II
My dream photography trip would be shooting the wave at Teahupoo in Tahiti when it is going off with or without a surfer on it.
My inspiration….
My inspiration in my photography style is trying to record imagery in a way that our own eyes cannot see. I am a morning person so being up before dawn is not a particular chore for me, and provides wonderful opportunities for interesting light and conditions. Due to the low light, a photographer has three choices, to pack up and leave, use very high ISOs for a faster shutter speed or drop the shutter speed and see what happens. I prefer to lower the shutter speed rather than adding digital nosie to the image. I am not completely sure of the physiology, but when the human visual system looks at movies, for example, they are shown at 24 frames per second suggesting to me that our brains see images at no slower than 1/20 of a second. Also, when we move our heads, our brain tries very hard to keep the image sharp. With my photography, I use slower shutter speeds and camera motion to capture an image that we have no way of seeing perceptually. Also, due to the slower shutter speed, the camera has more time to collect color information which we cannot see at that moment of low light, and this also creates an image that frankly I couldn’t see when I took the image.
My workflow….
The workflow always begins with the light at the time you take the photograph. This cannot be emphasized enough. If the colors aren’t there to begin with, they aren’t going to come out in the processing. Digital sensors capture a ton of information and shooting in RAW optimizes that feature. I am a real proponent of “shooting to the right of the histogram” and try my best to get a little highlight alert flashing on the LCD screen. When you look at the image captured on the back LCD of the camera, it looks bright, flat and washed out, BUT, the color information is there. I open up the file in Aperture and drop exposure, add contrast and adjust color temperature and export it to Photoshop. There, I will remove the dust spots. There is a film legacy with surfing photography to use Velvia chrome which produces highly saturated colors, so early on, I found a Velvia plug in for Photoshop and make my first layer with that plugin. Then I use additional layers for color balance, fine tuning of saturation and curves for the final look.
What am I most looking forward to during the APNW?
I will certainly enjoy meeting new people. I am excited to meet the professional photographers as well as the winners. I always enjoy being around other people who are passionate about photography. I only wish we could be together longer. I will be looking forward to new insights into landscape and nature photography in what is most certainly one of the best locations for this type of photography. I am also looking for insight from the professionals and winners on what I need to do to take my photography to the next level. I look forward to learning more about Aperture and how I can utilize it to better for my photography.
