The Mansurovs » Wallpapers

Best of 2011 – Landscapes (Part 2)

Nasim Mansurov — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:27:11 +0000

This is part 2 of my 2011 landscape favorites. Please note that some of the images you will be seeing in the “Best of 2011” wallpaper collection have already been posted earlier last year in various articles, but in much smaller resolution. If you are looking for technical data, like Camera type, Lens and Exposure information, you will find it in the EXIF data. Summary of cameras used for the below images: Nikon 1 V1, D5100, D7000, D700, D3s and Sony A65.

Enjoy!

1) Colorado Fall Colors 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Canyonlands Sunset 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Fall Colors 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Fall Snow 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Fall Snow 2 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Grand Tetons Reflections 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Ying Yang 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Hot Pool 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

9) Mountain Flowers 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

10) Petrified Dunes 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

11) Reflections 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

12) Sunrise Colors 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

13) Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

14) Waterfall 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

15) White Sands 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Hope you like these!

Best of 2011 – Wildlife

Nasim Mansurov — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:22:35 +0000

While looking through the 2011 photographs, I realized that I shot very few wildlife images last year. Part of it has to do with the fact that I was too busy testing equipment, but I also realized that I just did not get out locally as much as I used to in order to photograph birds and other wildlife of Colorado. A large number of great wildlife shots from Yellowstone and Glacier NP were lost during my two week trip across North-Western US as well, due to my own fault. All in all, 2011 was just not a good wildlife year for me. Hopefully I will do better in 2012. Enjoy!

1) Tricolored Heron 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Sandhill Cranes Taking Off 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Iguana 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Grouse 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Birds at Sunset 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Common Merganser 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Burrowing Owl 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Buffalo Feeding 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

9) Blue Bird 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

10) Birds at Twilight 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

11) Birds at Sunset 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Best of 2011 – Landscapes (Part 1)

Nasim Mansurov — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:54:20 +0000

Happy New Year! The Mansurovs are back after a short holiday, with some photos to share from 2011. At the end of each year, I go back and start reviewing what I have photographed. It is a very long and painful process, because I have to sort through tens of thousands of images and pick the ones that I think are worthy of getting published as wallpapers on our website, in addition to being featured in our portfolio (I know, the images in the portfolio are very old, but I am working on updating it). While the process is very time consuming, if you have not gone back and reviewed your images from last year, I highly recommend that you do. It is a great exercise to re-evaluate your work and understand your weaknesses. You should be a better photographer now than you were a year ago, so see what you like and you don’t about your pictures. Are you seeing a significant improvement in your work? How do the images from last year compare to the images from the year before? Once you pick your favorites (which you should limit to 100 images max and don’t forget to flag them in Lightroom), invite your friends and family to look at your images. If you have any photographer friends, ask them to help you out with this. Tell them to be very critical and only pick the images that communicate with them. Let them vote on each images and give a star rating from 1 to 5. Walk out of the room and come back when they are done. Filter Lightroom by 5 stars and see how many images you are left with. Then ask your friends/family to tell you why they chose those particular images, find out what they felt about each photo. Also ask them what they feel is missing in each image they picked – perhaps there are some things they see that you did not see before. Trust me, this kind of feedback is invaluable. It is OK if the feedback is very harsh – you should welcome any criticism. In fact, you need to learn to be very critical of your work.

This is the first part of my 2011 landscape favorites. Please note that some of the images you will be seeing in the “Best of 2011” wallpaper collection have already been posted earlier last year in various articles, but in much smaller resolution. If you are looking for technical data, like Camera type, Lens and Exposure information, you will find it in the EXIF data. Enjoy!

1) Sunset Rainbow 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Mono Lake Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Snow and Aspens 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Puerto Rico Flowers 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Dead Horse Point Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Bridge over Waterfall 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Glacier Mountains 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Canyonlands River 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

9) Waterfall 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Hope you like these, more to come!

Best of 2010 – Other

Nasim Mansurov — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:25:37 +0000

This is a bonus post to my “Best of 2010” series, with pictures that did not make it to landscape or wildlife categories. I’m posting images that have received positive feedback from our readers and some of the below images were specifically requested to be provided in high resolution.

Some of our readers sent me emails and posted comments, asking if any of the images I have posted so far were processed in HDR software. With the exception of one image called “Sunrise“, every single picture I have posted so far is a non-HDR image. The dynamic range and soft shadows you see in the wallpapers are a result of RAW images from a full-frame sensor (although some images were shot with D90 and D300s cameras) and a little “Fill Light” use in Lightroom. Obviously good technique and use of various filters do play a substantial role here, as explained in my landscape photography tips article. When I really want to bring out the shadows, I typically overexpose by a stop, which gives me plenty of detail to recover. If the sky is blown out because of this, I will shoot in brackets of three and then pick one image to work with in Lightroom. Another key is to try to photograph early in the mornings or late afternoons – that’s when the shadows are always light and soft, giving an “HDR” feel to photographs.

I hope you liked the “Best of 2010″ collection!

1) San Juan Streets 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Old Mine 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Ocean View 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Mesa Verde 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Kiva 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Door and Window 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Castle Tunnel 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Beach at Night 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Enjoy!

Best of 2010 – Landscapes (Part 4)

Nasim Mansurov — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:42:34 +0000

This is the last, fourth part of the “Best of 2010” for my landscape images. The first part can be found here, the second (BW) part is here and the third one is here. I hope you enjoyed my wallpaper collection from 2010 and I will be posting more of these in 2011 as well.

1) Lake Reflection 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Photographer 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Old Mine 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Mammoth Hot Springs 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Layers 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Fiery Furnace 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Maroon Bells at Night 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

9) Aspens 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Best of 2010 – Landscapes (Part 3)

Nasim Mansurov — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:03:53 +0000

This is the third part of the “Best of 2010” for my landscape images. The first part can be found here and the second (BW) part is here. As I have pointed out before, some of the images were already posted earlier as wallpapers, so I am simply reposting them.

1) Hell’s Half Acre 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) False Kiva 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Road Through Aspens 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Old Mine 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Yellowstone Lake 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Lake Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Fence Through Forest 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Farm 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

9) Delicate Arch 2560×1600 Widescreen Wallpaper

Enjoy!

Best of 2010 – Wildlife (Part 2)

Nasim Mansurov — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:36:21 +0000

This is the second part of the “Best of 2010” for Wildlife series. The first part can be found here. If you are looking for the technical information on how these images were shot (shutter speed, ISO, etc), the information is preserved as EXIF data in each file. Lola and I specifically preserve EXIF data in all of our images, so that our readers could learn from us.

1) Roseate Spoonbills 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Osprey Eating Fish 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Marmot Standing Up 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Great White Egret 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Coyote 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Clark’s Nutcracker Feeding 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Burrowing Owl in Flight 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Western Meadowlark 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Best of 2010 – Wildlife (Part 1)

Nasim Mansurov — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:19:58 +0000

Before posting two more landscape wallpaper collections, I decided to publish some wildlife images from 2010. There will be two parts and this is the first one. Unfortunately, I did not do much wildlife photography in 2010, so I only have a few images to share. Please note that all of these were taken in a natural habitat and the wildlife was not disturbed or hurt during the process :)

1) Geese at Sunrise

2) American Pika 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Hawk on Hay 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Burrowing Owl Chick 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Roseate Spoonbill 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Black-necked Stilt 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Black Bear Cub 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Baby Marmot 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Best of 2010 – Landscapes (Part 2, BW)

Nasim Mansurov — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 04:58:58 +0000

This is the second part of the “Best of 2010” collection for landscape photography. I have not done much of black and white photography, so the below images are sort of “experimental”. Let me know what you think of these! If you like the way they came out, I will post a quick tutorial showing how I did it.

1) Turret Arch BW 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Tree BW 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Layers BW 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Lake BW 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Dead Horse Point BW 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Best of 2010 – Landscapes (Part 1)

Nasim Mansurov — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:40:07 +0000

To be honest, I have not had the time to go through all of the pictures that I have taken in 2010, so I’m only posting some of the ones that I rated as my “picks” in Lightroom. I surely did photograph a lot more in 2010 than I did in 2009, but I am also getting more and more picky about my work. I believe that a stricter self-critique can only improve a photographer and while it sometimes can be discouraging to look at other people’s works and compare them to yours, I still think it is a good idea to do it every once in a while. Not only will it be a source of inspiration for you, but it will also make you want to get better. I often spend time looking at works of some of the masters of nature photography and their images not only motivate me to go out and try new things, but also remind me that I have a lot to learn!

This is the first part of my 2010 landscape favorites. Please note that some of the images you will be seeing in the “Best of 2010” wallpaper collection have already been posted earlier last year. Enjoy!

1) Colorado National Monument 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

2) Formations 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

3) Lake Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

4) Dead Horse Point Sunrise 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

5) Green River Storm 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

6) Great Sand Dunes Sunset 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

7) Colored Reflections 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

8) Aspens with Abandoned House 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

Hope you like these, more to come!