Welcome to Michael Costigan Photography.  I am an amateur photographer who has had the opportunity to travel extensively across the United States and western Europe, feeding my long-time passion for photography, the outdoors, and hiking in some of the most beautiful places in the world.

Most of the pictures on this site were shot in RAW mode with Canon DSLRs (10D, 5D MK II, and recently a 5D MK IV). and L series zoom lenses mounted on a tripod.   Some of the city scapes were shot with a Sony RX 100, also in RAW mode.   Only a few of my pre-digital images shot with a Nikon FE2 are of sufficient quality for display.

I usually shoot 3 images of each scene captured at 0 EV, -2 EV, and +2 EV, which I combine in Lightroom into a single RAW file.  This makes up for the limited dynamic range of the Canon sensors (at least compared to Sony and Nikon) and eliminates any noise in the dark areas of the photograph.

I process all the  RAW images in Lightroom.  I freely admit to removing distracting objects, such as trash, jet contrails, and sometimes people.  I do not add anything to the images.  If the final photograph contains the moon or reflections, they are actually right where they appear in the picture.  The images are processed to my taste.  In the digital era, it is very easy to add enough color saturation to turn even the most dull sunset into something truly spectacular as is often seen on the internet and even publications that should know better.  I try to refrain from doing that, but as with most photographers today, I use the tools in Lightroom to enhance what the camera captured.  This is where a sterile photograph is transformed into art, and hopefully captures my interpretation of what I saw when I pressed the shutter button.  Of course everyone has a different opinion as to what is natural, and what is over the top.

The original images are not for sale at this time, but the jpegs here are of sufficient quality for use on most devices.   You may right click or use the download button to save any of the pictures for personal, non commercial purposes such as wallpaper.

I hope you enjoy viewing the pictures.  Check back regularly as I am adding more content periodically. The updates are listed under the "What's New" menu.