No Apologies

 I'm no great photo editor but I do like to play. When I take the camera out for a spin I shoot a ton of shots trying to find a good balance of light and shadow, color and composition. Generally I don't think "What a great Shot!". I figure with a little digital magic from one of several photo-editing software suites I might come up with something interesting and possibly nice to look at.
    I saw these coneflowers while mowing the "north forty" the other day and figured they might be worth photographing. Mid-morning light with good contrast from daylight to shadow. Good configuration of individual blossoms and nice contrasting blue flowers in the background. I took about a dozen shots as I circled the threesome. I used an old Nikon 70-210 zoom adapted to my Canon. The telephoto opened wide gives a nice blurred background with shallow depth of field. Though the flowers were beyond their peak I figured I could use that to my advantage in editing. A nice enough picture but I wanted something a little more.


I first used the automated fixer in Photoshop elements,saved the new
file and opened it in OnOne PerfectPhoto. This software is the perfect sandbox for me to play in as it provides many one click variables for many different looks. I wanted a kinda old artsy look and fiddled with several options til I was satisfied and here you see the results. Nothing out of this world but I like it and for me thats what counts.

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Relative Project

MO and I are digitizing a bunch of old negatives and hope to compile them in some meaningful way. We've come across some with unknown faces. In this photo we can only recognize Artemus Ellsworth Handy(Grandad),far left and Margret Mae 'Clark' Handy(Granny), 2nd from right. Who are those other people?!

Hummers Have Arrived

Got buzzed by a couple of males today...here's one of 'em. 500mm lens, f8 @1/125th sec, ISO 800. Overprocessed in Elements to get a little better definition.















 Original photo.

Before and After

 Ok, I guess I'll just post some raw photos taken with old glass mounted on digital slr in before and after modes. I was working in the garden and saw these birds congregating in the trees. I dropped the rake and ran to the house for a camera. I think a 55mm mamiya lens was mounted so that's what I used. Most of the birds were gone by the time I made these but with a little processing I may have something worth printing.

Photo shot with Canon EOS T2i with 55mm? at who knows what apprature, 1/1600 sec, iso 400.processed in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.

Composition

Sheesh, you'd think with the billions of dollars spent on all the high-tech cameras NASA could get a little better composition. The horizon is all crooked, there are distracting shadows in the foreground, no hint of what the subject is and no human element...what's up with that?!

This image was taken by Front Hazcam: Left A (FHAZ_LEFT_A) onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 157 (2013-01-14 07:23:49 UTC) .

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Winter Solstice

Nothing too fancy, but I really enjoyed taking these.  Had a little backyard fire for the Solstice.  Camera, tripod, bulb mode and remote.  No real strategy just snapping intermittently.  The last photo in the batch, if you look closely, captures Kieara's back of head and face at the same time; kinda cool and creepy.

Light Painting titled "Incomplete"

I haven't quite achieved the effect I was looking for, but work has moved in, the holidays have moved on, and night shoots have been buried for the time being.  I was trying to get a nice clean shot of the truck exterior while also capturing what's under the hood, along with some fancy-shmancy light painting.  Obviously I have some work to do, but feel like there is a good start buried in these captures.  These are all single exposures completed under the cloak of darkness with various battery powered lights from around the house (flashlight, fluorescent lantern, laser pointer).