Southern Oregon – Page 7 – Jeanne Hoadley Photography

Northern Flicker

I hadn’t been out of the car five minutes before this Northern Flicker landed on a branch near me. I never even knew flicker’s existed before I got into bird photography but lately I have been seeing them everywhere.

In post processing I did a lot of work to tone down the shadow on the side and bottom of the bird though I am still not completely happy with it. I also edited out all the branches in the lower right hand corner to lose distractions and create some negative space. The the usual treatment in Color Efex Pro: a little detail, a little saturation and some darkening of the edges to highlight the bird.

Cone Flower

Somehow it got to be Saturday and I hadn’t been out to shoot all week. So I ran down to North Mountain Park where the cone flowers are looking pretty good in spite of the drought. This was shot at f2.8 with a macro lens and I like the shallow depth of field but did add back some detail in post processing. It came out so bright I didn’t need to add any saturation for once though.

Overgrown Fence

Well, I had a devil of a time coming up with an image of the week this week. None of them seemed quite good enough. Of course coming back empty handed from my trip to Klamath Falls to photograph dancing grebes probably didn’t help.

But I like this one I took just down the alley from my house of a neglected garden fence. I gave it some treatments to emphasize the feeling of decay and abandonment.

Spotted Towhee

So, I decided if I was going to be a bird photographer I needed to learn a little more about birds. Taking a Life Long Learning class on birds has helped me to see that I was even more ignorant than I knew. Take for example the spotted towhee which, it turns out, is a very common bird in these parts and a year round resident. Yet I had never seen one before. Perhaps because I wasn’t looking.

In any case this one was a good poser. One of the challenges of bird photography is that most of them refuse to hold still. In post processing I added detail and sharpness, a little saturation and emphasized the bird with a darken/lighten center filter.

Purple Vetch with Horse

Vetchwhorse

I had thought to go to California to look for wildflowers this week but the weather was a little iffy for getting over the Siskiyous and back. Then I noticed the hills in my own backyard were turning purple. A short walk from my doorstep brought me to this view and the horse graciously posed to add an element of interest.

Some detail added in post helped give definition to an otherwise dull sky. I would like to try again with a little more light on the subject if the sun ever comes out again.

Orchards in bloom

Orchards

I showed my favorite picture from this week on the Klamath Basin blog (http://jeannehoadley.com/Klamath). It was the white Pelican in case you were wondering. But I felt I needed to come up with something new. I was afraid I had missed the peak of the pear blossoms but there are still plenty of them out there. My challenge with this image was flat lighting and clouding skies. but I did like the composition.

So, I took it into Color efex pro and did the usual magic (detail, brilliance/warmth, darken/lighten center)) and I still wasn’t happy with it. So I gave it a Film Efex Vintage filter and that gave it more of the look I wanted. I also added a border. Some images just need a border. I still think I need to go back on a sunnier day closer to sunset but I could hang this one on my wall so it passes muster.