I was looking for birds to photograph but I kept hearing these bullfrogs so went over to the pond to investigate. Took me awhile to find them even with the 600mm lens but I finally did. I took this one into Topaz glow to soften up the pond scum a little.
Here’s another one from the coast. I used a texture effect to give it a different look.
I finally got that 180mm macro lens I’ve been jonesin’ for. Took it out for a test run at North Mountain Park this morning and I have to say I am very pleased with the results. Only took me an hour and a half to tear myself away from the gardens. The birds will have to wait for another day.
This image was cropped a little from the top. Added detail and saturation in Color Efex pro and some sharpening in Photoshop.
I was playing around with some of the fun software and some old images and came up with this one I really liked using a combination of Topaz Simplify and Topaz Glow.
I found this cool snail shell in the forest when I was looking for mushrooms. Good thing because otherwise I would have come home empty handed. I photographed it on my granite counter top to create an interesting background. Then I took it into Nik Color Efex Pro for detail, saturation and warmth. Next into Topaz texture efects where I started with the oily hands preset and added a light leak and some scratches. Ended up back in Color Efex Pro for a border.
I went for a camera walk this morning and found this dutch iris in the flowerbed of one of my neighbors. I few lingering drops from last nights rain.
I never get tired of photographing flowers. This one just needed a few blemishes taken care of with the spot healing brush or content aware fill. Then some detail and saturation and ever so slight darkening of the corners in Color Efex Pro.
This week has been more about gardening than photography so in that spirit I went back to the Texas pictures and created a painterly rendition of some bluebonnets with a single paintbrush. I just like the colors!
Well, this week I spent most of my time working on a slide show to use as a demonstration in a PowerPoint class I am going to be teaching. I was using my California trip as an example so I chose this photo from the group for the image of the week. It’s bordering on the abstract f you don’t know what you are looking at. It is the shadow of a pier on the beach with waves coming in and a shorebird looking for something to eat.
It was all about the post processing in this one as the shaded porch did not make for good light the the blue chair against the blue house didn’t work as well as I thought. I was considering a black and white treatment but after adding detail and saturation and adjusting the exposure using levels, I took it into Topaz texture effects where I found several looks that worked well. I ended up choosing the burning dust preset as it best fit my vision of how the chair should look.
A friend got permission for us to photograph in the boneyard of a logging company in the Applegate Valley. I’ve had a lot of fun processing each image for just the right look. I don’t really have a favorite, I chose this one because it is the last one I did. I took it into Nik Color Efex Pro to add detail and saturation. Then I turned around and took it into Topaz Texture Effects for an old timey look. I finally settled on the scratched bronze preset which gave me just the mood I was looking for.