Yeah, I know, another Hydrangea, pretty lame. But it has been a busy day which is going to be followed by a busy week so I HOPE I find some time to get some new images but it is not going to be easy. This one was also taken with the fisheye optic. It left some black corners which I filled in with content aware fill. I also had to reduce the noise and I added one texture to help unify the edits to the corners. But, you get a little better idea of what the fisheye is capable of with this one.
I made the mistake of going to Lensbaby’s web site to see if they had any other lenses I should try out. What I found was the Fisheye optic which gives a very wide angle of view and has a half inch minimum focusing distance. I started out in my back yard to see what it could do. I had been shooting inside last night and forgot to reset my ISO so I’m going to pretend I wanted all that graininess for an artistic effect. I had to crop it to an 8×10 because I found the curvature of the fisheye at the top very distracting. I added a lightroom preset and one texture. Not my best work but what I could come up with on short notice today. I’m thinking the fisheye might be fun at the rose garden.
I had very good intentions to get out and shoot today but when I got home from my morning meeting it was so windy I didn’t think I could find anything standing still. So, I opted for this one from my walk on the Greenway with the Edge 35 the other day. I just cropped it a little and edited out a distracting element in the lower left corner.
This week has been busting my chops, meetings, classes, volunteer activities. All good, just too busy for photography. So, I’m dipping back into yesterday’s trip to the Grower’s Market with the Burnside. This Sunflower had seen better days but still had a lot of character. I had the lens set to create an in camera vignette but took it even further in post processing and added a texture which added even more darkening at the corners. I also added detail especially in the flower to make those edges and ridges snap. I just got some new Lensbaby toys today so hope to be able to play with them tomorrow.
I took the Burnside mounted on the R with me to Growers Market today. The booths are starting to thin out I’m afraid. I always love it when the growers go to the effort to create an artistic display. In post I added a high pass filter and bumped up the exposure just a little. I had the Burnside set to create an in camera vignette so that was already there.
Here’s another one from my camera walk with the edge 35 yesterday. There is a spot along the greenway where a tree was cut down about six months ago and they just left the log pieces there to rot. I was thinking it might be fun to photograph a leaf on one of the stumps and even picked one up and played with it but felt kind of guilty for staging the shot. Then I looked over on the other side of the path and here were these two leaves right where nature put them.
The stump was kind of washed out so I added a vignette to darken the edges. It was still pretty pale and boring so I added a brown texture that gave me just the effect I was looking for.
As promised I took the Edge 35 out for a walk today. I initially put it on the M3 but it was so heavy it almost overwhelmed the little camera so I switched it out to the R which felt more balanced. Before I left the house I checked the specs on the Edge 35 to to make sure I knew what I was working with. Minimum focusing distance 7″ check, f3.5 to f22 check.
I spotted this old oak tree along the Greenway and realized it was on the right side of the fence. I went over to see what leaves and acorns I might find. Seemed like most of the acorns were on the ground already. This tree has to be at least 200 years old. It is about six feet around the trunk at the base. So, I went over to give it a pat and thank it for being there. Well, when I looked up and saw the sun shining through the canopy I remembered a little trick that most photographers who have been doing it for any time will know. That is when you set the aperture at f22 and point it at a light source, including the sun, you will get a perfect starburst. Yep, it works.
So the trunk and limbs of the tree came out completely in shadow so I had to take it through Camera Raw twice to open the shadows up enough to see the detail in the bark. It maybe could have used one more trip. I also added some luminence to the greens and yellows to make the leaves stand out a little more and reduced the luminence on the blues to darken the sky.
This is another one from yesterday’s walk on the Greenway. Actually it was captured before I ever left the neighborhood. It was carefully composed so the white bark showed through and the street behind did not. This again was taken with the Sol45 on the M3. I did a little inventory yesterday and found that the Sweet50 is way over represented at 27 out of 65 images posted, the Trio is next at 11, the Sol 45 with 7 and the Velvets split at 6 each. All of which means I’ll be working with the edge 35 and the Burnside next week.
So, in post processing, adding clarity was the main thing, then I added a slight vignette to make the main leaf stand out more.
So, today, I decided it was time to mix it up a little and took the Sol45 for a walk on the Greenway. I was just getting interested in the acorns when my battery started flashing red. I forgot to bring a spare but I did remember to put extension tubes in my pocket. It was a little dark under the canopy where I found these but so many of the ones in the light were over my head. I worked on the exposure, added a high pas filter, and added two textures.
This one is from my first round of Street photography in Medford. Sometimes an image just keeps calling to you. I saw this one as grunged up and desaturated. So I took it into Topaz Studio to find a look that almost got me there then let some of the color bleed back through. Then I took it to Topaz black and white effects and did the same until it came close to what I had been envisioning. I should also say that there was a lot of pre work in photoshop getting rid of air conditioning equipment on the roof.