Finally had a break in the weather so I could get outside and do some photography. Lots of birds at North Mountain Park but the Scrub Jays were the most colorful.
I cropped this one a fair amount even though it was shot at 600mm. Detail, saturation, denoising and sharpening.
Traditionally this time of year I am combing through my images to find the top 10 to 25 or at least my favorites. this year with over 8000 images in my 2016 file (and yes some of them belong in the recycle bin) I decided it would be a fools errand. I’m up to my ears in completing an album of images from 2016 which is now up to 56 pages and I’m halfway through October. With 5 or six images a page, well, you do the math, it’s a lot more than 25. Some of the images got in because they are best to tell the story but still, they have to have some redeeming value to make the cut.
So, long story short, this Dutch Iris keeps popping up in my mind when I try to think of my favorite image of the year so I decided to just go with it and skip the filtering process. Ironically, with all the travel I’ve been doing, it was captured about two blocks from my house. It was April, it had been raining and was just starting to clear so the flowers were in prime condition and still had a few drops on them. I have a metal print of this one hanging in my downstairs bathroom, which is also serving as an art gallery.
I will also be using this one for the sidebar of my blog site so, no, you are not seeing double.
The weather hasn’t really been conducive to outdoor photography and I’ve been busy working on my album of photos from 2016. I’ve also been thinking alot about photo composites and digital art so I decided to play around with some ideas I had about using my wood duck pictures in a composite. For the background I used a closeup of a colorful glass plate from a macro workshop a few years ago. Then I added some clipping masks from Anna Aspnes designs. And then I started bringing in the photos. Overall I would say its OK but I’m not 100% happy with it. I would like to see the images blend into the background a little more. I think I like the ones that didn’t quite fit the clipping mask and I added color around the edges the best so that may be something to think about for future. Would I hang it on my wall. Probably. I see it as a metal print.
I’ve been working on a book of my favorite images from 2016 (of which only one will be printed). I already have 16 pages and I’m only on February. Yikes! Anyway, I came across this one this morning and went Wow. I guess I had passed over it previously because I was intent on capturing Wood Ducks but this Mallard turned out beautifully. I love the soft colors of the reflections in the pond and the perfect mirror image of the duck. I also love the drops of water on the duck and the detail in his feathers. Just Wow.
In post processing I gave it come clarity and vibrance and just a touch of saturation. Also a little sharpening and I boosted the exposure a little.
Rarely do I get this close to a Hawk without it flying away. This one seemed more curious than scared. I could wish it had been sitting on a fence post or tree but you take what you can get. At first glance I thought this was not a Red tail but after looking more closely I could see that though its chest is not as light as some it does have the distinctive darker vest and a look at my bird books confirmed that this has to be a Red tail.
I did some heavy cropping and converted from horizontal to vertical. I may have gone a little too close on the turn wheel and its shadow. I tried shooting vertical from the car blind but it just didn’t work too well and with wildlife you don’t have the luxury to mess around. I can’t tell you how many “Gone birds” I have photographed in my life. Anyway, just a little vibrance and saturation and some sharpening for the final image.
The Japanese Garden in Ashland’s Lithia Park was in full glory this week. But I found myself fascinated with the raindrops lingering on the ends of the leaves. I did one sweep through the Garden with a wide angle lens then went back to the car and got the new 180mm macro which won the day with this image of Japanese maple leaves with a raindrop and a beautiful soft yet colorful background.
Well, I guess it is a good thing when I am too busy photographing to post the image of the week. I spent a long weekend at a photo workshop in Olympic National Park. The fall color was stunning but the rain didn’t let up for too long at a time. I found myself drawn to the mushrooms which were present in all colors shapes and well, mostly small, sizes.
This one was right along the edge of the road near a steep bank so it was all I could do to get a shot framed and some serious cropping ensued. I added a little saturation, some sharpening and darkened the edges.
I’ve been working on ways to blend images and add text. In this one I took and image of some black-eyed susans and added a texture layer. I still wasn’t satisfied but in some of the blending modes the flowers went monochrome and that looked interesting to me so I made a sepia tone layer and blended it in as a sort of border. I liked the look and added some simple text just naming the flowers.
I almost waited to long to get down to North Mountain Park to photograph the milkweed seeds this year. But there were still a few worthy of my attention and this was my favorite of the lot. I cropped it ever so slightly to maximize focus on the seeds and pod. I added detail and saturation in Color efex pro but was still not happy so went back in Photoshop and added vibrance and a smart sharpen layer.
Well, I missed the image of the week altogether last week and I’m running late this week. I guess that means my life is full. Took my Mom to the coast to celebrate her 84th birthday last week. We enjoyed pretty good weather but there was a storm lurking offshore so we also got some pretty good wave action. It took a few tries but I caught this one just at the critical point. Just added some saturation and sharpening in post. I also tried this one in black and white but I liked the color version better.