Flora – Page 36 – Jeanne Hoadley Photography

Grapes

grapes

So, on my mission to find my 2nd Great-grandfather’s grave in Lower Lake, CA last week I suddenly realized I was only 30 miles from the Napa Valley. While I should have planned better to spend a whole day photographing there I couldn’t resist the temptation to at least poke my nose into the north end of the Valley. Most of the grapes had been harvested, of course, but there were a few clusters left for show near one of the winery parking lots. Backlighting from the sun gave some of the grapes a stained glass look.

I actually had to do a lot of work in post processing because of the backlighting and some very distracting spectral highlights. A combination of cropping, content-aware fill, and clone stamping got me to this point. I also did my usual tricks in Color Efex Pro; detail, saturation, and brightening the center while darkening the edges.

Milkweed

Milkweed2

Well, I’m now the proud owner of a Canon 7D Mark II. I took the Mark I out for a spin on Tuesday, turned it on and nothing happened. “Oh, must be a dead battery. Good thing I have a spare in my pocket.” Switched out the battery and still nothing. Well, red flags were going up all over at this point but I was still hoping I had forgotten to charge both batteries, though it seemed unlikely.

So, I went home and charged one battery and sure enough when I put it in the camera nothing happened. It was not until this point I noticed the message on the LCD screen saying “Camera cannot communicate with battery.” So, I went upstairs to the office and typed that into google. Turns out this is not an uncommon problem with the 7D (Mark I only I HOPE). It seems there is a screw that comes loose and causes the camera to loose communication with the battery. The camera still works, it just can’t report on battery life. And there is some risk that the screw now rattling around inside the camera could cause the circuit board to short out.

I did find a U Tube video telling me how to fix the problem and I got as far as taking all the screws out of the bottom plate but I couldn’t figure out how to get the plastic plate off without breaking it so I decided that since I had been planning to upgrade to the Mark II soon anyway, I might as well go ahead and order it and use the Mark I for backup.

Had it not been Yom Kippur I would have had the new camera the next day but as it was B&H got it to me by Friday which was still pretty impressive, and they paid for shipping. I headed back to North Mountain Park this morning and found the milkweek seeds still near peak from a photographer’s point of view.

Many of the switches and buttons are the same on the Mark II as the Mark I but it does have a few more bells and whistles which I will have to study up on. At least I figured out how to turn off the annoying beep that just about drove me crazy this morning.

Dahlia

Dahlia2

Sorry I didn’t get an image posted last week but it was my birthday and I was out shooting. One of the places I love to go for flowers is Shore Acres near Charleston, Oregon. Unfortunately the staff has gotten huffy and planted little hedges around all the flower beds thus making it nearly impossible to get close enough to the flowers to do macro photography. I got out my telephoto lens and did what I could but it was disappointing not to be able to do the kind of close macro abstracts I like. Still, it is hard to go wrong with a dahlia.

Post processing brought in detail and saturation and lightened up the center while darkening the edges.

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.

Lilies

I found these lilies blooming at Shore Acres State Park near Charleston. The Gardens are what remains of the estate of timber baron L.J. Simpson. This was taken hand held as I was playing chauffeur for my Mother and could not take the time I would have liked for photography. But the image stabilization worked well. In post processing I first adjusted the exposure a little using levels. Then I edited out another partial lily in the upper left hand corner using a fill with color selected from the left. ( I tried content-aware fill but it wanted to put another lily there.) I then took it into Color Efex Pro where I added detail, a little saturation and used darken lighten center to put emphasis on the top flower. Finally back in photo shop I added a smart sharpen filter.

Red Poppy

I went looking for birds at North Mountain Park and instead found a beautiful display of red poppies. Most of them were past prime but this one by the house looked pretty good. I had the telephoto lens on for the birds so I had to set up 10 feet away to get this shot. the background was kind of washed out so I added a green texture and blended it to get what I thought was just the right look for the background.

Spring Blossoms

It has been raining almost every day for the better part of two weeks. So, I was forced to spend some time in the digital darkroom. I had shot this image back in April just down the street from my house. Though I liked the composition and subject,I was shooting up the light was not on the blossoms and it needed some work.

First I took it into Color Efex Pro for some detail and to add light on the blossoms. Next I added a couple of textures to bring more color into the sky. Finally, I took it into Topaz Impression for a painterly look. I think this one would look good as a gallery wrap.

California Poppy

Poppy

I had to put off my trip to California again this week. But as I was walking down along the Greenway I discovered that I had an abundance of California Poppies practically in my back yard. So, I geared up with tripod, macro lens, closeup filter and kneepads and headed out to see what I could do with them. It was a cool morning so some of the blossoms were reluctant to open fully. I like how the grasses blurred out to form the perfect background. I did add some saturation and detail in post processing as usual.

Pansies

I’m so happy to see flowers showing up everywhere. These pansies were in a planter by a store. The background was pretty busy and boring so I thought a texture might help. It did but the transition between the pansies and the background was still rough so I took it into Topaz Impression and applied a Georgia O’Keefe filter which brought me to something I feel pretty good about. Of course, if it were a real painting I would have the yellow flower facing into the frame, and purple. Oh well.

Tulip with texture

Tulip_texture_muse2

I didn’t have time to get out and shoot this week but I did play around a little with textures. This tulip from the studio last year had a background that was too bright so I did a little processing adding detail and brightness then overlaid a texture from French Kiss which I had blurred out using a Gaussian blur filter. A little experimentation with blending modes and opacity and it came out looking pretty good.