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.
Back when I lived in Missoula, Montana I took some classes at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. They had a sort of mantra “No, white skies!” In Ireland with it’s almost always cloudy skies this proved to be a challenge. In this image I had almost the holy grail of ancient site photography: A round tower, a celtic cross and the ruins of an old church all in one photo and the tower was framed in a window. Doesn’t get much better than that compositionally. But the sky in the upper corner was a very flat white. So, I turned to Topaz Texture Effects to help me out. I actually found several looks I liked but most were more monotone and I was grooving on the orange color of the lichens so I chose this one which gave me some color in the sky and a kind of crusty look which suited the old ruins well. And, of course, a nice purplely blue sky with texture
Street Musicians
are everywhere in the cities of Ireland. Everything from tin whistles to rock bands I shot this in Galway but then he turned up again in Cork. The instrument is called a concertina. He also had dancing puppets. I liked his feather.
I don’t do a lot of portraits but this fellow definitely had a unique look that cried out for photographing.
I like the way he is framed by the arch but I wish I had gotten the whole instrument in the frame. Cloudy skies in Ireland meant high ISOs so denoising and sharpening have been routine in post processing.
I don’t know if 
anyone noticed but I was so busy keeping up with my travel blog that I did not get an image of the week posted. I am only just starting to shift gears from documenting my trip to creating art so here is an early attempt that was shot last week in Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland. There is a lot worthy of photographing in Ireland and being tied to a tour bus is not the best way to go about it. But, I fear I would not be able to drive on the left side of the road and I’m a little too old for hitchhiking so short of hiring a driver I’m not sure how to make it happen.
In any case, I liked the colors of the mountains and the field in this one. I tried it as an impressionist painting but I liked a little more realism so ended up with a texture effect that gave it a border and helped to emphasize the stone church.
I’m on the move in Ireland and I don’t know that this is the best image I’ve taken this week but it is the closest at hand and it is representative of what I came to Ireland to photograph. I hope we will see more like this. I’m finding the lighting to be a real challenge here as the weather cycles through stages of cloudiness, rain and sunshine every day. Not always optimal when you need it. I ended up doing an HDR on this one which turned out surprisingly well given I wasn’t using a tripod. I sharpened it, used a high pass filter, and sharpened it some more but I am still not completely happy with the quality. I do think it will work well as an element in a Photoshop composite.
There’s not a whole lot of grunge left in Ashland’s now trendy Railroad District but there is one building down about 1st and A that has corrugated iron in all stages of rustiness with old wood underneath and patches on the patches. And a kind of spooky face painted on one side. I just keep going back for more.
I was working on culling the files this week and came across this one from my June trip to the coast that I had processed in Topaz Impression. It just made me go Oh, Wow, I really like that so I thought I would make it the image of the week since I have mostly been working on learning new tricks in Photoshop but do not yet have a lot to show for it.
Here’s something a little different. I have been doing an online course in Photoshop Artistry and came up with this impression of Portland from my recent visit. I started with a skyline image taken from the Pittock mansion then added an image from my files of a rain streaked window. Then I did a selection of the umbrella man at Pioneer Courthouse square. I added a rose from the International Rose Test Garden for the city of Roses using a gradient mask to blend it in without obscuring the skyline. Finally, just in case you didn’t recognize it I put in a selection from the Portland theater sign. Not bad for a beginner.
I spent a little time in the Portland Rose Test Gardens this week while on a tour of the northern part of the state. Lots of good images to plow through from there and other destinations. This one got the basic sharpening, saturation and darkening of the edges in post processing. And a little cropping to place the center of the rose off from the center of the image.