Author Archives: jeanne

Day 39 – Oak Leaves

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oak_leaves_restyle

I realized I haven’t been doing much indoor photography despite the uncooperative weather. Today being another sunny but too windy to have fun outside day I decided it was time to dip into my box of found treasures. Feathers, leaves, acorns I’ve been saving for a rainy, or windy, day. I shot this handheld with the EOS M on a neutral background which I then blurred out using a Gaussian blur filter. Then I added a texture also blurred and blended. I finally settled on multiply though I wasn’t totally happy with the colors. So I took it into Topaz restyle and ended up with something I’m pretty happy with.

Day 38 – Fountain Close Up

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Fountain

Here is one more black and white from the walk in the park. I fear this fountain’s days are numbered given the way to appears to be crumbling when viewed close up. I read an interesting article this morning that suggested we should be spending at least 10 minutes a day with our cameras to get sharp with the function of all the buttons and develop muscle memory for making adjustments. I know I often say I can do something but I can’t tell you how to do it. That’s muscle memory. Even after 30 years I can pick up a clarinet and start playing it even though in my head I can’t remember how to play it. Same idea. Years of practice develops muscle memory.

The idea behind the 100 days project is similar. Just do it. Every day. And not just the camera but the post processing skills as well. I have been spending time with black and white conversions lately. I may go to working with textures next. Building the skill, ingraining the knowledge. That is the point.

Day 37 – Stream

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Stream

Here’s another entry in the black and white category from yesterday’s photo walk in Lithia Park. Because I was being lazy and not carrying the tripod I was challenged to get a slow enough shutter speed to get the flowy effect in the water. This was shot at 1/6 sec f/11 with my elbows firmly rested on the bridge railing. I did a fair amount of editing on the left side to remove distracting sticks and branches. To emphasize the water flow I added a dark vignette and burned the edges.

Day 36 – Oak Leaf

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Oak_Leaf

So today I took a walk in Lithia Park with the EOS M. While most of my snaps were of rushing water and rocks I ended up liking this decaying oak leaf the best. The dried brown of the color image didn’t do it for me though so I went with a black and white treatment and chose a heavy sepia tone to bring it back in the direction of the earthiness of the forest floor.

Day 35 – Teasel

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Teasel

Well, oops, I let a day go by without posting, without shooting, without processing. Forty lashes with a wet noodle to me. But I will make up for it by posting two for today. This one is from Tuesday’s camera walk. I set out to process it in black and white but I accidentally pushed the bi-color filter button next to the black and white conversion button in Nik Color Efex Pro and I loved the effect which put some color into an otherwise grey sky and some suggestion of field color below which was absent in the original capture. I also added some brightness to the main teasel head using the darken/lighten center filter. And, as I’ve said before, I’m into borders just now.

Day 34 – Acorn Woodpecker

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Acorn_woodpecker

Finally a day that was dry enough and warm enough and not too windy for a photo walk. The birds were enjoying the weather too, especially the woodpeckers. The light was flat and I was shooting at 1600 ISO so I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this guy looking good enough for the internet. Exposure adjustment, denoising, saturation added and ultimately a BuzSim treatment in Topaz simplify finally brought him to life in a way I could be happy with. Oh, and did I mention cropping? Heavy, heavy cropping on this one.

Day 33 – Sunflower Milky

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Sunflower_Milky

This sunflower shot on a bright summer day was almost too harsh. I had planned to convert it to black and white but in scrolling through presets in Topaz Black and White Effects I came across one called Milk Memories which leaves a little color in and just gives it a faded look. Adding a border from the finishing touches options gives me an image I wouldn’t hesitate to print.

Day 33 – Barb Wire

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Barb_wire

Not sure if this fence was built by a drunken cowboy or what but Iliked the shapes and patterns of the barbed wire and the texture of the old wooden post. I’m finding in flat light situations like today black and white is often the best solution.

Day 32 – Hydrant

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Hydrant

Today I spent a lot of time working on updating my portfolio. I have it split up into topical categories of which Black and White is one. Because I don’t have a lot in that file I decided to go looking for images that might look better in black and white. This one definitely qualified. As to whether it will get into the portfolio? The jury is still out on that.

Day 31 – Red Poppy

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Red_Poppy

I got so caught up in identifying the image of the year and creating a web gallery of “best of” that I forgot to post anything yesterday. It seems only fitting then that the image of the day is the image of the year. Now that I’m done with that editing and processing exercise I am afraid I really am going to have to go out there and brave the cold and wind to create some new captures.