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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, its a good thing the weather is improving because I have just about finished with editing and post processing for 2015. Just have to narrow down the best images of the year. This one may make the cut but it has some tough competition. This one was shot back in September at the butterfly garden in North Mountain Park.
I’m starting to get into this post processing challenge but I hope that within a few days I will be done with the 2015 files and it looks like the weather may improve enough to get outside and shoot something new. Meanwhile, I like the zen quality of flowing streams and the simplicity of black and white. I think the diagonal line through the image helps too.
I made good progress on the editing and post processing yesterday. I just forgot to post my favorite image. This Iris was shot back in May. I think one of my New Year’s resolutions has to be to do a better job of editing and processing at the time. Though sometimes it is easier to delete files after the emotional investment has dwindled.
Finally a day that was warm enough and dry enough to be outside. As a brown leaf against a blue sky this was interesting but I don’t think I would hang it on my wall. I decided to go monochrome to celebrate the veins and texture in the leaf. I also edited out a lot of extraneous branches. I denoised and sharpened after taking it into Silver Efex Pro where the border was added. Now I think I might hang it on my wall.