2BD48 - Mango Light Play - Exposed to the Right

 

With a few tweaks to contrast and exposure brought it back to normal.

 As shot, intentionally over-exposed.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this concept all weekend.  Basically, the idea is to over-expose your shots because mid-tones and highlights hold more information via the sheer number of pixels than do the shadows. If you tend to take shadowy pictures, you're introducing more noise in the dark areas.   But I guess that also explains the difference between shooting raw and with jpgs.    RAW offers more data that you can tweak later.    So I took some pictures over exposed by 1 or 2 f-stops.  They looked pretty bad to me straight out of the camera.

Here's the screenshot from LightRoom.  The histogram on the right reflects the tweaks I made to pull back the exposure and even out the histogram.   All the red areas on the left side mark the clipping in the white (over-exposed) areas.

Hmmmh ...   I guess I'm not real impressed with this technique.  Maybe it would work better with another image / subject?  It seems like a lot of fuss an bother on the shooting side, just to make corrections in post production.  I'm just not used to, or comfortable shooting in manual mode.  By the time you have everything set up and ready to go, the shot is gone.  The bird has flown away ...  At this point, I much prefer auto mode.  I know that sounds like heresy to some people out there, but it does a pretty good job in most cases.

If you're wondering what this is a picture of, it's a mango in a pottery bowl with sunlight coming through our lace curtains to make some interesting light play.   I like how the shadows bent around the curves of the bowl and mango.    Just for fun, here are a few more Light Play pictures [For the record, I think these were all taken on manual  / auto mode] :

2BD46 Triptych Challenge

This week, Kim challenged us to make a Triptych.  Either shots cropped out of 1 image, or taken in a series.  This forced me once again to use Light Room -- There are still many things about it that are not intuitive, but I muddled through and produced the image above.   Once I had the layout, I took it into PSE to add a texture layer as a frame. 

2BD26 : Scavenger Hunt

This week, Kim sent us on a scavenger hunt with daily prompts.  For most of these, I was able to work up pictures that fit from my photo archives.  Some of them even worked for more than one prompt.  Enjoy!
 

Creative Reflection
Have I mentioned that I LOVE our new granite counter tops?  And peaches!

 Bold Color - Creative Reflection

Someone I Love - Creative Reflection - Water

Countryscape - Wilderness

Alaska from the Train

Light

“But the way you captured the light is amazing. Did you use real gold thread for the sunbeams?” 

― Annabeth in The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan.

Water 1
Beautiful Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.

Water 2

Cooling my Feet in Lake Louise - Ahhh!

July 2013 Photo-Heart Connection and 2BD23

Sunlight through the Aspens in Banff, Alberta, Canada

Kat Sloma hosts a wonderful practice each month called Photo Heart Connection.
Deepen the connection between your photos and your heart and soul by participating in this monthly review of your images, to find the one that best connects to your heart.

This summer, I had the great good fortune to take a trip to Banff in the Canadian Rockies.  It's been on my bucket list for years, and I finally got to see it with a very close friend of 30+ years duration (Yes J-- I'm talking about you!).  ;-)   This picture comes from a short walk through the Cave and Basin historic site in Banff, where a natural hot spring was discovered.  Banff became Canada's first National Park, created shortly after Yellowstone in the US.  They say Banff is THE most visited national park in North America.  It is certainly beautiful!

I started working up this image for a 2BD23 lesson, but decided I liked it so much, I wanted to make it the Photo-Heart Connection pick/pic for July.   The sun is different in the mountains--I'm not sure how to explain it--thinner, more fragile?  Closer?  In many of the pictures I took there, I got these lovely sun flares.

The guide we had for this part of the tour is very passionate about his job as Parks Interpreter, the park, the wildlife, the plants, the hot spring, the ecology of the place.  He spends much of his free time hiking and taking photographs.  Visit Banff Moments for some of Amar's beautiful work.

My friend Janna had just asked me to do something with some hand-dyed wool yarn she acquired.   She doesn't do that kind of handwork, so I offered to crochet her a scarf if she sent me the yarn ...  While I was thinking about what kind of pattern to use, this beautiful scene came into my view ...  and I thought a lacy scarf inspired by this photo of sun through aspen leaves would be lovely ...  We'll see if it actually works out that way! Ask me again in 2 years ...

The quote is one of my favorites from Rumi.  "Let the Beauty we love, be what we do."  To me, it means, Life is short : Make your passion your life's work ; Bring Beauty to this world.   As I listened to Amar talk, and I thought about my own developing love of photography, and making this scarf for J, these words seemed like the most appropriate match for the photo. 

The simple processing on this image :
1) Background Photo
2) In Lightroom 5, Kim Klassen's Summer Haze Preset
3) In PhotoShop Elements, Text - Windsong Font; Soft Light blend mode, 100% opacity
Font color chosen from one of the aspen leaves.
4) Copy Layer 3

 Here's the cropped version with more focus on the light.   

 

2BD24 Capturing Emotion

This week, Kim asked us to capture emotion ...  I was glad of the prompt to capture portraits, as flowers and still-lifes can't/don't show emotion.  This is a picture of my mom, just about to burst out laughing.   See that sparkle in her eyes?  ;-)

While Kim's Dramatic B&W recipe didn't quite work for this one, I did play with levels to clarify her skin.  I know she'll be surprised to see herself here (Hi Ma!). 

Capturing emotion is a tricky one--To see someone sad, and to take their picture seems like such an invasion of that private, candid moment, yet I love the portraits that allow me to see that ...

Here's another one of my son, Oliver and his "little brother," Aidin.  They are not really brothers, but they've known each other their whole lives and treat each other just like brothers.  Oliver hates having his picture taken, hence, he's hiding his face in a cringe.  Aidin is a whole other story ...  as you can tell in these 2 shots.   Every summer, Oshkosh hosts Sawdust Days as a celebration of our logging history.  Carnival rides and carnival lights and carnival food.  This was a lot of fun for the boys on the verge of adolescence.    The background is a Lost & Taken Summer Texture.

2BD22 Focus and Blur

 

I bought a new camera this summer : a Canon Rebel T3i with some fancy lenses.  This is one of the first pictures I took with the 50 mm 1:1.4 lens.   I was pretty impressed.  No messing around with aperture settings.  The lens takes care of it. 

Here's another one for this week's lesson, taken with the 40 mm pancake lens.  Every summer, we have a Buck Skinner's Rendezvous in Oshkosh, along the shores of Menomenee Park.  People come to re-enact life and times in a 1700's buckskinners camp.  As you can guess, there are merchants galore selling things like beads, furs, leather goods, feathers, tea, iron work ...  It's a fun time.  That blur in the background left is the shop owner, wondering why I'd want to take a picture of a basket of feathers ...  He was a good guy.  My kid bought several items from him, including a flint fire-starting kit and a mini-cross bow.  He certainly knew his clientele!

2BD20 : 1 Photo 3 Ways

The Lesson this week was to take 1 photo and work it up 3 different ways. 

PSE Version 1

AutoPainter iPad App - Benson Treatment

PhotoStudioHD iPad App - Charcoal Sketch

Original Photo from The Apple Sessions

 Although I really like this picture from the Apple Sessions a few weeks ago, it has some challenges.  The background is so dark, it's difficult to add textures, so I did the basic PSE treatment of adding text and a heart brush.   I thought this would be a good time to play with some of the many iPad photo apps I've collected in recent months.   First, I  did some basic edits in SnapSeed (Added Drama1 and a Black-and-White Neutral treatment) before pulling it into AutoPainter and PhotoStudioHD respectively.  It's kind of fun to see the transformations.   And gratifying to see the effects of paint and drawing without having to actually invest in expensive art supplies and actually learn the techniques.  ;-)

 

Kim Klassen's Spring Blossom Pic with Romantic Recipe 1 in LightRoom 5

Kim Klassen's Spring Blossom Pic with Hazy Sun Recipe 2 in LightRoom5

Kim Klassen's Spring Blossom Pic with Recipe 3 Edits in PSE

Original Spring Blossoms Photo Sample Pic by Kim Klassen

I actually started the lesson with Kim's sample pics and the recipes.  This lesson did not go well for me.  Lots of frustrations with LightRoom.  Sigh!  This is a new program for me.  For years, I've been using Picassa to manage and organize my digital photo collections.  It's been working out just fine, but with all the talk about how wonderful LR is, I decided to make the switch.  I've been using the beta version of LR5 for a few months, and finally purchased a copy in June when it was officially released.  Thought I'd better sign up for Kim's Round Trip class so I'd actually learn to use it, practically speaking.  I'm through the first week (1 of 8) of lessons with 17 pages of notes and at least 10 hours of time invested so far.  She packs it full of information!  That was just week one ---  There are things I know how to do in my sleep in Picassa.  I don't even have to think about it.  Not so in LR.  I should be easier on myself--it's a brand new program for me, with another Adobe (not-the-most-intuitive) learning curve.  PSE was difficult in the beginning, too.

So I figured out how to make a virtual copy of Kim's sample spring blossom image, and worked through her 2 recipes.  1 thing that threw me for a loop was the White Balance Preset.  Kim likes to use a "cloudy" white balance preset.  The only options I saw in the LightRoom Basic Panel were "As Shot, Auto, and Custom," so I'm not all all sure if that's just a variation between LR4 and LR5 or if I'm really missing something?   I don't know enough about LR or all those settings to make my own Cloudy Preset.

Also having trouble with those Tone Curves.  I can't figure out how to grab onto the endpoint and move them up or down the graph.  Whatever I select just moves the curve, but the end points remain corner to corner.  ???  Anyone know the trick to adjusting those?

So I had my version 2 and 3 done.  LR decided to "stack" them.  I guess that means LR recognized they were all related and made a mini-collection on the fly. 

The virtual Copies were in a stack : Kim's original sample pic, along with the 2 Light Room tweaked versions.  At some point, I wanted to make another copy so I could try Recipe 3 in PhotoShop Elements.  That seemed to work -- The Elements Recipe was so straightforward and simple, it only took about 2 minutes!  Then I went back to LR to look at all 4 versions and compare.  And the first 2 LR versions were nowhere to be found!  Ugh!

I'm still not at all used to the organization system.  In Picassa / PSE, I like to name the files and add captions so I can easily tell what assignment and what version.  I guess I can do that with keywords in LR, but that seemed to get lost -- Kind of a pain to flip to the keyword window just to see which was which.  Then it looked like I had 2 extra plain copies of Kim's original sample pics sitting there, so I deleted them.  Turns out, I must have deleted the whole stack.   Grrrr ---  I hope Kim has a lesson on this Stacks Phenomenon.    Breathe!   You can do it all again ...  It will stick this time, right? 

So by the time I re-did everything, I decided to make my copies of Kim's original in Picassa then make the LR edits.  I thought that method would be clearer in my head.  And it was --  but now I have multiple images with multiple edits in 2 different catalogs.  Picassa can't see the LR edits, so some of those pics look like plain old copies of the originals.  Are you confused yet?

2BD18 Old Shed in SnapSeed

The Beyond Beyond lesson this week involved a bit on iPhonography, using Snapseed to do some basic photo editing.   I have SnapSeed on my iPad, so I used one of the old shed pictures for this play date.  I wasn't keeping notes, so I can't tell you exactlywhat I did, but it involved SnapSeed's Tuning, Drama, and Black & White options.  Kim also mentioned PicTapGo, which is the iPhone app for RadLab.  Unfortunately, there is no iPad version, but if you have an iPhone it's an incredible deal at $1.99. 

With a little more tinkering, I figured out how to add a Sepia tint to give it a different old-timey feel.   I also added one of the given textures to add some interest to the blown out sky.    When I edited this image in PSE, I was able to extend the canvas to make a bigger sky for the storm clouds.  This altered the composition so that the shed was not sitting smack-dab in the middle of the picture.   With iPhoneography, I see I have to be more conscious of composing shots as I take them ...  In this case, more sky, less grass in the foreground, shed off center.  Not bad for a first try, though!  I can see how this could get addicting ...

I have several Photography Apps on my iPad, but I haven't taken the time to really sit down and play with them.  Usually, my camera and my MacBook are not far away.  I have processes that work for what I do, and since I don't have an iPhone that's always with me, I haven't made that transition. 

Lots of frustrations with the Photo Transfer App this am.  It shouldn't take 45 minutes to transfer 2 images.  In the end, I abandoned PTA and went for Drop Box which seemed to work a lot better today.   I understand that SnapSeed works very well for/with Instagram.   Since I don't have an Instagram account (a conscious choice for my lifestyle at present), I wanted to send the image back to my MacBook so I could post it here on Sweet Leaf.  I know--I know : Why not just compose the the post on the iPad?  Because I have a system that works; The photo archive for 2B is on the MacBook. 

Now on to understanding and using LightRoom better ...

Cheers!

2BD17 : Eyes-on-the-Prize Do-Over

For this week's lesson, Kim asked us to critique our own work.  Work worked well?  What could be better?  Consider what we'd have done different and give ourselves a chance at a do-over.  I took the Maggie-apple pic from the last post.  After sleeping on it, I thought I could improve it ...

As a reminder, here it is from The Apple Sessions.  I decided the green was just too overpowering, so I used The Coffee Shop Blog's Selective Color Action to black-and-white-ify the image, and used a layer mask to brush back in selective color on the apple and Maggie's face.  True, she is a black dog, but returning the color to her eye and tongue really helped bring it back to life.  Not to mention the many shades of black in her beautiful coat!    I also cropped it down to be more square.

Yes!  I'm much happier with this do-over.  I think this one is worth framing and printing!  Thanks to Kim for suggesting the do-over and giving us the chance to revisit one of our pics.

 Here's the Evil Queen Do-Over.  Again, I used the Selective Color Action (as above) to tone down the too-green background.  But she came out looking more like a cartoon character (Well--I know she is Disney, but that's not quite the effect I was going for here.)  I added a few textures, and a gradient to brighten her face and tone down the purple in her gown.    Yes--another tweaking success!

This is where I left it the other day.  I'm liking the new one better!

2B D16 : An Apple a Day

Green Apple with Pitcher

The lesson this week was to take lots of apple pictures.  Practice makes perfect. She also encouraged us to step outside of our comfort zones and push our limits.

I did play with a version of this in PSE, but decided I liked the original SOOC best.

 

Red Apple with Pitcher

 

I must have taken 200 shots of this kind of macro on 4 different cameras with various settings and lenses in the past month.  Talk about practice!  Talk about pushing my limits (3 lenses to swap out).  I learned a lot, and deleted most of those shots.  

These are a few of the better ones.

Green Apple at Home

I really like this one - soft and golden.

The only tweaking for this one was to make it black-and-white.

Which one do you like better?

Eyes on the Prize

Maggie, my 2nd-hand Newfie loves apples.  Normally, she's very shy when I take out the camera, but she'll do just about anything for an apple.

                            The Evil Queen with Poisoned Apple

We went to the Door County Renaissance Faire this past weekend.  It's a relatively new and well-done Ren Faire that is growing.  Most of it happens in the woods, except for the jousting and Equestrian Arts which is in a field.  The Evil Queen was at the Wishing Well selling bottled water.  She took money, but also accepted apples.  ;-)  I could not pass up the chance to get her portrait with said apple.  What fun!
Here's the processing step-by-step :
1) Background image
2) Copy background image - Screen blend mode - 20%
3) RadLab : Contrast (Luma) - Sugar Rush - POS Lens - EZ Burn (Original) - Prettyizer
4) Kim Klassen's 1402 Magic Texture - Screen Blend Mode 47%
5) Kim Klassen's Printed Texture - Soft Light - 22%
6) Color FIll Frame (Black) - Color Blend Mode