So as I mentioned a few posts back I have been sorting and re-sorting and filing and categorizing all of my old files.  Something that was long overdue and greatly needed…  One thing that I found while comes through the files was thin image above.  Granted it looked nothing like this when I started because back then I was all about experimenting and tweaking Settings and White Balances and when I looked at this shot when I got back to the computer IT SUCKED!!  It was a drab mess of a white balance that was set so cold that the whole image was a lovely shade of purple  So back when I first saw this image I said forget it, and it has sat for the better part of 4 years on a hard drive taking up space.  Now 2012 roles around and I am sitting at my desk and I see a file that says Lessons Learned..  A file that I started a long time ago with images that were pretty much the bottom of the barrel, I screwed something up somewhere, or I was temporarily insane at the time of shooting.  But, I kept this file around so I could look back and see where I have been and what mistakes I had made so that I wouldn’t repeat them again.

Long story short I come across this images and think to myself:  This was shot in RAW I can change whatever White Balance I want!!  Ok, before the jabs come out with the “DUH josh you could have done that back in ’08″ I was younger and not so level headed (or at least that is going to be my excuse at this point)

So long story even shorter.  I dropped this into Lightroom 3, adjusted the White Balance to something I liked.  Even then the color image just didn’t work for me so I went with my favorite tool of choice Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.0 and went to town on this image.  A few sliders here and there a touch of structure and BAM!  an image that I though was at the bottom of the barrel is no one of my favorites and is already sitting on my wall in a nice 24×36 frame.

So lesson with all of this rambling?  Keep your images, hard drives are cheap and you never now what you will find when you go browsing…

With all the things I have been involved with lately and all the time I have had on my hands being stuck at the house.  I did the unthinkable and went and completely reorganized and sorted all (YES ALL!!!) of my images to date.  It took the better part of 3 days, lots of coffee and tea, as well as the better part of my sanity.  However, I was able to complete this task and in the process I found images that I had completely forgotten about.  Some of these images were from a study of light that I did on flowers a few years back.  Others just good old fashion macro photography of flowers out in the wild.  One thing that I noticed was that while the colors are rich and wonderfully please in to the eye.  I wondered what would happen if I decided to shift the spectrum of color a bit, say to the Infra red side of things.  So I gathered up a set of images and Jumped into Color Efex Pro 4.0 and had a little fun with it.  The results are below.  Turned out pretty neat I think…

The pano was shot using a free Microsoft iPhone app call Photosynth.  It is pretty user friendly and process images quickly.  I dropped it into Photoshop and did some quickk editing with some SEP 2.0, some Dfine, and finally Sharpener Pro 3 to pop the rock just a bit, and presto…

I know I didn’t do Half Dome justice in this pano, but it was that amazing sky that was stealing the show that day for me.

Pretty neat what that little camera can do with some great apps behind it

Should it be in Color???

Or in Black and White???

Let me know what you all think…

On the way back up the hill I found this old swing and snapped one more shot before the light was gone…

But enough of that.  As of today there is only 24 days left until I am kicking my heels up and hanging out with my great buddy Jeff Lynch on the next installment of the Texas landscape Safari.

I started thinking about the last trip out there and WHAT A BLAST it was to go to all these amazing locations.  I dug up some images from the old files and decided to give folks a preview of what is out there in Texas.  At the same time I thought I would play around with SEP 2 a bit more and have some fun…

If you are coming out to Texas for the event.  I will be the guy in the cowboy boots and hat (can’t miss me )

So onto business, see that image below? Yep, it may look slightly familiar if you followed last years Life@50 blog. It was a shot I didn’t decide to publish at the time because I just couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to make it visually appealing. I mean I took it knowing I wanted to do something with it, and my mind’s eye was working overtime spinning all the creative goodness into it. However, when I got back and sat down at the computer it just did nothing for me. So it has sat for a while steeping in the back of my brain as to why I took a shot I know I wanted, but then somehow forgot how I wanted to finish it.

And along comes a new toy, yes this is a B&W image so you know what I am talking about, Silver Efex Pro 2 (ah if only digital downloads could shine, this would be the shiniest dam thing on the block!!) I don’t know what it is about playing around with new goodies that makes it so much fun, but the instant I started playing I couldn’t stop. I tried a little of this and that, and then started finding all the new goodness that there was to enjoy, and I have to say I am hooked on this amazing new release of this software. If you own the previous version of this program, and love it I like did, then I truly believe that you will be obsessed with this one. I used a modified Pinhole preset on the image above and then added one of the new natural borders into the mix to make it interesting. Personally, I dig it.

I don’t know how to describe it other than it just works great!! The new features are to numerous to mention and just the amazing fine tuning the guys at Nik Software did on this program make it simply the greatest B&W conversion tool out there in my opinion.

So why am I standing on the soap box and cheering the praises of this awesome program? Simple, I like it, I like everything about it and what it does to help me tell the stories of my images. Remember the old proverb, Photographers are storytellers, think of this as my story editor to truly make you see what I saw while I was out there clicking away…

Ladies and Gentleman what you see above is basically Picture Zero.  This shot was taken in Yosemite when I was first trying out to be Moose’s assistant.  This was the first outing of the morning and I remember I was so nervous I couldn’t see straight.  It is amazing to see how things have progress since this shot was taken.  I wrote a book, my wife and I had our second daughter, and I have made many new friends along the way, like Jeff Lynch, Ray Ketcham, Sabrina Henry, Mark Krajnak, Jarred Sutton, and many others through just running into them on the street, or on that social media giant Twitter.  For what is worth I wouldn’t have changed a single thing that has happened since I have taken this photo.  So as we enter the new year, I guess all I have to say is enjoy your time and always shoot, you never know where a single shot will take you…

OK, I know yet another HDR image, but you know what it is fun to play with the new HDR Efex Pro from Nik Software.  Funny part is I really just like doing those single shot HDR images and seeing what I can some up with next.  In this case it was this shot from last weekend.  In color it just lacked something in HDR.  The blue in the sky was so overdirven (my own doing) that I just could find a happy medium to play with, so what did I do?  Black and White baby!!!  Now this time around I didn’t do my usual flow of working in HDR, exporting, then diving into Silver Efex pro.  Instead I did everything form inside HDR Efex Pro and I like the results…

Any how with all the holidays coming up I imagine things are going to quite down on the blog (like there already are not)  but I will have some neat stuff coming up soon.  The Life@50 project is coming to a close soon, and new endeavors are on the horizon along with the continuation of the Pen and Pad project, that had a few set backs this year, but will see a triumphant come back this upcoming year…