A Study in IR with Flowers

Jan 222012
 

So 2 posts in a week, I think this is a record for me at this point :)

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…

 

On a Pano Limb

May 162011
 

OK, strange title?  Yes, I agree, but honestly I didn’t know how this would turn out until I finished it.  What you see below was shot with an iPhone.  Yes, I know I have been on a bit of a iPhone shooting kick lately, but hey it is honestly a good way to learn composition in some aspects.  You have to move to get the shot not sit there and zoom in so you are always looking for an angle and plus it give you a new way of looking at things…

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

And the Monkey Pushes the Button

Feb 022011
 

I know that is a line from a movie somewhere, but for the life of me i just can’t seem to remember where…

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…

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