August 2009

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‘Cause if my eyes don’t decieve me there’s something going wrong around here

August 29, 2009 in Image Processing, Landscape, Photography, Photoshop | No comments

I was going through the incredible backlog of images I’ve amassed this summer for two reasons – the first being…well I’ve got this terrible backlog of images I took, uploaded with LR2 (including renaming and a gross keywording) and never looked at because of the photography class I took, and second because I just received a set of tutorials and actions from Tony Kuyper based on luminosity masks. (Which in turn I learned about from a post on Naturephotographers.net a wonderful group of people and fantastic place to learn and be awed by other photographers) I read through the tutorial on handblending HDR images with luminosity masks, tried to do it a few times myself and then decided to heck with it, this guy is amazing, I’m lazy and I want the actions he’s made so I don’t have to do it myself so I used the handy link and for a minimum donation of $25.00 (which is SUCH a bargain) he’ll send you a collection of his ebooks as pdf’s as well as actions. And he’s an awesome guy, he got the zip’s to me in less than 20 minutes and even bothered to look at some of the images in Mike’s and my travel link and say nice things to me! So I had to give it a try.
So after a good dinner out I went looking for a good image to try it on, and instead of one in those 15 folders I haven’t weeded out yet I decided to look at one of the ones from my RISD class and found this…

It's not fall yet! Damn it!

Now looking at the image it nearly made my heart seize…a fall leaf in the middle of August…but it was dull, lacked contrast and over all wasn’t nearly as traumatic as say, going to see District 9 this afternoon (which I walked out of). So it needed some help and now I had this Joe Jackson song running through my head and I began to play with the luminosity layer actions and doing some luminosity painting and finished up with using the smart glow action at 25. And whew…

It's not fall yet, Darn It!

Much better. not my best image but it allowed me to play around with some gross changes to all the different masks as well as some finer painting and give me a pretty striking result. I am still in denial that fall is on its way, especially with the wet, mostly cold summer we had but at least it will be pretty…

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Lotus Flower in Wickford

August 18, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

Thanks to my friend and fellow photographer Babs I found out that down in Wickford there is a small pond with Egyptian Lotuses blooming. I was down there last week and there was only one flower in bloom but there were several getting ready. The day was perfect for photographing these beautiful flowers mostly overcast, their color is so delicate that full sun washes them out. I’m hoping to get back in the evening this week before they are all past bloom or cut down by overzealous visitors.

Just begining to bloom

Just begining to bloom

After The Thrill Is Gone

August 17, 2009 in Image Processing, Photography | No comments

I was home visiting my dad and sisters this weekend and my younger sister suggested we get up early and do some photography at the abandoned buildings of the old Pilgrim State Hospital which is the creepy 500 lb gorilla that is near where my dad lives. Pilgrim state was always a bogyman story to keep children in line and going there to shoot at some of the abandoned buildings was really creepy for me. I’m not much of an urban photographer, I enjoy shooting in a city but it’s not my first choice and abandoned buildings always give me the chills. But I’m always up for an early morning shoot and like to push my limits so I was up for it. It was all the creepy I expected but I was surprised at the amount of through traffic that goes around the abandoned part of the facility, it seems to be a major cut through for vehicles of all types despite the no trespassing signs all over the place.

This is an HDR of 7 images combined in photoshop and then tonemapped in photomatix and brought back into photoshop to finish. (thanks to my friend Terry of the uber-HDR skills for his tutorials to lead me through this)

After the thrill is gone

Stormy Skies

August 14, 2009 in Landscape, Photography, Uncategorized | No comments

Coming off of rt302 headed down onto I93 we caught sight of the fog boiling up and over the ridge. The day was stormy but the sun was breaking out behind us lighting up the fog and the nearer mountaintops.

There's a storm front coming...

A three image HDR combined in photoshop then exported to photomatix then taken back to photoshop for additional blending and adjustments.

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News

August 13, 2009 in General, Photography, Vacation | 1 comment

It’s been nearly 5 months since my last post and I’ve got no excuse. It’s not laziness, not even a disinclination to post since I say to myself fairly often, “I should post about that” or “I should post that image” or…well you get the idea. So, no time like the present to begin again and I’ll start with some news and a brief rundown of the past few months.

The big news is that I was the first guest interview for my awesome photographer, HDR guru and good friend Terry. Almost as much as I hate listening to myself speak I hate seeing what I spoke about but there I am and Terry did an awesome job with walking me through the interview process.

Second news is that despite a 5 week delay we managed to get the website from our Maine vacation (which occurred during my hiatus from blogging) up and posted. Huge thanks to my wonderful husband for making me make that final push despite my tendency to try and do a million things at once and for doing all the work on the intro and the code to make it all come out alright.

Puffin sitting on a rock, Machais Seal Island:

Whyfor so sad?
Third news is that my friend Chris who I’ve gone a few photowalks with is doing the Walk4Hearing this fall in Boston. Chris has been hearing impaired since he was 18 months old and getting cochlear implants in 2006 has changed his life. Chris’s story was featured in Towner Jones Photography blog for “What I’m Thankful For” The walk4hearing is a great cause.

The last bit of news is that I just finished a landscape photography class at the Rhode Island School of Design. The class was called Earth, Sea and Sky and had us traipsing all over the state (I know it’s a small one but still…) to some beautiful locations to shoot, it could only have been better if we had blue skies, every class was overcast and rainy. We are having a gallery show with our 4 best images from the class – out of the 40 or so that we showed during after class critique sessions – at the Cranston Public Library. The opening is TBA.

An image from Beavertail Point, Jamestown RI taken during our class:
Beavertail Lighthouse

Well here’s to hoping I’ll be a bit more consistent in the future. I’ve installed Timothy Ames’s LR2Blog plugin for Lightroom2 so I have really no excuse not to just pop some images on when I’m working – no excuse if I remember that is