What it was #1

Remember the other day when I asked you what it was? It was this:

Still don't know? It's wool from one of our sheep! I know, that was unfair. Another one tomorrow!

Can you guess what this is?

This is an extremely close shot of something. I'm wondering if YOU can guess what it is. Answer will come tomorrow.

More Lightroom Paintbrush

Ever since I've discovered the lovely paintbrush in Lightroom, I can't get enough of using it! So here's another set of examples of having far too much fun with the paintbrush. Did you know you can create virtual copies of images keeping all the edits? That's how I did these so uniformly! I kept all the edits and merely changed the color on the paintbrush!

A little jaundiced mayhaps?


Too much licking on the lollipop!


Grape jolly ranchers. *Sigh* Can't keep her out of anything!

Have fun!

Color vs. Sepia

When talking about cameras and pictures, people always argue about color versus black and white or sepia etc. Now I give you almost the same picture. One in full color and the other in sepia. You tell me which you like and why.

So? I posted the sepia to my Redbubble but maybe the color should go up instead.

Oh reflections...

Reflections, reflections, oh how I love thee. You make my heart pitter patter. You have the most amazing qualities.

*Thump Thump*

Some shots can't be missed...

This is one of those.

Got a little Captain Morgan in ya?

Centered Photos

Not every photo must be centered, some can be great without. This is not one of them. I like that this tree is center.

Brushes & Exposure

Today, I have a prize for you. We're going to cover brushes and exposure in Lightroom. If you're anything like me, finding things in photo editing software can be overwhelming. As a result, I haven't done much editing other than really really basic things (like the direct positive which we will talk about here too).

Here's how the picture looked SOOC (straight out of the camera)

I went into Develop and added Direct Positive, Auto Tone, and Punch (in that order). It made the picture look great but Sister K's face was way too washed out and since she doesn't often look at the camera, this was unacceptable.

To fix, I went to the brush tool. I brought down the exposure, scaled down the brush size and brushed over her face. The nice thing is, if I don't like the exposure level, I don't have to redo the brushing, I just slide the exposure over and it changed what I already brushed as long as it's selected.



Much better!

Redbubble

I posted this on the main page but here is a link to my redbubble here too!

My Redbubble

More Focus

Remember talking about focus a few days ago? Here's another one for you of my little puggle Honey.

More Less is More

Another photo where less is more.

Less is More

Sometimes having less definition in a photo, creates more.

This was our ride last night. 6 of us horseback at sunset.


Profiles...nice

Focus

Focus is that thing most of us are lacking in our lives...but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about camera focus. Some of the best photos can come in the oddest places and sometimes you can create a great photo by adjusting your focus.

This is one of my favorite photos of the Redwoods. These are big monstrous trees and without a wide-angle lens, I couldn't get the whole tree in focus. So instead, I got up real close to it, looked up and focused my lens on the closest ridges to me. Everything else is blurry...but clear enough to see. Try playing with the focus on your camera and see what kinds of photos you can get!

A Lesson on Slow Shutter Speeds

In Truckee, we were very close to the river and we took a few walks to take pictures. One of my major goals during our week there was to get some pictures of the river in "motion". For example:

To achieve this, I needed several things. First, I needed a good time to do it. I needed low light, and the light to be behind me. When you slow the shutter speed down, the camera takes in more light. To have a longer shutter speed and to avoid overexposure, I needed low low light. I achieved this by going at dusk. For a shot facing upriver, I would have needed dawn. The other thing I absolutely had to have was a tripod. Any shaking of the camera would have made the still items blurry, not just the river. Beyond a tripod, I used a remote. This meant that I didn't have any shaking from pushing the button. Not necessary, but helpful.

I discovered, that whether I used a shutter speed of 2 seconds of 5 seconds, the picture only varied in exposure, not in the movement of the water. So I soon decided to keep the backgrounds on my photos in good exposure and still get excellent movement of the river. If the river had been slower, I would have had to use a slow shutter speed. Fortunately, it's a swift river.

For a finishing touch, I popped it into Lightroom and used Direct Positive and it was done.

Circular Polarizer

I mentioned it in my last post, the circular polarizer. This wonderful little camera add-on can create some very interesting photos.

Without the circular polarizer, I would have been able to half see through the water, and half not. I used the polarizer to make it so that I could not see through the water at all. Instead, I see the reflection of the trees.

This photo was taken with the circular polarizer turned all the way the other way. This makes it so that I can see through the water to the bottom of the ceek.

Pine Trees

My husband and I just recently got to have our honeymoon in Truckee. While there, I got to take some amazing photos. Here's a couple involving pine trees that I liked.

This one I had to nearly crawl on the ground to get. SOOC it didn't look great so I stuck it in Lightroom and gave it a make-over using B&W High Contrast. It's harder to see the grass and the trees but something about it makes it seem more abstract to me.


I used a circular polarizer to see the reflection in the water, rather than partially through the water. In Lightroom, I added a direct positive effect and that did the trick!