The Pink Rose

 

I took this photograph at Larry and Shelley’s house. Actually, I took it with my cellphone . I believe this is the first image I have used from my phone. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the resolution. I am not real happy with the way this looks so I may work on it later. (Update: I did change it and it looks a lot better, it is just rather small compared to my other photos). It has been several months since I posted and now that the weather is warm, I will work on doing more.  I downloaded the image using Adobe Bridge into camera raw where I increased the vibrance and lowered the exposure a little. Then took it into Photoshop and cropped it. Usually I show my metadata in the caption under the photo, but I really don’t have any to share today. I will give this a tag of Blackberry 9530, but that is all I have to report!

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Another Succulent in My Backyard

Canon 7D, EF-S18-55mm, 30mm, f/4.0, 1/250, ISO 100

This gorgeous succulent flower was in my backyard this morning. I just had to take a photograph. I like the way the light is hitting the top of the flower and shining through. Bringing this in to Photoshop,  I did up the saturation  so you could easily see the blues and greens and the reds around the edges of the outside petals. I don’t know what it is called. It grows long stems (look to the left of the flower) with flowers on top. There are no leaves, but I don’t know of any succulents that have leaves! I hope you enjoy it.

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P.S. Lily is 5 months old today!

In My Front Yard

Canon 7D, Raw, EF-S18-55mm, 28mm, f/4.0, 1/125, ISO 100

When I stepped out my front door this morning to get the newspaper, I saw this beautiful bloom. My house faces North so there is not much sun. My bougainvillea rarely gets any flowers. I thought I better take a photo. I like it because it shows the pinks and the oranges. I basically just did levels and contrast adjustments. I like being able to see the texture on the petals and the stamens. In general, I am very happy with this photo. Let me know what you think!

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Lily Marie at Three Months

Canon 7D, Raw, EF-S18-55mm, 45mm, f/6.3, 1/60, ISO 125

Lily looked so cute when we were there for a Father’s Day barbecue. I liked this close-up photo because you can see her pretty eyelashes. Her hat looked really cute too. At least she is not frowning! I brought the image into camera raw and did an exposure adjustment to brighten it up a little. Then in Photoshop, I did a levels adjustment, some noise reduction and a little sharpening. I do enjoy taking photos of her but I think she is getting tired of seeing me with a camera in front of my face!

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White Orchids on My Patio

Canon 7D, Canon EF-S18-55mm, Raw, 34mm, f/6.3, 1/250, ISO 800

I finally got that photograph of my orchid. I took this on my patio in natural light. I guess I was “feeling it” today!  As usual, I did a levels adjustment in Photoshop plus a vibrance increase.  I put everything on a new layer and changed the blend mode to multiply. It highlights the details on the flowers. I decided to include more lens info in my caption. Specifically, the manufacturer and size of the lens. The lenses I use are all Canon except my Lensbaby. That reminds me, I haven’t used that lens in a while. Maybe tomorrow or sometime this week-end. I am trying to give you as much info as possible about what I do and how I do it. I hope you find some of it helpful.

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A Moon Shot on a Very Cloudy Night

Canon 7D, Raw, 300mm, f/11, 1/125, ISO 200

Got a little break in the clouds late last night.  You can see some cloud shadows in this photograph. I took two dozen photos and this one shows the face of the moon and some clouds. I did some sharpening and noise reduction in camera raw. Also some exposure adjustment so the moon would show up clearer.  A  levels adjustment in Photoshop and I was done. Maybe I should have increased the ISO and some of the clouds around the moon would have shown up. Compare this to another full moon photo I took almost two years ago.

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What Can You See When You Look Up?

Canon 7D, Camera Raw, 17mm, f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 200

This is my neighbors tree in their parkway. I noticed one day how intricate and intertwined the branches are. You can’t see any of this just looking at the tree straight on. I went in the house to grab my camera and Willie wondered what I was doing. When I showed them to him, he said he had never noticed this before. I did increase the saturation and contrast in Photoshop. It did not need a levels adjustment. I then cropped it some because the sky looked white at the two bottom corners of the photo. It was too distracting and I wanted you to be able to see all that is going on with the tree. I hope you like it. Tonight there is a full moon. I am going to try to get out and take a photo. Why don’t you do it too and we can all post tomorrow and compare. Also, go outside and look up to see if there is anything interesting to photograph!

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Pink Calla Lily

Canon 7D, Raw, 59mm, f/5.6, 1/160, ISO 100

I was at Larry and Shelley’s yesterday to take some photos of Lily for her two month birthday. Shelley and I were in the backyard and she was very proud of this pink calla lily. The photo came out very nice and I really like the shadows falling across the lily. Since it is a raw image, I opened it up in camera raw and made a white balance adjustment. Then in Photoshop, all I did was a levels adjustment. Maybe I need to do something more exciting and artsy with my photos so I will have more to share with you.

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Geranium Leaves

Canon 7D, Raw, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/6400, ISO 200

It is such a beautiful day today! I went outside to take a photo of the first blooming orchid of the year. Well, as you can tell, I did not have much luck with it. I will try again later. I told Willie I wasn’t “feeling” it. However, these very colorful geranium leaves came out great. Aren’t the variety of colors beautiful? Willie has a good green thumb. I did a little cropping in camera raw then took it into Photoshop. There I did a levels adjustment to make it pop then I opened up the lens correction filter and added a slight vignette. That is an easy way to do it. It’s a little windy outside now so I guess I will try the orchid again tomorrow.

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A Beautiful Geranium

Canon 7D, Raw, 55mm, f/2.8, ISO 100

I have never done a black and white geranium photograph. This was a beautiful pink with many colors going through the leaves. I opened up my Nik filters and decided to go black and white. This has a blue filter which really made the flowers pop. I made a slight contrast adjustment (lowering it) along with a levels adjustment and here is the result. I hope you like it. I like the way it has a circular feel from the leaves in front and the leaves and stems in the back. It makes your eyes stay on the photo and not go off. Do you agree?

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Geraniums Blooming in My Backyard

Canon 7D, Raw, 55mm, f/2.8, 1/250, ISO 100

I do all of my shooting (well, maybe 98%) in manual mode on my camera. The meta data on this image seems to be pretty common for me. I really liked this photo because of the sharpness of the buds – you can even see little fuzzies (a technical term) on them if you look close. I did a slight levels adjustment in Photoshop, then I added a little of a vignette so the buds would stand out  more. We have many geraniums in our backyard, and this was my favorite photo from this day.

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Purple Petunias

Canon 7D, Raw, 48mm, f/2.8, 1/200, ISO 100

I took this yesterday at Larry and Shelley’s when I was over there to take Lily’s one month photo. She is so cute! Anyway, they have some very nice flowers in their backyard and I went back to take some different photos. These were so pretty but I forgot to ask Shelley what they are called. Could it be a petunia? My Canon 7D takes such great photos I really don’t have to do much in Photoshop. The main thing I did was a levels adjustment which helps the white balance and then I did some noise reduction. I am a little unclear as to why it needed this since I shot it at a low ISO.

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What is This Lensbaby Photo Of?

Canon 7D, Raw, Lensbaby +4 Macro Filter, 50mm, 1/500, ISO 800, Curves adjustment

What do you think of my little unknown object? Can you tell me what it is? I would love to hear your guesses. I came across this totally by accident and was very surprised at its appearance. It is unusual. I used my lensbaby. I enjoy seeing the images I can get with it. I did a curves adjustment in Photoshop just to make the background more white. It was too blue. I used a higher ISO because it was late in the day and cloudy. I am happy with the result. I love the Canon 7D and I try to learn one new thing about it each day. I will be taking many days to learn it all, if ever.

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My Little Guy Donnan

Canon 7D, Raw, f/11.0, 1/200, 43 mm, ISO 100

This is my three year old baby Donnan. I spent some time brushing him today. When he looks like this, we call him “foo foo,” because he is so fluffy. Next, I will work on his four year old sister, Kyla. This is the same little guy jumping in this post. I did a few adjustments in Camera Raw, then I took it into Photoshop, and I really didn’t do anything. He is my little sweety and I love him. He is not crazy about being brushed, but he accepts it and is much better than Kyla who cries and moans with every wisk of the brush!

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From the Desert, the Ocean or Both?

Camera Raw, 45mm, f/11, 1/100, ISO 400, Nik Silver FX Filter

I walked outside with my camera today and said to myself, “What are you going to photograph?” I walked around and then I saw this. Isn’t it gorgeous? How many little creatures do you think have lived in and on this rock? How old do you think it is? In post processing, I changed it from Raw to DNG. Isn’t the texture and the depth fantastic? I made a few adjustments in Camera Raw and then brought it into Photoshop. There I used a filter from Nik Silver FX to convert it to black and white. I then used a high pass filter to bring out the edges and changed my layer blend mode. That made all the different levels of this image really pop. 

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A Work of Art or Trash?

Canon 7D, Raw, f/11.0, 1/50, 43mm, +4 Filter, ISO 400, Nik Stylizer Filter

How long do you think this was buried in our backyard? I remember it when it was new. I used a close-up filter (+4) and then took a lot of photos. I enhanced the colors in Photoshop using the Nik Stylizer Filter and I changed the blend mode to soft light. You can really enhance a lot of your images just by changing the layer blend mode. Even though I had my aperture at f/11.0, I still didn’t get much depth of field because of the close-up filter. I set my focus towards the middle by where the door is. How do you like that engine and sunroof? 

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