Big Stones (Dry Brush)

The HDR processing brought out some color in these otherwise gray/brown rocks. The dry brush changed the texture (really only visible at actual pixel view). My daughter thinks that she can see a face in the rock on the right, but I think that her imagination is perhaps more active than mine. Thanks for stopping by!

Under Bridge Graffti

This is another HDR photo that has been touched up with the Dry Brush filter from Photoshop Elements. Pretty much without fail, whenever I look under a bridge, I can pretty much guarantee that I am going to find graffiti. I thought that the graffiti in this photo gave some color to the arch of the bridge, which stands in contrast with the "nature" elements of the river and the forest beyond. Thanks for stopping by!

Dead Tree (Dry Brush)

There's a pun in the title... "dead tree (dry brush)". Well, I thought it was funny. I applied the dry brush filter from Photoshop Elements to this photo, which I had first processed in Photomatix (and then changed the angle and cropped it in Aftershot Pro). Though the tree has obviously gone through some kind of trauma, I really liked the texture that was brought out in the wood. I also liked the color of the wood against the bark. When I look at the whole thing up close, the filter gives it an interesting touch. (It's not as easy to see the filter's effects when you look at the smaller version of the image.) It's interesting what the filters can do to bring out the colors and make a picture of a dead tree interesting. Thanks for stopping by!

Black and White White-Breasted Nuthatch

There was something about this image that I liked best in black and white. Maybe I was looking for something different and was able to find it by taking the color out of the bird? You don't lose much color on this kind of nuthatch when you go from color to black and white; it's a grey, black, and white bird. Still, there does seem to be a color difference in the gray on the bird's feathers. Also, the white seemed a little bit brighter. It was something different, and I liked it. Hopefully, you do, too. Thanks for stopping by!

White-Breasted Nuthatch, or Penguin?

Ok, so this is obviously not a penguin. At least, not when you look at the full image of the bird. While I was looking at the image in the little postage stamp sized preview window in Photoshop Elements (using the Artistic Filter: Underpainting,) I could only see the bird from the neck up and thought to myself, "Huh. That kind of looks like a penguin." Except, penguins don't land on my deck to eat the sunflower seeds. For that, I'd have to start leaving out raw fish on my deck. :)

Looking at Seeds

The dry brush filter in Photoshop Elements is one of my favorites. After processing the original image file in Photomatix and then cropping and straightening it in Aftershot Pro, I applied the dry brush filter from elements, giving a subtle smudge/blur to this image.

Return of the Nuthatch

My friend, the nuthatch, returned again after something of a hiatus. (Actually, I don't think he ever left. We stopped leaving seeds out on our porch for a while, and when we started up again, the squirrels thought that we were leaving out a buffet for them. It was quite a while before we started seeing birds again.) The nuthatch is a difficult bird to capture with your camera. We have dubbed it the 'five second' bird, because five seconds is pretty much all that you have to take the shot. In five seconds, the bird has landed, picked up a seed, and flown away, so -- if you're not ready, you've missed it. The conditions under which this shot was taken was not really the best. As we begin to move into the winter months, the late afternoon lighting from the sun gave me shutter speeds lower than 1/10 sec. at ISO-100 and 0 exposure. To compensate, I bumped my ISOs up to ISO-200, and I turned my exposure down to -1.7. This gave me an exposure time of 1/15 sec., and a rather dark image. Sending the file through Photomatix, the image brightened up quite a bit (the program generates a darker and lighter file when you process a single image file). I also did some crop and touch up work in Aftershot Pro. So, overall, I was glad to see the nuthatch landing on my porch again.

Dry Brush (Filter) Woodpecker

This little woodpecker was quite far away when I took this photo, and the resulting image was somewhat blurry. So, what could be done to redeem the image?

After cropping the photograph in AfterShot Pro, I took it over to Photoshop Elements, where I tried out some of the Artistic Filters. For my settings on Dry Brush here, I used a Brush Size of 2, Brush Detail of 8, and Texture 1. The blurriness was turned into smudginess, and the resulting image was far more appealing than where the picture began.

Barking up the wrong tree

I was interested in the texture of the bark on this tree. (Since most of the leaves are gone, there was not really much else to be interested in.)

Winter is coming. :)

Fallen Leaves (in Black and White)

These leaves were very sad. At least, I felt sad at the lack of color as I looked at these fallen leaves. They were all brown. Or, at least, mostly brown; there were some varying shades of brown among them. I thought I would try them out in black and white to see if it would be an improvement. Somehow, black and white makes this image look busier to me. Black and white levels the playing field, so that instead of having different parts of the image highlighted in brown, I found my focus drawn to the shapes of the leaves (which were not nearly as attention-grabbing to me in the color version.) Also, because it seems to me that the details in black and white (like the veins in the leaves) were more pronounced than in the color version. Still, whether in color or black and white, its a sad image.

The Tree Leaves Remind Me of Dish Soap Bubble Colors

As a child, when I would be assigned the duty of washing dishes, I would spend a lot of time looking at the colors of the dish soap bubbles. (Read: Procrastination? Or: Childhood imagination?)  In the post-processing of the image of this tree with the orange leaves in the background, the background colors reminded me of those filmy colors that I would see when looking at the dish soap bubbles. 

Little Purple Weed Flower

Growing outside at the end of October, after we've already had a few frosty mornings, I found this weed. It seems that weeds are content to grow at any time of year, and as the color caught my eye, I took a picture of this little purple weed flower. It made a nice contrast with the brown that seems to be standing out everywhere else. Thanks for looking! (This image was one exposure, processed in Photomatix.)

Trees at Poo Corner

One of my favorite Photomatix filter presets comes in a package from Trey Ratcliff, called "Poo Corner". It's not a very colorful preset; in fact, it seems to take a lot of the color out of the image... while yet having some color in the image. (Did that make any sense?) Anyway, it's one of my favorite filters, and here's another image of trees, one that I processed using Trey's Poo Corner.

Clouds and Trees Landscape

I liked the texture that the clouds gave to the background of this autumn landscape, something like marble. The leaves (that are left) seem to be caught somewhere between yellow and green; it won't be long before winter arrives.

Yellow Birch Leaves

I was really impressed with the yellow color in the leaves that were hanging around on this birch tree. Taking a picture of it (3 exposures for HDR) was quite a trick, as the wind always seems to be blowing (especially when you want to take a picture of a tree...).

Leaves with a Light Red Tint

I liked these leaves. The way that the sun was shining on them, some of them seemed transparent. I'm sure that someone who is more botanically inclined than I am will probably point out some poison ivy in this picture that I didn't notice... I was too busy looking at the pretty red leaves.

Apple Tree on a Cloudy Day

This is another photo from a month ago. I don't know if all apple trees look this way, but this one looks kind of wild, with its branches shooting off in every which direction. I like how the redness of the apples stand out in contrast with the dark bluish tint of the clouds in the background.

Wedding Decoration: Rose in a Jar

This was my favorite edited version of a photograph of a decoration at a wedding that I recently attended. The rose in the jar was beautiful, a very big rose (as you can see in the photo). The angle makes for quite an interesting photograph, with the shoe dangling over the rose at the top right corner of the scene.

Sunset Under the Bridge

This is a sunset view from underneath the Mackinac Bridge, in HDR, processed in Photomatix and cropped and otherwise edited in AfterShot Pro. I was going to make a joke about trolls (under the bridge) but decided against it. Thanks for stopping by!

Lake Stones and a Rorschach Test

While visiting a lakeside park in Michigan, I took pictures of stones. In the Photomatix processing, I liked the effect that one of the "surreal" filters had in bringing out the colors in the stones. Afterward, I found that looking at the pictures of the stones is like looking at a Rorschach; I see one stone that has two creepy little faces in it.

Too Much Light on the Seagull's Neck

My original image on this seagull was too bright, with the bird mostly washed out in the image. I was shooting at 0 exposure and probably should have notched it down in the full sunlight (especially since I was shooting something white.) I liked the ripple effect in the water and wanted to do something to salvage the image, so...

This was my first attempt running through Photomatix and then taken over to Aftershot Pro for some crops and edits. The bird has mostly been brought back, but there were a few hot spots that I could not remove. (Someone with more experience/patience than I probably would have been able to do so.)

Then I had another idea:

This won't work for everybody, but I thought: What if I simply crop out the offending portions of the image? I used the longest crop setting from AfterShot on the Photomatix image, tilted the photo, and this is what I came up with. Again, probably not for everybody, but I thought that it did nicely in bringing out the feathers and the ripples/color in the water that I enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by!

Red and White Striped Umbrellas over the Yellow Chairs

I liked the vibrancy of the reds and the yellows in this scene, or the way that they combined together. For some reason, It makes me think... lemonade.

Pictures of Orion at the Lunar Eclipse

While taking pictures of the lunar eclipse yesterday morning, I learned a few lessons. I was basically guessing, running through the settings dial, hoping to find a something in which I could get a half-way decent picture of the moon. I'm not quite sure that a 24mm lens is the best choice for shooting these photos, as such a lens leaves you trying to focus in on a small dot in your frame (one that mostly appears as a ball of light...). The image above is cropped from the original, which was shot at ISO-100, F-stop f//1.8, 1 sec. (with a remote control). It's not the best that I had hoped for but was the best that I made.

When I grew frustrated trying to get a proper moon shot, I turned instead to shooting the constellation Orion. I think that the best shot I came up with was the following:

F-stop: f/1.8, ISO-800, Exposure time: 19 sec.

Compare that photo with the one that I had taken immediately prior, where (again, using my remote control,) the only difference in settings was that the exposure time came out to 8 seconds:

At first blush, this final picture might seem to be the better picture, as I like how dark space appears. However, what I liked better about the 19 second image was the fact that you could see so many more; though the overall image is brighter, I like how "full" the 19 second image appears to be.

Mackinac Island Horses

Mackinac Island is home to quite a few horses, at least during the non-winter months of the year. In today's picture, you see a few of the carriage-pulling horses that live on Mackinac Island.

Stone Wall at the Cemetery

This HDR image was from a carriage ride past a cemetery on Mackinac Island. I had a tough time bringing out the white cross the way that I wanted it in this image, as it seemed to blend into the washed-out yellow tree in the background. I think I got it close in the picture that you see in today's blog post. Thanks for stopping by!

Suspended Wooden Carriage

This wooden carriage was suspended from the ceiling of a carriage museum on Mackinac Island. The HDR effect (3 exposures) brings out not only the grain on the carriage but also the wood in the ceiling itself.

Butterfly in the Wavy Hazies

I believe the wavy hazies in this image are due to the ghosting, which was cleaned up around the butterfly but left for the effect in the rest of the image.

Lovely Yellow Butterfly in the Green Foliage

I really liked the foliage in this photo, perhaps even more than the butterfly. I like the different shades of the leaves, the blue-green in the bottom-right side of the image and the deeper green in the upper-left side of the image. The position of the butterfly in the middle, at the point of the color change, is also kind of cool. All in all, I really like this image. Thanks for stopping by!

Black and Yellow Striped Butterfly

This is a black and yellow butterfly in HDR, from Mackinac Island. The island is home to two butterfly houses, the Original Mackinac Island Butterfly House and Wings of Mackinac. I like taking pictures in such places, for the obvious reason of all of the color that you can find both in the butterflies and in the plants.

Which Part of the Image Do You Want to Stand Out?

Sometimes, when I'm processing HDR images in Photomatix, it doesn't seem like there is always a whole lot of variation as I scroll through the preset editing options. For some reason, this image had noticeable changes as I scrolled through the presets, making different parts of the image stand out.  In the different editing possibilities, certain features within the photograph were highlighted. I eventually settled upon this version as the one that I liked. Thanks for stopping by!

Butterfly-palooza Continues

Butterfly-palooza continues with today's photo post of... two more butterflies!