Blue Jay under the Tree (Dry Brush / Platinum Filters)

Back in December, I took a really far away picture of a blue jay (or, at least, it was really far away compared to the lens that I was using to take its picture.) In this instance, while the platinum photo effect is cool, I think that I like the color version better.

Nuthatch (Palette Knife / Platinum Filters)

I'm still playing with the effects settings in Paintshop Pro to take pictures and make them look like they were taken a long time ago. Here, the Platinum setting (circa 1873 - 1920) reminds me of pictures that I've seen in old family photo albums. The original nuthatch picture was a little blurry, so I smoothed it out (blurred it together more?) by using the Palette Knife filter from Photoshop Elements. Overall effect? Interesting. Thanks for stopping by!

Frosty Broken Tree (Albumen filter)

One pretty, frosty day last year, I came across this place where a tree limb had broken. It was pretty, how the frost made shapes on the trees. The albumen filter from PaintShop Pro adds (imo) some gravity to the picture, making it look like some special event in the past. (For the time and effort that it took to make a photograph back then, as opposed to what it takes with digital now, it should have been something special if they were going to all of that trouble to make this photograph, right?) Here's the pre-albumen version. I like it, but I like the albumen better. Thanks for stopping by!

White Poinsettia (Daguerreotype Filter)

The Daguerreotype was an early photographic process, dating from the early 1800s. For those who are historically nostalgic (or, maybe if you like shooting old-style photos,) Paintshop Pro offers a Time Machine effect that can make your picture look like a Daguerreotype. (From this post alone, I have learned how to spell Daguerreotype....) I could see several uses for this, particularly if you were interested in taking photos that looked like they were from the early 1800s. Could be fun. Thanks for stopping by!

Poinsettia Leaf (Albumen Filter)

Looking through the different filter options that are available to me in Paintshop Pro, I came across this interesting Photo Effect called "Time Machine" (which sounds very sci-fi). The time machine part here is that the filter can make your photo look like something that is really old; the description mentions something to the effect of the old glass photo negatives. I was really have trouble getting this leaf to look exactly like I wanted, until I applied this filter and thought, "That's kind of cool." Thanks for looking at my photo!

To HDR or not HDR, that is the question

White is one of those colors that generally does not tend to go through the HDR rendering process all that well. Snow tends to look rather dirty. People are typically another no-no, unless you are trying to bring every blemish out of the shadows, in which case, HDR is your friend.

I was working with a white poinsettia (still alive from this past December, and still has its white leaves!) and did not find what I was looking for in the HDR process. The best image I came up with was the one that follows:

I liked my original image much better, even though (or maybe even, because?) the background is fairly well washed out.

Poinsettia Leaves in February (Dry Brush Filter)

So we're coming up on the end of February, and my poinsettia plants from December are still alive. (They're losing leaves like crazy, but... they still seem to be alive.) What I first liked best here was the leaf that was changing between red and green, which was the reason that I initially made this picture (trying to get that leaf.) I wasn't all that crazy about the dying leaf up in the top left corner, until it really stood out in post-processing for its darker color. The weirdness in the bottom left corner probably has something to do with my f-stop, which I was trying to keep low in order to blur out the backyard background through the window. (I guess that the backyard wasn't the only thing that it blurred out!) Thanks for stopping by!

Pretty Red Leaves (Dry Brush Filter)

It's ok. You can tell me that these pretty red leaves were poison oak, or poison sumac, or poison ivy. I really don't know what they are. But, they probably weren't just pretty. Which is why... I just took a picture; I didn't touch them or anything. (These cold winter days have had me thinking back to warmer days recently.) Thanks for looking at my pictures!

(Palette Knife Filter) Butterfly

Revisiting thoughts of warmer days, I thought I would apply filters to my butterfly photos to see how they might look as paintings. This was an image in which I liked the DxO preset better than my Photomatix presets (before it all got blurred together anyway in Photoshop.) Thanks for stopping by!

Mackinac Bridge Sunset (Aged Newspaper Effect)

Corel PaintShop Pro X7 has an effects filter called "Aged Newspaper" which can make your picture look like something from... an aged newspaper. Actually, there are various settings between 0-100; the setting I used for this photo of the Mackinac Bridge at sunset was 100. It took out the vibrant color in the image, but I was having fun playing around with the yellowing newspaper effect. Here's the original (from 3 exposures processed through Photomatix):

Thanks for stopping by!

Gravel Mountain (Palette Knife Filter)

This somewhat pixelated picture of a pile of gravel was processed from three of my earliest 3-exposure sets that I took with my NEX-6. When I was just learning how to process images, I didn't really find anything that I particularly liked about this one, so I simply moved along. Going back, I'm finding that I can have some fun with these old images, manipulating them in the Photoshop filters settings. The original looks much more like a hill in a gravel pit. This one? It looks like a pixelated hill in a gravel pit. Thanks for stopping by!

Autumn Lake Sunset (Dry Brush Filter)

This photo dips back into my archives, processed for HDR in DxO and then filtered with a Dry Brush in Photoshop Elements. I liked the stripe of the cloud formation across the sky as the sun was setting that day. Thanks for stopping by!

Nuthatch Looking at the Snow (HDR via DxO; PE12 Dry Brush Filter)

Within the last couple of weeks or so, I picked up a promotional download of DxO Optics Pro 8 which I've been opening up to see how it works. (I'm a slow learner.) One of the features that I noticed were three HDR settings - two that could be processed from RAW files (artistic and realistic) and a third HDR setting - slight. I used the artistic setting for this photo, which I then took over to Photoshop elements for its Dry Brush filter which I like to apply to my photos. My verdict's still out on what exactly I think of the program. Time will tell. Thanks for visiting my photo blog!

Chickadee Headshot (with seed)

This image highlights a problem that I sometimes run into: a purple highlight. I'm not sure if I'm getting this because of the position of the sun with respect to my subject (that's my best guess). What I like about this image (as it is) is the detail that can be seen in the feathers, with the lines all over the bird's body. The purple halo... not so much. Thanks for stopping by!

So, I think I figured out what I did. Apparently, when I lightened up the image so that I could see the bird's eye, that's when it brought out the purple "halo" at the top of the bird's head. Keep everything dark, and the purple glow is (at least) not quite as noticeable.

Chickadee Picking Up a Seed (Dry Brush Filter)

Initially, I tried the Paintshop Pro "Magic Fill" on this image, because I wasn't so crazy about the little twig cutting behind the chickadees tail feathers. While the filter managed to take the twig out, it left something of a "digital shadow" behind:

Given the right background, I'm sure that Corel's Magic Fill (and the Adobe equivalents) work well. (Its possible that maybe I could have run the filter more than once, and maybe that would have cleared it up a little bit.) Here, I decided that it was better to keep the twig in the picture. Thanks for visiting!

Chickadee Looking Over the Edge

After picking over my deck for seeds, this chickadee hopped over to the edge. Here, it's looking before it leaps. (It did eventually come back for more seeds.) Thanks for stopping by!

Withered Leaf on My Deck

Now, granted, "withered leaf on my deck" does not sound like something that would be all that impressive to look at. This was one of those poetic moments (maybe, poetic in the Edgar Allan Poe sense of the word) in which I reflected on the dead leaf and branch that had landed on my deck. Thanks for stopping by!

Canadian Sunrise (Palette Knife Filter)

Granted, there's a point in post-processing at which a photograph stops looking like a photograph, or when it starts looking like something other than a photograph. Is it still photography when your photo starts looking like a painting, or a cartoon? I guess my thought is that, if an artist manages to produce something that he finds visually pleasing, it's ok if it doesn't look exactly like it did when he snapped the shutter on his camera.

Chickadee Returns During a Break in the Weather

Yesterday was a rather nice day (before today's winter storm hit us here in Minnesota). The birds were out singing, and they even came to my deck looking for food. Here is a little chickadee, heading toward a pile of snow to see what he can find.

Blue/Green Image - Processed with Stained Glass Filter

This is a crop from a photo that I processed differently (with a different filter), where one of my favorite parts of the image was the deep blue off on the side. What is this that you're actually seeing here? It's some kind of tree branch, but I'm simply enjoying the colors (the blue was my favorite) and the way that the branch trails off into the corner of the picture. It's not for everyone, but... it's interesting to play around with. Thanks for stopping by!

Industrial Rocks (Dry Brush Filter)

It wasn't until I started looking for a scene to crop out of my original photo that this image struck me as seeming very industrial (with all of the metal work at the top overlooking the rocks that make up the bottom 2/3 of the photo).

This wasn't on my radar at all when I originally shot this picture. I was initially interested in the two light stands:

Thanks for stopping by!

BW Nuthatch in a Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

Poised for flight, the nuthatch looks toward the center of the picture from its branch on the left.

Squirrel in a Tree

This first crop of my squirrel in a tree image has more of a portrait feel to it, as though maybe this would be the picture that the squirrel would have in its yearbook and make little wallet sized pictures to pass off to its family and friends. 

This second crop, much wider, has more of a landscape feeling to it, like there's some story that could go along with this picture, something like, maybe, "Squirrel dreams of fishing" or something like that. There was something about this crop that seemed "off" to me, so I tried it again, moving the squirrel from being directly on the 1/3 crop line to centering it in the first third of the picture. I think I like the second version better.

Thanks for stopping by!

Nuthatch on a Tree (Dry Brush Filter)

Several months ago, I happened to see this nuthatch up in a tree. Was it looking for bugs, or was it simply planning out its aerial assault upon my porch, in order to help itself to the black oil sunflower seeds that I had strewn about in the hopes of taking pictures of birds? Whatever it was doing, I managed to take its picture while it was yet up in the tree, so that (after much cropping and processing,) you have today's photo set before you. Thanks for stopping by!

Trying to Fix a Blurry Green Bird (Stained Glass Filter)

This photo would have been a nice photo... if it had been properly in focus. I took this picture back when my camera was relatively new and didn't know what I was doing when I was shooting inside in low-light conditions. So, what should I do with all of those photos that are more or less garbage? Sometimes, new life can be breathed into these photos with... (ta, da!) photo filters. Filters don't always work, but sometimes you can smudge or smear your way through a bad photo and make it turn out to be something that... isn't quite so bad. Thanks for stopping by!

Nicely Figured Flowering Tree, Past its Prime? (Dry Brush Filter)

There are definitely parts of this flowering tree that are past its prime, and yet... there are still buds on this tree that have yet to open. My attention was initially drawn by the flowers, yet what ultimately got me about this image was the curved part of the tree that you see in the center of the picture; that's what I liked best. Thanks for stopping by!

Pink/Light Purple Flower (Dry Brush Filter)

One of the great things about visiting a place like the Mall of America is that you can find so many different varieties and plants growing indoors. In a place like Minnesota (with our subzero temperatures,) it's nice to find somewhere with an "indoor garden". Otherwise, our plant-life around here this time of year just looks a little bit brown. Thanks for stopping by.

Odd Color Schemed Plants (Filters)

As I looked at these plants, I was really impressed by the vibrancy of their colors. They were bold. Looking at the picture however (dry brush filter applied above), the bold colors don't seem to go so well together; they kind of clash. I thought that maybe there was something I could do to try to make it work better in the editing, maybe the cutout filter:

While the cutout filter gave the image an interesting effect, it has really muted all of the colors, making it a less interesting picture than the original. Hmmm...