Seagull Reflected on the Water (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

Cairns (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

A Fisherman, or a Fisher of Men? (Graphic Novel filter)

Original

Graphic Novel filter

Colorized Graphic Novel filter

Thanks for stopping by and looking at my pictures! :)

Another Ladyslipper (Graphic Novel filter)

Ladyslipper (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

Monarch Butterfly with Lilacs (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

Swans on the Pond (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

Sea Gulls (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel filter)

And now for something just a little bit different... sea gulls! (From a long time ago.) Thanks for stopping by and looking at my pictures! :)

Graphic Novel Filter Winter Bench

Bee on Lilacs (Graphic Novel filter)

Well, this is a throwback going back to 2007, back before I started shooting everything (almost everything,) in RAW. I took this old JPEG file and applied the Graphic Novel filter, and... I like how it turned out. Thanks for stopping by and looking at my pictures! :)

Bird in the Grass (Cutout Filter)

I was digging back in the archives for this photo (which comes from 2009, when I was shooting with my Canon XTi.) I think that the bird is a heron, or possibly some kind of crane. It was a blurry picture (I did fire off a few more in which I could see that the bird had a light colored neck) and as such was quite disappointing. Yet, when I applied Adobe's Cutout Filter to the file, the blurriness goes away (as does much of the detail in the photo when you look at it full size). I do like the way that the Cutout Filter renders the photo, almost in a cartoon format, with all sorts of "cutout" shapes. It's cool, if you like that sort of thing (like I do). Thanks for stopping by!

It's Definitely Not the Apple Blossom Time of Year

This photo comes courtesy of my Canon XTi (taken a few years back, at a warmer time of the year). I'm kind of looking forward to May/June when my crab apple tree will blossom, which is sad, because we haven't really even settled in to the worst part of winter yet. (I applied the Elements Dry Brush Filter on this photo.)

Looking Forward to Seeing Some Green

Looking back through my photo archives, I came across this picture of a tomato plant (from the same time as I was shooting the pea plant that I posted yesterday). This picture is almost seven years old, shot with my Canon XTi as a JPEG. (For HDR effect, I generated two more exposures -- one darker, one lighter, and then tonemapped all three images together in Photomatix.) The green was what really drew me to this image, and... having been snow covered here in Minnesota for quite some time, I guess I'm really looking forward to spring. 

Little Garden Plant (2007)

This flower is different from those that I have been posting recently. It's an image that goes back a few years, so I don't even remember exactly what kind of flower this is! Actually, I'm pretty sure that it was from our garden, and that it was probably some kind of pea, or possibly even a bean plant. Whatever it was, I took this single JPEG image and generated two additional images - one darker, one lighter. I fused them all together in Photomatix, and produced the image that you see above. Thanks for looking!

Ocqueoc Falls (2007)

This is Ocqueoc Falls in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The original (below) was created using a Canon XTi back in 2007. For this one, I like the edit a lot better than the original image.

Little Brown River, Falls, Rapids Action

The original image (the second image below) looks a little tame in comparison to the edit (the first image below). Tame isn't always bad; as I look at my edit, there may be something that's just a little bit 'too wild' about it. I had wanted to bring out the reddish brown color in the river, but perhaps I brought it out a little bit too much, almost to the point where the river looks dirty?

Hexagonal Sun (Not Like We Used to Draw in Grade School)

Back in grade school, here's how I would draw pictures of the sun: I would always start with a yellow circle, fill it in, and then draw all sorts of rays emanating from the sun. I'm pretty sure that I never drew a gray hexagon, surrounded it with white, gave it a reddish tinted outer layer, and then made six white streaks shooting off into the blue sky. (Blue sky, maybe.) Well, I guess there's a first time for everything!

Impressionistic Sunset (Looking for the Transit of Venus)

As I looked closely at the unedited version of my picture here, looking for the Transit of Venus, I did not find the planet (which was probably hidden behind the street light, anyway.) Instead, I found all sorts of dust specks in my picture (yuck!). 

Rather than trash the picture, I took it over to Photoshop Elements 2.0. I applied the Dust & Scratches filter (Radius 37 pixels, Threshold 9 levels) and... voila! The dust specks are gone! Together with the dust specks, you've also lost the street lamppost (or, from what you can see of it, it looks nothing like a street lamppost) as well as the trees looking anything like... trees. But, since you couldn't see Venus anyway, the image has been somewhat salvaged to leave you with a pretty picture of the setting sun. (Canon XTi; June 5, 2012). 

That Little Dot on the Sun Might Just Be Venus

That little black dot on the right-side of the sun might just be Venus from the Transit of Venus (June 5, 2012). Or, it was an untimely piece of dust on my camera lens (but I really do think that it could be Venus). The black and white version below was the best that I could find from the photos that I took, in which I may have actually seen Venus making its transit.

Surreal View (or not) Transit of Venus (maybe) 2012

This photograph is from June of 2012, the day that the Transit of Venus was supposed to be visible. (It's the first in a series of several that I'll be posting.) I'm not sure that I ever saw Venus (except on Wikipedia or elsewhere online after the fact), but I did make several interesting sunset shots. I ran this particular image through Photomatix for a little single image HDR action, and then took it over to Elements 2.0 to do a little work on dust/spot removal. The mountains beneath the sun are really trees that have come out with some really cool colors to look like... mountains.