bluekat's Journeys

 More flowers from the backyard. Attempting to relearn post processing skills that have gone rusty.  Oh, and I ordered a new (to me) camera. WooHoo! Nikon z6. So excited! Fuchsia buds Azalea I love these spotted Petunias More Fuchsias 1/80 sec • f/7.1 • iso 160 • 50/75mm 1/80 sec • f/7.1 • iso 320 • 50/75mm 1/80 sec • f/7.1 • iso 200 • 50/75mm Not a great photo below. It's soft and blurry and was shot at 8000 iso. I cry if I have to go above 400 iso, but that's old school thinking I guess, so I'm trying to challenge myself to try a few higher iso photos. 8000 is a little extreme, lol. 1/3200 sec • f/7.1 • iso 8000 • 50/75mm Before and after screen shot of the high iso noise.

I love bumble bees! But they don't sit still for photo ops.

Went for a mid-morning run at Cheadle Lake. Stopped for a few pics on the last lap. It was so pretty with all the wild flowers and baby ducks and geese. Only the flowers lingered for the photo op. All photos from the iphone. I posted them to Facebook and Instagram earlier, but these were processed in lightroom, so hopefully a little better. This evening Ron and I returned for a walk with the dog. This time I brought the Sony. I read an article earlier this week about hand-held HDR photos, so I decided to give it a try. I've done very few HDR images, so it's all rather new to me. Single image processed in Lightroom. My somewhat garish attempt at HDR. Photoshop and Lightroom. I must say I prefer the single image, processed photo.

Not the best image of the bunch, but it had the most over blown areas and I wanted to see what details I could pull out of the bright spots.  It worked better than expected. Processed in Lightroom. 1/50 f/6.3 ISO 200 19mm Here's a copy before processing:

From the backyard 1/1000 sec f/6.3 ISO 200 19mm

Playing around in photoshop. Believe it or not this started out as a project that was going to have desaturated colors. Guess I went a little off target. Oh well, had fun with it anyway. Here are the original files used for this project. Used layers and masks (difference), an inversed image, along with various filters.

Layers, textures, distressed, or what I do on a rainy day when I don't want to out into a soaking rain. :)

Found tonight on our walk around Cheadle Lake. ISO-800...a little grainy for my taste.

f/11  •  1/100 sec  •  ISO-200 Along the trail to Bridal Veil Falls. Processed and converted to grayscale in Camera Raw. Let's face it, the waterfalls steal the show in the Gorge, but I often like the little hidden scenes just as well.

Bleeding Hearts |  f/5.6  •  1/125sec  •  ISO-200 We went for a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. More like we went for several short hikes along trails and past falls we hadn't explored before. We bypassed Multnomah falls in favor of lesser traveled trails. I hope to get a few image posted from the day, but we shall see. More from Latourell Falls

f/5.6 • 1/80 sec • ISO-400   Just one of the fences we pass on one of our walks.

f/1.8 • 1/125 sec • ISO-200 • Nikon D80 I got to borrow my brother-in-law's 50mm prime lens this weekend. I really like this lens. It's fast, it handles low light pretty well, and it's quite small, which was nice on our bicycle ride today.  It's been a long time since I've shot without a zoom. I did a lot of backing up and stepping forward...that was the zoom. :) This image is from my fushia basket, shot this evening when the wind and bright sunlight had faded for the evening.

f/5.6 • 1/50 sec • ISO-100 • Nikon D80  I'm not sure how I discovered LAB color. I've seen it in photoshop and never used it. In my explorations I found the following websites. I can't say they're the best information out there, but it was enough to get me started. Adobe's Website: Lab Color Digital Photography School  I suppose as a graphic designer I should have a better understanding of the different color modes. I understand RGB, and CMYK, but LAB color is something of a mystery to me. It's different in one key way.  It separates color from lightness. There are 3 channels in lab color: lightness, a and b.  Using the curve adjustments, lightness can be adjusted without altering the color channels (a and b).  Each color channels can be adjusted to make the colors pop. I'm probably not explaining it well. If you're interested read the tutorial or google up some others.  To save your image as a jpg you will need to return to the RGB mode. Before converti...

f/6.3 • 1/5 sec • ISO-200 • Canon G11

I had an errand at the hospital the other day, and on the way in I found all these wonderful, tall columns of color. They are much prettier in real life. I'd give them a name, but I don't know what they are called. f/3.5 • 1/320 sec • ISO-100 • Canon G11 One little cheat...I cloned out a corner to eliminate a distracting background element.

 f/5.6 • 1/250 sec • ISO-100 Rhododendron or azalea? I had to google it, since my definition is Rhododendrons have big leaves and azaleas have little leaves. Not exactly scientific. It turns out that all azaleas are Rhododendrons, but not all Rhododendrons are azaleas. Therefore I'll call it a Rhododendron and that covers everything. By the way, Rhododendron is hard to type!I don't want to type it anymore. I processed this from the raw file. I don't really know what I'm doing in camera raw, so for now I'm winging it. In photoshop I converted to lab color and adjusted curves. The tutorial for curves/lab is here . I'm quite sure I went looking for some other tutorial and got sucked into this one instead. I wouldn't go looking for lab color on my own initiative. What can I say, it was interesting and different. I'm not yet sure what the advantages are. This was one of my first forays into lab color. I'm also trying to tone down my heavy-handed sharpeni...

This weekend was spent planting 45 shrubs around our backyard. It went faster than expected, so I spent a little time snapping some pics of a few spring flowers blooming around the yard. Labrador Violet. f2.8 • 1/20 sec • ISO-100 • handheld   I used a square crop because it was the best choice for the composition. Nah...I lopped off a corner with a blown out blob of light that couldn't be easily covered with a photoshop cheat.  :) Andromeda f2.8 • 1/60 sec • ISO-100 • handheld   Both were taken with the G11.

This morning there was white stuff on the ground and on the car. It melted before I left for work, so no need to scrape the windows. The bike has been staying home this week, although Thursday is looking hopeful... Yet more plum blossoms. Sorry, it's the only thing blooming in the yard lately. Soon it will be cherry blossoms...I bet you're waiting with bated breath! My photo habit of late has been to sharpen everything to within an inch of it's life, so for this one I went all soft and smooshy. What's a fancy word for it...ethereal maybe? Truth be told it was just having some fun in photoshop on a quiet afternoon. Something to tide me over until the spring weather returns. Counting down to daylight savings time. Woot!

Something soothing to cap off a busy week full of deadlines. I tried to get a nice photo of the plum tree three times this week, but a good photo was elusive. The camera wanted to focus on a subject not of my choosing, and I didn't have time to fuss with it. That's the problem with trying to get a photo or two before rushing off to work. Eventually the camera and I both settle for this one. I have one more sign of spring recorded for posterity. Another sign down...a few more to go.

One while waiting up for Santa. From the Oregon Garden, earlier this year. A little fringe/halo on the edges.