The Deer

I have been playing around with this picture.  I thought I would show you all the iterations.

 

Which one do you like better?  Any suggestion for other ways I can edit it?

 

 

Cropped, focal point highlighted, colors softened in spots, and sharpened in others.

 

 

Cropped and sharpened.

 

 

Cropped, sharpened, focal point changed.

 

 

Original

Trees

Today we were encouraged to post pictures of trees.  Here are a few I took today and a few from the past year or two.

 

I cropped our Owl friend's picture and sharpened the colors a little, I think he is quite handsome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiet Moments

This class I have been taking these past two weeks is more about photography as an art form, rather than a class where you learn how to use your camera and what settings to use for different kinds of shots.  And although I do need to learn the settings on my camera, it has been nice to step back and really concentrate on the aesthetics of photography.  You can know all about how your camera works, but if you don't have the "eye" for a great photograph, then you will never capture true art. 

 

Today we talked about capturing "Quiet Moments".  Here are some that I picked out of my archive of photos.  I did some post processing work on all of them in PicMonkey.

 

 

Deer - Silver Lake

 

 

Geese - Old Farm

 

 

Geese - Old Farm (Old Farm is where I live by the way)

 

Silver Lake in the Fall

Post Processing

I am learning how to use this site called PicMonkey.com to do post processing on some of my pictures.  Like cropping, sharpening, changing the color saturation, adding a copyright symbol, adding text, etc.  Here are some of my samples from today.

 

 

Copenhagen Train Station.  Sharpened, cropped, copyright added, and "cooled" with PicMonkey.

 

 

Copenhagen Train Station.  Sharpened, cropped, copyrighted, and "warmed".

 

 

Hong Kong Harbor.  Horizon Line straightened and copyrighted.

 

 

Holden Sunset.  Quote added and copyrighted.

 

 

Buttes.  Cropped, sharpened, copyrighted, and "cooled".

 

 

 

Buttes.  Cropped, sharpened, copyrighted, and "warmed".

 

 

 

Angles

In photo class this weekend we were encouraged to find something of nature inside the house and then to look at it in a different way.  I have some gorgeous shells (thank you Mom and Grandma), so I decided to use my Triton Trumpet shells.  I took about 30 shots, but these were the most interesting.  I need to practice, practice, practice.

 

 

 

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Depth of Field and Bokeh

Today's class is on Depth of Field and Bokeh.

 

Depth of Field can either be shallow (where there is one focal point up close and the rest of the photo blends into the background), or deep where the foreground and background are equally in focus.

 

Bokeh is the Japanese word for "blur" or "haze".  So this is where you intentionally blur a portion of your photo.

 

Here are some examples that I submitted today.

 

 

Depth of Field - Copenhagen.  The purple flowers are intended to be the focal point.  I could probably do some post processing on the background to blur it a bit more as well.

 

 

In this butterfly picture I manually added the Bokeh effect by using a free application called PicMonkey.com.  See the blurry circles of light in the background?  That is the bokeh effect.

 

 

This one I have posted before.   It is an example of Depth of Field from one of the first photography classes I took.

 

 

Another Depth of Field example.  But not as good, as there aren't any interesting things in the background.

 

 

Golden Hour Shots

I am taking another photography class for the next 2 weeks, and today we discussed the "Golden Hour" of light.  This is the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset.  We were asked to post some pictures in our digital classroom of photos we had taken during this timeframe.  I thought I would share mine here as well.  Since I think they are kinda pretty.

 

 

Southern Utah Sunset

 

 

Huntington Beach Sunset

 

 

Hong Kong Sunset (from the deck of a Junk)

 

 

San Francisco Sunset

 

 

Yuba City Sunset (from Auntie Vern's house)

 

 

 

Random Moments of Christmas Cheer - Two

I took my second photography class two days ago...it was all about shooting at night and specifically shooting Christmas lights.   I took 76 pictures, then narrowed it down to the top 12 or 13.  I have to admit, I still don't really know what I am doing, I just try all the different manual settings and hope for a miracle.  I think I am getting better though.   Anyway, here they are, in no particular order.  Also, as a bonus, I am including my owl pictures from Thanksgiving.