Starting Summer

Our start to summer has been as busy as the last several weeks of school:  marching band practice, cleaning out backpacks, getting used to a new routine, finalizing summer plans - but we took a quick weekend off to just relax and reconnect with each other.  A few shots from our (hot) weekend.

 

This looked like fun - for someone else - no way could you get me up there.  It was really breezy and I did see the operators monitor the windspeed a few times.  But a go-cart with a parachute, no thanks.

 

Like a good mother, I chased my daughter with a hermit crab.  On one part of the beach every intact shell you picked up revealed that somebody was already home. 

Don't know who was in this boat, but it made a nice image.  These were the true colors of the evening.  It was cooler, breezy and enjoyable in the evenings - except for the giant mosquitoes - wow were they out for the hunt. 

We really didn't do much this weekend, except for a little beachcombing, a little eating, resting, laughing - things we really needed to do as a family.  Now we are ready to hit the summer activities as some of us separate to do our own activities from time to time.  Hoping we can come together again at the end of the summer and recharge for the new school year. 

Wordless Wednesday

Beach Object

Being a little bit adventurous (crazy), my sister and I headed to the beach on a very chilly, windy day last week.  Looking at what washed up, we ran across this very interesting beach item.  I haven't done anything to this image - no cropping, color changes, filters -- this is the way we found it.  We were surprised at what the object really was.  

Connecting with Wordless Wednesday (which once again I couldn't resist adding a few words).  Visit here to see links to other images.

My Sepia Phase

I feel like I'm going through a phase, a sepia-toned phase.  Every image that I have been taking/processing in the past week I have been putting through a bit of sepia toning (if that is even the correct term).  I'll be the first to admit that I'm still a learning beginner with the post processing. but I'm trying (I refused to even think of doing this 2 years ago).  Participating in a few photo challenges this year has me thinking more about the photos before I take them & slowed my usual amount of spitting out images in hopes of getitng 1 good/usable one.  I feel I am getting better control over the images coming into the camera. 

The above were taken on Galveston Island with the purpose of practicing some post processing.  I had taken similar pictures in the past, but saw a few things I wanted to do differently (angle, amount of main subject in frame, & where did that bush come from?).  For these images I used my 50mm f1.4 lens, adjusted the RAW file to create +2 & -2 exposure JPEG images to fuse with the out of the camera pic.  In the fusing software, I chose black & white (a previous phase that I will definitely return to), with a saturation of 30% or 50% (wanted just a hint of color back in).  Back to photoshop for a tad bit of straightening & the sepia filter tone at 50% or 80% (just a touch of to add texture to the fence), then maybe a tiny crop to balance it all out.  I have to laugh at myself - this process would take forever at first, but now I can go through these steps rather quickly which makes going through several images a lot less time consuming (thank goodness - my computer time was taking over my day). 

My last thought on these -- at least they aren't horse pictures!!!  But don't worry more horses are in my future... show season starting back up.  Do you also get stuck in a phase when learning a new processing trick?  Do you find it helps your overall photography or hinders you in that you only see how you can process a photo rather than appreciate the skill used to capture the original image?  Personally I'm hoping for a happy medium at some point.

For comparison - here are the original, straight out of the camera, no processing (other than to lower the resolution for web upload) images. 

Weekend Rewind

This weekend our schedule was filled with our usual activities (sports etc), but we did have a totally new adventure too.  My daughter's barn decided to take advantage of our 75 degree January day & introduce a few horses to the beach & the surf.  It is always a lot of work going away from the barn, but it is worth it - it was fun for the riders/handlers, for the horses & especially for all the other beach-goers -- watching us.  Just wish the cleanup (sand, salt water) was as much fun (riders were wearing their paddock boots & 1/2 chaps).  Good news - I got some really great photographs (perfect photography weather - overcast, semi-foggy); bad news -- I lost a lens cap out on the beach somewhere... Our family did get a chance to relax and hang out together too (we even watched 2 movies)  - which we needed.  How was everyone else's weekend?  Do anything new or different?

Learning Something New - HDR

Galveston Island State Park

Although I realize most of the time I am behind the rest of the world in learning new techniques - I am really enjoying this approach to photography imaging - HDR (high dynamic range) that fuses 3 photos together (1 underexposed, 1 balanced, 1 over exposed) so that the final output includes all the colors, tones, etc that is possible.  I've seen photos like this circulating around, but didn't know how to get that look.  This seems to be especially effective in lower light. 

The above picture was taken at Galveston Island State Park, Texas, in the middle of the afternoon (I know very bad time for taking pictures), but I wanted a few very quick pics to play with.  I needed to do some research to figure out how to set my camera for bracketing and also quickly found out I would have to shoot in a manual mode (aperature priority) - not my favorite thing to do - but this will force me to get better.  I used 3 stops up/down and fused 3 pictures together using HDR software (Photomatix Essentials).  I didn't crop this - this is how it came out of the camera.  Once in the HDR software I applied the "painterly" tone mapping.  There are other choices & you can preview before you save the fused file/picture. 

Here are some details of what I did/used to get this picture.  Keep in mind that I've reduced the file size of this picture for the web - way down.

Camera - Nikon D90
polarizer filter on (for color saturation & glare)
bracketing set for F3 (3 stops +/- around the balanced photo
aperature priority (F4.5)
auto focusing

Here's another photo of a gull that I applied the deep tone map affect - wish our water in this area was that nice blue (it is usually kind of muddy), but it makes for a nice picture.  Same camera, aperature priority, auto focus, with polarizing filter (because yes I was taking pictures in the middle of the day).  This picture has been cropped. I really like the sharp/bright colors of the granite/rock he is standing on as well. 

Gull at Texas City Dike, Texas