28 Nov 12 This morning I had an opportunity to watch a training session given by a photographer who us known for her flower photography. Kathlen Clemmons does her work primarily in camera using a lens baby as her primary tool for capture of her flower images. In her seminar today she talked about using digital techniques to make fine art out of what would have otherwise been tossers before the advent of digital editing tools. Sponsored this morning by nik, she was demonstrating two of their plugins, Viveza2 and Color eFex 4, to achieve her fine art images. Having watched her work with several images that were nothing great to start with, but which looked rather nice when she was done, I thought I'd try to emulate, to the best of my ability, this being my first attempt, one of her examples. So starting with a not fantastic shot, I duped the background layer, then cropped it to get the tight image I wanted ( something she never does), and ran a detail enhancement on that layer. Duped that layer, selected only the green background, and ran a Gaussian blur on it so as to make it a non competing element in the picture. She would have achieved this effect using the lens baby attachment to her camera body. Duped that layer, ran a filter to lighten the center and darken the edges (think vignette) and also warmed it up a wee bit. Dupe that result and then did a structure enhancement on just the very center of the flower. That layer was then duped and I ran a noise reduction to get the final result. One of her comments was that there should be no distracting elements in the image; I've left two in to provide for a size determination. Probably doesn't add any to the photo, but sometimes I think it good to show relative sizes. Did I match her result; nope! But I got pretty close, especially considering this was my first attempt at so doing. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/50 sec @ f / 5.6.
29 Nov 12. Today's submission is a just for fun type. Back when I was in grade school one of the things folks did for arts and crafts was to paint using what was called "Paint By Number" kits. You got the canvas with the picture outlined with the colors to be painted in numbered. There was a set of associated jars of paint with the corresponding numbers, and of course a paintbrush. I tried doing several of these and my results might best be categorized as varying degrees of awful. But they did serve to occupy time even if not productively, unless learning what one can't do can be considered productive. While playing around with a piece of software today I came upon the idea of making a paint-by-number looking image, and so I did. The original is of Picture Lake and in truth looks much better than anything I ever managed to do with those kits of the 50s. ISO 100; 1/50 sec @ f /14 on a tripod.
30 Nov 12. It's that time of year when the large waterfowl return to Fir Island and I'm thinking it's time for me to go in that direction to see what might be available this year. On one trip there this past Feb I was treated to not only lots of geese, but plenty of Trumpeter Swans as well. Not to mention the raptors. As we were driving around to see where best to shoot the geese, I spotted this vibrant clump of trees that were anything but the color I would have expected, and behind them a vast display of evergreen in a complimentary color, courtesy of a bit of haze. With a color combo such as that, I decided I'd try to make the best of it. What I got was O.K.and certainly will bring back fond memories every time I look at them, but the shots were not quite what I was hoping to get. Still, I liked the idea of the complementary colors in the tress, not something you come across every day. So rather than go with a less than satisfactory image, I thought about trying to apply a technique to the image that was accomplished when I was just getting into photography, that of placing a section of nylon stocking - feminine attire type - over the lens to create a particular type of soft focus. I did mine in computer by first creating the best color rendition I could of the original, then ran a filter on it to get a nice soft image, a creative layer, then reducing the opacity of the creative layer to get my desired result. If sharp images are your thing, you likely won't appreciate this approach, but it was a very popular technique ( the original way) back in the 60s & 70s. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 9.
