Picture Post, Sunday August 27, 2006

Some things I have taken with my dSLR in the last couple of weeks. All have been played with in Photoshop Elements to make them look like I want, or to just play with certain features of the software. It's like the old days, playing around with things in the darkroom, only more fun, and I get to use color, and my hands don't stink. Cool.

This flower, I knew the light was getting too low, the wind was blowing it, and I knew it would be blurry because I had a low shutter speed. I thought, hey, if it looks bad, I'll just delete it. But I ended up liking this a lot. Every time I came across it, I would stop and look at it a while. Can't exactly explain why I like it though. I just do. That's always been good enough for me. Photography is a gut instinct thing with me, more than technique. This one is pretty much as taken, but I have gotten in the habit of touching up every photo I keep with lightening, darkening, or whatever, even if it's just slightly, like this one.



I don't even know what this is. It is some kind of looped pins in a palm tree, near it's base, and some string wound between them. I was walking around a park, and saw what looked like a cross. This one was in color, but when I took it, I 'saw' it in black and white. I knew that I would have to experiment with black and white on Elements, something I haven't done much of; converting from color and making it look decent, that is.


I saw this brilliant red color, and thought it was flowers. I walked over, and got as close as I could, and realized that the red was on leaves, and that the blooms hadn't even started to open. But those blazing red leaves looked pretty cool to me. This was at the same park as the black and white one above.



This was at a park along a bridge across the Intracostal Waterway, about 20 miles south of where we live. An area called Wabasso. I was right under one of the sections of bridge and the hardware intrigued me. I knew this was kinda boring, but planned on making some experiments with high contrast in Elements. I like the industrial look of it.



When I'm feeling artsy, I take pictures of pretty things. But when I'm depressed, I tend to take photos of cold, stark, inanimate objects. I'm a really big guy, and Can Not do impromptu photos of people. They see this moose with a camera and look aprehensive. So, to get out my creativity, I tend towards scenery and 'things'. Not trying to make excuses, just a little self analysis there. That's why I end up, on days like on this particular excursion, to end up with a couple of hundred 'cold' photos of things. But just getting out helps. So it's all good. Anyway, with this one, I did the old gaussian blur layer combination thingy in Elements to soften it up a bit, and make it more acceptable, but that blue sky was awesome that day. I end up having to do something to all the photos I take on days like this to make them less clinical and cold.



Another under-the-bridge photo that I liked. The subtle blue of the one pipe gives it just a touch of color.



This was taken at the same park as the second and third photos above. I liked the layered effect of the signs at different distances, and the sailboat on it's way out in the background.