Serenity

There is a painting at our local Culvers that I have always liked.  It is a picture of a large faded red barn with pasture and sheep walking toward the barn.  To me it is such a peaceful scene.  The picture here I took in Iceland has become one of my favorites and I realize it is because the scene reminds me of the painting at Culvers.  It is quite different but I see the sheep walking down the road and I remember that this was a rather quiet section of the highway, not much traffic at all.  I see the fields in the background and the barn which is quite small in my photo but it still reminds me of home for the sheep.  Then you have the mountains and the waterfall in the background.  What more could I have asked for.  Oh yeah, Jerry Hug you will be happy to know I took this photo with my iPhone (not my Canon DSLR) out the car window to quickly catch the shot before the sheep had a chance to move on. As Jerry would say, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

Yard Work

Working at home makes it easy to go outside when you can just look out your window and see that things look calm.  How many times have I gone to the prairie a few miles from me and found that it was not like at home, but quite windy and so almost impossible to photography the moving flowers.  You can also keep a close eye on what condition the flowers are in without travelling far.  It gives me a good chance to practice my macro photography on the spur of the moment and more often than if I had to pack up all my gear and take a ride. This was a week of lilies and roses.  I like the long stamens on lilies.  In the first picture I tried to accent the stamens against the lighter color of the flower.

With the Michigan Lily, I liked how the petals curved around the back of the flower and so I took this shot from a different angle to show that. It is always a good idea to look around your subject and take pictures from different angles.















Working at home makes it easy to run for supplies.
For this white rose picture I ran to the garage and got a blue piece of plastic to put behind the rose to make it stand out more than the light tan storage shed that was behind it.
















This pink rose attracted me because of the petal near the center that circled around the stamens in the middle.  When looking for subjects, look for something that is a little different than the normal.

What if Your Trip Flips?

We have all planned that dream vacation.  We have seen great photos of our destination and we just can't wait to capture our own spectacular shots.  What happens if you get there and your first four days are overcast, rainy, windy and your pictures look something like this?  So it happened on our trip to Iceland. You have a couple of choices.  You can throw them all in the recycle bin or shut the computer down for a few days and then come back to them when you are in a better mood and try to do something with them.  I opted for the latter.

On the original photo the exposure for the water is ok, but that means the land is dark.  Fortunately, I did shoot this for HDR.  I have one darker for the brights in the water and sky and one lighter where the water and sky are blown out but the land has a good exposure.  I combined them in my HDR software and did a little tweaking on the color and contrast and came out with this:

It is better but not quite there.  I then added a layer mask of the sky, gave it more contrast and darkened it to give it that stormy look.

But, I so wanted blue skies.  So I made another layer of the photo and then did a selection of the sky.  I found a picture where we did have blue skies in Iceland and  did a select all and copy and then went back to this photo and did a paste into selected area command and voila, blue skies.

I then decided to try a monochrome version of the tonemapped photo from the HDR program and here it is below:

So, all is not lost.  If you have done your best to capture the scene, a little computer work at home can help save the day.  You may even like several versions of the photos you have experimented with.