Thursday, November 22, 2012

If at first you don't succeed.....

It never fails, I will be out and about without my camera and miss a photo opportunity. Last week I was out walking Roxy and heard hundreds (not exaggerating) of birds hiding in the trees and reeds. I went home and returned with my camera waiting around trying to capture the birds in flight. I knew I had to set my shutter speed to capture the action and the only way this novice knew how to do this was to change the ISO setting to 800. Below are two pictures from this day and as you can see they are very grainy due to the high ISO setting (around 3pm).



 
Bill and I went out to Lake Natomas in Folsom this morning to walk and I decided I better take my camera. Bill found these two shots (he has an eye for photography... it is only a matter of time that he catches the bug and wants to learn how to use the camera).

I decide I needed to go back to the marshy area by the house to try making some adjustments and get some clearer photos (still bothered about the pictures taken last week).  I decided to forget about capturing the birds in flight and focused on the trees, pussy-willows and a few birds hanging around the trees. I took these around 1:00pm with at 100 ISO.








Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Trying to understand Photoshop CS6

I have been using Picasa to edit my photos because Photoshop CS6  is just too darn complicated. I have been trying to find tutorials to help me understand Photoshop so I can have some fun editing (YES I will admit it, I want to edit photographs). The reason I have changed my opinion on editing photos is because in my research I have seen some really fun effects and I am oh so curious.

Today I viewed a YouTube video on how to get started with Photoshop CS6. Below are my first attempts at editing. The first thing I learned (from my mistake) is to save my original image and edit a copy.

Unfortunately I don't have the before and after to share on one of the images so I will explain what I did. The picture of the tree had houses in the background which really bothered me... so.. poof... houses removed.


Here are before and after pictures of foxtails. I didn't like the branches from a tree on the upper right. When I was setting up the shot I tried multiple angles to avoid the tree branches but couldn't get the foxtails in the frame the way I wanted them. Now with editing I was able to remove the branches and some of the reeds in the grass, in addition I played around with the colors to make them a little warmer.


Now for some fun...

This picture was taken off of Lotus Road between Rescue and Coloma. By using "Filter Gallery"
and selecting Artistic/Poster Edge I was able to give this a totally different appearance. Make sure you click on them to open in a larger view so you can see the effect better.


 


Friday, November 9, 2012

One step forward, one step back

After our day trip to Lake Tahoe a few months back Bill and I decided to celebrate our anniversary up in Homewood. We rented a really nice house accross from the lake. This is the first time we took Roxy on a trip. She actually did very well on the drive and enjoyed swimming in the lake.

 

I titled this post one step forward, one step back because just as I think I am improving as a photographer I take a step back. My major challenge was shadows on this trip. I need to plan my destinations better based on the time of day.

We spent one afternoon at Kings Beach and enjoyed the amazing weather and scenery. It was great having the time to play around with the camera and various lenses.

 

 

We took a drive to South Shore, stoppping at an overlook of Eagle Falls. It had snowed a few weeks prior so the falls were running. Bill pointed out the shot I took of the hillside (good eye Bill).

 

South Lake Tahoe was very quiet.  We had coffee/tea over by the Delta Queen, watching tourists and relaxing a bit. The picture of the bears was a bronze statue outside the cafe.

 
 



Thursday, November 8, 2012

Surprise

I have been out and about shooting photos and am behind in my posts. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph a person learning gun safety. Below is one of the photos where I was able to capture the barrel flash from the revolver (unedited photo). I love it when I capture something unexpected and see it for the first time when viewing my shots for the first time.