Sheltering In Place for Photobugs

Time to dive into Photoshop, LOL.

Amboseli, Kenya

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Comments

  • Beautiful images, Doug.

  • Thanks so much. Sort of got interested in trying to make them pop. Here's a couple from my practicing.

    Photoshop lets you play with simulating lighting conditions. So, I'm taking some online courses -- too lazy to go to a school of photography. :wink:

  • Just as it was taken

  • Nice! What kind of camera? How far away, British?

  • Don’t know whether it was my camera or my husband’s, might have even been a cell phone. We were very very close.

  • Will someone remind me of the name of the bird in the second picture? Thanks much.

  • Crested Crane

  • Watch out for the baby.

  • Here's a picture out my window this morning:

    On the news this morning, they said 12 weather records were set in the last 4 days, from 2 new high temp records over the weekend (101 and 98) to a new low this morning (31). Supposed to be back in the mid 80s within a few days.

    Claudia, did the snow reach as far south as you?

  • That looks so. Ice, but I’m dreading the snow coming here and all that shoveling.
    Thanks to Quirky eye for starting this thread.

  • Hail storm in July here damaged roofs and cars where there was even bigger hail down the road. The hail storm we ant on for a long time


  • Stack of two images taken from our deck.

  • edited September 2020

    Great topic, Doug. A few pics from around the yard during Covid shutdown. Backyard Safari.

  • More backyard safari pictures. They were waiting for me when I returned from my morning walk earlier in the week.


  • We had lots of deer in the spring - not so many now. And British, my flowers aren't nearly as nice as yours (gardening isn't a favorite hobby so that is probably why) - but here is a picture of my granddaughters helping water a few of the flowers we do have!



  • The giant blue salvia attract the humming birds though we haven’t seen as many as usual this year.
    African marigolds around my mailbox, first time I tries them there this year, I don’t usually need to plant many annuals.
    The tree is interesting, it’s a Dawn Redwood. Once thought extinct, a stand of them were found in China some years ago. These tress were around at the same time as the dinosaurs. They are a sort of deciduous fir. The leaves look a little like mimosa plants. We visited Winterthur in Delaware about a 45 mins drive from where we live, maybe fifteen years ago. HF DuPont was sent some from China and they are there at Winterthur and huge, they grow fast. They were selling some tiny ones in the store, about a foot tall, being a gardener, I just had to have one. I don’t have a large amount of land at all, so I planted it as far away from the house as I could.

  • What we woke up to. Was supposed to stay warm enough for rain. Afraid to see how my geraniums fared.

  • Lovely grandkids -- so care-free.
    A couple more pics to contribute to the thread -- did my nephew's wedding last year -- first, maybe last time. So, a grand-niece, I guess.
    And my wife's garden -- she spends a few hours a day just watering -- even though we have a sprinkler system. Passionate about her hobby, I guess.

  • Adorable!

  • She was so scared to walk down the aisle -- then took a big "Gulp" -- and pushed her way forward.

  • Thanks for the info British. And loved the gorilla pic.

  • Latest image practice.

  • Here's the original; then add some PS spice. :)

  • edited September 2020

    Doug: I prefer the original versus the enhanced image. The enhanced image looks more like a painting, so that may be what you were going for. No right or wrong, just personal preference. I mess around alot with Lightroom adjustments and also NIK software. Sometime it works well and other times I get too carried away, but it is fun to have an outlet to be more creative with our images. I tend to like the idea of some of my photos appearing more like a painting. I have a friend that is an artist that uses the oil paint medium. Her paintings are so realistic that they look like photos at times. I find that interesting. Oh and as a side note, I love your image of your grand niece, beautifully done.

  • Thank you for your comments. I have this close friend that is an artist who also taught media in public schools. She's really into online courses, travels like us, but does it with mentors that radically alter their photos, so that they look like paintings and grunge art. They are simply beautiful and stunning.

    So we've had this email dialogue, because she lives in another state, about this very issue. But my own background is with Jay Dickman, a Pulitzer-prize winning Nat Geo photographer who emphasizes capturing "reality" in the camera -- he started as a Denver newspaper photographer -- and those photographers had to submit their RAW files. He prefers to not even use Lightroom.

    So my friend has pushed me to go deeper into Photoshop and really try to learn it, which I've been doing for the past two months, practicing almost daily. I've always felt shy and rather inadequate in using PS. So, I decided to really give it a try, to understand what it is doing at the pixel level, even, and what one might do with it.

    So, I prefer a really good, 5 star photograph that fulfills the basics of light, composition, color, and taken at the right moment.

    But it's rare that I get that. LOL.

    And, curiously, my friends have often preferred altered photographs to hang on their walls, particularly since I print them on museum quality mat paper -- so the intention is to play the line between a photograph and a painting.

    I don't know what I want to do or what I will prefer. But it's satisfying to learn and to try new stuff. I feel like if I expand my repertory of skills, I'll be better able to judge what I like, and want to do. It's a hobby, so I'm not committed to any particular way of doing things. The stuff I've posted here are intentionally extreme, sort of sketches of possibilities. It's a trying out and compiling of PS tools and techniques.

    I'll post a couple of the photos along this line that have been popular among my friends, shortly.

  • These look like paintings -- or not.

    So Blood Moon is a composite of a Connecticut Blood Moon, and two animal pictures. My audiologist chose it to hang in her office. Three Zebras are composted on a background layer. The zebras were interesting because they usually appear as a pair in watching out for each other.

    The inks are intense, Canon PGI-72s, and soak into the matte paper, which is a thick museum quality paper. The soaking makes them appear as paintings, but the sharpness of the image is still retained.

    Best,

    Doug

  • BTW, the wedding was in 2019; the original image was of her walking down the aisle, with a hand in the background giving her a little shove, LOL. So, it actually took about 20 layers in Photoshop to put in a sky background, correct the tones in her face, dress, the hue, saturation and luminance of each composite. So, even though it looks like a photograph, it's rather far removed from the original. I like it too, so I made a big 13 x 19 print and sent it to my newphew and his wife yesterday. His wife loved the original, I suspect she'll be delighted with the print sized for a wall hanging.

  • Smarks, you must have some great photos from that nice camera of yours, any good gorilla ones you can share?

  • Quirky eye, I just love your photos, especially the lion and zebra ones. I have a couple of Betsy Fowler watercolor prints that look very like that. We met her a few years ago. I’ll post a pic of them

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