Month: August 2011

Unfinished is one of the topics suggested in a Flickr group I just joined.  Each day a new topic is posted, which you can ignore or not, and you have about a week to complete and post a photo for that topic.  No photos may be used that were taken before the topic was posted.

I’ve been doing Project 365 for eight months now- longer than I have ever stuck to anything requiring discipline! But, I have needed some inspiration- and this Flickr group should help on those days when I can’t think of anything to shoot.  Yay, Flickr!

I actually took a photo yesterday of this same tomato plant for Facebook (not even thinking of my photo of the day- and that it could fit into a topic!).   When our family was here, Miles loved to water the plants with his Papa, so I was posting the picture to show him that they are finally turning red. So out I went again this morning, to photograph the “unfinished” one. You may recall this earlier post.  Similar photo, similar theme, same plant, but not the same exact tomatoes! 🙂

f/1.8, 1/125, ISO250, 35mm

Scott Kelby shared his favorite HDR settings a few days ago on his blog, so I tried it out!

I went on a mini HDR kick when I first started photography, downloading a free trial of Photomatix.  I lost interest when I quickly realized that I didn’t understand what I was doing (still don’t really. . .), although I liked some of the images I produced. When I bought Photoshop in January, I tried it again- but none of my images that I edited had that Photomatix look to them.

I think for someone like me, a preset is the answer. I just copied his settings and saved it as a preset- easy. I realize that this isn’t an outstanding image- just a quick look up at the the sky with clouds this morning- but it is interesting to see what happens to it.  I played around with it some more in Photoshop- even tried using it as a layer above the original image and blending it different ways (I want to try that again- interesting effects!)- but am posting it today just as is, the Scott Kelby way.

And here is the original shot (with a little definition and midtones boost).

As I understand it, HDR uses three images at three different exposures which are then blended into one. When I used Photomatix, I made 2 copies of an image- and made one lighter and one darker- then the software merged them. For this process, I used a single image- I have no clue what Scott does!

 

With a really busy day ahead of me, I actually thought about what my photo of the day would be last night. It is Texture Tuesday with a Back to School theme (a natural for me), so I planned ahead what my photo would be. Because of my 365 project, I am a stickler for taking the photo on the same day I post it, so I can’t work on the photo ahead and then just post it on the appropriate day.

But when I got up early this morning, I became entranced by the changing light out the window as the sun rays began to peek through the fog. Although I was planning an inside still life for today, I wandered outside in my nightgown and began snapping photos.  The light was changing quickly, so my original foggy shots were changing into sunny ones.

As I shot over the back gate (having abandoned the front porch for fear of what the neighbors might think of a nightgowned photographer photographing the fog over their houses), I became more interested in the details of the gate itself- hence this photo.

f/7.1, 1/100, ISO 320, 85mm

So from back to school to fog to sunlight to gate hardware- all in 27 photos. Symptoms of ADD? Hmmmm…..