Sunny sunflowers and happy people- Carol is here! We picked her up at the airport yesterday morning, and she’s going to be here for almost a week. Besides taking day trips to Sedona and Jerome, we will be laughing, talking, taking photos- AND having fun getting together with our college roommate, Susan!
Yesterday, the late afternoon sun hitting the sunflowers on the table caused both Carol and me to grab our cameras. I love those sunny sunflowers!
After the first year of doing my Project 365, I stopped carrying my camera with me all the time. And I always seem to come across beautiful scenes like this one, when all I have is my iPhone. I used to turn up my nose at iPhone shots, but no more. It is a perfectly adequate little camera, certainly better than not taking a photo at all- so, if my big girl camera is at home, out comes the iPhone.
I added a texture (Kim’s reentry) for Texture Tuesday, but the basics of the photo (including the colors) are just as recorded on the camera.
I had fun playing with one of my Sedona images- adding textures from Jessica Drossin.
I found this photo in my archives (from July) and decided to edit it in a monochrome-ish style- just because I was in the mood.
Photo taken on walkway at Bell Rock, Sedona
Top: standard Lightroom edit (exposure, clarity etc.- basically the top part of the Develop module)
Middle: standard edit with Kim Klassen’s autumn preset applied
Bottom: standard edit, then converted to a black and white with some split toning
I almost didn’t take any photos in Sedona last week; I felt I couldn’t do justice to the intense colors and beauty of the amazing landscape, especially with the harsh light and shadows of late afternoon. And of course, I was right. But, I couldn’t resist taking some shots as we walked around the area of Bell Rock and its neighbor, the Courthouse. I wasn’t planning to put them on my blog, because both images suffer from horrible contrasts, washed out colors and a cloudless sky. I know that if I go out there at the right time of day with some nice clouds, I will get a better result. However, these photos gave me an opportunity to practice my editing skills in an effort to salvage something to remember this outing.
The first photo was first edited in Lightroom, adjusting highlights, shadows, clarity, vibrance and more- but then I did some work with luminosity masks (a way of adjusting the luminosity/brightness of a certain range of tones using channels in Photoshop), a technique I re-discovered when visiting a local photo group. I had read about this on Clickin Moms a year or so ago, used the technique a couple times- and then forgot about it. At the photo group, someone mentioned adjusting the luminosity of a photo- and a chorus of voices called out “luminosity mask.” In fact, they may have said, “TK luminosity mask.” This week, I googled luminosity mask and came up with Tony Kuyper’s wonderful tutorials on using this technique- and I bought a set of his actions, which were MUCH more extensive than what I had done on my own before. Although not difficult to do, it made me realize how much I still have to learn about Photoshop. I love using Lightroom so much that I usually don’t bring my photos into Photoshop except for cloning/healing and adding textures.
So here is Bell Rock. If you look closely, you might be able to see people walking the trail up to the top.
The second photo was also edited in Lightroom- then taken into Photoshop, where one of Jessica Drossin’s textures, Mumbai, was added to bring out the colors and add in some contrast that was lost when bringing down highlights and bringing up the shadows.
The most recent lesson in our Beyond Beyond group involved intensifying autumn colors in processing fall photos. For this photo taken in Oak Creek Canyon, I used one of Kim’s presets for bringing out the coppery tones in autumn images.
We don’t seem to have many birds in our yard right now. The hummingbirds are gone, and there are just ravens and some little mystery birds flitting here and there. But we do have bees and wasps. . .
I desaturated this photo, because I didn’t find the colors pleasing, and then added a bit of split toning in Lightroom. Because it is Tuesday, I added one of Kim Klassen’s textures, 1301 (a favorite of mine), which I also desaturated. If you go to kimklassencafe.com, you will find links to some beautiful images using her textures.
My fall color photos today aren’t from my neighborhood. Friday we took a drive through Oak Creek Canyon, a beautiful area between Sedona and Flagstaff. It was the middle of the day, definitely not the ideal time for photography, but the scenery was breathtaking- much more so than these photos show. These were all taken at Slide Rock State Park.
I’m still enjoying the fall color, so bear with me!
There is some beautiful fall color in our neighborhood now! Arizona is not all cactus, you know. . .
And I couldn’t resist some more weed photos (my sunglasses are in there somewhere!).
This was shot with my iPhone last night as we walked downtown along Granite Creek before heading to a restaurant for dinner. There was beautiful light coming through the fall leaves; it was definitely the golden hour!
One simple photo two ways:
black and white
cropped, with Kim Klassen’s rue marion texture
Linked up with Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday.
Good news:
We’ve lived here for almost two months, and today I took my first walk in the neighborhood. I know, I know- I should have ventured out with my camera long before now. I’d had my eye on this field down the hill and decided to take a walk to take some photos of weeds.
Bad News:
After I took a few shots as I walked down our hill, I decided to put my sunglasses on. As I remember it, I had started out with my prescription sunglasses on, but then took them off and hooked them on my shirt as I took my first photo. When I reached for my sunglasses, they were NOT hooked on my shirt. They weren’t ANYWHERE. I retraced my steps- no sunglasses.
Good News:
I decided to continue my walk- those sunglasses had to be where I had stopped to take photos, and I would find them when I walked back up the hill. I walked a couple blocks and met up with a woman who had also just moved from California. We had a nice chat, and then I started back home to find the sunglasses.
Bad News:
I searched everywhere I had stopped on our hill- no sunglasses! I went home, and dragged Lonnie out with me to look- no sunglasses.
Good News:
We met a neighbor we had not met before, chatted for a bit, said good-bye, and then Lonnie found the neighbor’s husband’s AARP roadside assistance card in the weeds!
Bad News:
The sunglasses are still missing. I am hoping that I imagined the whole thing about wearing them outside and that they are in the house somewhere.
We’ve had an old milk can around the house forever. I think my father found it at the old house he bought during the forties when he first moved to Chico to start his dental practice. I re-discovered it in the seventies and took it to our Petaluma house where I used it for a dry arrangement, which included pampas grass, as I remember. The milk can’s claim to fame was as the unexpected hiding place for my keys, which my son Matt dropped in there when he was a toddler and we didn’t discover until several years later after we moved to Sacramento. It has moved with us each time, but has always been in the garage- never having a real place, but too cool to get rid of, even during the last extreme purge of our possessions before our move to Arizona. During the last few days while my husband has been out of town, I’ve been playing around with places to put it and have it currently placed on our front patio. I bought a few tall “sticks” at Joann’s to put inside, and also cut off some of the tall shoots from one of my mystery plants out front.
Here are some detail shots of the milk can and pods from the mystery plant- both converted to black and white.
melinda anderson photography 