Day 160- Leaving Boulder

After breakfast, we took a drive over to the Chautauqua Historic Landmark, a big park with hiking trails into the Flatirons, for a short walk.

View of Boulder from the trail

 

A BIG dandelion (for you, Carol!)- I wanted to crop it vertically but couldn’t figure out how to in Lightroom!

 

 

Here’s my favorite shot- a pro photographer came in with a young couple for a session under the trees. She brought lighting! WOnder if she’s a Clickin Mom. ..

All photos were taken with my 18-200 zoom and edited somewhat clumsily and hurriedly in Lightroom.  I’m currently learning the adjustment brush (just discovered there are presets in a drop down menu!) and the gradient thingie.

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Day 159- Pearl Street

While my husband was at his meeting today, I spent time walking around Pearl Street again.  It quickly started to rain, so I only got a couple shots before heading into Starbucks to sit and read.  It was not good weather for walking around with a camera. Afterward, I browsed in a few shops before heading back to the hotel.

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Day 158- Out of town!

We are in Boulder for a few days- business for Lonnie, shopping, reading, and photography for me! We’ve never been here and are really impressed with the city.  Both of us grew up in college towns and love the eclectic, interesting feel that having a college gives a community. And then when you set the city at the base of a mountain range- wow!  The town reminds us of Bozeman, Montana- but a bit more upscale. We are staying in a beautiful hotel off Pearl Street, which is the center of all the restaurants, shopping, and action.

So here are a couple shots from Pearl Street, where we walked this afternoon. There are street performers everywhere.

Boulder is a very green city:

And here are some shots from our wonderful hotel:

Lonnie getting to the room and immediately getting on the phone (this IS a business trip after all. . .)

The cute kitty that sleeps at the foot of our bed

The wine and cheese, which is served every day from 4 to 6!

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Day 157- Grounded

I took a bunch of photos to go with ground, today’s theme.  My emphasis was really on editing, because I have been feeling so uncomfortable with the “develop module” in Lightroom 4.  Today, I felt more like I knew what I was doing. I did some basic exposure, clarity, tone curve, vibrance edits and quickly was able to apply them to all the photos at once.  I did a little work with the adjustment brush to add a bit more clarity and sharpness to the itty bitty flowers (AKA weeds in 2 photos. . .)- and it felt more like my usual editing process. I think there is hope for me!

 

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Day 156- Entropy

The theme today is entropy– and boy do we have entropy! Actually, we have less entropy than we did last week, thanks to the work going on out back.

Here is a shot of some entropy that has not yet been removed:

The garden shed has been cleaned out and will be gone soon!

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Day 154- Stairs

Our deck re-construction is almost finished, and, serendipitously, the topic today is stairs. So here is a shot of our deck stairs, complete with new boards added here and there to replace the wood that was in less than stellar condition.

I wish I had a cute grandchild or at least a golden retriever to place on the stairs for the photo, but, alas, we are all alone right now.

Photo info: taken in manual, f/3.5,  1/100, ISO 500.

Edited very tentatively in Lightroom. I realized this morning that what is missing for me in Lightroom is Levels!  I do or DID a lot of my adjusting with the Levels sliders. I always adjusted with Levels and Curves- and then went into definition (clarity), contrast, and the highlights slider if necessary.  Levels is missing- and I miss it! Obviously, the same adjustments are applied in different ways- with the exposure slider and curves, as well as sliders for the different tones in the image- and MUCH MORE! This is the editing program of choice by most photographers (as well as Photoshop), so I know it will work out for me eventually.  I do love the export and import features- but the editing? Well, it will be awhile!

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Day 154- No clue. . .

Second day of using Lightroom and really no clue what I’m doing. . .

To make things easy on myself, I went with one of the themes- peek-a-boo (wish I had Miles or Henry here for that one). I finally gave up on sharp focus and concentrated on the editing.  The black and white part was easy- desaturate, adjust tones, and then add a bit of warmth in split toning (just saw that on a video. . .).  But sharpening? Noise reduction? That’s where the no clue part came in. I also don’t get how to add my watermark for Flickr.

I announced on Clickin Moms that I was making the switch to Lightroom, and quite a few CM-ers reported that they just made the switch too- including one of the diehards, who had been the guiding force of Aperture advice on the forum.  I was a bit surprised.  The biggest issue now is how and how much to import photos from Aperture. Right now I’m just sticking with the new photos.

 

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Day 153- Hanging

My Flickr groups have been given short shrift (is that really a word?) by me lately, so today I am going with a topic suggested this week- hanging.  Besides, my current favorite model flew back to San Diego today, so I am back to mostly inanimate objects.

So here is one of my straw hats hanging on our antique hat rack by the front door.

This was edited (not much) in Adobe Lightroom 4, which I downloaded again today (earlier this year I played with the Beta).  This time I have made a commitment to learn it, because there is so much more support out there for this program compared to Apple Aperture 3. I’m tired of being in an “elite” minority, no matter how much I love Apple products.  Adobe products for photography are here to stay; I’m not so sure about Aperture.  And besides- Lightroom is currently so much better than Aperture.

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Day 152- Liz

Today is my birthday, and we spent it at Joan and Rudy’s welcoming home their daughter, Liz, who is there for an all too short visit from New Zealand, where she has lived and worked for the last three years.  It was so great to see her- isn’t she beautiful?

I took lots of photos and have to say that, though they weren’t fabulous, they were an improvement over my usual party snapshots (yay- I learned some things from my class!).

And then there is the small problem of leaving my camera bag and all my lenses and camera accessories at their house.  Fortunately, Rudy is a Canon shooter so I know he won’t be messing with my stuff!

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Day 151- The Magic Porch

There is only 1 more week left in our photo class, so Carol and I got together to complete some of our last assignments.  She brought Mady, her brother’s golden retriever along for the day- which was a thrill for the whole family, golden lovers that we are.

Our lighting assignment took the most time (and, although instructive, was the least fun to do).  Finally we did some portraits of each other with Mady on our front porch, which I have decided is magic for getting good light.

Both of these were shot with Carol’s wonderful 50mm 1.4 lens.

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Day 150- Rerun

I’m really working on my portrait skills this week, since I only have a week and a half to finish my class assignments. I grabbed Matt before he went out the door and managed to get a decent photo of him.

This time I stood on a stool to get a better angle.  I swear, my best people photos happen in doorways!

I did a quick clean edit and then discovered the thread sticking up from his collar.  For some reason, I could not get any of the Photoshop tools to work (healing brush, clone stamp, patch etc.).  So it is still there.  It doesn’t matter for my class, because we can only submit SOOC shots (sigh. . .), but I wanted it gone for the blog.

And yes, he had wet hair. . .

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Day 148- Storytelling

If you read this blog fairly often, you know that I am taking Karen Russell’s photography class.  It is fantastic, and I wish I had taken it when I first started this adventure.  It starts at the very beginning, which concerned me- because I am not a beginning photographer.  However, she is so thorough and goes into everything in such depth (with lots of repetition to get the point across) that I am filling in a lot of gaps in my photography skills.  Plus, she answers questions all day long in her forum- and I have had a few!

One of the types of photography she talks about are photos that tell a story (normally in one shot).  Today, I am offering a story in several shots- so follow along:

These were all shot with aperture priority (because I had an uncooperative subject- a Karen Russell term) with varying shutter speeds at ISO 500.

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Day 147- Historic!

My husband has very few items saved from his childhood, but his Hopalong Cassidy mug and Captain Kangaroo cup are prized possessions.  Like most of our family memorabilia, they are housed in the antique dental cabinet in our foyer.  The theme today is history, and these cups are definitely part of our family history.

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Day 146- Georgia Peach

My friend, Georgia was kind enough to offer her house for a photoshoot this afternoon, so that I could complete some of the parts of an upcoming photo class assignment.  I was fortunate to have three friends to practice on, and (272 photos later) I have one part of the three part assignment done plus one photo to submit for the photo critique this week- and lots of good photos of my friends, of course!

It is late (we all went out to dinner afterward with our husbands), so I am only posting one of the photos tonight- so here’s Georgia!  I hardly did a thing to this photo; she just looks this good straight out of camera!

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