Category: out and about

After a trip to Starbucks, my husband and I drove over to the arsenal area so I could photograph some windows.  The arsenal has been turned into artist studios and businesses and is a fascinating place.  I promised Lonnie I would be done quickly, so didn’t take a lot of photographs.  One of the artists followed me around in his car, suggesting subjects for my photos.  Since I had just read a thriller about abduction, I got a little creeped out and didn’t spend much time talking to him.  But- since he referred to himself as a “fellow artist” (suggesting that I, too, was an artist), I did get a bit of a charge out of the encounter.

Here are a couple images, both artistically 🙂 edited with high contrast black and white adjustments and some split toning.

I love having fences to fall back on on Fridays; I don’t know why I don’t do it more often. Here are two taken on a quick one block walk downtown this morning with just my 50mm lens.

I have photographed this gate before- but not in fall. Today I created an easy preset in Lightroom which emphasizes the yellows and oranges in the image- fun!

This shot is of some magenta flowers peeking through the fence around the community garden.  Magenta isn’t one of my favorite colors, so I used one of Lightroom’s built-in split-toning presets to make it more to my liking.

The topic is indigenous!  What could be more indigenous to our suburban hillsides than weeds?  I drove to a nearby park and then wandered into the “open space” (aka weeds) on the hillside.

This one will be the official response to the prompt. I wish I could have captured the beauty of this clump of weeds covered in raindrops and sparkling n the sunlight.  I am still working on it, but like this black and white version for now.

I couldn’t resist snapping this shot of a park bench. What is it about park benches, fences, and bicycles that makes them such great photo subjects???  It might be my favorite shot of the day.

I have taken so many photos of the open space over the last year or so- and will probably take many more- especially when there is a barbed wire fence in the scene.  The next two photos both have some texture added (Jessica Drossin).

Clouds! We’ve got clouds!

It makes such a difference to have white, puffy clouds in the background instead of a dull, gray sky.  I took a short walk in the neighborhood and captured this shot of the hills overlooking the mothball fleet way in the background.  This photo does not follow the rule of thirds, but I like it better than most of my other ones because it shows the beautiful sky.

Walking back, I spied this Halloween display in front of a neighbor’s house.

With just a few minutes to spare, I sneaked outside before an all-day workshop and tried to capture some backlit leaves.

So, here we have some green ones. . .

and some orange ones!

Last night, as we drove up the hill after seeing an early movie,  we could see a HUGE moon (August’s BLUE moon) just cresting the hill ahead of us. Breathtaking!

We drove home, and I grabbed my camera and quickly walked back to to where we had the fantastic view. The moon had already risen, and did not appear nearly as large as it had five minutes earlier. To make matters worse, it was heading into a thick bank of clouds.  I didn’t have time for manual settings, so basically clicked 3 times before the moon completely disappeared.  I guess I should have chosen Program Mode, which I almost never use. The first shot (in Aperture Priority) had a shutter speed of 1/8 second! – and ISO 200.  You can see a bit of the trees and cars on the street.  For the next one, I hurriedly set my dial to my custom user setting, which includes Auto ISO- and the ISO shot up to 6400! The shutter speed was 1/20.  Ridiculous settings- I might as well have used my phone!  These shots won’t win any prizes, but they captured a moment!

Today, I went with the theme- school– an easy one for me, the lover (and hoarder) of school and office supplies.  This is the beginning of my third year of being retired from teaching.  It might be time to let go of some of the mountain of school supplies I’m hanging on to.  We are going to try to fit some into our car as we head to Wyoming next week.  Miles’s preschool has just moved to a new location, thanks to his mama, who is the chairman of the preschool board and the director. I’m sure they will make good use of some of my teaching materials.

I woke up with an urge to go down to the water again today, so I headed down to First Street and took a few photos in the early morning light.

Yes, that is my Prius!  I’m not one for car photos, but I didn’t feel like moving it.

Look who I spent the day with!

That’s right- it’s my good friend, Scott Kelby of Kelby Training, Photoshop Magazine, and a zillion books! I say my good friend, because Carol and I sat front row center, oohed and ahhed over his editing techniques, laughed at his jokes, and sat next to someone who actually knows him and is pictured in his newest Photoshop book. None of the other 450 attendees could say that!

We weren’t among those who asked him questions at the break, but we did generally stalk him, paparazzi-style (except with short lenses and better ethics).  Here is Scott at one of the breaks; Carol is stalking him on the right.  The shadow people were lined up to actually speak to him.

Scott is a fantastic presenter and incredibly skilled at photography and photo-editing.  The topics ranged from editing in Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom to portrait retouching to creating panoramic images to HDR and more. We had a fabulous day and learned a lot (none of which I attempted to do tonight on these photos)- and, after it was all over, we were brave enough to crawl up on the stage (yes, crawl- don’t ask. . .) to have our photo taken by our other new friend, also named Scott, the one who actually knows him.

All these photos were taken at ISO 6400.  You would think they would have better lighting for a room full of photographers!

My husband and I took our coffee down to the water off 12th Street today and were early enough to wake up the Canadian geese and watch the fishermen setting up their poles.  I took some bracketed shots, thinking I would do some HDR work, but ended up playing with my Color Efex Pro demo that I got (for free!), because I’m going to see Scott Kelby Wednesday (love you, Scott- sorry about what I said yesterday. . .).  I’ve had the Nik Software collection on my wish list for over a year (it is EXPENSIVE!), so I’ve loved using this demo version for the last month.  I think it doesn’t expire- it is just not the complete set. I can report that it is all it’s hyped up to be.

I did my regular Lightroom adjustments, and then went into Photoshop to apply the filter (I could have gone straight from LR, but I needed to do a bit of cloning).  The filter I used on this photo is aptly called Monday Morning, and I love its “instagram-ish” look.  One of the sliders is called smear!  I turned it down a bit, but otherwise kept everything full strength.

Happy Monday!

And here is another shot that I also edited in Color Efex Pro- to bring out the color and detail in the shadows.