A Dog on the Path

There is a really nice area in Oak Creek Canyon that we are usually never able to get into, but, on our way to Flagstaff two weeks ago, we were thrilled to see that traffic was not backed up along the road and that there were parking spaces available in the lot. We didn’t have a lot of time, but we were able to walk along the path for about a half hour or so. The leaves were just beginning to turn, and the overcast skies certainly contributed to the feeling that autumn had arrived.

After we crossed a walking bridge, we encountered a cute dog and his family, and I thought his white and black coat made a nice contrast to the orange, brown, and green fall scene.

And just because I can, here is the same photo with some painterly effects added.

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Fall Color in Black and White

I went out with Lonnie for a walk in Watson Woods in order to take photos for an assignment for my photo group. The fall colors were beautiful- just what I was looking for in my image. I’ve been limiting my computer (and iPhone) time due to symptoms in my arm, elbow, and shoulder from overuse, so I decided to limit my editing time to 10-20 minute blocks, rather than my usual several hours to several days per image (that combined with genealogy is what caused this problem in the first place). I did a lot in Lightroom, including using my Camera Vivid preset (thank you, Carol!), so that it was already quite saturated when I went to Photoshop. The edits I did after that seemed to increase the saturation even more, so then I applied an inverted image layer at low opacity (thanks to what I’ve learned in my photo group and to Blake Rudis, who developed this color correction process) to take out some of the yellows and oranges. When I brought it brought it back into Lightroom, I wondered what it would look like in black and white- and I found I liked that version even better! I think I must have been inspired by my friend, Carol again, who also turned a fall color photo to black and white. Rule breakers!

I took the photo to begin with because the girl reminded me of Caitlin, my daughter. And now in black and white it seems to have  a spooky feeling- which makes me think of Stranger Things, which we have been binge-watching on Netflix. Scary!

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On the Corner

On Saturday, I went with my camera club on an architectural photo shoot in Flagstaff, where we had a map and buildings marked on the map to photograph. I had so much fun tagging along with two expert photographers with fancy cameras, as we roamed the streets, eventually ignoring the map and photographing mostly street scenes.  The photographs I took of buildings were pretty uninspired and boring and not very good, but I had a great time with street photography.

This shot of a street musician and his doggie is my favorite.

20150613-MMA_7385_melinda_anderson-EditI processed it with one of the HDR filters in on1’s Perfect Effects and then layered it with the original photo is Photoshop, where I masked out the HDR edit from some of the areas.

 

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