One of the first things our little group photographed on our trip to Flagstaff was the Greek Orthodox Church. I was particularly entranced with the gargoyles, which adorned the roof line.
I found this one amusing, because it looked like he was munching on leaves.
I edited this one to give it a dark and foreboding look- could it be because I just saw Jurassic World?
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.
I 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.
Here are a few photos left over from various recent shoots- all in black and white:
My Friday Find is borrowed from my friend, Debbie, who graciously allowed me to photograph it this week. You may see it again, because I have some other ideas before I return it. And my goodness, there’s that straw hat again!
This is a Lensbaby shot with added textures. I like the look that some of my textures give my walls- wish they really looked like that!
And here is the same photo (in the original proportions- I “stretched the canvas” of the top one in Photoshop) with a black and white preset I adapted from one I had gotten from somewhere. I wanted a light-ish black and white conversion, which I sometimes do by adjusting tones etc. This time I decided to save it as a preset, hoping it will work on other photos as well.
First I saw the God-beams. . .
and then the beautiful morning light- a good day for photography!
Have a wonderful day!
Hats on Chairs- catching up on still life challenges for The Studio Online!
If you have been following my blog for awhile, you have seen this chair many times- and if you’ve been following it for a LOOOOONG while, you seen the hat. Oh well- you’ve seen them, because they’re great props for still life photography! And, no doubt, you will see them again!
These were all taken with the Lensbaby Edge 80.
The final assignment in my lensbaby class is a photo essay using mostly lensbaby images, and it can be either narrative or thematic. One can’t walk around downtown Santa Fe without noticing churches and sacred images everywhere, so I chose to focus on this theme for my photo essay.
Notes:
The first image- I’m not sure what building this was!
The next two are the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis, and the third is a statue of Kateri Tekakawitha (1656-1680), the first Indian of North America to be promoted a saint. The simple cross was hanging over our bed.
The rest of the photos are from San Miguel Mission, the oldest church in the U.S., built between 1600 and 1620.
Last Sunday we celebrated my birthday in Santa Fe. We walked around the downtown taking in as many of the sights as we could in one day and sampling northern New Mexico cuisine. Here are a some random detail shots gathered taken on our walk around the city; all were taken with my lensbaby.
We are home now, after a LOOOOONG drive through Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico and a day off to celebrate my birthday in Santa Fe. There are a lot of photos to go through- especially from Santa Fe, where I tried to take enough photos with my Lensbaby to satisfy the photo essay requirement for the last week of the class (even though I’m not a full participant and won’t be evaluated).
So today, I again celebrate the flat horizons and vast expanses of Kansas with these minimalist shots, both taken with the Edge 80 optic.
The drive across Kansas gave me an opportunity for an up close and personal view of a wheat field. My husband must have Kansas in his blood- I think the color version is his favorite photo from the trip.
Both were taken with the Lensbaby Edge 80.
Driving across western Kansas yesterday, I snapped photos from the car as we went along, and a few are decent. But Lonnie spotted this farm along the way and pulled off onto a country road so I could take my time and the photos would have a good chance of being in focus. I love the barn and silo! I know I could never have been able to hack it as a country girl, but I love rural scenes.
Lensbaby Edge 80
Yesterday, my father-in-law, like earlier generations in his family, was laid to rest at the old cemetery at the end of this dirt road, overlooking the tiny Kansas farm community where he grew up.
Family members and friends gathered to say a last good-bye to Corky, who always called this peaceful corner of the world HOME.
No longer having pets, I was eager to take some lensbaby photos of my inlaws’ 18 year old cat, Kiki. Normally she ignores me, but this time, she kept coming over to me while I was attempting to take her portrait. I decided to go for a really shallow depth of field and just focus on her whiskers. My favorite is the first one.
I’ve been keeping my Lensbaby on my camera all the time, trying to get as much practice as possible. When we are on a long road trip, we almost never stop for photos, so it has become my habit to take photos with my phone through the window as we drive along. On this trip, I started using my big camera instead of my iPhone to take these photos.
One of the assignments in my Lensbaby class was to take photos of objects that are moving (using manual focus, the only way you CAN focus a lensbaby). Although the subjects of my photos weren’t moving, the car certainly was! As we drove through eastern Colorado, I used the sweet35 optic to capture the scenery along the way. My favorite photo is this landscape (I love the light), which is NOT in sharp focus. I used Topaz Simplify and some added textures to give it a painterly feel.
The next day, as we drove through the plains of western Kansas, I used the Edge 80 optic on my lensbaby, which I found fairly easy to focus at 60 plus mph. The sky was very overcast and eventually gave way to heavy rain as we drove along.
Lonnie knows I have a bit of an obsession with photographing grain silos and farms, so he actually took an exit so that I could take photographs of this one from the road instead of from a moving car!
Posting from the archives today- here are some butterfly images that never made it to the blog.
And I couldn’t resist this super closeup- this one was on Lonnie’s shirt!
melinda anderson photography 