Black and White

I was challenged by a fellow photography friend to post a week's worth of black and white photos on Facebook. I do like black and white and that is partially why I decided to jump into Infrared Photography.
If the colors don't always trip your trigger, you can always convert it to a stunning black and white photo. Well, that is, if you have a decent photo to begin with.

I hiked earlier this week and took only my converted camera. I used an 850nm filter on it which will only produce IR photos in black and white. In the summer, leaves would appear pure white as would the grass. The clouds would stand out much better in a blue sky that appears black.

Well, here are some of those results with snow!

The bark of the trees are reflecting in a lighter color than a standard black and white shot. The old leaves of the oak tree are reflecting as white! The original photo in camera and when I bring it up at first is really a shocker. It is dull and listless.
So editing with a heavy hand is a must.

Here is a sample of this shot as it came off the camera:

Pretty dismal looking right?

With infrared photography, there is always editing involved.

I find that the infrared in the winter is not always a bonus, but that doesn't keep me from experimenting anyway.

I did use my little pocket IR camera to take this shot of pine trees. This was with a 665nm filter. Here is what it looks like straight out of the camera.

Kind of cool. The pines are a bluish white and the clouds show up pretty well.

Channel Swap:

The colors are pretty wild. Sky is a bluish color and some of the green pines are pinkish.
I could brighten it up some, but thought I'd see what it looked like in black and white.

I liked it!

And then I decided to blend it with a layer of Topaz Glow which sort of emulates a brush stroke.

Well, this final version tickled me. Just enough pizzazz to make it something I'd put on my walls. Not perfectly realistic, but in an artsy sort of sense, dreamy...

I've always thought that winter was perfect for black and white because the colors are so often muted and dismal looking.


I think I should work on some Still Life next....

Oh and the Fairy house?
It is coming along!

Still ugly, but...

It has potential!

Monday Night Storms

Monday was a pretty good day.

Of course there was the whole struggle thing of getting Rich to PT, but I set a personal record in CrossFit so I was still pretty happy about that.

Most of the day was spent doing yard work and then as the storms approached, I grabbed the refurbished IR camera and decided to give it a whirl.

Since the storm was slow moving, I thought I'd try out a couple of filters to see what I could come up with.

This one is a bit wild and crazy. Normally this filter would produce a yellowish cast to the foliage when channel swapped, but I took it further.

When the sun disappeared and things started to get dreary, I thought I'd try out the 850nm filter. In filter speak...this filter strictly shoots in black and white with the foliage become white.
I really liked the results even with the poor light.

I love the threatening sky again the white foliage.

So I walked to the south end of the pastures and took another shot back towards the house.

With that done I decided it was time to get inside.

The severe storm was a Watch so I neglected to move the mower and 4 wheeler to the shed.

Silly me. Never believe the weather people.

This happened as the storm blew in. The tree was uprooted and came down.

I worked all day yesterday on 'limbing' it out.

No real damage had been done. But the Grill was killed. The grill needed replacing a long time ago, but ..someone kept limping it along. I guess I am relieved about that.

My argument for getting rid of those older trees on the West side of the house, just got stronger I think.

New Year's Day Hike and ON1RAW2017

New Year's morning came in just like any other winter day. Except we hadn't gone out the night before. We aren't the party type any more.

The sun broke out as we finished up the morning chores. Note to self and husband. The new/used skid steer did not impress me. Since hubby can't put the ice picks on both sides of the steel tracks, it doesn't have the traction it should. It made putting out large bales and fodder to the cattle very complicated.

I think New Holland designed their newer skid steers for comfort more than practical use. Well, at least for our place. Going up a steep icy hill with a huge bale is an issue. The old skid steer had no problems with it. I am not impressed.

With all the watering done, I made venison backstrap, eggs, and toast for an early brunch. Then I gathered my super light tripod and Olympus OMD E M5 camera and headed out with the intention of walking to the east end of the valley.

Intentions are sometimes a bit confusing. I got to the creek and changed my mind. I walked west and discovered some beautiful ice formations glistening in the sunlight.
Morris was not with me so I didn't have to keep an eye on him.

This is where Ariel had built a snow fort for Doe, Deer, and Fawn. I moved on and turned back towards the east with every intention of getting to the end of the valley.
However.

I stopped and spent quite a bit of time exploring the frost on the leaves and grasses in the creek bottom. Up on the ridge it was quite warm. In the creek it was much colder.

I then got sidetracked by the sandstone wall. The ice formations were growing.

I used a timed exposure so the snow and ice above the water would reflect... hopefully on the water.
It worked!

Then I thought, how could I take a photo of me doing some things I liked? The Oly had a remote but it has to be plugged into the camera. So I focused on the wall where I thought it would work and set the timer for 12 seconds.
After a few shots, I got what I wanted.

That worked out so well that I thought I'd set up another photo. This time an action shot.
I focused on a spot where I thought my boot would land and then set up the timer again for 12 seconds. I got it in 2 shots.

I edited all of the hike photos in ON1RAW2017. I have ON1 10.5 which is a dynamite program. The newer RAW program is still a bit 'buggy' but I really like it.
My 'concept' here was to look as if I were leaping from one 'world' into another. My thought is this. Go out to nature and leave the boring world of electronics behind and you will see the wonder of the natural world.

Well there you go. A fun concept even more fun trying to create it.


ON1 10.5 is the preferred method also of doing some heavy editing. Which I did in this self portrait from a few weeks ago.

The woods are in me...

Of course I got side tracked in exploring the frost and the creek in just a small area. I had to get back home as the sun was beginning to fade out of the deep valley.

It would soon be chore time again and time to make supper.

However, I managed to take a photo of Pete, the run away Morris Toy for the story I am working on. I managed to take a shot of Fawn for those kids who love to follow The Doe Story and headed back towards home. My fingers and toes were frozen.

So I leave you with a few shots I got on my New Year's Day hike.

Enjoy

Happy New Year.

Taking photos/Random Thoughts

Of course there will always be the debate about how much editing is acceptable.
There will always be a huge debate.
To Edit or To Not Edit.

I am somewhat in the middle. A little editing can go a very long way. 

I like to take .RAW files now. I can breeze through them in CorelAfterShotPro 3 and get a good job done quickly. I guess I am plugging Corel because they haven't gone the way of Adobe where you have to pay monthly to use Lightroom and CC.

I've also found ON1 to be extremely easy and fun to use.
It has the ability of taking my .ORF and my .NEF files and working with them and I can save them in a variety of file types.

However, I am always interested in improving what I do. I read up on tutorials and watch the occasional video. 

One of the items I see floating around the internet is videos that teach you in certain programs of how to change the sky in your photo that you've taken.
Yikes! Okay, that is fun and it can add a lot of drama to a photo.

But when did we stop taking real photos? Or better yet, why do some folks post edit photos and spend more time on them in the digital dark room than they did thinking about taking the shot.

I've harped on this before. And I am as guilty as the next person for post editing shots. And perhaps I am all wrong too...

I have learned a few tricks that could help me get a more interesting shot than the conventional way. But swapping out skies seems a bit extreme for me.

I don't mind cloning out a small distraction, but going to the far end of the spectrum is a bit unrealistic.
So I don't know if I'd qualify as a purest ~ no, I am not. But I won't spend hours swapping skies, cloning in or out rocks, and other items on a photo.

I think about what I want to do, watch the weather for a perfect sky and then try to compose something that will work.

Here is an edit that is very obvious.

Here is another. Replaced sky added a moon, but it is all quite obvious.

Here is a shot I took a long time to think out and do. I took many shots on a beautiful morning. I used an Infrared filter and also did some shots with a ND filter.

I came up with this, edited to black and white.

[This shot was taken obviously before our house remodel.]

I like to do less as more.

I studied the lighting in this shot and went with what filtered through the window in the late evening out onto the porch.

I've done some pretty wild stuff, but always seem to come back to the basics.
I even once in a while go a bit overboard in exploring things like HDR.

Recently I've gotten an interest in bugs. I've read up on how some of the professionals get great 'insect' shots and learned about something called Image Stacking. Image stacking led me to Focus Peaking and searching out how to manual focus properly in an Automatic Focus world.

I'm making the circles. Landscapes, Macro, Panoramic, High Dynamic Range, Long Exposures, Still Life, and Infrared Photography, a bit of over the top artistic stuff, and then back to the basics.

All challenges to make taking a photo interesting and challenging at the time.

Edit? Of course. Have fun with it. 
After all when the debate dust settles, I guess it all comes back to the photographer and what the Artist Photographer wants to portray.

I guess if you are going to take photos, you just need to enjoy what you are doing.

Phases

As fall quickly tries to fade with the huge winds of yesterday and today, I start seeing bare trees.  The frost has turned the squash leaves in the garden to an ugly dead looking brown.

So I try to not think of what I call 'the boring brown month of November' and look for odd things to do on cold windy days.

If I have a few moments to myself early in the morning, I decide to delve into some editing to amuse myself before going out to do chores.

This creepy looking abstract was made first in JWildfire then run through Google's Dreamscope.  I layered the original over the Creepy Copy and brought back some of the fractal.

There is no practical reason for doing this other than to occupy my mind with some strange art in the morning.  And to get my creative juices going.

I then took a rather very bland photo that wasn't quite in focus from last week's trip out on PeeWee's land and decided to see how far I could 'mess' it up.

I first added a layer I'd made of streaks of color, then overlayed that.  Next I added the Weave Texture and was pretty surprised at how it came out.
Lastly I added a sandstone texture and figured that was enough.

I like it in a way and am tempted to try some other methods, but I see other folks that are so excellent at this that I think I should stay with Graphic Art and with straight photography.

This year my interest has been more in landscapes.  Previously I went through a period of anything small or macro.

The smaller, the better.

In the winter, I am obsessed by black and white photography.

Right now I am desperate to keep trying to catch beautiful shots of the quick fading Autumnal colors.

However there may be a point that I will feel comfortable in 'shooting' people.  I may have to force myself there.

Kids are always easy and fun.  Not so sure about adults and weddings or Senior Shoots in particular.

Who knows, that could become a new phase for me one day.

Breaking Rules

I've been reading all about the Infared Filter I purchased.

Rules.
Yes there are 'rules' or guidelines for using this filter as it blocks out all but the infrared rays.  Okay, maybe I am a bit incorrect here, but...but I'm no tech geek and I just know that the shots turn out RED. There are quite a few wonderful tutorials and explanations as to how to use this filter properly.

I really wanted to use it though and the weather was not cooperating.
It was blustery and overcast.  
The filter should be used when it is very sunny and calm.

But I found a spot to sit on the side of the road and set things up.  Tainter Hollow Road is not busy. It is about a lane and a half wide.  It has grass growing up the center of it.

I couldn't help but add the little sunburst in the center...just for some fun...

I enjoy walking there and there is a nice little trail along the trout stream if you care to find it.
The valley is very steep and I thought I could get out of the wind and the cold blasts of air for a bit.

I played around with a shot I took until I came out with this, some sort of 'fantasy' type shot.  I could just see a unicorn running down the road towards me.

Well okay, maybe not a unicorn, but heck, I had some fun.

Sleepy bees:

The weather forecast originally had called for a very sunny and pleasant day with a few passing clouds.

However, the skies didn't look that way about 4:30 when I decided to pack it in and head home.

I'd gone to Tainter Hollow expecting to take some great sunny photos with the IR filter and ended up doing some HDR work which I normally shy away from.

But I think photography rules are meant to be broken sometimes.

And I think that is perfectly okay.
How else will we learn if not by experimenting.

Somewhere over the Rainbow & photo manipulations

Last night after the third or fourth rain shower flowed through, we had rainbows appear in the eastern sky.

I ran out barefoot to capture some shots.

It was quite beautiful and to the naked eye, I could count several of the primary colors.
We were lucky enough to have a double rainbow!

The sky kept changing so rapidly before the heavy clouds moved in and gave us an early night.

I was pretty happy with how the FujiFilm FinePix HS30 EXR handled the panoramic scenes.  This was converted to B&W for dramatic effect using Corel PaintShopPro Ultimate 6X, along with Topaz plug in Filters.

I then used CS2 to take the same photo and edit the color version to see what I could do to make a striking difference.  The rainbow colors inspired me so I took a 'rainbow' gradient and swiped it into a blank layer above the color photo.

I changed the layer to 'Overlay' and reduced the opacity a bit.

It was a fun exercise in manipulation of photos.

Here is the original:

The effect may not be exceptionally realistic, but using gradients can help a 'edit' colors in a most interesting way.

Then there is the texture and lettering edit.
I decided to take a decent sky photo and just mess a bit with it, adding textures, colors, and finally text.

I think the rainbows last night inspired a little creativity in me this morning!