GLADIOLUS AN INNER BEAUTY

Tags

CLOSE UP PHOTOGRAPHY, Extention Tubes, Flower Photography, GLADIOLUS AN INNER BEAUTY, Heritage Basket Studio, Macro Photography, Sensuallity of Flowers

I have to thank Kieth Sprouse of Charlottesville, Virginia as well as many other photographers from around the world, for brow beating me until I fianally set my DSLR to RAW, it indeed changes your photography world! Doing so enables you to take some images that you want to toss in the delete pile and turn them into something wonderful, or atleast more useable than they otherwise would have been.

I have amazed myself, when I go to my Lightroom Catalog, and see just how many pictures I have taken, some I thought months back that I should mark them and just get rid of them, well that day has not come yet. It is a good thing, as today instead of working out in the beautiful sunshine like yesterday was, I did work on the balcony garden while getting rained on early this morning. Today is a dark and bleak rainy day. What to do, what to do, then I thought I would go through my Lightroom catalog and see what to pitch, well instead I started playing with images that I had forgotten all about and what flower could brighten up a dreary day more than Gladiolus can?

 

 

When we look at flowers along the roadside, in the field, or in formal gardens, we see flowers, bright and beautiful, they cheer you up if you are down, of course it means a little more if you were or are and avid gardener, botanist, or horticulturalist. Though when you are into photography it can open up a whole new world to you, through the use of Macro lenses, or extension tubes to be able to get closer than ever before. The inner working of the flower comes to life. I like close up and macro photography, it lets you into a world that the normal human eye cannot percieve. Colors, textures, veining, anthers, stamens, pistols, pollen (oh my even flowers have sex)!

 

When viewing flowers up close through the lense, at the time, you do not always percieve what you have just taken, it is not until you get it into Lightroom, on the computer, that you actually visually see the subtle nuances of the soft light back lighting petals, highlighting area you did not conceive at the time you clicked the shutter button. It depends on the flower and its texture, type of petal, as to what you get, with Gladiolus petals, the way the swirl out from the center and unfurl, often gives you an almost sensual feel, soft, yet some sharp in focus points acentuated by light and petals behind. You could refer to it as almost dreamy, etherial, sensual. Well a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

 

 

There are some pictures I have found that i did not like in color, delete! NOT so fast, you have the picture, try it in black and white, some photgraphs simply do not look like you remember the scene no matter what you do. Yet, some in black and white reveal an entirely new level of mystique and intrique to the imagination.

 

 

 

Experimenting with Lightroom

Tags

Basket Weaving, Basketry, baskets, CLOSE UP PHOTOGRAPHY, hand woven baskets, Lightroom, Oak Handles, Oak Hoops, Ribbed Basketry, Shooting in RAW, Weaving

Even though I know that I cannot cause the Lightroom program to self destruct, it is with great apprehension that I click, Import or Export. I take a deep breath and hope that I can get the pictures where they need to be so that I can place them into blog posts in Jpeg format.

Well, to my shock and amazement the pictures did go to the locaction there were supposed to, what a relief. I am sure if I worked with all the program enough, and on a regular basis, it would become second nature. I am hoping it will.

I did the photography on these tulips last year, and forgot about them, until just now, this is a very pleasant suprise indeed. These were just experiments using my extension tubes, as well as to have things to play with in Lightroom, and learn something in the process.

I hope to make and additional post this week, as I was on the Skyline Drive this afternoon taking pictures and hope to process them this week. I have learned my lesson and the camera NEVER leave RAW mode now! So much more versatility in RAW!!

     

   

 

Along with learning Lightroom all over again, which I will admit, today seems to be coming back to me fairly quickly. I am also showing work in progress on basket weaving, which I started back to at the start of the year. 2017 seems to be a year or returning to the creative things in life I like to do, basket weaving, photography and all that goes with it, blogging, and watercolor painting, which I have nothing of merit to show for it yet.

I will be making more substinative posts soon, everything I do seems to go hand in hand with blogging, all of which requires photography. It is my desire once I get the Lightroom going again I will be making topical posts with a direction.

 

 

There are now 3 times as many Oak Hoops and Handles hanging up drying as what these pictures show.

LEARNING LIGHT ROOM 2

Tags

CLOSE UP PHOTOGRAPHY, Heritage Basket Studio, LEARNING LIGHT ROOM 2, Lightroom, photography, POST PROCESSING, RAW Files, WILDWOOD PARK- BRIDGEWATER VA. Elkton VA

 

I am finding just like everyone has told me, you just have to get in there and play around with the settings to be the absolute truth. Experience is the best teacher!

What I really need to learn how to do is to be able to show before and after shots of the pictures that I fine tune. I try really hard to have my flowers appear realistic, from what I remember seeing. There is a fine line between washed out and unrealistically saturated. Though I am finding it to be rather easy, perhaps to easy, I will do it and see if someone comments.

It is nice to take a completely washed out picture, that I must admit there are some in which I was having a blonde moment apparently (you cannot tell now, but I was born with blond hair) and take it from hiddeous and resurrect it and bring it back to reality.

 

The above were shots of two different types of sunflowers, the first I liked for the contemporary way it turned out running diagonally through the frame with the stamens more in focus. The second, I liked more for the veining detail in the petals. In all the pictures the detail shows up best when enlarged (by clicking on them)

 

Below we have Mallard Ducks at Wildwood Park, Bridgewater, Virginia from early this Spring. If you live in the valley, and want a beautiful day in the park along the river, you cannot beat Wildwood Park.

While the second pricture is not a very pretty picture with all the debri from winter rains etc. stuck on the dam, it is hard for me to get to the park during the golden hours, of course it had to be high noon and the sun, glare was brutal off the water, even with a polarizer on the lens, using Lightroom, I was surprised how much better the photograph was able to be made, vs the washed out original.

 

SUNNY YELLOW ROSES

Tags

55-250mm lens, CLOSE UP PHOTOGRAPHY, extension tubes, photography, Sunny Yellow Roses

What could be better on a dark, bleak, cold and snowy day than a bouquet of small yellow roses! While shopping the other day which happened to be valentines day (I don’t have a valentine) so I gave myself a bouquet of lovely roses to brighten my week. Well of course I had photography in mind when I did. Today while the weather was bad I thought I would see what all I could do with them.

 

Slowly learning how to operate my digital camera (seems to be a life long endeavor) one day I will tackle all of the menus! Today I started in auto focus, then decided that NO the camera would not self destruct if I turned the knob to “P” . Guess what the camera is still on piece. So the majority of what is in this post was shot in “P” mode and manually focused.

 

My camera was mounted on my tripod, in my art room. The lighting was a construction site type of clamp on with a aluminum reflector with a 23 watt twisty bulb and a paper towel clamped to the reflector using it as a diffusor.

 

In the first pictures I was using kit lens 55-250mmm, the close up pictures were taken with various combinations of a set of 3 extension tubes attached, the final pictures were taken with the same lens and all three extension tubes attached.