Collums N Flowers

Playing with Lightroom Presets

While processing photos for last Thursday's Photo Challenge post I decided to try out various presets on a silhouette photo I had taken. For this experiment the only processing was to apply the various filters. The only other changes made were to reduce the size of the image and add my logo. Here are the results.

Original Image

 This first set were processed using filters that come standard in Lightroom 4. 

The preset name is under each photo.

Blue filter

B/W Contrast Low

Cross Process 2

B/W Look 5

Antique

Split Tone 2

Now for a few processed using Lightroom presets from the free presets offered by Hackingphotography.com.

HP_Angelic_High_Key

 HP_Orange_Light_Correction

HP_Tales_from_the_Sidewalk

I am really having a difficult time deciding which I like best. Of the standard presets it is between the B/W Contrast Low and the Split Tone 2, although I do like the Cross Process 2 as well. As for the Hacking photography presets that is much easier, my favorite there is the HP_Orange_Light_Correction. Although I do not like the halo affect that appears on all of the HP presets, I am sure if I had tweaked a few things I could have corrected that but I wanted to show how the image would look with only applying the preset. 

What do you think?

South Dakota Sunday: Waterfowl Stroll

Geese and ducks are a very common sight in South Dakota, so it is no surprise that one often comes across these beautiful creatures out for a leisurely stroll. This group is enjoying a quiet afternoon at The Redlin Art Center in Watertown South Dakota.

 

I posted more photos of this location and about The Redlin Art Center on Artistic Composition for my Sunday In My City blog post. To check it out just click here.

What's Better Than A Full Moon?

A full moon with partial cloud cover!

 

Not too bad for a shot taken with my cell phone. 

Sharing with Friday Skywatch

The Challenge: High Angle and Low Angle

30 day photo challenge

Oops, I skipped challenge number four. The fourth challenge is Texture, I guess I will have to get cover that next week. But here are the challenges I did this week.

 

5th challenge: High Angle

Playing with angle is something I love to do, so this was a fun challenge that I incorporated to the portrait session I had this last weekend. Unfortunately I could not convince little "T" to look up. He was much more interested in the bars and mulch.

 I had much better luck with the low angle shots.

6th Challenge: Low Angle

Sneak Peek: CC & T

Last year I had the privilege of doing this little guys newborn photos the month before we moved back to Sioux Falls from Rapid City, South Dakota.  So I was very excited to find out that I would have the chance to do portraits for him and his mom again. CC let me know they would be in Sioux Falls this weekend so we arranged a time to do Little T's One Year portraits. 

Because he is an active one year old she opted for outdoor photos. So in addition to these photos there are a good amount of fun photos that capture his energy.

Creative Processing

One Photograph - Three Images

Whether you are working with film and chemically processing your photos or are strictly digital, how you complete your post processing determines the final outcome of your photographs.

Original image

Cropped image

Artistic rendition

Sometimes I already have a plan for the post processing in mind when I take a photo and other times I just let the photo 'talk' to me. In this case it was definitely the photograph that inspired me to go more creative with the post processing. To me the original was nice but nothing special. The crop... well that is just boring! But this dark stroke artist rendition is eye catching and by far my favorite version of this photograph.

Changing Focal Point

I often take multiple photos of a scene or object changing the focus or perspective in each shot. I do this because I have found that sometimes my original "focus" vision for the shot isn't always the one that turns out to be the most striking image. Here is an example using some more of my air show photos.

While walking underneath these jet engines my eyes were drawn to the propeller on the next plane.

I thought it would make a cool shot to use the jet engines overhead as a half frame for the propeller of the next plane.

My main dilemma was deciding if I wanted the propeller blurry or sharp. Which wasn't much of a dilemma at the time as like I said before I generally take multiple shots with varied focus. It became more of a dilemma while going through my photos to decide which I liked best and wanted to share.

I keep going back and forth. One minute I like the sharp photo, the next I am drawn back to the blurry one. For me the blurry one has this aura about it. Be it a sense of urgency or maybe power, I can't quite figure it out. But whatever it is the blurry shot definitely captured my attention. 
 

What do you think? Sharp or Blurry?
Do you also change up your focus?

South Dakota Sunday: Peaceful Turbulence

As I no longer post to my South Dakota Photo Blog I thought it would be nice to have one day each week that I post a South Dakota scenic or nature photo. To start South Dakota Sunday off I have chosen a few peaceful photos of the turbulent waterfalls on the Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls, SD.

May your week be filled with peacefulness and very little turbulence.

Do You See What I See

Sometimes we can see what others see even if we aren't looking in the same direction thanks to reflections like this one in my grandson's glasses. 

"Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky, little lamb,
Do you see what I see?"

Okay, I know Christmas is way off but this sky photo reminded me of this line in the Christmas Carol 'Do you hear what I hear?"

While looking for the exact line I came across this song I had never heard by an Australian rock band titled "Do you see what I see?". While the meaning of song doesn't fit with my photos it's a pretty good song so I thought I would share it.

 

Sharing with:

Jame's Weekend Reflection

and

Friday Skywatch

WW: Protesting School

Pulling from my archives for this weeks Wordless Wednesday.

 

Quiet Beauty

Two very different locations caught during a quiet moment. 

 

The Terry Redlin Art Center is a very beautiful place but can be very busy.

 

The Empire Mall parking lot, taken this morning before the mall opened. 

For me the lack of people in these photos add a quiet beauty to the already beautiful scenes.

What do you think?

 

Sharing with:

Jame's Weekend Reflection

and

Friday Skywatch

Connections

With so many people present at the airshow capturing people as they connected with each other and their environment was both easy and enjoyable. 
 

The three women and small girl walking toward the aircraft is my favorite, although the young family runs a close second. I think the photo of the young family would be much better if I took out the two distractions in the upper left corner. What do you think? Which photo do you like best?