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dream hat photography > Today’s photo was made from the observation balcony at Vulcan Park. The park sits atop Red Mountain just south of downtown Birmingham. My intent was to take some shots of the city as the light was fading after sunset, hoping to get some nice photographs as the lights were coming on. The view of the city was obscured by a thick haze. The dull light offered little contrast to make the image pop. I have limited experience shooting at this time of day especially in these conditions so it was interesting to try and see what I could capture. In this photograph, you are looking northward into Birmingham. There is nothing of interest to note in the image processing. I played around with several filters but decided to leave the image natural with only minor color correction and enhancement.
dream hat photography > Today’s shot is back to something I really love, landscape images. Since we are technically in the foothills of the Appalachians, we get a certain hint of a “smoky” look against the hills. I manipulated the colors in the processing and applied a modified gradient map layer. When I bought the zoom lens, one of the intended uses was on landscapes. Before today, I hadn’t used it for that purpose.
dream hat photography > The honest truth is that I took some photographs today of yet another water lily. I know, you don’t have to say anything, I could feel it. History was in the making, the daily photo world was about to be turned upside down. It was a bold stroke and the excitement was palpable. All that was left to do was a little post processing and some cropping, no sweat. I was in the zone. I’d like to say it was a close call and that the water lily was edged out by the slightest of margins. But I’d be lying. The water lily came out flat, didn’t bring its best. In the harsh light of the daily photo, it’s day to day and you can’t coast. The water lily wasn’t even in the top five today. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller
dream hat photography > Today’s photo is back to a simple shot. Late this afternoon, I went to the botanical gardens in Hoover, but with it being such a beautiful and with it being Easter, there were quite a few people there. It is a fairly large area, so everyone was spread out over the gardens. I admit that I do not know the name of this flower. My attention to detail in trying to know exactly what I am shooting varies; today was one of those days I just shot things I thought were interesting and didn’t pay much attention to identifying the plants and flowers. There is some post processing. I know that opinions vary in this group on people that like it and people that prefer the images without much post processing. I just let each image guide itself. It is a decision I make on a case by case basis. Hope the purists don’t mind and the critics don’t think I am going to the well once too often.
dream hat photography > Apologies to the people that would like me to identify my subjects but most of the time I just shoot something because it looks cool. This is one of those shots. I have no idea what kind of plant this is but I will try to identify it. The colors, the shape, and the texture caught my eye.
dream hat photography > Feast or famine, why are there so many days like that for the dailies? Yesterday it was all I could do to come up with one photograph for the daily gallery. Today was a struggle to choose. Opinions vary and personal tastes vary so feel free to disagree with my choice. I put the other contenders in the Birmingham Zoo gallery, partly because it was small and these shots are all from the zoo. This shot is a Monarch butterfly but I assume most of you already know that. One thing I wonder about with the group is the work flow that each of you go through. I wonder if you have any special plug-ins for Photoshop that you think really offer some great assistance and leave more time for shooting and less time working with the images. I started this journey with Photoshop Elements 6.0 to process my images. It seems like such a long time ago now. I was originally shooting in JPG format because I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t long before I discovered the benefit of working with layers and also the benefit of shooting in RAW format. It was around that time that I had processed enough images to begin to establish a workflow. I was reading a lot about workflow in articles but so many of the articles applied to photographers that shot a large number of images on a subject, like maybe a portrait of someone. The articles talked about workflows to create contact sheets, to make the process of adjusting the groups of images more efficient. In that sense, it didn’t apply to the way I was shooting. Eventually, I started to notice a familiar routine as I would import my images into Adobe Bridge, open selected images in Adobe Camera RAW, then move to Photoshop CS3. Once in Photoshop CS3, I had my basic routine of renaming my background layer to protect the original layer, creating a blank layer to overlay the background and use the Custom Shape Tool to decide how I wanted to crop the image. Then I moved on to adjusting sharpness, color, contrast, and balance. I realized that I had a workflow, not in the sense that the articles had described for groups of images, but a definite workflow for the way I handle the processing for individual images. With so many people in this group and so much activity, each day as I am working on my images, I wonder what little things I could learn from each of you if I had the chance to observe your workflow, what new techniques I would discover.
dream hat photography > The moon was a great target tonight for image of the day. I had to play with a number of aperture settings and shutter speeds to get an image with the level of detail that I wanted. Yes, there is a fair amount of PP for effect but it was fun to try different things in Photoshop trying to figure out what I wanted to do here. Apologies to the Photoshop wizards out there, I am somewhat limited in artistic skills and Photoshop skills. For anyone thinking that I used a stock image or anything, this was my base image.
dream hat photography > Morning, stream, steam - This was taken at sunrise on a stream at Tannehill State Park in Alabama. The steam coming off the water and the morning light created a surreal mood.
dream hat photography > Coca-Cola crate - In the late 1970’s my grandparents on my Dad’s side of the family reached the stage where they moved from their home in a town about 30 minutes from where we lived, to an apartment in our town so the family could take better care of them. Over the years they had accumulated many things inside the house, but some of the more interesting things were stored underneath their house. In the storage area under their house we found an old wooden crate for Coca-Cola. Inside the crate, stamped into the wood is the name of the company that built the crate, the city and state, and the year that the crate was built (1956). The exterior of the crate is weathered but the wood is still solid. The crate was designed to hold six “Family Size” Cokes which were introduced by Coca-Cola in 1955. The Family Size Coke bottles each contained 26 ounces of Coca-Cola. Today’s image is a photograph of the side of the crate. Some post processing was used to darken and define the edges of the lettering. The aging of the paint and scars on the exterior were retained to preserve the character of the crate.
Feast or famine, why are there so many days like that for the dailies? Yesterday it was all I could do to come up with one photograph for the daily gallery. Today was a struggle to choose. Opinions vary and personal tastes vary so feel free to disagree with my choice. I put the other contenders in the Birmingham Zoo gallery, partly because it was small and these shots are all from the zoo. This shot is a Monarch butterfly but I assume most of you already know that.

One thing I wonder about with the group is the work flow that each of you go through. I wonder if you have any special plug-ins for Photoshop that you think really offer some great assistance and leave more time for shooting and less time working with the images. I started this journey with Photoshop Elements 6.0 to process my images. It seems like such a long time ago now. I was originally shooting in JPG format because I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t long before I discovered the benefit of working with layers and also the benefit of shooting in RAW format. It was around that time that I had processed enough images to begin to establish a workflow. I was reading a lot about workflow in articles but so many of the articles applied to photographers that shot a large number of images on a subject, like maybe a portrait of someone. The articles talked about workflows to create contact sheets, to make the process of adjusting the groups of images more efficient. In that sense, it didn’t apply to the way I was shooting. Eventually, I started to notice a familiar routine as I would import my images into Adobe Bridge, open selected images in Adobe Camera RAW, then move to Photoshop CS3. Once in Photoshop CS3, I had my basic routine of renaming my background layer to protect the original layer, creating a blank layer to overlay the background and use the Custom Shape Tool to decide how I wanted to crop the image. Then I moved on to adjusting sharpness, color, contrast, and balance. I realized that I had a workflow, not in the sense that the articles had described for groups of images, but a definite workflow for the way I handle the processing for individual images. With so many people in this group and so much activity, each day as I am working on my images, I wonder what little things I could learn from each of you if I had the chance to observe your workflow, what new techniques I would discover.
dream hat photography > Feast or famine, why are there so many days like that for the dailies? Yesterday it was all I could do to come up with one photograph for the daily gallery. Today was a struggle to choose. Opinions vary and personal tastes vary so feel free to disagree with my choice. I put the other contenders in the Birmingham Zoo gallery, partly because it was small and these shots are all from the zoo. This shot is a Monarch butterfly but I assume most of you already know that. One thing I wonder about with the group is the work flow that each of you go through. I wonder if you have any special plug-ins for Photoshop that you think really offer some great assistance and leave more time for shooting and less time working with the images. I started this journey with Photoshop Elements 6.0 to process my images. It seems like such a long time ago now. I was originally shooting in JPG format because I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t long before I discovered the benefit of working with layers and also the benefit of shooting in RAW format. It was around that time that I had processed enough images to begin to establish a workflow. I was reading a lot about workflow in articles but so many of the articles applied to photographers that shot a large number of images on a subject, like maybe a portrait of someone. The articles talked about workflows to create contact sheets, to make the process of adjusting the groups of images more efficient. In that sense, it didn’t apply to the way I was shooting. Eventually, I started to notice a familiar routine as I would import my images into Adobe Bridge, open selected images in Adobe Camera RAW, then move to Photoshop CS3. Once in Photoshop CS3, I had my basic routine of renaming my background layer to protect the original layer, creating a blank layer to overlay the background and use the Custom Shape Tool to decide how I wanted to crop the image. Then I moved on to adjusting sharpness, color, contrast, and balance. I realized that I had a workflow, not in the sense that the articles had described for groups of images, but a definite workflow for the way I handle the processing for individual images. With so many people in this group and so much activity, each day as I am working on my images, I wonder what little things I could learn from each of you if I had the chance to observe your workflow, what new techniques I would discover.
Feast or famine, why are there so many days like that for the dailies? Yesterday it was all I could do to come up with one photograph for the daily gallery. Today was a struggle to choose. Opinions vary and personal tastes vary so feel free to disagree with my choice. I put the other contenders in the Birmingham Zoo gallery, partly because it was small and these shots are all from the zoo. This shot is a Monarch butterfly but I assume most of you already know that.

One thing I wonder about with the group is the work flow that each of you go through. I wonder if you have any special plug-ins for Photoshop that you think really offer some great assistance and leave more time for shooting and less time working with the images. I started this journey with Photoshop Elements 6.0 to process my images. It seems like such a long time ago now. I was originally shooting in JPG format because I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t long before I discovered the benefit of working with layers and also the benefit of shooting in RAW format. It was around that time that I had processed enough images to begin to establish a workflow. I was reading a lot about workflow in articles but so many of the articles applied to photographers that shot a large number of images on a subject, like maybe a portrait of someone. The articles talked about workflows to create contact sheets, to make the process of adjusting the groups of images more efficient. In that sense, it didn’t apply to the way I was shooting. Eventually, I started to notice a familiar routine as I would import my images into Adobe Bridge, open selected images in Adobe Camera RAW, then move to Photoshop CS3. Once in Photoshop CS3, I had my basic routine of renaming my background layer to protect the original layer, creating a blank layer to overlay the background and use the Custom Shape Tool to decide how I wanted to crop the image. Then I moved on to adjusting sharpness, color, contrast, and balance. I realized that I had a workflow, not in the sense that the articles had described for groups of images, but a definite workflow for the way I handle the processing for individual images. With so many people in this group and so much activity, each day as I am working on my images, I wonder what little things I could learn from each of you if I had the chance to observe your workflow, what new techniques I would discover.
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