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dream hat photography > This is the train station in Atmore, Alabama. I decided to go with black and white to give the station a timeless look.
dream hat photography > Taking a photograph a day has helped me in so many ways. Although I have miles to go, I think I am improving by little bits. The task of shooting every day has made me become more familiar with my camera and has helped me expand my range/comfort zone. One of the other side benefits of both shooting every day and also looking at all of the great galleries in this group, is an opportunity to learn new things, sometimes about photography, sometimes new information about a variety of people, places, and things. Today, I was in the woods intending once again to find a great wooded scene. I was armed with a new lens that I bought this morning – a Nikon 70-300mm zoom. I had really needed the extra range. So, as I was walking back through the woods, I saw a butterfly and was able to use the new lens to catch her on a branch. Yes, I said her. I researched the butterfly while I was processing the image. This is apparently a type of black swallowtail and is a female. This is the first butterfly I have ever photographed. Comments and suggestions are always welcome and encouraged.
dream hat photography > First things first, today’s picture is not very good in terms of color and contrast. It is not especially composed or cropped well, and to be honest, it is not quite square. Some days, I try to photograph things that are visually pleasing, other days the idea is to bring you something of interest from my life. Today’s photograph falls into the second category. At first glance, it will look like a very poor picture of a tree and if it were a tree, you would be absolutely right. But this is not a picture of a tree; this is a photograph of a cell tower. In some areas around Birmingham, attempts have been made to make the cell towers more visually pleasing and to have them blend in more with the local surroundings. If you enlarge this image to its original size and take a close look at the branches you can see they are not real. If you take a close look at the top of the tree you can see the wires and panels that are camouflaged beneath the fake greenery. For all I know, you have similar towers in your area. If so, then you will not be at all impressed. At least in my experience, they are somewhat unique. It was tough to get a good angle on the tower, there is a fence around the base of the structure. There is no PP beyond slight sharpening and cropping on this photograph.
dream hat photography > By now, everyone recognizes this as another entry in what is becoming a parade of water lilies. Like the image from yesterday, the colors are muted. One thing I have been experimenting with is selective sharpening. I use the Quick Selection Tool to select the portion of the image that I want to sharpen. My sharpening method is to use the Unsharp Mask. But sharpening the entire image can sometimes bring unwanted artifacts from the background, and sharpening just the primary area of the image helps it become the focal point. Once you get the area selected that you want to sharpen, refine the edges, then save the selection so you won’t have to reselect should you want to use that or the inverse later. The iTunes selection for the day is by Jimmy Eat World. The song is “The Middle (Acoustic Version) from the “Bleed American (Deluxe Edition)” album.
dream hat photography > Today’s image is a look into the common and mundane but a central element of life in many homes, the refrigerator door. Scraps of our lives cycle across this impromptu bulletin board. When our kids were small, there were always drawings of some sort on the door along with whatever else was displayed. It is common to see appointment reminders, discount coupons, sports teams (in my case the AU logo for Auburn University), flight itineraries if someone in the family has a trip planned, and of course the magnets to hold things up. The PP today was mainly selecting the objects on the refrigerator and applying a filter to make the objects a little blurred adding to the generic feel. I then reversed the selection to get the surface of the refrigerator and applied a mosaic tile filter to give it a bulletin board feeling. Comments and suggestions always welcome, sorry if today's shot kinda sucks.
dream hat photography > The table - Some days it is the ordinary details that can catch your eye. A certain time of day, a certain perspective, or everyday objects in our lives that we often overlook in our daily routine can capture more than we think. After work today, I was sitting on the couch trying to decide what I was going to do for a daily photograph. Looking absently around the room, in the late afternoon sun, the glare from the lenses on the sunglasses attracted me. It was the way the sunlight flared off the lenses that interested me initially. It was a combination of the angle of the sunlight, the placement of the sunglasses, and the spot on the couch where I was sitting. A little movement to either side or a change in elevation would not capture the flare. The sun moves fast in the late afternoon and the light changed quickly. This was actually the first shot. I didn’t have the ISO I wanted but I needed to shoot quickly. The other images I shot of this were too late to get the flare. The table sites just beyond the entry hall from our front door, a chair sits at both ends of the table. In the image are Allison’s sunglasses, a spare house key, a plant that is occasionally neglected, and a phone. Just ordinary things, just pieces of our lives, but that’s how it goes.
dream hat photography > As some of you may or may not have noticed, I have been absent for a little over a week. I went down to the Gulf Coast of Florida to a place called Grayton Beach. So, that makes me about a week behind on daily photos. Depending on how you feel about my photos, it could be either a good thing or a bad thing. After not missing a day of shooting since January 1, 2008, there were a few days that I didn’t shoot at all. It really had nothing to do with opportunity; it was just my lack of effort, pure and simple. It’s not that I have any burn-out on shooting daily. I didn’t miss every day though and managed to take a few photos while I was away. In all the excitement of getting ready to leave and packing my gear, my ac power adapter was left behind. It was a mixed blessing but pretty much kept me off the computer which was mostly a good thing. I may change my mind somewhere down the line but my current impression of the images from the trip are that they are poor quality and not worth sharing. I am not really sure why they aren’t better quality images. Anyway, I am back home but still on vacation. I don’t have to be back in the office until Tuesday and haven’t worn my watch since last week. Needless to say, I am way behind on looking at galleries. I plan to get caught up but my lazy streak is still pretty wide right now. Today’s photo is another water lily (I will pause a second while you get over the shock and surprise). All I can do in terms of an explanation is to tell you that they interest me. Don’t ask me to explain why they interest me because I really don’t know. It’s not like I paid much attention to them in the past.
dream hat photography > Downtown Birmingham has a lot of interesting areas, so lunch hour today was another excursion to the north side of the city. Morris Avenue is just across the line that divides the north side of the city from the south side. The street runs east and west and borders the train tracks. It is a very old street and part of it is old brick cobblestone. They have converted a lot of the old buildings in the area to offices and loft apartments. I was able to get several good shots. After a lot of back and forth, I chose this one. Not much in the way of PP, the photograph really didn’t need any help from me, so I just made a few minor adjustments and cropped. Was there something wrong with my shot from yesterday? Comments always encouraged and welcome.
dream hat photography > Pound puppy – This baby (Pepper) was born about eight years ago. She was in the animal shelter and had been brought to a pet store along with several puppies looking for a home. Our youngest son and I were on a mission to find a puppy, we had just moved into a new house in June 2000. She was a couple of months old and was tiny. Due to her adult size, we think she might have been starved some when she was very young. She is a mixed breed but has a lot of Border Collie. She was a very hyper puppy and we weren’t sure how things were going to work out. We got another puppy (Max) a few months later to give her a companion. They were great friends and he taught her a lot about how to be a dog, even though she was in charge. A few years ago, Max escaped from the fence, he had a talent for escaping. He was missing for a couple of days and we discovered he had been killed by a car. We worried that she would be lost without him. She seemed to relax after he was gone, I think she was always trying to take care of him. She has mellowed so much since her puppy days. She is a total sweetheart. The camera is not one of her favorite things, so it is tough to get her to cooperate for a picture. I sat in the yard for a while as it got late in the afternoon waiting for an opportunity to get a good shot of her. My galleries don’t feature much about my personal life but since Pepper is not usually a willing subject, I decided to share this shot. I almost exclusively shoot on manual and prefer not to use a flash if at all possible. I used outdoor fill flash for this shot to allow me to get the shutter speed I wanted and to highlight her against the background.
This is the train station in Atmore, Alabama. I decided to go with black and white to give the station a timeless look.
dream hat photography > This is the train station in Atmore, Alabama. I decided to go with black and white to give the station a timeless look.
This is the train station in Atmore, Alabama. I decided to go with black and white to give the station a timeless look.
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