New Photos From Some Past Trips

Hello everyone.  It has been some time since I have posted any new photographs to my blog.  I have been busy but here are images from past and current trips.

                First Iris of the Season.

                                                                                                              Johnson's Shut Ins

                                                                   Flowering Pear Tree

                                                            Kansas Sunrise over the Flint Hills

                                                                Hanging Purple Flowers

                                                                 New Pine Cone

Last of Winter and Start of an Early Spring

Hello again:

  We are now between the end of winter and the start of spring.  The earthy is coming alive again with new growth and the wild flowers and domesticated flowers are poking the heads through the Missouri earth.  Just a few weeks ago we had an Arctic cold front slide through the area, actually it stayed for a few days.  The air was colder than the water in the local rivers.  The first couple of pictures are variations of the same scene.  Where the trees are white the Big Piney River runs through that grove of trees.  In the second picture I added too much warmth to the picture.  Let me know which one you like best.

 I been reading a book by Harold Phyllis Davis, titled The Photoshop Darkroom, a very interesting book, plus it gives you easy to follow instructions.  One of the items in the book showed how to make a picture using a black box and your photo scanner.  You place your subject face down on the scanner bed and cover it with a black box that you either made or bought.  The idea of the black box is to keep the ambient out.  Here is my first attempt . . . .

I hope you enjoy these.

Reworked Images

I hope that everyone made it through the Blizzard of 2011 with little or no problems.  To keep myself busy, I played around with a couple of old images.  The picture of St. Joseph's Church is blended or fused image.  You blend together three to five images that were bracketed when you took the picture.  The you play with it until you have the product you want, how's that for a technical explanation.

This other picture is from this past spring.  I had my camera in the truck with the AC on high since it was so hot outside.  I saw these flowers and pulled over to take a few pictures.  When I got out of the truck with my camera, the lens fogged up so instead of waiting for it to clear I took several pictures as the lens filter cleared.

Welcome Back!

I have not posted to this blog since last May.  I am not sure where the time has gone it just seemed to fly by.  I retired for the second time at the end of December 2010 so now I am looking forward to spending more time working with photography.

I have rediscovered HDR image making, which is very exciting when everything works correctly.  The pine cone bud picture is a HDR image processed in Photomatix Light.  I was just practicing by taking pictures of our pine trees.

I also discovered a pond on post that is very enjoyable to photograph.  I have included a picture of it, sunrise over Bloodland Pond.