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Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Weekly Photo Projects, Week 39

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Flowing Away For  +Project 52 B&W  our theme was Flow. I was thinking of shooting something water related, even if it isn't that outside of the box in terms of thinking. So when I was shooting this through my viewfinder I was primarily keeping an eye on the water. I wasn't sure how the shot would turn out once I got it on the computer, but once I saw it on the monitor I really liked it. I got the flowing water, but the brickwork also seems to flow. Blue on Blue Our theme for  +Weekly Photo Project 2013  was Negative Space. I liked the blue on blue aspect of this shot and the detail inherent on a Victorian house. This was an HDR processed shot  to hopefully make the house detail pop a little more. I think it worked out. You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here . My black & white project album here .
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Pigeon Point

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Pigeon Point Lighthouse Pigeon Point was difficult to shoot. For one it was the middle of the day giving me very harsh light to work with. And two a very ugly, but probably necessary, fence runs around the lighthouse itself. So getting a close up shot that didn't have the fence is near impossible. And I certainly don't relish the thought of painstakingly removing a chain-link fence stroke by stroke. Thankfully I was able to find a gap in the fence and snap this. In terms of processing I wanted to emphasize the state of disrepair the lighthouse is in, so pulling out details of both the white walls and rust and decay was necessary. I find that the hardest work I have to do recently is cleaning up solid blue skies. This makes working with photos a little more difficult as I'll DeNoise for the subject then DeNoise far more aggressively for the sky then mask in/out the sky, depending on which is easier to do.
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Weekly Photo Projects, Week 38

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Week 38: Landscape For  +Project 52 B&W  our theme was Landscape. I had recently read up on some infrared workflows and techniques so I was once again tempted to try infrared out. It seems my 720nm IR filter is good with black and white conversion but not so good with doing faux color shots, so with that in mind I shot this. I really liked the outcome. The deep black sky was primarily achieved through the IR filter with some tweaking in Topaz Labs Black & White Effects 2 . The shadows from the bush on the right kind of play with you, I think, as you want to think this is a night shot. Week 38: Autumn Unfortunately I needed to use a backup shot for  +Weekly Photo Project 2013 's Autumn/Spring theme. It's almost a continuation of last week's  photo. In terms of anything special about this hot? I applied the Autumn preset in Topaz Labs Adjust  (on sale for Sept for 50% off using "septadjust") which gave it the warmish tone I had envisioned. Then j...
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Little House in the Valley

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In the Valley Today's shot is an unintentional re-shot actually. I had originally shot this valley almost exactly two years ago back when I was using the Canon SX10is, and had the chance to shoot it again, though not exactly remembering how the first one was composed. It's interesting to compare the two shots. Sadly the originals of most of my Canon work were lost in a horrible twin hard drive failure (computer and backup drive) so I can't look at them in full size. The scenery looks to be little changed over the past couple years, though it looks like the overhead lines have been replaced with what I can only assume are underground lines. Compositionally I think the two shots cover just about the same area, though with different lenses and sensors it won't be an exact match. I do remember purposely catching the road in the bottom left corner of this shot, though I probably purposely made sure to leave it out of the original shot. This shot was made up of five vert...
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Surprise

Because I'm too lazy to re-write the post here (wait for the whole page to load).
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Weekly Photo Projects, Week 37

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Tennis, anyone? I almost didn't use this shot for the  +Project 52 B&W  theme of Sports this past week. I had visions of capturing someone serving, but there was no one playing when I stopped by, and I couldn't begin to figure out what would be needed to shoot myself serving. I wish I had a slightly wider lens to get the corners, I'm right up against the fence as it is, but it turned out all right. In terms of post processing I smoothed out the area behind the baseline so bike marks wouldn't be so visible. I like how peaceful the photo looks. Winter is coming I wanted a shot that showed the end of summer and winter coming, but this is all I got. I do like the spiderwebs and stuff caught in them and the detail in the flower. You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here . My black & white project album here .
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Topaz Labs Adjust

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Before (Left) and After (Right) of one of my favorite sunset shots processed with Adjust I've been wanting to highlight some of the tools and plugins I use often here on the blog because they have helped me learn and enjoy photography. One of these plugins, Topaz Labs Adjust 5, is also on sale this month, so I thought it was a good time to start. I'll have the link and the coupon code at the bottom. When I first got started with HDR photography I was initially disappointed with my photos after the HDR processing step. They looked flat and boring. They weren't like the HDRs I was seeing from other photographers. I then learned that most photographers finish their photos off with plugins, and one of the most popular ones was Topaz Labs Adjust. Adjust was my first plugin from Topaz and in general, and is still one of my most used plugins with my HDR work. Topaz and Adjust have come a long way since I first started using them 3 or 4 years ago. Adjust has moved from vers...
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Popular posts from this blog

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca...
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