Worked On

"Worked on" is what photographers say when they have made adjustments to a photograph. In the days of black and white prints made in a darkroom with an enlarger, "burning" and "dodging" were techniques of darkening and lightening individual areas of the print. Now that we work digitally, some of the techniques are different, but the effect is the same. Generally, I make very few changes in the images I post, but in this image, I darkened the sky a bit to give it detail, and then the grasses in the foreground were too dark to reveal their patterns, so I lightened the whole foreground area, and then increased the contrast just a bit. The trick here is to not have any changes that I made seem obvious. I hope this looks "normal" to your eyes.

A Nice Morning for Seagulls

We went down to the promenade by the harbor this morning, thinking it would be a nice place to have our coffee. It was a perfect day, with warm temperatures, a clear blue sky and almost no wind. A perfect day for sitting and watching the water. Guess who decided to join us? We each had a scone to munch on with the coffee, so I am guessing that our visitor was hoping we would feed him as well. But we didn't. It is not good to encourage that behavior. The thing that I liked about this photograph are all the subtle shades of blue in the water and the sky.

Invertebrate Biology

As I drove by the harbor today on the way home I saw a whole group of people down on the sandbar with shovels and buckets. I have never seen so many people in a group on the beach. So I screeched to a stop, jumped out, grabbed the camera, and started photographing. I began shooting from a distance, and then gradually moved in, until I was standing at the periphery of the group. When there was a break, I asked the professor if it was a class, and he said it was a field trip for a college class in invertebrate biology. I asked, because I knew you would all want to know! Even thought they were in public, I didn't feel comfortable moving in for close-up views of the students, so I worked at a distance to find interesting silhouettes.

Fresh Paint

I told you I was painting the garage doors, and even showed you a photograph of the doors after the first coat of primer. Well here is a close up after the final coat. Here's the thing I love about this - I loved the old paint on the doors, cracked and peeling. So now that it is painted over, I love that it is not smooth and perfect, but that you can see the texture of the old paint under the new. The texture is brought out by the late afternoon sunlight raking across the doors. Gives it character, I think.

A New Level of Stupidity

I decided to drive out to Southold last night after supper, with my car full of telescopes, to do some observing, since we had such wonderful clear skies. On the way out, I realized that I had not shot anything for the blog, so I started looking around. Then I saw the view in the rear view mirror of the car, with a line of cars behind me with their headlights on. "I can make some kind of photo of that" I thought. So I got the toy camera, and aimed it at the mirror, while keeping my eyes on the road, and started shooting pictures blindly. I was NOT looking at the camera. When I stopped, I looked at the photos and found this one. What is cool is that, at first, you are not sure what is going on. When I snapped this one, I accidentally included a view under the mirror, as well as the view in the mirror, and it included this car passing me on the right. Kind of a cool photo, because you are not sure what is going on at first, right? See I told you it would be a doozy!

Grandparents

At the end of the service in church today, they asked all the grandparents to stand, and then they said a blessing for all of them. There were a lot of grandparents in the church, but this group was just across the aisle from me, so I concentrated on them. I thought I had a good picture, but as I look at it now, the expressions give us no idea of what is going on. Wonderful faces, though, don't you think?

I Can't Make Up My Mind

Some time back I posted a close-up photograph of this wildflower border garden on the edge of the road, just up the street from me. I mentioned that there were a lot of flowers and a white gate, but the light was such that I couldn't include very many flowers or the gate in the photograph, if I remember correctly. So I have been watching the flowers all summer, and today, on the way back from the recycling center, the light was perfect, and, as a special treat, the gate was opened half way, which gave me a better view of it. So this is good, except for the life of me, I cannot decide which photograph I like the best. So I will leave it up to you. These flowers are really beautiful, aren't they?