Today was the day to get out and use the camera during daylight!  I had to take the day off from work to drive my son back to college in Potsdam, NY.  It is a three hour drive each way with plenty of scenery.  The drive up to college would be the scouting phase and then on the solitary return trip I would be able to stop for pictures.

I was not disappointed.  The weather in the early morning was overcast and snowy but by the time we left the house the sun was out and the clouds were disappearing.  There was not much traffic on the roads which allowed me to stop at the various locations to take my pictures.  This picture is from an abandoned set of tracks just north of Lowville, NY on Route 812.  I actually stopped to get a picture of the bridge looking the other direction down the tracks but liked this view better.  It’s true.  Always look behind you after taking the picture.

I also chose this picture because I wanted to contribute it to the Hobby Photographer’s Photo Theme of ‘Lines’.  The theme is about using lines in landscape or city photography to enhance the mood or lead the viewer’s eye through the picture.

This picture works for me on multiple levels.  There are the obvious lines of the tracks and then the telephone poles but the over growth on the right creates another line all leading in the same direction.  I’m going to have to stop here again once spring returns to get this view when everything is not as drab looking.

This will probably come off as whining but I just didn’t have the time today to explore with the camera.  I ended up searching the house again for a subject to photograph.  What I ended up using was our Olszewski Disney Gallery of Light shadow box of Snow White Kissing Dopey.  I chose not to try to photograph the entire piece but focus on the inside scene.

Due to the lighting conditions inside the box I once again used a 3 exposure bracket and combined them using Photoshop Elements photo merge exposure option.  It isn’t the same as a dedicated HDR program like Photomatrix but it gets the picture most of the way there and then I just need to tweak it.

The manual tweaking just wasn’t working for me.  I turned to Topaz Labs Adjust 5 filter to apply a ‘Photo Pop’ HDR effect to increase the detail  and bring out the colors more. The light inside the box produced a hot spot in the center of the picture which I adjusted out slightly by decreasing the brightness locally.

Tomorrow I need to return to a more typical picture.  I’ll have more opportunities as I am taking my son back to college and it will be a 3 hour return trip by myself.  Looks like I’ll be bringing the camera and spotting places to stop on the drive out.

There is only two hours left before this day slips into tomorrow.  I have never had such a hard time capturing my project picture.  I had an idea that I just could not execute on.  My wife had received a bottle of Grey Goose vodka for Christmas and I thought it was a very interesting bottle for a picture.  I was also thinking I could use the opportunity to learn more about Topaz Labs ReMask 3 filter.  Needless to say, I have more work to do in learning the program as well as how best to photograph a translucent object.

Overall it was a interesting learning experience for me.  Trying to setup a place in the kitchen with barely adequate lighting and a make shift background cloth was almost beyond my patience level.  The picture is not one of my favorites but I’m going to use it for today’s post as a reminder of the process I went through and what I still need to learn.

I found some black cloth to use as a background which I thought would provide enough contrast with the bottle to allow me to use the ReMask 3 filter.  I eventually gave up with the filter because I could not get a sharp enough mask in quite a few areas around the bottle.  Some of my problem might have been the lighting, I’ll have to experiment more when I have more time.

I went with a three image photo merge exposure process in Photoshop Elements to create my final picture.  I ended up adding some clarity to bring more detail to the image and words on the bottle.  I guess looking at it again as I write this it isn’t too bad, just not the image that was in my head when I started to create this picture.

I’ll try revisiting this bottle when I learn more about both the software and lighting.

Driving over to town to get bagels for breakfast I couldn’t help but stop to take this picture.  Lucky for me there was no traffic on the road because the shoulder was very narrow and I could’t pull over to get the car completely off the road.  This is a picture from the end of the runway looking toward the hangers of the old Griffiss Air Force base in Rome, NY.  The steam/smoke trail from the power plant was hanging low to the ground probably due to the extreme cold (-15F).

Smoke Trail – Day 65

All the processing was done in Lightroom with noise reduction done in Topaz Labs DeNoise 5.  I cropped the outer fence out of the picture and changed the aspect ratio to 16×9.  I increased blacks and added some fill light to bring out the detail in the snow.  My exposure was a little dark so I added some brightness but also added contrast to bring out the color in the sky.  To get a little better definition of the steam/smoke trail I increased clarity.  Here is the original for comparison…

Time once again to play catch up!  Spent a week on vacation thoroughly enjoying the time away from work and the cold northeast.  Was very spoiled by the weather in Orlando with most days near 80 the whole time we were there.  Traveling is generally a big hassle and the return trip was no exception.  I’m just going to spend the weekend getting back into a normal routine and try not to daydream too much about my home-away-from-home, the Beach Club resort in Walt Disney World.

I was able to keep my 365 project going while on vacation, which should be no big surprise as there is a plethora of photo opportunities in Disney World. I was helped out by the fact that I’m usually an early riser even when I don’t need to be, so I was able to go out for walks in the morning as everyone else was getting ready.  Well, enough rambling, let’s get to the pictures…

Day 55 – Holiday Door

Getting ready to leave the next morning for our vacation I was scrambling to find a subject for my project picture.  The historic church at the end of my road is always decorated for the holidays so I drove down and grabbed a few pictures.  I decided to focus on the red door with the decorations since the there was too much noise in the rest of the image.

Day 56 – Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

We spent the night at my mother-in-law’s house since we would be flying out early the Saturday morning.  With everything else going on I almost forgot to get my picture so I roamed around her house pointing the camera at anything interesting.  I typically see this saying portrayed by monkeys so the ducks caught my eye.  I quick pose on the table and I stayed on track.

Day 57 – Standing Watch

Once we arrived at the Beach Club resort we dropped off our stuff in the room and headed over to Hollywood Studios for the last night of the Osborne Family Lights and Fantasmic before it closes for a refurbishment.  Walking out to the Yacht Club’s lighthouse to catch the ferry I spied this perched on one of the posts.  He was not intimidated by people at all.  I was about 3 feet away when I took this picture.

Day 58 – Blue Waves

Soarin’!  I love this ride and our first full day in a park was spent in Epcot.  Grabbed a fast pass and headed out for other adventures.  When we returned there was a small delay in the fast pass line and I just couldn’t stand there under these lights without taking a quick picture.

Day 59 – Ornate Sign

Sat down near the restrooms next to Pirates of the Caribbean and the first thing I notice is the wall.  The color and texture had me at ‘Hello’.  Then I noticed how ornate the sign was and the wonderful detail in the tiles.  That was all she wrote folks, photo taken!

Day 60 – Fading Beauty

We were waiting in line to see Mickey over in Camp Minnie-Mickey at the Animal Kingdom which allowed me to play with the camera.  Actually I was just getting ready to take pictures, really!  I really liked how this one turned out with the dark background.  I think it enhances the colors of the foreground subject.

Day 61 – Light and Leaves

This lamp post was visible from the balcony off the living room of our villa.  I really liked the black post against the colors of the fallen leaves.  My plan was to get a picture at night with the light on but my attempts all failed.  I blame the camera…  lol.

Day 62 – Flower Bokeh

On one of my morning walks I stopped taking pictures across the lake and focused on some of the flowers I could find along the walkway.  This one was just too vibrant to pass up although I still couldn’t resist a little Boardwalk bokeh in the background.

Day 63 – Snow Post

Back in the northeast on Thursday night and this is what I wake to Friday morning!  It wasn’t as bad as I want to make it out but after a week in Florida I wasn’t ready to deal with the snow.  This was just a quick picture out the back door at my mother-in-laws before packing up the car to finally get back home.

Day 64 – Slant

I made a decision today!  Yes, your applause is appreciated… thank you.  For the last 53 days I have been taking pot shots with my camera hoping to get a picture for this project.  There were a few days where I actually thought about a picture and planned how to shoot it, but for the most part it has been pot luck.  I don’t think this is the actual intent of the project.  Have I been learning about my camera, yes.  Have I been learning about composition, yes.  Have I been learning about exposure, yes.  It just feels like I needed something else…

Now for my decision…  The Hobby Photographer’s Photo-Theme Page runs a bi-weekly theme where each photographer can submit three pictures for review.  At the end of the two week period everyone votes for their favorite picture.  The winner has bragging rights until the next theme’s winner is chosen.  I decided to submit photos for each theme which will focus my on creating at least three pictures with a goal in mind.  I think this will help me with composition and the peer review/exposure will help me improve my overall skills.  This week’s theme is Abstract…

Abstract Words

Scott Thomas, fellow Upstate NY photographer, has a great blog, Views Infinitum where you can read about his journey into photography, view great pictures from around New York State and learn about photography concepts.  I just discovered he uses his blog to run photographic assignments to help newbies like me improve their skills.

This weeks assignment is about the rule of thirds.  You can read about it on Scott’s site by following this link: assignment 17 rule of thirds.  As an added bonus attached to this assignment Scott will be picking a random winner from the submissions to participate in an online photography e-class.  I’m feeling lucky, are you?

Rule-of-Thirds

This was a picture I took early in my 365 projects.  As Scott mentions in his blog I purposefully composed the picture following the rule-of-thirds but as you can see from the original below I needed to crop the picture to achieve the image I wanted.  There was also a little tweaking in Lightroom to improve the mood and tone of the picture.

Original straight out of camera

Single digit temperatures and a losing battle with the sun left me with inside objects for my project picture.  I’ve discovered when shooting inside in low light I need to always use the tripod to ensure a sharp image.  I’m just not very steady at slow shutter speeds.  I also wanted to try more bracketed shots with the thought of combining them using Photoshop Elements – Photmerge Exposure option.

I found this fragrance diffuser on one of the end tables and it looked like it would catch the light nicely while providing a nice contrast to the wood grained top.  The automatic bracketing does work on my camera if you need longer exposure but I was able to get around this issue by setting the exposures manually.  Luckily for me I didn’t move the camera in between shots.

Once I had the three exposures merges in Elements I did a small adjustment to the levels and adjusted the contrast.  The picture didn’t turn out that bad and discovered another nice background to photograph objects against.  After reviewing the in camera pictures of this object I tried another bracketed shot of a candle topper with the candle lit to provide some contrasting light.

Looking at this image today I might have done a different crop to better highlight the detail in the top but overall this image works for me too.  This opens up more possibilities for exploration and with winter starting to set in here in Upstate NY, I’m going to need a lot more indoor subjects!