I decided to get off my butt and outside early today.  Not the greatest decision considering how cold it was, but it did allow me to get a few nice pictures during the sunrise.  You never know what a Sunday is going to bring and what you will be doing so I thought it best to explore with the camera before the rest of the family crawled out of their beds.  I do know that one agenda for me today is to find a pair of gloves I can use with the camera.  Challenge accepted!

I walked down the road this morning in the direction of the rising sun.  I endured the cold wind in my face because I knew the walk back would definitely feel warmer.  There are snowmobile trails throughout our county and luckily for me there is one that crosses the road close by.  Being able to walk the fields on the hard packed trail was better than trudging through the snow that would have surely been over my boots.

There is always a moment as the sun rises where the sky is a multitude of colors.  The effect is helped here by the presence of some low cloud cover but it does make for vibrant pictures.  Very little processing for this picture.  I added some contrast, a little clarity and toned down the vibrance some in Lightroom.  I also needed to remove some of the noise I always seem to have when there is an abundance of sky in my pictures.  I’m sure it is due to my camera only saving JPEG files.  Looking forward to upgrading to a little better camera soon.

I was fortunate that a couple rebel snowmobilers decided to venture off the marked trail and cut across the field in the direction of my house.  It allowed for some additional exploring without having to retrace my steps along the road.  The higher the sun reached in the sky the colors dramatically changed which gave me this picture about 15 minutes after the one above.

By the time I finally reached the road on the other side of my house I noticed the this view across the valley. It is taken about 90 degrees from the sunrise pictures and again presents a totally different look to the morning.

Sitting at the computer this morning I was not confident that I would have a good day with the camera.  It was overcast and snowing with the potential to keep inside all day.  Of course, if I had just checked the weather forecast I would have known it was going to clear up by this afternoon.  I wasn’t that smart this morning.  I’ll use the excuse that the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.

We had plans to drive out to the NY State Fair Grounds in Syracuse for the Salt City Antique show which I thought might provide some photography potential.  I brought the smaller Sony with me as it fits in the inside pocket of my coat on the off chance I would be able to use.  Antique dealers do not like people taking photographs.  Everywhere I looked there were signs up stating ‘No Pictures!’.  All was not lost, there was still light when we left the show…

A friend at work suggested we try Quaker Steak & Lube for lunch if we do venture out to the show.  It is just up the road from the fair grounds and I can tell you now it was worth the trip.  The food was better than I anticipated and I enjoyed all the cool props throughout the building.  I did manage to sneak a few pictures and almost considered using one for my project picture.

We eventually made it home with about an hour to spare before sunset.  The temperature did not get above the mid teens but there was no wind which allowed me to wander around outside for a longer time before my finger tips begged for warmth.  The sun was not obscured by the few clouds in the sky and produced a brilliant orange hue on everything.  I particularly liked the look of the fence at the property line (a favorite subject when stuck at home).

I liked the color and texture of the post in the foreground.  I tried a few different angles but felt this one with the remaining fence posts blurred in the background made for the best composition.  I kept the processing simple on this picture.  It was fairly close to what I wanted straight out of the camera.  I added a little contrast, a little clarity and a small  temperature change after cropping to a 2×3 ratio.  I realized when I was all done and happy with this picture that I have used this before at the start of my project.  I like the picture above better than the earlier one.

Here are a few of the pictures from the interior of the Quaker Steak & Lube restaurant.  The first is a little busy looking and I had more than an amble amount of lights in the picture!

The second one is of the neon sign hanging on the wall in the top left corner of the first picture.  I let the camera automatically adjust for the brightness and then adjusted the exposure a little more to get the background to disappear.

I guess the bone head play yesterday was for the best.  Today turned out to be a nicer day to take pictures outside.  It wasn’t any warmer but at least the sun was out and there was better light.  I returned to the scene of yesterday’s picture, the cannon in front of the fire house and managed to get better views then before.

I don’t actually recall when the cannon was erected but it is a fitting symbol for the town’s namesake, General William Floyd.  I live in the Town of Floyd in Oneida County, New York.  William Floyd was born in Long Island and served in the Suffolk County Militia during the Revolutionary War.  He was an original signer of the Declaration of Independence and served as a member of the House of Representatives for New York.  He eventually moved to our area of the state settling in the hamlet of Westernville.

There was a wide range between the light and dark areas of this scene.  I did not want to lose any detail from the darker cannon so I set the camera to take a 3 bracket set (-1/0/+1).  I combined the pictures using Photoshop Elements but the resulting image was still a little dull to me.  I used Topaz Labs Adjust filter to brighten the image and intensify the colors.

I have quite a few more views of this cannon.  I think I’ll see what else I can create.  I know there is a history theme on G+.  I’ll do some more research and see what I can create.  Looking up the info about William Floyd has peaked my interest.  I’ve lived in this area for over twenty years and I’m still discovering new info. Time to do more than just take up space…

Alright, I’ll admit it, it was a stupid thing to do.  I could make excuses but in the long run I wasn’t focused on the task at hand.  I stopped on my way home from work to take pictures of a cannon on display in front of the town fire hall.  It was overcast and snow on the ground but the dark cannon would stand out nicely against all of that.

I grabbed 10 – 15 pictures from various angles and felt good that I would be able to create a picture for my 365 project from the images I captured.  When I got home I plugged the camera into the computer and started the process of transferring the pictures.  I don’t even remember what I did to distract myself and interrupt the process but I saw the pictures on the screen, unplugged the camera and proceeded to delete the memory card. As soon as I returned my attention to the computer I realized I never clicked the ‘Import’ button.  Aaahhhh!  What a bone head mistake!

I lowered my head, grabbed the camera and started wandering the house for a new subject.  My son just went back to college yesterday so his room was fairly empty.  I noticed this game on the floor and thought it would work as my new subject.  I liked how it seemed to jump off the blue carpet.  I stepped away about eight feet so the flash would not be as strong and clicked away.

After yesterday’s success at creating a landscape picture for my project and the Hobby Photographer’s Photo Theme I was looking forward to processing the cannon pictures.  I have wanted to stop and photograph the cannon for quite a while now but always seem to drive by.  Hopefully there will be an even better day soon to return and get the pictures I lost today.

Lesson learned!  No more immediate deletion of the camera’s memory card until I am absolutely positive I have the images on the computer…

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…