Two of my passions are photography and nature. I like hiking and discovering new plants, animals, vistas and I enjoy photographing them along with all the challenges that this entails.
I was excited to see these amazing photographs of fungi posted by PetaPixel.
Photographs by Steve Axford via PetaPixel
There are many more beautiful photographs at the link below:
Photographer Captures the Beauty and Diversity of Australian Fungi
Who knew that fungi could be so varied and so beautiful?!
Readers of my blog may have noticed that I enjoy the outdoors, hiking, birding, etc. My wife and I were recently hiking in the recently created Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks National Monument in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
There were many excellent sightings that I hope to write about in the future, but for now I want to tell you about my very first attempt at creating a Panorama using Lightroom 6.
I have only been using LR for less than a year and I have been making progress in learning about the various tools. When LR 6 arrived with “built-in” panorama creation tools, I couldn’t wait to try it.
The Organ Mountains are very large and cannot be captured easily in one shot so I decided to create a Panorama.
I took the following seven pictures with hopes of being able to “stitch” them together using LR.
I wasn’t sure exactly how to accomplish this task so I searched online and found Julieanne Kost’s blog post about it. She is an excellent and gifted instructor. I have used several of her videos before. If you are interested, you can watch her video below:
I heard that when doing a panorama, one should have about a 30% overlap and although I wasn’t too exact about this, I took a guestimation as I captured the various pictures while moving my camera as level as I could across the distant view.
Here is the final result via a thumbnail-ish rendering.
You can see a large-sized image here at the link below:
Organ Mountains, Las Cruces, NM
The image needs a bit more editing, perhaps reducing the “noise” in the sky, etc., but I am pleased with my first attempt. Are you encouraged to try creating a panorama?
The video below is for a new television series, Tales by Light, which is intended to showcase photography and videography.
Below is the first paragraph from an article on PetaPixel describing this series:
“Want an incredible dose of photographic inspiration? Check out this newly-released 2-minute trailer for the new TV series Tales by Light, a new TV series that follows 5 top photographers as they take their cameras to the ends of the Earth — photographers who have an unquenchable desire to capture and share the wonders of this world with the rest of us.”
Read more about the series at the PetaPixel website – click here
Tales by Light Official Trailer HD from Untitled Film Works on Vimeo.
Can Photoshop be used as an overall Artshop?
Did you ever think that you could use Photoshop as an artist’s drawing program? And the good news is, you don’t have to start from scratch! This is an interesting video demonstrating how Bert Monroy uses Photoshop and Google Maps to create drawings of urban scenes. Could this open your mind to more creative ventures?
Nearly a month ago, I published a post about this American Kestrel that suddenly arrived in our neighborhood. You can see the original pictures here. I was happy to get the pictures I did that day since I hadn’t seen this bird before and I was able to mark it off of my lifetime birding list. I wasn’t sure I would get another opportunity like this. As a novice “bird watcher,” this is exciting stuff. I understand that Kestrels are one of the few birds that will eat other birds.
The pictures aren’t great, but as a record of spotting this bird, they would suffice. I use a Canon SX50 HS which has a 50x zoom that goes from 24mm to 1,200mm. One would think that it would deliver an up close and personal view of anything you wanted, but often even that reach doesn’t seem long enough.
Since then, we have watched as a Curve-billed Thrasher took to the offense to try and keep the Kestrel away from its nest and other neighborhood birds have become a bit uneasy as well.
Imagine my surprise when I walked in the courtyard this morning and saw this:
As a matter of perspective, here is a picture taken when we had been in the house only a while and it will give you an idea of the location of the fountain on which the bird has perched.
And here is one last picture of this very pretty bird.
Amazingly, the bird sat on top of this fountain for more than twenty minutes. I was able to get within 15 feet of it and the only thing it did was shift its weight. The bird was extremely alert and it was riveted on my every move. You can envision what a hunter a bird like this can be with those big eyes and talons!
This would be both a birder’s and photographer’s delight. A European eagle owl in the town of Noordeinde, Netherlands likes to land on the heads of people. It apparently has had some experience with humans since it does not seem to be the least timid around them. The bird rests where it lands for a brief period and then is off to find another perch!
A few good photography quotes can be seen at link below. This is the one I liked best. To see the others, visit the linked site.
Let’s face it some of us are just not skilled enough with Photoshop to remove or add certain items from pictures without making it look very amateurish.
I guess Sid Frisjes felt a bit intimidated by wanting to have a forced perspective picture of himself and the Eiffel Tower so he posted the picture below on line and asked:
“Can someone photoshop the eifeltower under my finger? [sic]”
Image via Mahsable
Here is just one sample of the renderings offered:
Via Mashable –> IMGUR
Visit the Mahsable web page to see the others. Some are quite clever in their prankish way!
Like many photo enthusiasts, I use Adobe’s Lightroom and the BUZZ this week has been about the new version.
One of the most highly touted upgrades was the addition of a High Dynamic Range (HDR) merge and adjustment component. I watched one of the webcasts from Kelby One and when I saw the results of one of the HDR-processed photos, I said huh?
Kelbyone, one of the premier training resources for photographers and photo enthusiasts, had several webinar-type broadcasts about the new version.
NOTE: I have nothing but praise for Kelbyone. They offer many free resources to help budding and seasoned photographers. They produce a free Lightroom show every Friday which I am always anxious to watch so I can gather a deeper understanding of Lightroom and learn new techniques/options. So this is in no way a comment on their reportage of the new upgrade to Lightroom. They call the shots as they see them.
Here is the link for their review of the new options available in Lightroom – Kelbyone
After they demonstrated the new HDR component to process an HDR image, I didn’t think it was anything like a traditional HDR photo. I thought that I was just not experienced enough with HDR and I wasn’t appreciating how good it was. After all, over the Internet, it is really hard to get the best view. I figured if Scott Kelby and R.C. were satisfied, it must be good.
Well…several days later, it appears that the Emperor May Have No Clothes. Trey Ratcliff, the father of the modern HDR movement as far as many are concerned, has chimed in and seems to have the same feelings I had.
Read his comments about the new upgrade here:Lightroom 6 and HDR?
What are your impressions of the new version of Lightoom?
The video below shows how baggage is sometimes “sorted” or directed to certain places when moving down the conveyor belt. Imagine if you had your valuable camera or computer equipment in one of these bags and it shifted close to the edge where the arm hits it.
Airport Baggage System pushers at an international airport somewhere. How does the pusher know when to push the bag in the center without spinning it? Only those with brains in advanced technology know!