Holiday Wishes

Hope all my M3 friends have a great Christmas and are prepared to celebrate a fun new year with our 5D Mark III cameras capturing great images and having a good time.  Looking forward to getting together on the 17th to learn more about our cameras.  We'll miss you Ronal, but hope that next retirement isn't too far away.  

By the way, other than the typed words and a little levels adjustment, there wasn't any Photoshopping in this image.  Just a dark room, a red and green laser pointer, and a 5D Mark III set on bulb with an aperture of 22.

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Putting the Camera Through the Paces: My First Effort

So, the camera arrived this afternoon while I was in the middle of decorating my tree.  I hurriedly finished with the tree, then took the camera to my office to acquaint myself with the features.  With Mike's suggested e-book in hand, I worked through several chapters.  

Long story short, I went back downstairs and tried my first 'for real' shot.  This is an in-camera HDR, using one of the cool 60-some focal points, and an unbelievably high ISO, and of-course, hand held.  

I'm in love! 

Dickens of a Christmas -- and one more

In all of my years of living in Nashville, this is my first time to venture to Dickens of a Christmas in Franklin --  Loved the "junior" fiddler and the harpist was a wonderful delight.  My Bobbies got distracted as they had just caught a jail escaper.  Mike, I like your background better with the Bobbies.

On the way home stopped at the Natchez Bridge and did an in-camera HDR.

Dickens of a Christmas

A fun shoot yesterday.  Perfect day for taking photographs, no rain but cloudy.  Given the crowds, I did a little photoshopping to isolate some of the people.  Some of you may know the lady in the last pic.  I didn't.  She apparently writes and illustrates books for children.  I was blown away with her illustrations.

The "wanna be" ☺  took this a couple of weeks ago in Cades Cover early one morning on Hyatt Lane.  I added some textures to the same image just to see if I could enhance it some.

Mark III comes through again

I think all of you are aware of how crazy I am about my kids and grandkids, so I was pretty happy with the result when I took the photograph of Leigh and her crew for the Christmas card picture.  We were trying to find some color for the background and our best pick was behind the fence with light coming through the trees.  Unfortunately that made the image heavily backlit so I needed to use some fill flash to lighten the crew.  I tested this on our Montgomery Bell outing (thanks Diane) and it worked pretty well.  It did here to.  I simply put on my speedlite 580EXII, fired one test shot, and waalaa, I had the expose I wanted.  Check it out.  Loving that Mark III.

Montgomery Bell church shot. Edited in Nik.

Another plus for the Mark III

Saturday was the Music and Molasses Festival at the Ag Center.  Lots of fun and a great place for a nice family outing.  Normally I don't take too many pictures of children, but I couldn't resist this shot.  It was inside one of the buildings, so I cranked up the ISO to 20,000 (yep, 4 zeros) and took it hand held.  I was amazed at how little noise there was.

More from Montgomery Bell

Water reflection of trees across the lake.  I selected the reflection, copied it on a new layer (control j) and transformed the scale, dragging the reflection up to extend it.  A little tonal contrast, glamour glow and a small levels adjustment finished it off.

A shot looking up the trail going down to the lake.  I added a little red with Nik Indian Summer and then, on a mask, painted back in the original colors in the center.

Is that a person lurking in the grass?  Oh yeah, the photographer shooting butterflies



Used Nik Color Efex - tonal contrast, midnight filter and then darken/lighten center.  Moving the center over the butterfly.  I then brushed in the effect I wanted.

Tree (real original, huh?)
Used Nik Glamour Glow and Fractalius Crayon at a very low opacity

Leaf Abstracts -- using Fractalius Soft Crayon

Grand Prismatic Leaf

Here's hoping I have kinda figured this thing out.

 This turned out to be more adventuresome than I intended.  The magic wand and refined edge was great on the outer portion of the hanging basket and in the interior were a nightmare.  

 My favorite Color Effect Pro for flowers - detailed extractor and brighten/darken center

This was my first playing with the magic wand and refine edge and this background was much, much easier to than the clouds and blue sky above.

Barn Studio Images

Here are a few of my images from our "studio still life" exercise.




straight out of the camera with white balance correction

big change here was adding the wooden table look

a little topaz simplify here

One of my favorite Nik filters