Decisions, decisions.... When to STOP looking for the perfect look.

Tonight we had to go to Azle to take Tinkerbell back to her Mom. I was grateful to not be having to go fight our way through the Ft. Worth traffic to their home, and it was nice driving down some twisty turny back roads that I've seldom been down. (If you never do this, I suggest you try it some time around sundown.) Anyway, we passed across a part of highway that was almost underwater near Boyd, Tx from the flooding of the Trinity River that runs through there. I thought to myself...oh boy, if we come back this way, I'm definitely stopping for some sunset pics of this. Ya know...maybe...if it looks good. :)

So we dropped her off, said our goodbyes and headed back. It was just getting to be sunset. The colors were nothing short of amazing. I asked my driver if he would kindly pull over (RIGHT NOW!!!) so I could take some pics. He generally always complies with my requests unless he thinks I might get killed trying them.

I walked across the road and snapped a handful of keepers and on we came toward the house so I could edit them. Mind you, don't sneeze, blink or breathe improperly in Bowie or some jackass cop who shall remain nameless will stop you for a bogus charge and spend 30 minutes sitting in the car trying to drum up some charges that they think will stick. I used to actually stick up for that person because I thought deep down they were a good person. Boy, was I so so so so so so wrong! But enough about that. Luckily, I wasn't driving and God kept his hand over my big fat mouth so I didn't get us in trouble. My driver is pissed but was polite to said officer. More than I could have managed and I'm sure that they will be after me next. Might as well paint a bulls eye on the hood of my car. All the drunks and meth houses on every damn street but by all means just be chicken shit and stop people for basically NOTHING and then dig till you find some bullshit to tag on them so your captain thinks you are rocking your job. Ugh!!!!!! I hope some day I get to be your nurse. Then YOU will see a power play. Oh me oh my. But I digress....

We arrived home and I downloaded my pics from the SD card and they were just as lovely as I thought they would be. So I picked one to play with and set out on my way to making it fabulous. It should be noted here that I had a conversation last night with a fellow photographer who was using a stand alone version of Lightroom and had not yet been converted to Adobe CC for $9.99 a month. Seriously, people...just do it. No I don't like renting a program either but having access to both Lightroom and Photoshop for that pittance is reason enough for me to continue on with it. I rarely use photoshop on it's own, but I do resize and sometimes remove power lines etc with it because it is easier for me than using lightroom to do those things. Anyways, I was telling my friend about "Dehaze". He said "What the hell is Dehaze?" That's when I knew he hadn't stepped up to the cheapie creative cloud.  So he is partially the reason for this post as well so he can see my DEHAZE in action.

I am posting four versions of the same shot taken with a Canon EOS 70D with a Canon EFS 24-70L lens.

The first has my minor adjustments in it. The highlights and shadows trick. The black/white trick. I DID use his contrast trick. But no dehaze and just Adobe Standard. It's basically just SOOC with minor adjustments. None of these are presets. All just little changes.

The second, I added a Dehaze of +31 .... yes it's random. No I have no reason why.

The 3rd I switched from Adobe Standard to Camera Standard. Notice it reddened out the sky and the reflection in the water.

The 4th I switched to Camera Faithful. You'll notice the sky is less reddish orange and feels more real to me.

I could have gone on and on for hours on this one pic. But should I have? When is enough really just enough? When do we stop tweaking our images and adding and subtracting the tiniest subtleties that probably no one really notices?

I guess it's the same principle as when an artist finally decides that his last brush stroke is truly his last. It's dependent upon our artistic vision and what we are thinking or feeling at that moment about that shot.

But tell me... which one do YOU like best?



Good night and God Bless.

The Unattainable Fortress

There's a place here in North Texas that every explorer longs to visit. Well, actually there are two. One of them, while probably the greater of the two, is occasionally attainable. You just have to be there on the right day at the right time with equipment ready and you just might get in. And then...there is the unattainable. The one about which they say "don't even bring it up." "You know it's not gonna happen." "It's impossible." "People still live there." One guy gets down right angry when it's brought up.
But every so often...about once a year...I go on a drive by just to check it out and shoot some more outside of the fence pics.
So a couple of days ago, after dropping Emma off at home, I decided to detour through the big city of Decatur and take a drive on up that dead end road. Of course, it was the same as always, although they had been tree trimming so there was a pile of brush in an undesirable spot. But here is my shot for this year. I loved this processing on it. Thought it made it look more haunting. And one day...one day my friends, I'll get in. I may have to pay someone but I'll get in.

Until we meet again.....

Let's Talk About Editing - Cell Phone Photography & Snapseed

Editing, Post Processing, Workflow

These are all terms that you've no doubt seen if you are thinking of getting into photography or already dabbling in photography. But if you are indeed "new" to photography you may not know what this means or what you need to do or how to even get started with it. And you've probably seen some smug jerk somewhere saying "blah, blah blah the photograph should be exceptional straight out of the camera. You should not have to do anything but minor tweaks to get the look you want. Everything should be done before the shutter snap. blah blah blah." I like to call these people purists. There's another word I use for them but I'm trying to make this blog user friendly for all ages. 

There are many many many editing/ post processing programs out there today. And much depends on how you're taking your photos and where you plan to edit them. I know some people who ONLY take cell phone pictures. Before you scoff too hard at that, let me remind you that some of the cell phones out now days have capabilities that rival "real live cameras". Currently, my cell phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 with a 16 megapixel resolution.That's not too shabby people. And I can tell you that in low light, it takes fantastic pictures easier and with less noise than my big ol' brand new Canon EOS 70D. So with that being said, if you are a cell phone shooter, you can still take fantastic pics but in my opinion they are just not complete until they've been fine tuned. 

I use Snapseed on my cell phone. There's also a built in editor and downloadable filters but to me, for many years now, Snapseed has given the most bang for the buck. Of course, now it's free so that's even better. It used to be a $5.00 app in the IOS store. I also used it exclusively on my iPad until Adobe Lightroom Mobile became available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Recently, Adobe also saw fit to make an android counterpart as well so now you can use Lightroom Mobile on IOS or Android. Yippee! But I will cover all of that Lightroom business in a later post since it costs money and I'm talking about FREE editors. 

Snapseed offers you a vast amount of controls and tweaks from brightness, contrast, saturation, ambiance, warmth, shadows, highlights. Cropping can be done with free aspect ratio or certain presets for instagram etc. Vignettes may be added, colors modified. There are a ton of things you can do with your cell phone snaps to make them fantastic. 

This is my before shot. It's ok. Nothing to write home about. 

 This my after shot. Much nicer. 

All processing was done in Snapseed in less than 5 minutes for demonstration purposes. 

BTW if you like Bloody Mary's I suggest you head on up to Winstar Casino in Thackerville, Ok. and have one in the Terrace Cafe'. I'm totally addicted now. 

Let's Talk About Editing

Let's talk about editing. 
Sometimes in our excitement to get out and shoot, we can't always frame a shot the way we want. In my case, I saw this Longhorn by the side of the road so I slammed on the brakes, pulled over, got out my camera, switched lenses, put the cap where I wouldn't lose it, jumped out of the car and by this time, the Longhorn was beginning to notice this was not average behavior.He started moving so I hastily fired a few shots. And then he turned his butt to me. How rude! So I got home and the shot on the left was the best of him but if you'll notice, he had a sunflower stalk over his horn, one above his head, one in the middle of his back and it looked like a jungle. I could have said it wasn't worth the time and chucked it but I like this rude animal and I wanted his picture. So I recomposed. Removed the things I hated which took wayyy longer than it would for a pro and now, it's still not a great shot, but it's much better than it was. The moral of the story is this. Don't give up just because it didn't look perfect right out of the camera. Ideally, we would all love that but only the best pros get that option most of the time. Take it into your editing program. I must say at this time that if you are not shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG then this won't really help you nearly as much. You should always shoot in RAW. (And no that doesn't mean get naked and go outside.) But RAW allows you to completely change lighting, exposure, clarity, vibrance, basically everything after the shot in post editing. JPEGS do NOT. Yeah they give you the feeling you can change some things but really you can't.
So ...again...moral of the story is "Don't give up on a bad shot. Some are beyond hope but most can be given a second chance just with a little creative post processing."