Photography Friday – Black and White Edition

This month the theme for the Cayuga Nature Photography Club meeting was black and whites, so today I’ll be sharing some of my black and white shots. These include some pictures I’d already made black and white, but also some pictures where I’m experimenting with black and white just for this post. For next week, I’m hoping to have links from the tutorials shared at photo club and to have downloaded the Nik Silver Effex trial so I can share some more experimental pictures made into black and whites using that program.

Photography Friday

I’ve recently joined the Cayuga nature photography group and for next month’s meeting the theme is black and white. As a general rule, I don’t take many pictures with the intent of turning them into black-and-whites, so it’s fun to practice. I’m also getting to try out the new camera bag the boy got me for my birthday and I really like it! Unfortunately, I forgot that we learned about needing a short shutter speed for a longer lens and over estimated the steadiness of my hands when taking the pictures of the geese. I loved the colors and the composition too much to get rid of them though, so you might be able to tell that I sharpened them using photoshop’s smart sharpen filter. From a distance, it looks great and I love that I could sort of salvage these pictures, but it also makes them a lot grainier. And that’s my week in photography happenings 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Photography Friday

This week, I decided it was time to stop being a pansy and bravely venture out into the cold to get some good pictures.  I’ve found it hard to motivate myself to go out for pictures lately, between the cold and the gray, but I actually managed to get some really brightly colored pictures which I liked a lot.  In this first picture, the background was just too distracting in full color, but I loved the shape so I decided to just keep the beautiful red curves.  I also found a really pretty, fall-colored bed of pine needles sheltered under a tree where the snow couldn’t reach.  The colors here were so vibrant, I just had to get a picture 🙂

 

Photography Friday

This week, the Ames Photography Club meeting was a talk on HDR photography, so I’ve been experimenting with that a little this week.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any results I’m excited about.  But I did photoshop this picture I took over Christmas break and I think I like it enough that it’s going to be my entry in the photography club contest this year.  The theme is abstracts and I’ve had a lot of fun taking pictures of things I wouldn’t usually notice trying to get something good for it 🙂  As always, feel free to check out my other work on flickr and if you follow me, I’ll follow you back.