"Gallery WIndow": Lots of DA stuff in this, mainly expunging bright light lights from all the ceramics and straightening the windows and cloning and NeatImage and healing and boosting saturation wiith Kyoto color (Flaming Pear) and simplifying with Buzz Simplifier no. 1 and...lions and tigers...and bears oh my...Portion of the SOTA Gallery window on Pine Street in Philly. 

"Pink Dogwood": Blossoms from a tree down the street. Shot in studio. 

"Melograno Flower Box": A DA of something I shot on Sunday at a restaurant near church. 

"Parrot Tulip": Bought two of these at the florist on Saturday. Liked the colors and textures of this one best. 

"Jewels": Raindrops on the leaves of a bush next to church today. The enitre bush was covered with these jewel like raindrops and they caught my eye as I walked by. Shot with the camera in macro mode and with a 10x close up filter. 

04/22/2006

"Double Tulips": A little patch in the Kater Street Garden that I took last Saturday. My outdoor flower shots are tempered by my not being able to control the light and the subject. But this little patch of touble tulips stayed still and I thought they came out very nice.

04/21/2006

"3": Uh-oh!

"Yellow Red Tulips": Today's little PS project. 

"Popped": Got some poppies from the Sunday florist (Pure Design) and two pods. One of the pods opened. 

04/18/2006

Pansies I & II: So I saw these great flower boxes on the way home Saturday. Pansies, not my fav flower at all....I mean really the little buggers are so hearty you even see them every where in the middle of winter around here... do have some great colors and these looked very nice and were at eye level so they were easy to shoot. I put my 10x close up filter on and was shooting away when someone from inside the house came out. Well as I was not doing anything particularly wrong that I knew of, so I did not let her phase me. We had a little chat and noted that the flowers did look rather nice that day. Then she asked for a print or two and I side sure and even showed her a preview. She went back in and I shot some more. These are two of what I got. Gotta get the prints ready so I can take them by.

"Pink Cascade": Bought these on the way home Saturday and did not get to shoot them until Sunday night. I processed them today.  

"Sunday Morning III": My sister asked me to take pictures of our family church for a booklet she is preparing for the church's 100th anniversary this year. Guess this is really sort of Sunday afternoon from the shot time of 12:33 PM. I metered off the front chandelier light of the row of lights causing the background to be mostly dark except fot the rosette stained glass window in the background. 

"Easter Egg Net": Water drops placed on a piece of nylon netting refracting an Easter basket and eggs in tbe background. Happy Holidays everyone! 

04/14/2006

'Suburban Reflections': An architectural abstract. Distorted reflections of the Suburban Station Building in buildings of Penn Center Plaza across JFK Boulevard in Philadelphia, PA.

04/13/2006

"Stock Exchange Dapples and Reflections"

Oh my...late again....been depressed about something or other....not sure what. Hopefully it will pass. So I was perusing items that I saved on my hard drive that I never processed and found one that I took in Dec'03 with my Fuji S602Z. Great camera. Been meaning to take it out again sometime, but I have really so bounded with the Fuji S7000 that I don't know what the results would be. Hope they'd be as good as this...well I like it...and I have no idea what I'm going be like when....well if....well when....well...we'll see.

"The Palms": We get these every year at church. I believe they are Lion Palms? Anyway I came home with 4 and tried an linear angle abstract with them. Like the gradation of the greens and, of course, the lines.

04/11/2006

Well I seem to be a day late and at least a dollar short...again! My Refraction of Light challenge entry did Ok. Got through round 1 of the MS Challenge but unless Nasti took a picture and dropped her camera (God Forbid!) while she was taking it, I don't think I'll make it past round 2. Heck, she's good the only way she'd not move on to the next round would be if she could not get the image out of the camera. Great cause. I will try it again next time around.

04/10/2006

Oh my...well....the yellow challenge was interesting. It tried a few different things. One that I put it that did not enter was "Two Sunflowers". As you can see, I did not use my normal black velvet background instead using a piece of heavy yellow construction paper. It did not do to bad, in fact it was on three sites today....go figure. Always happens, I shoot more than one thing for a challenge and end up usually putting the wrong one in.



I really liked my challenge entry cause it was very different for me. I made some changes per suggestion received in the challenge and it won a site today as well. So maybe I wasn't entirely wrong for once. I am still fascinated that the drop turned out so well in this as it was shot at 1/16 sec.

"The First of Spring": A little select desat. 

"City Sunset Reflections": Took fhis back in 2002 on the same day as "Life Un-Imitating Art" (see 04/01/2006 entry). 

"Petal Abstract IV": I went to my Sunday florist after church, before going to work, and bought a few flowers. Shot this in the office on Sunday. Lighting was a combination of the office and the later afternoon sun streaming in the windows on the west side of the building. 

04/06/2006 "Office Shadows"

I had a shift change for a couple of days and it has just thrown my regular routine off. Sorry this is so late. This past Sunday, in between church and work, was a fairly good shooting day. Had a nice time....even at work where I shot this. I just turned and... well you know its something you see that you hope you can get in the camera they way you see it in front of you and this sort of turn out that way. Later afternoon soon shining through a windows with the shadows of the blinds on a fine natural composition. I made a few adjustments for camera distortion and the regular processing routine did the rest.

"Le Petite Dejeuner": I was going to use the original of this for the Yellow III Challenge but went a different direction....BLUE....LOL! No, just a different concept in yellow....so, of course I get told it's maybe TOO yellow...so maybe I should have gone with blue....Anyway this is the daughter of two of our choir members at church. I wanted to try something a little different DA wise and got a new magazine and followed some steps and made some of my own changes. 

"Primary Drops": Set a RainX treated mirror in front of my computer monitor displaying primary color stripes, dropped some water with an eyedropper and ...well there it is. Later! 

"!9th and Market III": Today's weather really negated yesterday's. But I'm off tomorrow so we'll hope for the best. Shot this on the way to work yesterday. The curved corner of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange building across the street from the lines of the Commerce Square Buildings. 

"A Delightful Spring Day": Not warm, not too cold, brilliant sunlight. Today was a keeper. 

"Life Un-Imitating Art": This was my alternate Best of 2002 Challenge entry. Dusted off the old CD's and reprocessed. This was my first POTD at a couple of sites and even won a second place on Kodak when they had monthly prizes, though it never won a POTD with them....hmmm...guess I'll re-enter it. The processing was a bit different from the original in that I cloned out a set of parking lot lights in the lower corner right over the boy by the easel/architectect thing behind the many with the Binonculars.
The premise of the picture was that they were tearing down a building across the street from where I worked. On the building was a mural. The mural was sometimes called the Comcast Mural, as Comcast sponsored it. The building was being torn down to make way for...you guess it...the new Comcast building....only they never started it until about 3 years later. The irony of the situation is that the mural was actually titled "Symbolic Building of a City". I just saw this and took it and that was it. But there was more to see when I uploaded it. The juxtaposition of the really wrecking crane and the construction crane in the mural along with the wrecking hooks dangling from the real crane hanging over the top of the mural. See what is left of mural and you see some people gathered looking up in awe of what was a new beautiful piece of architecture in the mural which has been replaced by the real life crane. A news conference for the new construction turns to a news story of protest of the destruction of the building and the mural.
I was always please with this image and I hope you are, too. Later it's late....don't forget to turn your clocks ahead!