New Work From Your Old Archives!

"Zion Tree"

This morning I read a blog post from an acquaintance on G+, Alan Majchrowicz. It was about "Bringing Life to  Old Photos". I definitely could relate to his words since I also have a habit of reviewing images that were shot years  earlier. The image above is a product of that habit. Whenever I return from a trip I will review all of the images. I will process all the favorites and then it may be months or years later before I go back and take another look through all the "losers". Oh heck, I shouldn't call them that. The favorites were probably the tens out of the group.There may possibly be many eights and nines in the remaining images and maybe a ten that I overlooked first time around. This can happen because my expectations are different immediately after a trip. I usually have a few shots that I am really excited about but sometimes I don't think the final image conveys how excited I was when I initially created the image. Several years later my mind has cleared of all those expectations. Software, my processing skills, and my vision have also changed and I hope for the better.
"Zion Tree" was taken three years ago in Utah's Zion National Park. I may have liked it better as a color image if it had a rich blue sky and better light to contrast with the snow and red rock. The light was flat and the sky was gray. When I looked back at it a few months ago, I thought "it may make a nice black and white". After making all the adjustments in Photoshop I was pleased  but I did feel it needed one last tweak. Most of the Topaz filters seem to be used a little heavy handed  by most photographers but a little bump from "Topaz Detail" worked perfectly to add a little texture back into the snow. I created a separate layer for that adjustment and then masked the layer so it only had an affect on the snow.

My Best Images of 2011

I had a tough choice picking the 10 best this year. Several very good ones had to be left out but I think you will enjoy the images and the stories behind them.

School Days

This was shot at the Dallas Heritage Village. The Renner School is fixed up just like it was when being used as a one room schoolhouse. This has been a popular image at my art shows and it seems that a school teacher is usually the one that is interested.

Lake Martin Egret

When I traveled to my last show of the year in Covington, Louisiana, I stopped at Lake Martin. Both mornings had great conditions for photography and I made the most of it. I could have included more images from the trip than I have. Lake Martin Egret received so much positive response on Google+ and 500px that I had to include it. This day had started out much like the image below, but the fog had just lifted and was letting some sunlight in.

Moon Set on Lake Martin

The pre-dawn skies appeared to be clear while I was driving from my hotel to Lake Martin but things really changed when I got within a half mile of the lake. This was one of the first couple of images I took that day and the last one before the moon vanished in the fog. I spent the next hour shooting like a mad man and ended up with quite a collection of winners from this mornings shoot.

Lightning Over Dallas

Summer had been hot and dry in Dallas but late September brought some rain and lightning. Actually, it was much more lightning than rain and was pretty scary when it moved in. I headed to White Rock Lake and felt it  was much safer to get out of the car now that the storm was moving away from me. I took many exposures and combined several of the better lighting strikes to create this image.

San Miguel Mission

The San Miguel Mission is in Socorro, New Mexico. I had spent sunrise shooting at  nearby Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It was still fairly early in the morning when I headed back to town and wanted to shoot the mission. Normally, I would want some clouds in the sky but in this case the clear blue skies contrasted nicely with the warm adobe walls of the mission. The shadow fell in just the right place too.

View From the Winspear

On this evening I was anxious to try out a new wide angle lens that I had bought. I was hoping to shoot the reflection pond in front of the Winspear Opera House but a large Christmas tree was sitting in the middle of it. That forced me to look for something else to shoot and this is what I found. The new lens at 16mm did very well.

Reflection of Mammoth Mountain

In late August I spent a week in California. A large forest fire near Yosemite National Park had us changing our schedule but we managed to survive. I got this nice reflection one morning in Yosemite near the Tioga Road.

Jellyfish

On Sunday morning before the Rockport Art Festival I went down to the marina and shot a few pictures. I took a few shots of a jellyfish that was swimming near the surface. It didn't have the bright colors of some of the jellyfish photos I've seen but worked very well when converted to black and white.

Zion Tree

I may be fudging a little on this one. I shot it a couple of years ago but only recently did I process it as a black and white. It was OK in color but I really like it in black and white.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Reflection

This is a new bridge that is being built over the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. It has been designed by Santiago Calatrava and is scheduled to open around March of 2012. I was walking back to the car after taking some pictures of the bridge and noticed a large pool of water in the river bottom. I got a little muddy getting this last shot but it was worth it.

I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and Great 2012!

20/20 gallery and several new images!

 If you go to the Galleries page on my website you will find a gallery of the best 20 images from my "Twenty Nights in Twenty Days" project. I am pleased with the results. While doing the project I noticed several other blogs which encouraged people to do a 365 project. I love to shoot but I can't imagine trying to come up with a good interesting image for everyday of the year. On my project I had a couple of days where I wasn't too thrilled about the results. It is just going to happen occasionally. Once I hit the road when my art show schedule starts back up there will be days when it will be quite difficult to find the time to shoot something interesting, process the images, and post it to my blog. Some days there just is a lot of other things that need to get done. I did look at a link from a "365 project"  image that was posted on a blog. The first 20 out of 23 images were snapshots of the guys 3 year old doing things. Several were cute but most were boooooooring! Some were poorly exposed and poorly processed. I would never make my fans suffer through something like that.

Sunrise at Bryce Canyon

Soooooo..what do these three images have to do with my Twenty Twenty project? Absolutely nothing.  Sometimes I review and process images immediately after a trip or shoot. I'm always real excited about some of them but it's still a good idea to review them at a later date. Your emotions, expectations, and memories have faded by then and you can look at what you shot with a new and fresh outlook. Many times instead of shooting new work you can create some nice images by reviewing and processing some of what you already have. Bryce was taken back in November. The rainbow was taken back in late August while in Colorado. It started sleeting on us right after taking it. A small image on the internet probably doesn't do it justice. Zion was shot several years ago.

Rainbow from Mount Evans

Winter in Zion