That's Why They Call it Art!

The three images today are actually three versions of the same digital file. I shoot all my images digitally and have my camera set to create a RAW file of the scene. A perfectly exposed RAW file doesn't necessarily give you an accurate representation of what you were looking at but it does give you most of the information to re-create it accurately. Then again, what law says you have to re-create it accurately and besides, you only have your memory of what it looked like to go by now. More than ever, the final image has become your interpretation of what you want it to be. The new version of Camera Raw has an abundance of adjustments that can be made before you even open an image up in Photoshop. Color balance, color saturation, contrast, shadow detail, and many others are all under your control.
These images were made during a 30 second exposure where I gave each car a pop of a flash with a red gel in front of it. The top image is close to the way it opened up in Photoshop without many changes in Camera Raw. On the second one, I adjusted the color balance in CR to neutralize the red cast from the flash. This added blue to the sky, which I liked. I did want some of the warm cast back in the cars, but at the same time I didn't want to lose the blue in the sky. The bottom image was created by combing the first two images. Image one was added as a layer in front of image two. I decreased the opacity to about 58% in order to allow some of the neutral color of the bottom layered cars to come through. I then masked the sky so it was about 85% the rich blue of the bottom layer.
This is a great example of why photography is art! I controlled every aspect of the creation of this image from the time of day, the composition, the light, and the final color. The camera only did what I told it to do, and nothing more.

From Texas to Colorado!

I will probably spend weeks editing and processing images from my trip to Colorado. I'm also a big believer that you should look back at your images a year or two later when you have a clear mind and can take a fresh new look at the images you created. Your memories and preconceived ideas you had have all but faded away. You can now connect with them the way everyone else connects or does not connect to them.
The first image is a little different view of the Petrified Wood Station in Decatur. I know I've shown pics of it before but they have all been HDR images. This is from one exposure. The adjustments you can make in camera raw are quite amazing these days. The adjustment brush and the fill light slider really helped get the most out of this one.
The next two images were shot at sunset up in the high country of Colorado. I just wish the clouds would have pinked up the way they did this evening at my home in Texas. It would have kicked up their appeal a couple of notches. We came across the mule deer buck while on an evening drive from Reudi Reservoir. The bottom photo of aspens was created by vertically moving the camera during a one second exposure.

Turning my storm picture into a scary monster!

The other day I got an email that included a picture of a really menacing looking black cloud. It got me to thinking...I can make the one I took last week look that scary, so I got out my Photoshop and made a quick adjustment with the curves tool. I also masked the ground so it didn't get much darker than it was. It almost looks like a giant tornado now.

Where were you 40 years ago?

Forty years ago I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school. I grew up in the fairly upscale North Dallas neighborhood of Preston Hollow. My father was a well respected surgeon at Baylor Hospital. I was a captain of the Golf Team, a cheerleader, and class favorite. Life was good! Hillcrest High School Seniors 70!
I didn't know much about Woodstock until the movie was released March 26, 1970. I'm not sure when the Soundtrack (album) was released but I owned one and listened to it about a jillion times. It's still out in the garage with all my other records, but no way to play them right now. I also saw the movie a bunch of times and just programmed to record it tonight between 10pm and 2AM. I can't wait. Have you ever noticed how the music of a period brings back so many other memories from that time? If its good memories then its a good thing.
Soooooooo. What was your favorite performance at Woodstock? After seeing this I may have to go with Joe Cocker. http://www.elwp.com/Joe%20Cocker.html
It's dang funny if nothing else. Realistically though, I'm not sure I could just pick one. The Who, Hendrix, Santana's "Soul Sacrifice", Country Joe's "The Fish Cheer"? I probably have a soft spot for Ten Years Afters's "I'm Goin' Home" because I could lip sink and air guitar the whole thing to perfection.
Check this out also. http://bit.ly/4DZFQl After all, this is a photography blog.

A morning at Maroon Bells!

During my recent trip to Colorado I spent a morning at one of the most photographed locations in the country, Maroon Bells. It is not hard to see why this area just outside of Aspen is so popular. Majestic mountain peaks with a clear mountain lake to reflect a mirror image of the scene. This was my second time to spend a morning at MB. Both times the lake has been perfectly calm until about 15 minutes before sunrise then the wind came up and bye-bye reflection. I did create a pre-dawn HDR image of the scene before the wind came up. Once the reflections were gone I decided to move to the field on the north side of the lake and use some of the wildflowers as a foreground. The first two images were both made from a series of three exposures.
As the sun rose higher in the sky I hiked a short distance above Maroon Lake where I could use Maroon Creek in the foreground of the last image. As pretty as it is in August , it still doesn't compare with late September when the cool fall weather changes the Aspen trees to bright shades of yellow.

Something is eating my tomato plants!

I arrived back home from my Colorado trip on Tuesday afternoon. After unloading most of my stuff and sitting a spell I went out in the back yard to check on my three tomato plants. Only one of the three has produced anything but that particular plant has about 40 small tomatoes growing on it right now. I looked at it and thought "whats happened to all the leaves". I soon saw the answer...Tomato or Tobacco Horn worms. Five of them. Two of them were huge. One of them was in the process of eating one of the tomatoes. I decided to take some photographs before getting rid of them. After getting a few nice shots, I realized I might want to shoot a few more in the morning. Unfortunately, most of the eating so far had been on the productive plant. I set them over on the un-productive plants until morning. I figured that could be their punishment for not producing tomatoes.

I took the image below on the following morning. There was still a lot of leaves on this plant and the back-lighting even made the horn worm glow a little. Right after taking this one of the big worms became active. Through my 180mm macro lens I watched him eat a whole leaf. He ate it like you would eat corn on the cob, but much faster. In less than five minutes the leaf and stem were gone. But I still had to decide what to with these little eating machines. I couldn't help remembering a conversation with our Navajo Guide, Tom, years ago. He was taking us on a morning tour of Monument Valley. While we were talking he mentioned the bugs that were eating some of his small corn crop. I said "why don't you just spray and get rid of them?" He replied "they have a right to live, too". Hmmmmm. Well, I didn't kill the horn worms, but I did throw them over the fence into the neighbors yard! It's a rent house and there probably isn't much to eat over there except the dead grass and the dog poop.

From Colorado back to Texas!

After a long drive from Colorado, I finally arrived home yesterday afternoon. Since then I have been trying to get caught up on things but did squeeze in some time to work on some of the images from the trip. These first two were taken about 20 miles south of Eagle, Colorado.

On the drive back to Texas we stopped a few times to photograph different things.The pink Cadillac and the Betty Boop waitress were found at a diner which had closed in Clayton, New Mexico. Betty would have been nothing but reflections if I had not used a polarizing filter.


The Cadillac Ranch is located about 8 miles west of Amarillo, Texas just off the south side of I40. We arrived shortly before sunset. People were everywhere, but finally about dark they all left. The shot below is two images that were combined. If my flash would re-charge itself a little quicker I probably could have created this with a single thirty second exposure.
Thirteen days earlier when we had driven through Electra, Texas we started to see lightning. Yesterday it happened again. As we approached Electra, we watched a small rain cloud up ahead of us grow into a mean looking storm within a period of about 10 minutes. Lightning appeared to strike a tower near Electra. We pulled over and photographed the storm which seemed to have low dark clouds which were rotating around the whole system. One of the neatest looking thunderstorms I have seen.