Ballet Slippers And Orchid

My last few entries haven't been super exciting - unless you like shoes (and even then...).  I find that I'm lapsing into a pattern of shooting on Sundays (my day off); Sundays I don't feel much like leaving the house, so I just throw something down on the floor and see what I can do with it.

Today I waited (unintentionally) until late afternoon to shoot and decided to just use the available light.  Of course I get all sorts of tweak-happy in Lightroom, so these have been altered enough that you can't really tell how dark the room was.

Anyhoo... I do have a tendency to bleed a lot of the color out of my shots; not quite black and white, but close.  I don't recall ever liking color images as much - even when I took photography in high school I preferred black and white film to color. 

These are my old point shoes - they've been gutted and stripped - I treasure them dearly....





The orchid is now about six weeks old and has fully blossomed.  It's so lovely.  I kill absolutely everything, so I'm pretty happy that it's still around...




We'll be moving soon; I'm going to miss my "space" - but maybe it'll force me to get out of the house and find some more interesting subjects to shoot.

Le Fleur

I took this last year; one sunflower amidst its many brothers and sisters in a little yard on the side of a little house that sold baby clothing and knick-knacks.  They were so tall and lovely as they listed lazily with the heavy summer breezes.  A few months ago, a marijuana dispensary moved in when the baby clothing store moved down the street. 

They hacked all the sunflowers down.

Lightroom 3 Beta 2

I still had this stuff lying around from the last shoot so I decided to snap a few pics with the updated Beta version of Lightroom 3.  I didn't notice a big difference relative to developing the images but it appears that they've made some tweaks when it comes to labeling and sorting (under Library).  Here's a link to video demonstrating the updates.  Every time I went to the page, it froze up so I haven't watched it yet.

Anyhoo...

Shoes

Shoes for Paris...




Shoes from Paris...




My models on this snowy day...

New Lens

The Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens is an ultra-wide angle autofocus zoom designed for Canon DSLRs.  Just got it today - the weather is gnarly, so I'll have to wait a day or two to take it outside and really see what it's capable of.  Based on the reviews I've read, I don't think I'm going to be disappointed *and* it'll be great to have with me in Paris.

Portraits IV

Dancing Light Ghost

This is by no means a great photograph, but what I noticed is that the figure wasn't visible to me with my eyes. It wasn't until I looked at what I'd photographed that I saw this gent dancing down my hallway.

I'm realizing more and more that what we see and what a camera sees are two entirely different things...

Orchids

Portraits III

Portraits II

Portraits I

Watermarking

Watermarking a photo is much more difficult than I thought it would be. I used "The Photoshop Elements 8 Book for Digital Photographers" (2010) by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski to get the job done. This book is a must have for users of Elements 8 - it's really an incredible resource.

LR3 II

Before...


After...


Correction to last post: It does appear that you can make some minor corrections in LR3 (i.e., spot removal and red eye)... I didn't make any corrections in this photo - just mostly playing with hues and saturations to enhance the seediness of this bar (seen in the film, "The Bridges of Madison County").  The sharpness is lacking - I wish I'd had a tripod for this shot.


This door could probably tell a tale or two...


No editing at all on this one (though the sky could be bluer)...

Lightroom 3 Beta

Just downloaded Lightroom 3 Beta and spent about 15 minutes playing with this photo.  What I like about LR3 is that it's fairly intuitive and not as hyper-complex as PSE8; what I don't like about it is that, from what I can tell so far, you can't make any corrections on it.  For instance, there were scuff marks on the sole of the shoe that I would have wanted to correct, but couldn't find a way to do it in LR3 (I did end up later removing the scuff marks with PSE8).  Looks like you'd have to make all corrections in PSE8, import the photo to LR3 and, from there, you can do some pretty amazing things to add finishing touches to the photo before publishing.

As an aside, Christian Louboutins are one of my weaknesses and will no doubt surface on this blog from time to time.  My husband took this photograph, I just posed for and manipulated it.