One Last Look at Rose no 1

I need to photograph.  It’s an addiction.  A good one, I hope.  One last rose photo, side detail view.  Pushed back into the shadows so that only the front and side of the rose are lit by the window and the reflector.  The original photo had more of the stem and I took some others that included more of the vibrant greens of the…well, I don’t know what you call the green parts.

In Lightroom, I cropped and brought out the light tones of the rose as well as darkened the background just a bit.  I saturated the red and increased clarity to give it more definition.  I processed further as a portrait because the white part of the rose reminded me of skin.

It is budget time and I have a proposal due today.  My sister and her children come to town this weekend.  I crave looking around at my favorite blogs and taking more photos but those are luxuries I must deny myself for now.  Sigh…

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  3s at f/16, ISO200, Portrait Mode.  Tripod and 52-inch reflector on white side.

Arched

Lobby view of the Bank of America Building in Houston, Texas.

The building was designed by Philip Johnson and built by Gerald Hines in the early 1980’s.  The attempt of the lobby is to recreate the feel of a classic 1920’s-1930’s urban train station.  It soars giving a feeling of grandeur and even awe; always cool on a hot, summer day.  A spectacular design.

Nikon D90 with Tokina 12-24 at 12mm.  1/15s at f/5, ISO400.  Taken on my way to a meeting so its handheld and shot quickly.  Cropped and converted to grayscale in Lightroom.   Split toning added a blue tint to the highlights and a sepia tint to the darks.

Details, Details

Roses are the most glamorous of flowers.  They are stately, aloof and beautiful.  They are complex, do not give themselves up easily and prefer to be the show-stopper.  To me, they are like an actress, a diva, that dominates the limelight and craves the camera’s flash.

I love to photograph in the early morning when I can make the light mine.  I used my 52 inch reflector to manipulate how the flower was illuminated.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  3s at f/16, ISO200, Portrait Mode.  In Lightroom, cropped slightly, added black and increased light.  Sharpened, increased contrast and clarity.

Illusion

I am, as many of you know, obsessed by a dream of softness.  In pursuit of that and in contrast with the sharpness of other photos, I took this image far out of focus.  Out of focus is, well, out of focus and mostly, it looks bad.  This, however, I like.  It uses black space and creates a feeling (for me, at least) of something barely remembered; craved, perhaps.  It contains a hint of the mysterious romantic.  Perhaps even a voyueristic quality, stealing a glimpse of that which is just out of reach.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/10s at f/4, ISO200, Landscape mode.  In Lightroom, increased black and lights, saturation.  Decreased clarity and contrast.

Nine

My son turned 9 on Thursday.  It is kind of hard to believe but we had a good time.  We gave him a Nintendo DSi as opposed to the Nintendo DS that he has.  On the DSi, you can take photos and he has been taking photos with me.  He is thrilled with it.

I photographed him this morning in a rare moment when I could keep him still.  I am always amazed at the phenomenal amount of energy he has.  Posed near a window with a reflector on the opposite side.

Nikon D90 with Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 at 56mm and Photoflex 52-inch reflector.  Manual exposure, 1/13s at f/4, ISO200, Portrait Mode.  In Lightroom, cropped, brush-sharpened eyes, adjusted light levels, increased vibrance, decreased clarity and contrast.  Used noise reduction to soften.

One Green Dot

In the evening, after the rain, I saw that a hibiscus bloom had been blown off its bush and onto a small table.  The light was a little strange and I was struck by the green dot on the petal.  What strange bit of nature caused it to appear?  I don’t recall it being there when it was in bloom.  Anyway, as Ed says, a continuation of my dark flower mood.  Still, the colors are amazingly bright, aren’t they?

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/2s at f/11, ISO200, Landscape Mode.  In Lightroom, adusted light levels, increased vibrance and clarity, sharpened and cropped.

Little World

The toadstools lasted only for a few hours once the sun came up.  They are creatures of the night.  The pot that these were in is large and they were able to hide under the shade of the hibiscus for some time but they were never meant for the light.  In the prior post, Maggs asked what they smelled like.  That part of yard has many wonderful smells and it never occured to me that these might have their own earthy fragrance.  I bet they did.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/15s at f/11, ISO200, Landscape mode.  Landscape mode saturates the colors and makes the background a little darker.  To add to the dark background, I took the cover from the light reflector and draped it over the side of the pot so that the brown, terracotta was covered.  The silver reflector added white light to the image which made the toadstools pop out, almost as if I used flash.

In Lightroom, I adjusted lightlevels, cropped a bit, worked with the brown saturation and brought the green saturation down.

Toadstool 3611

It rained yesterday afternoon.  We’ve had one other rain in the last 70 days so this was an appreciated downpour.  This morning when I went out with the dog, there were toadstools.  Everywhere.  My favorite were these, inside a pot with other flowers.  I knew they would not last long so I have a few to share over the next day or two.

At a quick glance, these are hard to see; small, gray and in the shadows.  But with the macro lens and a silver reflector, they ceased being fungi; they became toadstools!

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/100s at f/4, ISO200, Landscape Mode.  In Lightroom, I cropped more tightly around my subject.  I adjusted light levels to bring out the white.  I desaturated blues slightly and saturated orange/yellow/red to bring out the color of the toadstool.  The silver reflector made the water caught in the toadstool blue.

One Last Moment in the Sun

I set this in front of a window with Venetian blinds.  I placed it against a black background.  I cracked the blinds open until a small shaft of sunlight illuminated the top part of the tendrils.

This is an orange trumpet flower which had dropped off its vine to be scooped up by my patient hands.  I carefully cut the bloom open to reveal a world destined to disappear, unconcerned that its beauty would pass anonymously.  Instead, it gained one last moment in the sun.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/4s at f/16, ISO200, Portrait Mode.  In Lightroom, desaturated, increased black for the background, increased contrast and clarity, increased fill light, brightened light and dark tones, decreased shadow tones, adjusted green hues, cropped, sharpened and done.

Decisions

I was asked if I still use my Nikon D50.  I do.  It is simpler than my D90 but it produces excellent images.  This photo is a good example.  It was taken with the 12-24 lens, indoors, at ISO800.

Right after a swim, my son returned to the team area and was obviously hungry.  He opened the cooler and took out the strawberries.  I watched him grapple with a decision: should he eat the healthy strawberry or dart off and get some ice cream like all the other kids were doing?  I didn’t say anything but let him grapple and he ended up eating the strawberry.

He ate a couple more strawberries and some grapes, then he looked at me and said, “Dad, after the meet can we go to Brewsters (a gourmet icecream shop).”   I still smile at this memory.  Yep…we went to Brewsters.

Nikon D50 with Tokina 12-24 at 24mm.  1/100s at f/5, ISO800, Portrait Mode.  In Lightroom, increased lights and vibrance.  Toned down clarity and saturation.  Added noise reduction and cropped.  Most of the time, I crop first and then do my adjustments but sometimes it takes doing the adjustments before the crop makes sense.