Monthly Archives: September 2013

Desert Family – Image From My Archives

Keeping with my previous goal of finding new images, “Desert Family” is a photo I made a couple of months ago while in California. My ideal workflow, if I am not on deadline, is to review my images right after shooting because I always want that immediate gratification, which is the beauty of digital. But often, I like to let some time pass before doing significant post processing.

How I Post Processed

My post processing for “Desert Family” consisted of accenting the things I really liked in this image. The bleakness of the desert mountain against the deep blue sky really captured my eye, along with the shadows the clouds cast on the mountain. The addition of the three green palm trees adds an element of life into the bleak surroundings that is characteristic of the desert.  I used Photoshop’s Curve Adjustment Layer and selected specific areas in the shadows and highlights of the mountain to accent some of these areas. I also added a Hue & Saturation Layer to bring out more blue in the sky. To complete the image I used a texture over the sky to give it that portion of the image a more painterly effect.

The Image “Desert Family”

Desert Family

Thanks for reading and you can view more of my work on my website.


Alien Vista – Macro Image

Alien Vista is a macro image I shot several months ago and then got busy or went out of town and neglected to do anything else with it. It was taken with my mighty macro lens, Canon’s MPE-65mm. This lens is a beast, but it allows very close up photography up to 5:1. This would allow taking a photograph of a grain of rice. The downside is the shallow depth of field requiring taking multiple images and using a piece of software to combine the images and their different focus planes. For this image I used Zerene Stacker, which works fabulous for this type of application. It is a fun process, but does require a lot of patience. It is always amazing to me how interesting and often abstract something becomes when shot extremely close up. This is a close up of the inside of a cantaloupe.

Alien Vista, macroThanks for reading and more of my work can be viewed on my website.


flamingo on black background

Image of the week

A new resolution this week is to target one new image and call it image of the week. By this I mean I can either shoot something or go back through some of my existing work and take another look at an image I may have passed by and see if anything clicks. I often find after a bit of time lapses from shooting an image I may see it differently. I think the emotional connection to a shoot has somewhat lessened. Often, I think wow … this is pretty good. Also I know that over time my editing skills are improving and I may have some new ideas to post process an image.  The image of the week for this week is one I shot last year at a local garden. This flamingo looked so peaceful and almost in a meditative state.

Image of the Week

Thanks for looking and reading. More of my work can be viewed on my website.