Huge Monsoon clouds rolled in yesterday afternoon but other than a few sprinkles,
we were mostly hit with strong winds. This photo was taken from my window upstairs.
For added drama, I converted to black and white and applied some contrast in Topaz.
Slow shutter speed and deliberate camera movement of Prickly Pear Cactus and a Mesquite tree.
I’m thinking about fall colors today and the late day sun makes this look kind of like a fall scene.
You’ve probably noticed that my blog has a new look. The image on top will change
each time you refresh the page. You’ll ultimately see 3 different panoramas. Two are of
the McDowell Mountains. (I live 1/3 over from the left). The bluish one is the Superstitions.
Each panorama is made up of 7-10 vertical images. I combined them with Photoshop.
For the past year and a half, I’ve been putting up with extreme slow downs in Photoshop.
(you thought I was going talk about aging, didn’t you 🙂 ) Because I haven’t had much time
for photography, I’ve put up with it but when I started having to restart Photoshop after
only one simple task, I finally took the time to figure it out. Not that I hadn’t tried a million
things already…including buying more memory…but this time I googled until I found an
answer. Long story short…FONTS!
How can you have a proper Halloween, for instance, without these?!
Yes…I admit it. I’m a nut for fun fonts. I have animals, flowers, holiday themes, etc.
I have hundreds, I’m sure! Well, a single font or maybe more had become corrupted.
The simple solution (for me anyway) was to turn off font preview in Photoshop.
Problem solved! My memory is running at 100%. I then turned font preview back on
but chose “small” preview and so far so good.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could do something equally simple to get ours back? 🙂
No…not a layer in Photoshop. I wish it were that easy! With the topsoil down it was
time for a layer of of crushed rock. This time I got a shot of the truck unloading it.
I can hardly believe it but I covered both the front and back yard in a day and a half!
I’m beginning to believe that… yes…I am a super woman….a nutty super woman 🙂
The next layer is rip rap for the washes.
Even though it took us almost twice a long to get home as it did to drive up, we really enjoyed our visit
to the Flagstaff Arboretum last Sunday. We went to catch the last of the wildflowers but as it turned out,
there were practically none. There was this Lavender, though. I created a modified Orton effect.
Of all my Barrel Cactus, the red one is the most striking. It’s so brilliant, you can’t help but say WOW!
I had high hopes for a full circle of flowers but maybe next time. Here’s a few shots from yesterday.
Tech info: Slightly overcast day. Canon 5DMK2, Canon 180 macro lens, ISO 200, F/13, 1/125th sec, plus 1/2 stop.
There were hundreds of these big fat red flies at the Flagstaff Arboretum this past Sunday.
I assumed it was a Flower Fly or Bee Fly but it’s a different family called Tachinidae.
This particular one is called Adejeania vexatrix.
I’m always reminded of horror movies when I see beauties like this 🙂
On Monday night, we had an incredible lightning storm. The strikes were so close and were
so bright that it would look like daylight for a few seconds. Even though there wasn’t any rain,
it would have been too dangerous to go outside but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to
catch some lightning so I ran upstairs, opened a window, held the camera against the window
frame and held the shutter for 30 sec. I kept shooting for about 10 minutes and caught lightning
in almost every shot. The following were my favorites. Where was my tripod? Somewhere else 🙂
Canon 5DMK2, Canon 24-70, f/6.7, ISO 800, 30 seconds
Canon 5DMK2, Canon 24-70, f/8, ISO 800, 30 seconds
At ISO 800, the noise was almost non existent. The color cast was interesting this time but I liked
how it worked with the artistic blur so I didn’t change it. All I did was bump up the contrast a little.
Ansel Adams said that the key to good photography is visualization. It really does make a difference
if you have a definite goal in mind for a photograph. At the Flagstaff Arboretum, there’s a bench tucked
in a little Aspen grove. It’s a scene I can’t resist. The last time I shot it, it was surrounded by Columbine.
This time, the light was a real challenge so I shot it with three ideas in mind.
The first is an HDR which means I took 3 shots to capture the best in the highlights and shadows.
I then used Topaz Simpify 2 to knock down the edges and add a little more color.
The second shot is in Infrared which always works well in bright light.
The third image is an abstract. It’s the result of intentional camera movement and my favorite way to shoot.
I plan to go back the last weekend in September when I hope to find the Aspen in full fall color.