All Kinds of Things Going On

So join in the fun!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might have noticed that I was gone for a while. I’ve moved from Cambridge UK to St. Louis Missouri. Also, this blog is moving. My new location is Photography Journal Blog Volume 2. I’d love to have you follow me over there. My first blog’s media library is almost full so now and since moving seems to be my theme this year, I decided to make the leap.

The new blog has a very similar title because it will have similar content. I’ll still be blogging about photography, various projects I am working on and a lot about my editing process. I’ve rejoined the St Louis Camera Club and was pleased to have received an Honourable Mention in a recent competition:

ISO 1250 22mm f/9 1/40sec

I’ve written about this photo before and if you would like a refresh on how I created it, you can find that here.

Serengeti Morning

I was working on some of my Tanzania photos this past week as part of a project I’m putting together with my oldest child. One of our safari drives in the Serengeti was an early morning one that allowed me to take a few sunrise photos. I’ve never really taken a lot of sunrise photos and I think that shows when you compare them with other types of photos that I have taken. This file below though is one that I just revisited and reprocessed that I was pretty happy with:

ISO 2500 f/14 1/60sec 22mm

To me, one of the biggest challenges of sunrise photos is that the real thing is pretty spectacular and that can be hard to capture in camera. I’ll keep working at it though! This particular file was taken in December 2017 with a Canon 50D and a wide-angle lens. Another photo that I processed this week with the same set-up and for this same process I posted here.

Added to Lens Artist Photo Challenge, Morning. This made for a great challenge topic for me this week.

Cheers!

Wordless Wednesday: Ngorongoro Landscape

ISO 800 f/18 1/640sec 10mm

Added to A Photo A Week Challenge, Peaceful Place.

Cheers!

April Squares: Top Shots, Malta

ISO 3200 f/9 a/30sec 18mm

Day 18, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: July 23, 2018. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Mdina, Malta. The wonder of Malta in my opinion is its history. Seemly everyone has traipsed over the island. The apostle Paul was shipwrecked on the island, others arrived in a more deliberate fashion.  We came for both the history and the sunshine and were not disappointed.

Thoughts on the Edit: The ISO was set high as a way to compensate for the dark interior of the cathedral. The resulting noise was left in. I tend to leave noise in my photos, this is just a matter of personal taste. The photo has the Luminar Look, Too Cool for School, added. On another layers I added the golden hour filter and the Orton effect.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

April Squares: Top Shots, Alhambra

ISO 1600 f/13 1/500sec 15mm

Day 15, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: April 7, 2018. The Alhambra in Granada, Spain. A beautiful cultural site. The Alhambra is sprawling and there are a few different ways you could approach your visit. We chose the audio guide, which was probably best considering how many photos I wanted to take. I have many lovely landscape images but for this challenge I chose a detail shot instead.

Thoughts on the Edit: After applying the square crop, I bumped up the details slider. I have added the Luminar Look, Authentic Randy, and a vignette.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

April Squares: Top Shots, Hadrian’s Wall

ISO 800 f/13 1/1000sec 16mm

Day 7, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: August 16, 2017. Hadrian’s Wall, several spots along the Wall are maintained by English Heritage

Thoughts on the Edit: Although now a square, the original file was captured with a wide-angle lens. The edit has the Luminar Look, Camden Desat, applied. I also experimented with the Orton effect filter, using it on two layers, the initial edits layer and the final edits layer. I’ve not ever tried that before and what I was specifically working on was the look of the sky.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

Even At A Distance

It was almost two years ago that I took this photo:

ISO 200 f/16 1/250sec 21mm

Taken on a drive along the Normandy Coast, this landscape still resides in my mind as one of the more beautiful places I have ever been. I pulled out this file yesterday and this morning created an interpretation of it:

ISO 200 f/16 1/250sec 21mm

I started with some basic edits that included straightening it a bit while I was cropping. I removed some dust spots with a combination of the erase and clone and stamp tools. I added the Luminar Look, Soft and Dreamy Faded. Within that look, which is applied at 100%, I made some adjustments to the filters. On a separate layer I then applied the Orton Effect filter and a vignette.

Your thoughts or questions about the edit are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to the Lens-Artists Challenge, Distance.

Made with Luminar: St. Peter’s Basilica

Yesterday I posted this photo:

ISO 250 f/0 1/400sec 16mm

As a companion photo, I have this image:

ISO 1250 f/9 1/100sec 22mm

Both photos were edited in Luminar 3. The first photo has the look, Dreamy Film, applied at 65%. The second photo has the look, Documentary Film, applied at 100%.

The first photo was shot from the top of St. Peter’s Basilica and the second from the ground looking up to the Basilica in the skyline. Not only does where you chose to shoot your photo change perspective of the subject but it is my opinion that how you choose to edit it does as well.

Your thoughts on either image are welcome below. This post is a response to Lens-Artist Photo Challenge, Change Your Perspective.

Cheers!

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts includes any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

What I Am Working On: A Continuation

The file I chose to work on this past week was a continuation of and a revisit of work I have done in the past. The file under construction is this one:

ISO 250 F/9 22mm 1/500 sec

An older edit can be found here. Recently, I posted about using sliders that I don’t often use and this edit is a continuation of me working on using them. The resulting edit is this one:

ISO 250 F/9 22mm 1/500 sec

Prior to conversion to black and white, I used the custom white balance, luminance, dehaze, and polarize filters. It’s then converted to black and white with a red filter. The matte look and Orton effect filters have been applied and it has two vignettes applied to it.

A lot of filters but I am pleased with this edit, for now. The photo was taken a few years ago from the grounds of the Monte Cassino Polish war cemetery and is a shot of the nearby Monte Cassino Abbey  It was a day trip from Rome, and a memorable day from a fabulous holiday.

Your comments or questions are most welcome below. This post was inspired by the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge which has the theme Special Spots Shots for this week.

Cheers!

Favorite Photos of 2019

It’s fun to go back through the year’s blog posts and look at what I worked on. For this week’s Lens-Artists challenge participants were encouraged to pick some favorites for the past year. I went through the year and from last January picked this image:

ISO 200 22mm f/16 1/400sec

The original blog post it appeared in is here, but I chose it as a favorite because the edits are minimal and the composition simple, two elements that often turn up in my work.

This past year I also launched a weekly wrap up of daily photos taken with my iPhone. From that series, this is a recent favorite:

As Shot

The original post is here, but this is a favorite photo because I liked the image just as it was and felt no need to edit it.

Many of the photos on this blog end up in some variation on my Instagram or Picfair accounts. From 2019, these were my top 9 on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

It’s my #topnine2019

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Dec 27, 2019 at 6:18am PST

Images in this post that are also on Picfair include the lighthouse and the pig.

So, what’s in the works for Photography Journal Blog in 2020? I’ve enjoyed the Daily Photo Weekly Wrap-Up posts, so look for those to continue. I will also continue to write about my process of editing photos, I like writing out what I have done as a way of thinking about what I have or haven’t accomplished in any given edit. For January, look for two new additions. The first is I will be attempting Becky’s Square Challenge, January’s theme is light and you can read about it and join in here. The second is a 52-week Smartphone Challenge hosted at Island in the Net. I misunderstood the original post and accidentally got a head start of that one, but I will be joining in on the right weeks starting in mid-January.

Overall, I’m hoping for a robust year here on the blog. It will be a challenge! Thanks very much for reading and all the best for 2020 to everyone!

Cheers!