Another Frosty Morning Photo

I was out a few days ago taking frost pictures. Today’s picture I decided to edit in black and white.  Yesterday’s photo was in color, but I thought black and white would be a better choice for this spent dandelion stem:

 

Since there was a lot of frost on the ground and I really wanted to draw attention to the stem, I cropped this photo pretty severely, making it more of a panorama style image.

The original image was shot using a bracketed exposure.  In this case -1, 0, and 1.  I combined the three images into one using Photomatix.  Photomatix gave me several black and white options, but I chose this one because I thought it gave the image enough sparkle without being over done.  Then I did my cropping and sharpening in Aperture.

So what do you think?  I welcome your comments below!

Cheers!

Fun with Frost

It was chilly here this morning, so I went out to take a frost photo:

ISO 100 50mm -1ev f/2.8 1/200

This was a exposure bracketed photo that I then edited in Photomatix.  I was trying to get as much detail of the frost as possible.

Cheers!

Black and White Revisited

A little over a week ago I wrote about a photo I had taken of leaves in black and white.  The post can be found here.  One of the things that I had been hoping to do was show the frost on the leaves.  Lori Ono, who commented on the original post, suggested some ways in which I might bring out the frost in the editing.  I used some of those suggestions to make this version:

ISO 1000 50mm 1ev f/2.2 1/640

This time I think the frost, particularly on the stems of the leaves, is visible.  In order to get this effect, I first put the photos into black and white with a blue filter in Aperture.  Then I edited the bracketed photos in Photomatix.  I cropped and sharpened the photo when I brought it back into Aperture.

If you click on Lori’s name above, it will take you to a photo challenge posting she wrote that I think turned out really well.

Cheers!

Black and white this week

It is interesting that both my digital photography and design class are dealing with black and white this week.  While I don’t do a whole lot with black and white photography, I do enjoy it.  Here is one of my images from this week:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/160

Some of you that read the exif data I include might wonder why I used an ISO of 1000 and the answer is simple.  I forgot to change it when I was setting up for these photos.  I did use a bracketed exposure for this image and then used Photomatix to edit.

What was most interesting to me in making this image is that the color version showed the frost on the leaves, while in black and white you pretty much can’t tell it’s there.

Cheers!