New Neighbors

There are some photos that I’m not sure are going to happen.  This is one of them:

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And another:

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These are our new cygnets. I thought there was a nest this year, but I wasn’t certain. The weather was a bit different from last year, and the vegetation around the lake has grown up in a different way. Last year’s next I could clearly see from the shore.  This year I was only guessing. Last year’s clutch was very successful, six healthy offspring, this year I have spotted four.

Generally, when I set out to photograph these swans, I take my 70-200mm lens. You will see that for these photos, the lens is at 70mm, the swans are incredibly close, particularly when you consider that this lake is on a path that is frequented by a lot of people and dogs. I chose these two images to edit in part because, despite the fact they were taken at the same time, the color of the water appears different.  As far as edits go, for this round I have chosen to stay very close to the original exposures, the images have been cropped and sharpened.

Was I excited to see them? You bet! Here is a photo from the day I first spotted them:

View this post on Instagram

We have #cygnets I say all excitedly, like I had something to do with it. #thingsiseeonmyrun came back with the camera #nofilter

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jun 16, 2018 at 4:48am PDT

Do you like my true to life edits? Do you have new neighbors this Spring? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge: New

Wordless Wednesday: Half a heart for Valentine’s Day

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Weekly Photo Challenge: A Tour Guide on Patrol with the Ducks

A few days ago I went looking for these guys:

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Only in real life, they looked like this:

ISO 800 95mm f/9.0 1/3200 sec

I was looking for them because week six on the Dogwood 52-week challenge is alternating rhythm, or to practice using light and dark to create depth and rhythm. Sunlight on the lake often creates harsh shadows which adds a sense of depth.  As for these four birds, they always seem to be hanging out and patrolling the lake as a unit, the rhythm of their lives in step with each other regardless of the other activity on the water. It’s a honking loud rhythm too, in case you were wondering.

For this challenge, I was out to push the depth and rhythm ideas a bit. I added a motion filter and tin-like cast to the photo, I think it makes the light and dark contrast stand out, pushing it to a bit of an extreme for a nature image. Lightroom is a good editing tool for pushing ideas, sometimes you can go a bit too far though. Do you think this edit pushed the boundary of the challenge, or did it hurl it off the cliff? Your thoughts are welcome below.

It’s no wonder I went to my local lake, you will find me there a lot, it’s one of my favorite places to photograph:

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ISO 640 95mm f/11 1/500

What it felt like, the ideal version

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Morning scene, edited

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Just a few shots from the last year or so. And one more from this morning:

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#rainbow #thingsiseeonmyrun

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Feb 8, 2018 at 12:58am PST

I may not make a good tour guide since I spend a lot of time chasing photos and listening to ducks, but it is beautiful and a good place to practice photography.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Variations on a Theme

One of my favorite things about photo editing is that is fairly easy to create many variations on a single photograph. When processing my photos I create many versions, saving various edits along the way. For example, I started with this photograph:

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Created many including these below:

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ISO 320 50mm f/16 1/320sec

ISO 320 50mm f/16 1/320sec

Before settling on this one:

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This final version perhaps sums up the title of the post, Variations on a Theme. I’ve created a combined color and black and white version. I then boosted the overall warmth of the whole image to unify the piece a bit, as the starkness of combining the two seemed a bit jarring.

It was an interesting experiment, but I like the original color version better than any of the other versions. What do you think of the various takes, do you have a favorite? For the purpose of this post, I kept all of my variations, but eventually, I will go back and delete the ones I don’t care for. I may even make another one.  This ability to create and destroy is a very liberating advantage to editing digital photography, do you agree? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Early Bird

I tend to get up early, I enjoy taking photos first thing in the morning.  This spring we have a robin nest outside of our kitchen window.  As in past years, I set up my camera and tripod with a remote shutter to take photos.  I’ve been waiting for the four eggs in the nest to hatch. It should be any day now.  This morning I was thinking it might be the day because in the time I had my camera set up the mother bird flew back and forth several times to the hedgerow.  In the past, we have seen mother birds do this to get rid of shells as the birds hatch.  This morning looked like this:

Land, look at camera:

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Conduct an egg count:

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Head back out:

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I was sure I would find a hatchling there, but not yet, just eggs today:

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A bit about last year’s nest is here. A few nice pictures, but an unhappy ending for that year’s nest.  I’m hoping for a happier outcome this year.  I’ve also noticed that my best pictures are a bit later that perhaps what you would expect.  I have good luck between 7:30-8:00am, the mother bird is active and the light in that particular spot is nice then. I guess you could say I’m an early bird that doesn’t have to be that early.

It’s lovely when the photo opportunity comes to your kitchen window, don’t you think?  Feel free to leave a comment or pick a favorite out of this morning’s photos.

A little update on 4/21/15: I have been taking photos of the now hatched birds, to see a few check out my twitter feed.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Achievement

I found out this week that this photo won an honorable mention in a photo contest that I entered it in:

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I titled this one, Siblings, it was taken last spring as part of a series of images I took of a the nest that was just outside our kitchen window.  This particular image was taken with my point and shoot camera.  I then cropped it and sharpened it in Photoshop.  To be honest, I did minimal post editing with this photo because I thought that the picture told the story without anything added to it.

I was pleased to have won with this photo, it seems like quite an achievement to me considering the quality of competition that my camera club offers.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Minimalist

When I think of minimalist photography, I always think of an image that is more poetry than novel. To me poetry as a writing form allows for more interpretation than the fully formed narrative of a novel. Minimalism allows for more breathing room.  So for this week’s challenge, I chose to edit an image that I took a few weeks ago in a very peaceful garden:

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To get this image, I chose an f-stop of f/10, because I wanted the water and the bridge to be in focus.  This image is more about taking in an entire scene than it is about just the elements in the foreground. I also chose a fast shutter speed because it was pretty windy that day but I knew I wanted an image that was more serene.

When I got to the editing phase, I first cropped the image because I felt there were elements in the photo that were distracting.  Then I put a warming filter on it in Photoshop.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 500 100mm 0ev f/10 1/500

What do you think? Does this qualify as a minimalist image to you, or does it still have too many elements? How about the filter, I think it conveys a sense of calm that helps the image seem more minimalist, do you agree? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Follow the Signs

Sometimes when you are out hiking trial markers are very helpful, other times less so:

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I took this photo over the summer while on a backpacking trail at Hawn State Park in Missouri.  When we are carrying all the stuff needed for backpacking I tend to just carry my phone and use the camera that it has.  In this case, that was all I needed, just a snapshot to show a funny sign.

Signing in can be very important when it comes to backpacking.  We also stop and register at the trailhead when we will be gone for a few days:

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Fo this photo, which was also taken with my phone, I have edited it using a Iris-blur filter in Photoshop.  This obscures the details of the people signing in and I have set the focus point on the act of signing in.

When out on the trail sometimes it is difficult to find creatures like this frog, because they are attempting to give no sign of their presence:

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Even sharpened a bit in Photoshop, this photo is still a bit blurry and is a situation where I wish I had one of my more sophisticated cameras with me.  This frog was beautifully blended with the background, and my camera phone really doesn’t do him justice.

How do you decided which camera to take on a trip? For me, a lot of that comes down to weight and how much else I am going to be carrying.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Endurance

It’s been a long summer and some of the wildflowers in our garden have seen better days:

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It’s a small act of endurance to live in this spot in the garden. The flowers that grow there are subject to heavy rain, blistering sun, and wind.

It’s been a long and busy summer in our house as well. If you have stopped by this blog before you know that I took the summer off to focus on a few things. I’m still working on my Illustrator class, but I have missed blogging so I am back, hopefully once a week.

The photo above I took this morning in our garden with my new (to me) Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens. I will show the original photo below. I increased the exposure and clarity in Camera Raw.  Then in Photoshop I cropped and sharpened it. I was pleased with the outcome.  I’m looking forward to playing around some more with this new lens.

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Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Cheers!

Between projects and work and life in general

The theme this week at the WordPress photo challenge is between. I’ve been working on a lot of things lately, too many perhaps, and I have decided that I have to choose between a few of them and make a choice about what I am going to focus on for the rest of the summer.

I was out biking a few weeks ago, and since my point and shoot camera is always with me, I got this shot while I was taking a rest:

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I used the macro setting on the camera and was really pleased with the way the background was blurred, giving the field a bit of a romantic feel.

One of my work projects for this summer is learning Adobe Illustrator.  I’m taking an on-line course that you can do at your own pace.  I created this image from my original photo in Illustrator using Image Trace:

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I imported my .JPEG file photo into Illustrator then chose Image Trace-Low Fidelity Photo.  Then I cropped the image.

I was pleased with the result, but what do you think?  Learning Illustrator is one of the projects that I am having to decide if I want to continue.  What that means though, is that I need to decide between this blog and the Illustrator class.  Because both the blog and class require on-line hours, I feel like I can only do one or the other if I am to keep the rest of my life and work in balance. I chose the class, it was actually a hard choice for me to make, I love writing this blog. I felt in the short term that the class needed to take priority, so this blog will be on hiatus for the rest of the summer.  Since I am behind in follow-up visits to other blogs I am hoping to take a bit of time every day to visit a few.  I am hoping this will keep my in the loop and excited to resume blogging in the fall.

As always, your comments are welcome below, and I would like to thank all of you who have stopped by to take a look at my blog.

Cheers!