Weekly Photo Challenge: Symbol

A few weeks ago I was rock climbing in Utah.  Close to the area were these petroglyphs:

ISO 2000 70mm 0ev f/8 1/125

These symbols are examples of Fremont Rock Art and date from 450-1300 A.D.  Also close by were examples of Archaic Rock Art dating from 6,000-1000 B.C. and modern graffiti.  Personally, I find the modern graffiti on these rocks annoying, but looking at the Fremont period work, I was wondering if there would have been people in that time who found it annoying that their contemporaries were putting “graffiti” where the older Archaic art was.

This photo was taken outside Arches National Park on Utah Highway 27 near the climbing area called Wall Street.  I was using my 70-200mm lens, but as this example of the petroglyphs were not that far up the rock, the zoom wasn’t really necessary.  I edited this image in Photoshop using curves to make the colors in the rock pop a bit and make the art stand out.

Bonus points to you if you find the critter in the photo.  I also have posted this photo on Flickr.  What do you think of this type of art? do you also like graffiti?  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Object

The Weekly Photo Challenge prompt, started with the idea of telling a story using an object.  Mine tells the story of a very busy weekend:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

This is a chalk bag that was a gift to my youngest rock climber who had a birthday recently.  This past weekend a party was held in her honor at the rock climbing gym where we climb.

I will show the original photo at the bottom, but I was interested in taking a pretty standard photo and editing it in Camera Raw, which is something that I am reading about in conjunction with the Photoshop class I am taking.  The textbook for my class is Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers by Martin Evening which I am finding to be a really good resource.

So, I opened the original photo in Camera Raw and in the Basic settings made the following changes:

1. Increased the temperature
2. Increased the exposure
3. Increased the contrast
4. Decreased the highlights
5. Increased the shadows
6. Decreased the whites
7. Decreased the blacks
8. Increased the clarity
9. Increased the vibrance

I made all these changes using the various sliders and just adjusting until I created an image that I liked.

To make the border, I opened the image in Photoshop.  I cropped the image and then made a rectangular selection to the interior of the crop that would eventually make my new border. Then I made a mask on that layer.  Then I went to Select-Refine Mask- and I increased the radius slider.  That creates the ragged border.  From there I made a layer underneath and filled it with the brown color.

Here is the original, so you can see what I started with:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.  Do you use Camera Raw? I am finding it to be a pretty powerful editing tool, helpful before I even get started in Photoshop.

Cheers!