I was on a short vacation to Ocean City, MD a week ago. While there a replica of a 17th Century Spanish Galleon was moored near the inlet to the Atlantic Ocean. The ship, El Galeón, has been travelling the east coast of the US allowing tours so visitors can experience what it was like sailing a ship in the 17th century. I went down in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was high in the sky and bright, so I took some photos and did my best to make them presentable.
A friend of mine took a trip to New Zealand (Yes, I was/am jealous) and took some panoramic shots. When he came back he told me he had forgotten to set the exposure lock on the camera and all the images in the series were exposed differently. He tried to stitch the image using Photoshop but was very unhappy. I asked him to send me the images and I would see what I could do. I received the images and began to figure out a way to correct this easily. I could, of course, have gone into Photoshop and tried to correct the exposure for the 15 images in the series, but that would have taken too much time.
In the past I have used a free program called “Hugin” (http://hugin.sourceforge.net) to stitch panoramas. I knew that it had the ability to correct some variations in exposure. So I fired it up, loaded the images, ran the align and came out with a good-looking image. I imported the image into Lightroom4 (It really does make your images look better than version 3), did some post, moved over to Photoshop to matte it and here is what I came up with.
Another before and after shot. I shot this image last fall and never spent anytime doing post, I wasn’t sure how I would like to see it.
The other day I received an email from about Perfect Effects 3, so I decided to download and give it a shot. I loaded the image and used the Faux HDR Effect preset and then did some minor adjustments in LightRoom 3 and a bit of spot healing in Photoshop CS5.
Here is what I came up with.
Enjoy!
A few weeks ago I posted an image of a mother Eastern Bluebird(sialia sialis) sitting on a perch in front of her nest in a bird house here at the house. Fast forward a few weeks…babies had arrived and began flight school. We saw four little ones trying to master flight as they were bouncing all around the yard. What an opportunity to get a few shots of the babies. I got the camera, made sure to have the 70-300mm lens on there and off I went. I didn’t get far before I was met with “dive bombing” from the daddy bird. I backed off and found a little one near a flower bed. I crouched down and set up the shot. Boy, isn’t it quite the sight?
Enjoy!
So I recently got my hands on onOne Software’s Photo Tools. I decided to try to bump up the colors in my recent barn pics. I opened the photo in Photoshop, then switched to Photo Tools and simply selected the Magic Landscape Enhancer preset. Needless to say, I am now a onOne Software convert.The before and after shots are below.
Enjoy!
The area of Maryland in which I live is pretty rural. Our county has a deep history in agriculture. We also have a small area in which several Mennonite and Amish communities exist. Since barn building is a main stay for both communities, it goes without saying there are a lot of barns in Southern Maryland. Whenever I am driving through the area, I try to keep my camera packed and ready to go.
On one afternoon, I saw this long red barn and decided that would make a great shot. I parked, got out and shot a few frames. I decided to shoot a panorama to get the barn, a portion of the field around it and the cloudless sky. I think the green, the red and the blue sky are a great combination. Here are a couple photos from that day.
Enjoy!
Watch out Moose Peterson there’s a new wildlife shooter here 🙂 We have a bluebird house in our backyard and every year we get 2 nesting pairs of birds. I was just firing up the grill for Easter dinner when I looked over to the birdhouse and there she was. A momma bluebird was starting to build her nest. I went inside, grabbed the camera and tripod with the 70-300mm lens and got it setup. After about 30 minutes of waiting and no sign of her again, I decided to set the camera for a interval timing shoot. I dropped my eyes to the display on the camera and started to set the timing options. When I looked up there she was sitting on her perch just waiting for her picture to be taken. I snapped off about 9 frames and here is what I ended up with.
Enjoy!
I am fortunate enough to live in an area that is steeped in American history, Southern Maryland. There is plenty of history in this area dating back to the settling of Maryland by English settlers in 1634 at St Clements Island, through the revolutionary war, to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination up through the Civil War to the present.
One interesting location is St. Ignatius Church in Chapel Point off of the Port Tobacco river. St. Ignatius is one of the oldest Catholic parishes in the Unites States. It was founded in 1641.
I stopped on my way home from work and took a few shots, included is my first HDR shot.
Over the weekend I decided to head into Washington, DC for the Photoshop World Expo. The weather on Sunday was a bit dreary, overcast and a chance for rain, what a perfect day to stay indoors. I packed up my camera and headed downtown. I took the yellow line of the Metro to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. After spending some time at the expo, I decided to check the weather and see if it had changed, lucky for me it had. The clouds were clearing and the sun was starting to shine. So I got back on the Metro and headed to Arlington National Cemetery. This time of year it is beautiful. The flowers and trees were in bloom, a great place to spend some time reflecting on the sacrifice of others and to make some wonderful images.
If you want to learn more – Visit the Arlington National Cemetery website.
To see some pictures from my trip – Click Here.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I did making them!
Photoshop World DC falls right in the middle of Cherry Blossom blooming in the Washington DC, Area. This year we should be seeing peak bloom the week before Photoshop World opens. Due to the wonderful weather we have been having here in the Mid-Atlantic the National Park Service has moved the peak time up to March 20th through the 23rd. However there will still be plenty of blooms to go around for the Pre-Cons and opening of the conference.
To keep up to date with the happening around DC and the Cherry Blossoms, visit the National Park Service Website – here!
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