Roses & Editing

I have been trying to experiment more with editing lately because there are all these trendy edits floating around cyberspace. Sometimes when I wonder "How did one of my students get that effect?" and then I know I am being passed up!

I've been experimenting with different pops of colors, saturation vs. desaturation, lighting, layer masks and texture in photos, as well as starting with a particular action in photoshop to speed up the process and then going from there.  I thought that a nice subject for these edit experiments would be these beautiful roses Karl bought for me.   I really like how these edits turned out!  Side note - the composition on a few of these was not very strong when I first took the image.  Later I was able to crop it into what I feel is a much stronger photograph.  Yay for cropping (and clone tool so I could clone out my feet standing on my kitchen table in the straight down shot)!

Self Portrait

I have a giant mirror hanging in my living room so after one photo shoot I was doing I snapped a few pictures of myself in the mirror.  I like the idea of a portrait of me with my camera because it's very environmental, natural and describes me well.

I took a risk on this one and did a major 45 degree tilt when I took the image. I know some of my photo students and other fellow photographers would describe massive tilting or tilting of the horizon line as a sort of faux pas - however, what's the point of rules if you don't break them every now and then?  I liked the geometric lines, angles and framing that tilt gave the image.  I like how the camera is lined up straight with the edge of the photo so it seems like the one thing in the image that isn't tilted.  I tried a black and white tutorial edit that I pinned on my photography pinterest page - I liked it, it was easy and was only a few steps!

Night Photography

Yep, just taking picture of my usual subject, the sky behind the sugar beet factory behind my house.  The colors, saturation of the sky, the clearness of the stars, the way the clouds and sun shine through, and the weather all make for a different subject each time.

This time I experimented with long exposures and making sure everything was in crisp focus and best quality with ISO 100.  I was surprised that on some of my images stars came through - I'll have to go out on another clear night and try just zooming in on the stars and seeing what kinds of pictures I can come up with.

I mostly just cropped these images - the colors were that saturated straight out of the camera!