January 2013 – What I Pic

I’m not one for talking dirty but how about a little mud in your eye? There’s nothing like a good rainfall on a January day in the West Virginia hills to stir up a little mud. Of course, artistically it leaves a lot to be desired. Just a monotone brown color oozing everywhere. But I found a colorful tree to add a little…

Animal planet

The suburban wildlife just seems happy to pose for me lately. In this case I swung by the local cemetery to try out some of my manual focus lenses but I took along my telephoto zoom also, just in case. I was really there to test my ability to use my manual lenses in a speedy manner. I love my old…

Testing tires

I purchased a used Toyota Rav4 at the end of December to use as a second utility vehicle. It is perfect for my needs and I liked it a lot with one exception. The day after I bought it I drove it to the park to test out the four-wheel drive system in winter conditions. The park roads were still icy…

You got to moo(ve) it

Another rural portrait of a willing subject. I seem to be hitting the livestock jackpot lately. Shooting a black bull (cow?) against a white landscape and sky certainly presents its own set of problems. Fortunately my subject was patient while I experimented with different exposures. I first did a normal black and white conversion after doing some contrast adjustments and dodging the…

More river time

Another shot from down by the river. Although I never set out to take bird-duck-geese photos, whenever I see them I want to take photos of them for some reason. And the photos are fairly straightforward shots – the kind you get by simply taking snapshots, not sitting in a blind all day with a super-telephoto lens. Mine are more like the…

Insta-style

I finally got out to take some actual photos yesterday. A nice sunny but cold winters day off from work. It’s been so dark and gloomy every time I had a camera in my hands lately, so it was nice to shoot away without worrying about slow shutter speeds. Unfortunately my creativity didn’t kick in and I ended up taking…

It’s something

For lack of anything to say and lack of any suitable photos that I have taken lately, I’ll offer up a fine portrait of a tree that a shot a short while ago. I played with the color on this one a little and almost….well, OK, I did forget about it, until I was browsing through my files this evening. It’s…

Thorns can scratch

This little leaf cluster caught my eye amongst all of the dried tree branches against the lovely snow and mud background. They just looked so vibrant and alive. And as soon as I saw the photo on the LCD I knew I wanted to do a texture treatment with it. Like always, I just wasn’t sure which way I was going to…

Drifting

Shooting snow has always been a challenge for me, especially when there is no other subject in the photo. I want to keep the brightness of it yet still retain the texture detail. Of course I overexposed when I shot so I wouldn’t end up with dark gray photos but I still had the highlights to consider, I didn’t want to burn out…