Who Is That Ghost Dog?

 

In HDR mode, three exposures are taken in rapid succession and then stacked to make one densely saturated image. In the shot above, Sunny Juliet was trotting along so quickly that her image looks to me like (except for the missing tail) the ghost of old Nikki. Below is SJ looking more like herself. 

Morning dew looks so otherworldly, ethereal. Leaves that have lost their chlorophyll, on the other hand, will not be as rare in a few weeks as they still are this morning.

Are We "Dynamic" Yet?

 

This scene, Grand Traverse Bay on a rainy morning, wasn't loaded with color, but I tried the HDR shooting mode, anyway, to see what it would capture, and I liked the result. HDR stands for "high dynamic range." The camera takes three consecutive shots, with different exposures, in quick succession and combines them. You can read more about HDR here. 

I had shot my meadow the day before in HDR, and this was the result:

What do you think?

Masters of the Cochise County Winter Sky

 

They were not airborne when I arrived at Twin Lakes about 1 p.m. but all clustered in the shallow water. The ones that look the most out of focus above are reflections of the standing birds. 

I drove around to another part of the pond, where the background of my photos would be the peaks of Dos Cabezas. And for some reason totally unclear to me, the birds took flight. It was not my presence; there were several other vehicles and even a couple of photographers with tripods. No problem, of course, because they are magnificent in the air. The only trouble I'm having now, as I look at what my camera caught, is deciding which is my favorite -- if I had to pick just one. What do you think? And I'm making it easy! I'm not posting every shot!

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Around the Seasonal Curve

This is one of my favorite trees in the township. A survivor, it has a strong sculptural presence. The last time I photographed the tree, it was background for soapwort in bloom, but it is stunning in every season, in every mood.

This Is It

As spring moves into and through summer, the parade of blooms is captivating, and I look for ways to capture their beauty and magic that will do more than repeat photographs of previous years. After trying various angles and distances this morning with coreopsis (its flowering tells me that we are fast approaching summer’s longest day), I came upon a partly shady corner with dark trees in the background and a road sign with color dimly echoing that of the flowers. It made me so happy I deleted all the other digital files of this year’s coreopsis. Below is my favorite shot from a year ago. Which do you like better?

Snowy Scene and Cloudy Sky in Sepia Tone

Subtle: Two More Ways

Still curious and encouraged by a friend to see what the photo in the previous post would look like in monochromatic versions, I took it to Photoshop and produced a black-and-white copy, then one in sepia.

Desaturating the color alone did not produce the results above. I did that first but then also darkened highlights and lightened shadows -- before, of course, adding back in the warm tone in the second version here. 

Interesting Cloud Formations

We came home to a fascinating southwest sky yesterday afternoon. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. Have you? One of those times when a real wide-angle lens would be more satisfying than the digital camera's fixed lens.

Lake Leelanau Scene Two Ways

The Photoshop filter used 

to achieve the altered image below

is called Chalk & Charcoal.

Looks like a book cover to me.