As Per Suggested

84/365

I'm a big fan of cropping out distracting elements in my images.  I do it in-camera as much as possible. If not possible, I don't mind cropping a little post-production.  I also enjoy the "square" format you can often edit if you take the photo properly.

Yesterday I posted two images of some lilies that I have in my mini-garden.  Neither of those two above concepts occurred to me.  Duh!!  Sometimes I just let myself get into a mental rut and then I wonder why my images are so boring and ordinary.

A friend commented on the post and suggested I crop this image into a square.  Another duh!!!

So....as per suggested, here it is.

original

So much better.  Thanks, Jeff.

cropped

The Waterfalls

70/365

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up to attend a photo field trip today to a location that is a short hike to a really beautiful waterfall.  After my hike yesterday I was pretty weary and half determined not to get up at 5:15 am this morning to get to the carpool location on time.

But then I thought that if I didn't go, I'd just sit around the house, bored and unproductive, so why not get up and go?

Although it was very cloudy and drizzly this morning, it never actually rained, thank goodness. 

The cloudy conditions contributed to the intense colors of the foliage and rocks, and it was easy to 

avoid the sky at this particular location.  So all in all, it was a good day

and I'm glad I convinced myself to get out of bed and get there on time.   

I don't know the people in this first image, but I love the image anyway.  I love how they are relatively sharp, while the waterfall in the background and the tree branch in the foreground are soft.  

I recently purchased Photoshop Elements 10.  It has some fun special effects that are very easy to do.  Since the images in most of my recent posts have been straight, traditional images, I decided to try a couple of the special effects in Elements 10.  All but one of the images in this post have had an effect applied.  Such fun.

Baby Blocks

As I mentioned before Christmas, I love wooden alphabet blocks. This was another day that almost got away from me, photographically speaking. When I took the baby for a walk, I took my camera too, but this is a really boring neighborhood. After putting the baby to bed, it occurred to me that I still didn't have a post. Sigh.

Then I remembered that I had these borrowed blocks in my car. So out to the car I went, and this is the result. I hated using the flash, but it's dark already, so flash it is. I wanted to make some creative adjustments to the image, but since I'm using a new version of Elements and I don't yet have the instruction manual, and I didn't want to spend all night trying to find the right buttons to push, those adjustments will have to wait.

Posted at 7 pm on Monday, January 27, 2009