leaves – 223

3261

Small and large leaves float on the water at Mill Creek near the lake.

3266

3265

3263

You can see one more here!

Advertisement

cosmic skies – persistent contrails

3279

This is the reason I joined the Air Force.  I couldn’t stop looking at the sky.  Skygazing!

Click on any photo to enter the gallery.  And click here for one more!

3280

3283

3274

3273

3279

bayside drive

3145

There is a small marina on Irondequoit Bay that can be seen from a small public park by the roadside.  Looks like some expensive floating hardware to me.

lakeside drive

3075

There is a small channel that connects Lake Ontario with Irondequoit Bay and there is a swing bridge that allows traffic to pass over the channel.  These orange markers are placed along the bridge as a warning to small craft going through the channel.  The walkway is reflected in the water and the early morning light struck it just right.

3093

3105

 

it’s that time of year, again

8470

I was asked once if I arrange leaves for a photo.  When asked a question about photos I try to be forthright and honest.  My answer in this case was “sometimes”.  Generally, I don’t arrange leaves or almost any objects in the nature shots but I will try to remove some distractions that I don’t think would be of interest to the composition, if at all possible.  Sometimes it’s not possible to get the look I wanted and I have resorted to using the clone stamp tool to remove unwanted elements, but this is rarely done.  Sometimes it’s hard to improve on what you naturally see.

it’s that time of year…

8467

I think fall gets here earlier every year but this year I don’t mind.  It wasn’t a very pleasant summer but fall has been very nice (so far).

milkweed

5426

topaz impression – first impression

1966

Last week I installed a trial copy of the Topaz Impression plugin and process a few photos with it.  This seems to be a powerful plugin that required me to update my graphics driver and it runs slow on my system (which needs upgrading, too) but my system is 6 years old now.  That’s ancient by computer standards.  Though a bit slow, I had no problems running it and it ran smoothly.  The designers made it easy to access and it’s very flexible. There are numerous presets and each is easily customized by the user.  This customization allows for an almost limitless number of possibilities for each file processed, giving you complete creative control over the process.

This plugin, unlike others, is not meant to enhance a photograph but rather to give it more of a sketch or painting look.  I started with RAW files that were fine tuned in Lightroom before starting the plugin.  Some of these photos included here have been modified after Impression was run.

Is it worth $100 (US)?  I’m still in the trial period and I intend to see how useful it could be for my own style of shooting.  I can see a lot of possibilities but I don’t want to rely on plugins to make photography interesting. I have to say it is fun to work with a tool like this and I might find room for it in the future.

3267

2334

2316

 

 

it was a dark and stormy night…

1538

…and it got even darker.  And stormyer (if that’s a real word).