City Park Fauxtumn

Then I got really bored and whipped this up with my favourite oil paints.  Mmm... linseed...
Not really, it's a 100% digital creation.  In the beginning of the year, I photographed several of these magnificent trees in City Park.  Before the horrendous wind started, I took a trip to see how they were getting along in Autumn.  Gorgeous as ever, I wasn't satisfied with the greater atmospheric occurrences and just took some snapshots to record the locations.  Enter the new painting technique...
Enjoy!

Fauxtumn Leaves

 Always time to play.  I'm sitting in the studio for the sixth day in a row.  It's starting to get to me and affect my mood.  But there's just too much dang wind to go out and play.  It's gusting over 60 knots, and after ten minutes it's unpleasant and boring.  So, I'm playing inside instead.  The new release of Photoshop contains some interesting painting tools.  I processed these photos through my normal parameters, then started pressing buttons and pushing sliders until I got this result.  It's a bit garish, I realize that, but my toolbox just got a little bigger and now when I head out to photograph, I may be shooting certain subjects to utilize this technique.  The photo below is the result of a new masking technique I discovered that allowed precise selection of background and foreground.  This seems to get closer to my desired effect.

As a finishing step I added a canvas texture to these images.  Knowing they were destined for the blog I thought the texture would aid the viewer's perception of the digital image.  However, if I decide to send an image for printing, it would certainly be printed on canvas and therefore I'd have to remove the texture.  I've done a few of these now and you can expect to see a few more, soonish.

One Hundred!

Today is my one hundredth post!  Glad it's a happy colourful image.  Finally put the studio back together and got most everything plugged in again.  The new layout didn't come together the way I wanted, but it's certainly better.  Feels good to be back to work!
Saw this tree the other day after I had pack up to hike back tot he Jeep.  The sunlight in the leaves and all those colours, I had to stop and shoot more!  Who could give this up?  Yellow, green, red, blue... what'd I miss?  Pretty sure if it's a colour it's in the photograph... gonna be a pain to get this one printed correctly.

Leaf & Rock, Plate 7 of 9

This little broken rock is in the middle of a hiking trail, which made it really easy to find a wide, level place for my tripod.  Turns out it's also the preferred trail for an even less socially adept group of entheusiasts, Joggers!  Before I knew it, my artistic pursuit was an impediment to all of Western Fort Collins!   No one ran into me, but I was reminded of the local etiquette regarding stationary objects and pathways.  Whatever.  These results were absolutely worth it... just look at that texture!  This kind of stuff isn't found every day, so you silly joggers can run in the road, I'm doing important stuff here!
(image notes:  Nikon P7000, tripod mounted, 5 shot bracket, tonemapped in Photomatix Pro4, black and white conversion in LR3)

Symmetry on the Prairie

Everything seemed to line up on the prairie this morning.    Maybe it's a face telling us an ancient story?  I love the sun here in CO, makes it difficult to find a decent exposure, but sure feels great!
Here's to a warm spot in the sun this weekend!

Rabbitbrush and Horsetooth

An early morning view along the Cathy Fromme Prairie Natural Area in Fort Collins, Colorado.

October Morning

Mountains make their own weather.  I woke under clear skies and cursed through the dawn for some drama.  Didn't happen until I finished dressing and packing up for a long hike.  Ok, better late than later.  Instead of hiking, I dodged bursts of rain and wind and chased little hits of sunshine around the aspen groves.  I carry an umbrella as a standard part of my camera gear, it's the best for keeping both rain and sun off your lens.

Elias

As often as possible I'll take the long way or the dirt road or the "hey, what's over there" route and that's how I found this cemetery.  There are less than a dozen markers, two of which are modern.  Mostly they are broken or very well weathered, like this one, which looks both.  I wonder what is more interesting, the life Elias led or what happened to his gravestone.
It's Friday and October... take the long way home.

A Forest Fall

If you ever get the chance to camp in the center of an Apsen grove, do it.  Even in the height of summer it's a rewarding experience.  If you have trouble finding a good place, remember, "X" marks the spot.

Let Them Go, They Will Return

Walking back the Jeep, I was struck by the beauty of this composition.  The colour was muted by the overcast sky, the air had warmed enough to make me sleepy and I just wanted to lay in the grass listening to the gentle rustle of Autumn.  (it's Monday, who doesn't want to go back to bed)

Last Spin Of The Summer

Spin, spin, great circle!
Ninety-six minutes during the last night of summer as a full moon lights the changing aspens of Veedauwoo.  Smoke from a fire in the expanse of land northwest of this location hangs low and is illuminated by the negligible light pollution of Laramie, WY.

The Broken Bridge

Seems like every fall, I find a composition that allows me to place a sun star in the leaves of an aspen tree.  As if on queue, I clamboured across this bridge and turned around to play.  Sometimes you just get lucky.

Ponds Below Elbert

Mount Elbert, 14,440' (right), is the highest peak in CO, and the highest in the Rocky Mountains of NA.  Might not look that way from this vantage, but once you start walking up the hill, you quickly realize the scale.  No filtration, no multiple exposure fancy compositing, just a single 2.5 second click before dawn.  The sun rising into thin clouds way way way out east, which was killing the colour in the sky, but bathing the ground in a soft warm pink light.  After snapping this, I scrambled down the hill through the stream and over to my second perch for the morning.  This light wasn't going to last!

The Cast Removed

This photograph is the same as the one in my earlier post.  But the great yellow glow was just too much, so I corrected this for the little bit of blue sky in the left of the frame.  Not much different, but certainly a more natural balance to the scene.  Artistically, I prefer the other photograph, which is what I was pursuing at the time.  Only in hindsight, did I consider that the yellow from the filter gives a fantastical and sinister quality to the photograph, and a more natural balance might be more alluring to the viewer and therefore, bring the photograph closer to the idea.  Incidentally, all preferences aside, this is the version I submitted to a recent contest, because when it comes down to scrutiny, you can't argue with natural colour.  Hope you enjoy both!

As They Whisper, So They Move

I started down this road while waiting for a couple of noisy folk on quads to leave the area.  In many ways I'm like the wildlife, people come and I go.  Downhill, to be accurate.  Not much was happening photographically, I was at an elevation of 8600 feet without a single cloud in the late afternoon sky.  The fall colour was about a week before the real peak would happen.  There are some beaver ponds in the area that I wanted to scout for the following morning's sunrise shoot.  You'll see those trickle through the blog in the next few days.  So, with all that sun, I had been playing with the blue/yellow varicolour filter, does interesting stuff to the light when all you have is big bright sun.  The colour in this photo is from stacking the filter with a polarizer.  Instant autumnal peak!  At the bottom of the hill was a drained pond and thick mud.  The road took a hard 165 degree turn to avoid the mud, but the photographer did not.  Instead I plodded through to see the area just behind the former dam and found another little pond.  Lots of dead trees sticking up through thick muddy water.  Time to turn around.  Walking back up the hill, I noticed the way these trees leaned and bent over the road.  The autumn glow gave the impression they are playful among themselves, but cautious with outsiders.