Wildflower Macros

Friday was my birthday, so I took the afternoon off from work and headed out to spend the rest of the day in my favorite environment, engaged in a favorite activity. Kay and I drove to the Julington-Durbin Creek Preserve a few miles from out house, Camera in hand...

I brought only my 150mm macro lens, planning to shoot the northeast Florida wildflowers that would, no doubt, be arriving in abundance after the wet, warm weather of the previous day. I hadn't planned on the huge, remarkably fast flock of Tree Swallows that was all over the pine flat. Wrong lens to shoot them, but I did get one lucky shot off (above), as a solo speed-burner zipped by... then on to the wildflowers.

The yellow guy above is a bud-heavy goldenaster. They are everywhere in the piney flatlands and in many local lawns right now. The opening blossom is about 1/4 inch in diameter.

The purple bloom above is a viola septemloba (literally purple flower with five petals).

This last one,as near as I am able to guess, is a dwarf huckleberry. Beautiful little quarter-inch white bell-shaped blossoms on stems covered with bright green, waxy leaves. More north FLorida wildflower images can be found on my website here.

Sometimes It's Good To NOT Be The Photographer!

Kay and I attended the wedding of Keith and Becky this past weekend. Becky is the daughter of Steve and Michelle. Michelle is the bass player for my band, The Ashley Gang. They hired a great photographer to be their "pro" wedding shooter -- which gave me the opportunity to just relax, and shoot unposed, random stuff...

There is certainly something to be said for NOT having the pressure of someone's wedding memories in your hands -- or in the memory card of you digital camera...

I shot about 200 images -- then got to go home and "play" with them in photoshop, knowing that I had that luxury...

Weddings are great opportunities to learn the craft of digital photography, particularly when you're not the one being paid to get it right!

I have immense respect for photographers who do this stuff for a living. There is tremendous pressure to please your client, whose tastes in artistic imaging may be much different than yours... or the clients whose wedding you shot last week. They earn every cent they are paid, and you get what you pay for...

Thanks, guys, for letting me learn more of this craft at your wedding! You were amazing. More photos from Becky and Keith's wedding can be found here.

Topaz Adjust 4.0, Briefly...

Just downloaded the Topaz Adjust upgrade version 4.0, and thought I'd give it a (very) quick workout... for the uninitiated, Topaz Labs produces a variety of cool photo adjustment "plug-ins" for Photoshop. Adjust is perhaps the most versatile, allowing everything from mega sharpening to excellent noise reduction capability. The 4.0 "touch and feel" is very nice -- a slicker, cleaned up graphic interface, and a number of new presets (pre-designed photo effects that you can simply use as is -- you can, or course do all of the modifications yourself). So here's the brief part... I chose an under-exposed shot of the surf off of Turtle Beach near Sarasota Florida from last summer... this one....

... pulled it into Photoshop elements 6, and used the "Shadows and Highlights" adjustment to brighten it up just enough... then called up Topaz Adjust 4.0 from the plug-in menu. I skipped through the presets one by one (you get both a thumb nail and an adjustable -- up to 100% -- preview pane to get a very good idea of what your process image will look like). After running through them all I chose the "dramatic" preset, and enlarged the main review pane to view the details of the result. Between the earlier brightening and the Adjust "adjustment" there was a good bit of noise in the image. So still in Topaz Adjust I selected the "noise" tab, and ran the slider up until I got the amount of reduction I wanted, while keeping enough detail. I hit the process button and... voila....

There's a guy surf casting out there in the Gulf of Mexico under that approaching storm front... pretty slick, eh? You can find all of the Topaz products and download free trial versions here....Simple!