Textures

Tree bark is always good for some texture in a photo, but the weird spot on this tree trunk was a neat contrast to the rest of the bark.

Texture becomes the subject.

Dreams Die Hard

When we lived in the Atlanta area in the late 1980's/early 90's, I started back to college to earn an engineering degree.

While there, I fell in love with Georgia Tech, right downtown in Atlanta.

I didn't have the stellar academic background to get into Ga. Tech and it had been almost ten years since I'd had any school, so I started back to school, and did very well at Southern Tech in Marietta, northeast of Atlanta and close to where we lived at the time.

My desire was to do well at Southern Tech and then hopefully transfer to Ga. Tech to finish my degree.

But working full time and going to school as much as possible left me facing at least a 7-8 year grind.

I eventually decided to move the family back to Louisiana where I was from, and where both Lovely Wife and I had lots of family for support, and I finished my degree at Louisiana Tech in 1996.

I don't regret for a second the path that I took, and I'm proud to have earned my BSEE from Louisiana Tech, but that dream of going to Ga. Tech is still there inside, and burns strongly.

Whenever they play football on TV my heart races. When we are in Atlanta, a must for me is to go to the campus and walk around a bit, and drive all over the rest of the campus.

Who knows? I might finally get a graduate degree from there some day as a tottering old man.

This is a photo of the "Tech Tower," their oldest and most revered building.

Can't Be Helped, This is Florida

Every once in a while we get the kind of bad weather that lasts a day or even for a few days, but the rest of the year is like this.

Even on days where we get a pretty good rain shower or thunderstorm, the rest of the day is like this.

Point your camera in any direction at just about any time of day and you'll be looking at something like this.

It's just Florida.

Squares

These interesting windows were on an amazingly designed and colored building in Melbourne, Florida.

Black and White #37

I don't know the names of hardly any flowers. Or plants in general.

I've been trying to figure out how to separate colors in black and white photos.

My new Elements 7 has a lot of neat new features when compared to my previous version (v4), and I've had the desire to sit and play more.

Simply removing the color from a color image will almost always result in an UGLY black and white shot, as will simply turning it from a color photo to a grayscale image.

I've finally found a couple of different processes in Elements that allow me to convert a color shot into a nice, contrasty black and white that I like.

When I first removed the color from this shot, the blossoms and the greenery were nearly the same shade of gray.

But I'm happy with this one, though I'm still learning.

You can see the original outrageous color of these flowers on my other blog today at Picture Post, Sunday, September 27, 2009.

Red Dragonfly

Saw this guy while out and about a week or so ago.

I had never seen a red one, much less the neon red this guy was sporting.

He was in almost constant motion, and I only got two shots of him.

Of the two shots, this was the only one that wasn't blurry from his movement.

The focus is a bit soft, but hey, sometimes you have to take what you can get. He flew way off within seconds of this photo.

Fleur de lis

The rusty fleur de lis on this flower pot holder we have out by our pool have lots of character.

One of those items that you don't notice, but when you take a minute to examine them in a photo, they look kinda neat like that.

I bought a new version of Photoshop Elements, version 7. My previous version was v4, and it didn't have the capability to deal with Nikon RAW images from my new D90.

Elements 7 does, and the difference in features between v4 and v7 is a major upgrade for me.

Elements 7 has many more capabilities of manipulating the Nikon RAW files than the old version, so I'm having a blast using it.

I tried the Nikon Capture NX software but I like the layout and ease of use of Elements more than I do the Nikon Capture software. Plus I tried adjusting the same RAW files in both Elements and in Capture NX and I couldn't tell one from another in the final resulting images. I did this with a number of RAW files and for several hours.

So I just deleted the trial version of Capture NX and bought Elements 7 and Scott Kelby's awesome Elements 7 book. I'm set up now.