POTD 77 of 365

Everything lined up today for a shot I've been itching to take for months. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, for a short trek through some woods, the light was OK (not great, unfortunately), there was no snow on the ground, and my back isn't giving me much grief. Because I knew all but the the light and my back would cooperate, and I suspected those would be OK too, I tossed the good camera in my bag this morning, and I took this on the way home from work today.

There's a feature in Dorrance, right off the 81 exit, that's locally known as "The Standing Fire". It's an old chimney, sitting in the middle of the woods, and, like all odd things, you'll hear that it's haunted, and you can either:

A. Smell smoke
or
B. Hear voices

I don't put much (read: any) stock in any of that, but, since a company started felling most of the trees in the area surrounding the chimney, I've been a little concerned about a not-well-documented piece of local history, and wanted to grab a shot.



This shot had a ton of work done to it. To start, it's three exposures, merged using Picturenaut, and then brought into PS for some dodging and burning.

Instead of the D&B tools, which I've found to be miserable to correct if it goes wrong, I added a D/B layer by creating a 50% gray layer in "Overlay" mode.

Burned areas got painted black, with a large brush at 8% opacity. Dodged areas got painted white with the same brush.

I bumped up the vibrancy a bit (and, may have been a bit ham-fisted there), spun it down to a JPG, and there it is, after a crop to remove some of the negative space at the top of the shot.

Pretty happy with this one.

POTD 42 of 365

Tonight, I've deconstructed a previous shot. If you've been playing along at home, you'll know the shot to which I'm referring:



Two shots - one picture, and a fairly irked photographer. Sounds about par for the course, actually.

One by one...

The apple - two flashes. Key is the 580EX II at 1/16 with the grid, and the background light is the 430EZ at 1/16, 35mm, and a Storaro Green gel.

The apple is suspended from the ceiling by 4-pound monofilament (AKA - cheap fishing line) that I cleaned up in Photoshop.



The syringe is lit by the worklight, and is shot with the 50mm at f/22 and the #1 and #2 extension tubes.



Frankly, I loathe the apple, however, it looked even worse when you could see the line.

This, folks, is one of the reasons I eschew photo manipulation - I'm not creative enough to alter reality.

POTD 37 of 365

Apparently, there was some sort of football game or something this evening. Consequently, I found myself at my folks' house sans Canon. I've always got my iPhone with me, however, and I am really starting to dig Camera+.

This is a large clock my parents have above their fireplace.



I applied the internal "Vibrant" setting to the shot, and then, once I got it onto my laptop, oversharpened the snot out of it in DPP.

POTD 35 of 365

I got a set of backordered extension tubes in the mail today, and wanted to try them on this evening's shot.



What you're looking at is a close-up shot of the small LED flashlight I keep in the psteudio for when I'm working in the dark.

Lighting is (once again) the worklight, placed in close.

Setup looks a little something like this - note that I used the iPhone mount I rigged up the other day to hold the flashlight.



Once I took the picture, I did put it on a black background in Photoshop. Once again, I'm finding I really like the abstract quality that macro provides.