Winter Comes to New Jersey!

After weeks of mild, almost spring-like temperatures, winter finally made an appearance in New Jersey. This photo of my backyard was shot with my Samsung Galaxy Tablet...which I LOVE! It's not an award-winning photo, but does show the snow. Wasn't sure we'd be getting snow this year!

August Challenge - Vanishing Point

The August Challenge from the Community Photo Challenge is Vanishing Point, so feel free to post ANYTHING as long as it fits the challenge, Vanishing Point.

This image--Under the Bridge--was taken in Pittsburgh, PA. What a great place for all sorts of photos, but especially for architectural ones like this.

Community Photo Challenge - FIREWORKS!

This is a great time to have a FIREWORKS Challenge!! This challenge has been extended to the end of July.

Here are a few of my fireworks images:

Community Photo Challenge - RED

This month, there are two challenges at the Community Photo Challenge. One was Still Life and the other is RED. Click the banner above to see the other entries or to enter yourself. Anyway...here's my image for this. It's a photo of my younger granddaughter delivering Christmas presents to our house. The title of this is: Santa Chloe.

Still Life

I know it's been a long time since I posted a new image on my blog. Life has gotten in the way since last July. I've been working hard at being a good President for my Camera Club, I've been managing my Adobe Photoshop Users Group's monthly meetings, I've been actually shooting photos and processing them (but not sharing enough). Anyway, Marie has posted a new challenge on our Challenge Blog and I wanted to participate. SO.....here's my image, entitled "Take Me Home".

Photo Challenge - Your Personal Challenge

Our current challenge is something different - challenge yourself to try something new! Here's how it's worded in the Challenge Blog (click this banner to visit the challenge):

"Michael Staley said it perfectly.....'There is no challenge more challenging than the challenge to improve yourself.'

This next challenge will be ANYTHING that you want it to be, but it must be something new to you. I have decided to work on a few different types of photography this summer. I am concentrating on HDR & digital Infrared photography. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. You use bracketing on your camera & Photomatix to transform your images into HDR. Visit Trey Ratcliff @ Stuck In Customs & scroll down to his video at Google."

Now to MY personal challenge: I went to an evening presentation of "Two Shots of Creativity" in mid-June. The presenters were Jane Conner-Ziser and Jack Davis. Jane's creative ideas centered around portraiture, which isn't my "thing", but Jack's creativity centered around the amazing new features in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 6 (which comes with Photoshop CS5 and was pre-ordered and installed on my computers as soon as it was available!). I've been using Photoshop since Version 7.0...over 7 years...and have used ACR exhaustively...but always just to make adjustments prior to working on my images in Photoshop. SO--my personal challenge was (and still is) to learn more about this great tool and to use it to its fullest.

My finished image is below:

Jack's lessons included teaching what he called the "4-Step Tango", first steps when working in ACR, to set the tones and color. He also showed us how to create a faux HDR look. The most enlightening part of his instructions, for me at least, was how he used Presets...and how to create your own. I'm sure most people have no presets in their ACR tabs...I know I didn't until I downloaded his. He also showed us how to use the Targeted Adjustment Tool (5th tool from the right on the top of the ACR dialog). Another great tip was how to take snapshots of your work as you progress...and these stay with the file, so you don't lose your snapshots when you save and close the image.

I can't go into detail about what I did here or what I learned from Jack, but I highly recommend, to anyone interested, that you search on the internet for 'camera raw 6 tutorials' and/or purchase Jack's new DVD (available at PhotoshopCafe.com).

Just to show how far the finished image traveled from the original, here's the photo I started with:

Blogger Community Challenge - Flowers

Marie changed things up for the current challenge...Here's what she wrote: "There will be two challenges this week that will be posted....THIS one will only last a week & the following week you will have the opportunity to vote on your favorite image. This week's, challenge is "Flowers". You can do a flower garden, a macro, landscape image with flowers. It can be any kind of photo as long as it has a flower in it.Post your images on your Blog. Come back here & click on the blue button below & follow the easy instructions. This challenge starts today & ends on Monday, June 21, the voting starts on the 21st, ends on the Monday the 28th."



(Click on the banner below to visit the Challenge Blog and see the other images)




My flower image was shot in April at the Willow Wood Arboretum in Morris County, NJ. That park is a real treasure and I STILL haven't finished culling the bad ones and processing the keepers, but I loved this Golden Poppy: