It’s been fun while it lasted…

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It has been 3 years since the inception of the Crazy Women’s Photography Club and I think the time has come to bring it to a close. I thank all of you who have been supportive during that time and I can only hope that it has given you a hobby to carry you through the rest of your life. After all… that was the purpose of the club and I certainly hope that you have come to love photography just half as much as I do.

Always remember… it’s not so much the equipment, but what you do with what you have. Look for the possibilities even when you think there is nothing to shoot. If you don’t like the big picture, then move in closer. One of your most powerful tools is shooting in RAW and learning to edit your photos. You will be amazed at how that can improve even a ho-hum photo. Most importantly… get out there and shoot. Talk to other photographers and look at their work. The more you shoot, the more you will learn.

Your photos have intrigued me, made me laugh and have even brought a few tears to my eyes. To those of you who have been active in the club, I have seen you shoot subjects you may have never thought to shoot before. And for those who embarked into photography for the first time… your creativity and talent has never ceased to amaze me. We have had a lot of good laughs along the way and have made friends with photographers near and far. It has been a fun experience!

So I wish you all well and hope you will keep in touch. There are lots of other photo groups out there. Join in and have fun.

And in the words of Imogene Cunningham…
“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”

Take care… and keep shooting! And don’t forget to laugh as you go through life!

What does white balance have to do with your photography?

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In the nature club I belong to, we recently heard about the site iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/) where you can post your nature photos for both identification and documentation of wildlife, plants and insects. I thought it sounded like a superb thing to do and they were also having a period of time this month to document biodiversity in the world. Sounded like a cool personal project!

All photos would be mapped based on where you took the photo and they would be identified, even if you personally could not identify the species. What a great way to keep a log of your finds and an easy way to get help with ID’ing whatever you post. I know for a fact that I have had difficulty numerous times ID’ing dragonflies and birds.

So off I go with my camera to see what I can find. And no… I did not find anything rare and exotic but I went locally to the wild prairie area on Cook Road by Lake Ray Hubbard to see what I could find as this time last year the wildflowers were in full bloom. Blanket flowers are in bloom now and milkweed was just beginning to flower. There was a lot of pink primrose and then I spotted one lonely pure white primrose. It stood out from everything else and I was determined I wanted to shoot it.

The problem was… the wind was blowing and rarely let up for more than a few seconds. Wind is definitely a problem when shooting wildflowers, especially if you can’t find them in an area protected from the wind, so I increased my ISO to 3200 knowing it would increase the noise in the photo (definitely a negative!) but it would help me achieve a faster shutterspeed in hopes of catching a shot in sharp focus. And of course I was shooting in RAW to have lots of information to work with when editing. The day was cloudy but as always I left my camera in auto white balance mode rather than changing it in camera since I was shooting in RAW and if adjustments needed to be made, it could be done in post-processing.

I could not get as close as I had wanted due to a lot of mud in the area (note to self… buy boots!) so I used my 100-400mm lens for the reach and I was shooting at 400mm on a full frame camera. I was at f/11, 1/800 sec, and minus 2/3 stop exposure due to the white petals against a darker background. This was the original shot. Not exactly what I was looking for but I knew I could work with it in LR.

Primrose (Photo by Lala)

Primrose
(Photo by Lala)

So… here is the photo cropped, and a bit of clarity added, as well as some sharpening and adjustment to diminish the noise in the background, all done in LR. I tried both vertical and horizontal cropping but the vertical worked the best.

Primrose (Photo by Lala)

Primrose
(Photo by Lala)


I knew I wanted to get rid of those fine spider webs but that is difficult to do with the cloning or the healing tool in tight spaces in LR so from there I took it into photoshop Elements and got rid of the webs and also removed the vegetation at the bottom right as it did not add anything to the image.

I thought I was done with the image but on closer inspection, the white petals had a lavender tinge in the shaded areas. This flower was in no way lavender so I once again went into LR and adjusted the white balance with a simple slider to give me the white petals and remove the “off” color.

Primrose After Final Edit (Photo by Lala)

Primrose
After Final Edit
(Photo by Lala)


So what initially appeared to be a throw away image, ended up being a favorite image. Editing of photos is a wonderful thing and as technology changes, our ability to “fix” an image becomes easier. Of course we would all like to get the perfect image in camera but when that does not happen… we have options.

In preparing this presentation, when I right clicked on my original image I discovered that the metadata of camera settings was not there. OOPS! What happened? Well, I must have clicked on something at some time in the past to change my settings in LR but now they are back! Photography is a very steep learning curve! It never ends!

So I did post this to iNaturalist but I posted the one that appeared a bit lavender before I realized that I needed to change the white balance. I posted the corrected image but then could not remove/delete the other image on the site. I am finding iNaturalist to be a not so user-friendly site in many respects. I have e-mailed asking how to delete the other image and not a word from them as yet. Check out the site if you get a chance and I sure hope you have better luck with it than I am having!

April Challenge: Earth Day… Entry #6 Silver Falls State Park

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Silver Falls State Park (Photo by Sassy)

Silver Falls State Park
(Photo by Sassy)

Sassy in Oregon sends this photo our way. She has been busy moving and I do appreciate you sending this photo in spite of all your craziness!
“This is Upper North Falls at Silver Falls State Park. Silver Falls State Park is located near Silverton, Oregon, just 17 miles from where we now live near Molalla, Oregon.”

April Challenge: Earth Day… Entry #3 Bee on Wildflower

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This entry is from Liz…
“I’m attaching my recent POD, the bee on the yellow wildflower. Why the little humble but hard-working bee? Pollination is essential for plant reproduction. Many of our staple foods would not be available without the humble honey bee. And, we wouldn’t have the wildflowers to take photos of! When I see a honey bee working it’s little wings off to flit from flower to flower, digging deep into the pollen, I’m a happy camper!”

Bee on Wildflower (Photo by Liz)

Bee on Wildflower
(Photo by Liz)

April Challenge: Earth Day… Entry #2 Caribbean Shelf

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Well, for a minute I thought perhaps Lee had gotten into very high-flying drone photography but rest assured, she has not ventured into that, as yet!

I apologize for the late entry of these photos but I was in an area of spotty internet and could not get these posted as soon as I had wished.

So… this is from Lee:
“Here’s my image for Earth Day. I took it with my iPhone5 from the plane at 36,000 feet on our flight from Miami to Curacao. I think this is the underwater shelf near the Bahamas….it was so amazing to see it with the darker deep water next to it and the clouds off in the distance. I think it represents all that is grace and beauty on our Blue Planet. It’s also an area of the world many of us will never see in person. I was hoping to see it again when we flew back but was on the wrong side of the plane.”

Caribbean Shelf (Photo by Lee)

Caribbean Shelf
(Photo by Lee)

HAPPY EARTH DAY 2015!

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To kick off our Earth Day celebration, I will post a photo that I had taken when the water level at Lake Ray Hubbard was extremely low. Normally the water would be up to and covering part of the rocks. This photo was taken in November of 2014 and at that time the water level was 10.18 feet below it’s normal state. At the present time the water level is down 4.54 feet from it’s normal level thanks to the recent rains we have had.

Regardless of the fact that the levels are improving, it is no time, in my opinion, to relax water conservation. Water is a precious commodity and whether we get our water from Lake Ray Hubbard, Lake Lavon or wherever, we should keep conservation in mind. We take water for granted until we do not have it. We grow lush green lawns and plants that require huge amounts of water to survive in the heat of the summer and we fill our pools with water. Sadly, we waste water on a daily basis. We seriously need to rethink these strategies and save where we can. In the southwest, water will be an ongoing issue.

Make every day Earth Day and do what you can to reuse, recycle, and care for our planet Earth.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” —Jane Goodall

Photo by Fay-la-la

Photo by Fay-la-la

On researching Earth Day, I discovered that this is the flag to represent Earth Day. Too bad it is not flown by all countries! It certainly deserves respect by all people! We are in this together.
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/world/earth-day