Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day

Buffalo Skyline Edit

Playing around with Gimp I tried something different and I really liked the effect. The image shown is two images layered. The first image is the original, I adjusted the brightness and contrast a bit. I then duplicated that image and to the new layer I used colors/auto/equalize. This brought out the really cool colors in the clouds and a little more dimension in the buildings. I then dropped the opacity of that layer to 75%.

When the image was equalized though, some pixelization formed around the clouds. The only way I could remedy this was to lower the opacity of the equalized layer and then an image resize from 3872 x 2592  to 640 x 429.

I need to play with this effect a bit more.

Buffalo NY 2014. Interesting effect using multiple layers in Gimp with the equalize function and playing around with the opacity of the top layer.

A Day In The Park- Lighthouse

Towards the end of last summer I spent a day in the park. I took photos of everything I could possible find. It was a beautifully sunny day with wispy clouds in a blue sky. I came across this lighthouse and really liked the way the pond reflected the lighthouse. What you see in the background though is a combination of real and airbrushed clouds.

I found some cloud brushes, and played around with them a bit. I added some clouds to the image. I believe these clouds are the cloud brushes by Blazter which can be downloaded here.

After playing around with image manipulation software, and adding clouds, and sun, and light, etc, I can't help but wonder how much of any image is really what the photographer seen. So many images we see in magazines are illusions of reality.

Lighthouse in the park, artificial clouds added with the cloud brushes by Blazter. Download link in article.

Cat In His Window.

Well the warmer weather has almost reached Western New York. It's been unseasonably cold for April and May. My cat loves this window in the summer. So today's Pic A Day is my cat Buddy, chilling in front of his favorite window. As soon as the weather warms up a bit more I need to get out and get some photos.

Buddy chilling by his window.

The Niagara River

This image was originally 3872 x 2592. By taking larger size images you'll have more room to work with in post processing and you will probably find more uses for your images.

These 2 photos were taken from the same image. By cropping different sections of the image you can come up with different perspectives of the image.

The picture was originally of two guys fishing off the side of a pier on the Niagara River. The photo was taken by leaning off the end of the pier, and hanging over the water. The image had to be straightened and this was the first edit.

As the post processing began, I thought this section of the image had a warmer feel to it. By shooting your images large, in a good quality setting, you have more room to edit, and get different perspectives of the same shot.