Sunday, July 31, 2016

2nd DaPP Challenge at Daggerbay

An other trip, and yet an other batch of photos to edit! Phew! Edinburgh and rural France makes well over 1000 pictures together. I'm gonna have my hands full for quite a while...

Or am I? We're starting a new Daily Post-Processing Challenge over at Daggerbay tomorrow, where artists can share their work and have fun together in the process. The idea is to get around to editing those pictures you've not yet sunken your teeth into and develop a portfolio. I'm gonna be there, and I hope you will too.

Here's the first secret entry into my challenge. This is Châteauneuf en Auxois, a 15th-century fortress located in the commune of Châteauneuf, 43 km from Dijon, France.

I'm so lucky! Not only did I have the good fortune to live quite close to it and see it from the garden every day, but I was also lucky enough to get to go there during the medieval market! And boy did I get a lot of cool photos! I can't wait to share them with you all.

I hope to see you in the challenge

/MrsHjort


Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Edinburgh - yon Empress of the North

I just got home from Edinburgh yesterday. The city that smells sweetly and is filled with beautiful stone buildings. Where history is all around you.

This was my second visit to the city, though the first as a tourist. Last time, I didn't have the time to shoot. Instead my days were filled with seminars and meetings. But this time, I got to do all of the things I didn't do the first time, including taking the time to shoot for real. I got home with over 400 pictures, yey! Picking out the best ones and editing them is going to be so much fun!

This is the view from Calton Hill, down below is Princes Street and the Clock tower over Balmoral Hotel at Waverley Station with St. Mary's Cathedral in the background. It's a very popular place to shoot from, and one can see why.

I hope you like it too.

Cheers
/MrsHjort

Thursday, July 14, 2016

What Makes a Good Photo


"What makes a photo great?" Just recently I got asked that question by a friend. "Is it the photographer, or the post-ed?"

Nowadays, many are under the impression that anything, yes anything, can be done in post-ed. Any old ugly photo can be turned into a slam dunk using Photoshop, so what does the photographer matter? Well, yes, much can be done, but the real answer is that a great photo is the making of the photographer, and the post-ed. Both are crucial to the end product.

There's no getting around that you need a good eye to get good photos. Composition is the foundation of photography and it's the very raw material of a great shot. For instance, beginners often get caught up with the main subject. They might forget a busy distracting background, or fail to notice that the horizon isn't level, or that the lighting isn't flattering. These things make all the difference, and no manner of post-ed can save bad raw material. Much can be done in post-ed, that's true, but it can't work miracles.

If you have a good place to start from though, post-ed can be the icing on the cake. Take a look of the before and after pictures to the right and you'll see why. Both examples are exactly the same shots. Nothing has been removed or added, only enhanced! As you can see, a good eye isn't enough. Cameras have their limitations, and no matter if you have a cheep or fancy one, shots never come out quite like what you see with your own eyes, or like what you wanted them to be. But, you can compensate for this in post-ed, if you know how.

If I had a nickel for every time I shot something I thought looked glorious and it turned out to be flat and boring once I saw the result on screen... So many disappointments... Five years back, I'd just sigh and let the shots gather dust on my hard drive. But now, that I know how, I can do something about it!

It's fun to browse through those old photo folders... Sometimes I find those shots that disappointed me years ago, like the ones I'm showing you today. Then I fix them up and make them into what I envisioned they would be the moment I shot them. Great fun!

So you see. A beautiful photo really isn't a result of one thing or the other, but the combination of the two. You need both skill-sets; the skill to get good raw material, and the skills to tweak them in post-ed.
That's the yin and yang of photography :)

/MrsHjort





Tuesday, July 12, 2016

CCC - June: Sunny


This clematis is my favorite, it's called "Nelly Moser"... I know, I know, I initially said no "blooming flowers". I didn't want to recreate the last calendar challenge I did, and I've done so many traditional flower shots that I'm growing a bit tired of them, but you can't do a theme of "Little Details in Nature" without including at least one blooming flower. This macro it not at all like the ones I shot a coupe of years ago though - the composition is different, and this is more focused on the details of the flower than the flower as a whole. Thus I figured I was okay. I won't be doing any more of these though, so consider this the one exception to my rule.

/MrsHjort

Monday, July 11, 2016

CCC - May: Mild


There are a lot of poppies in my garden, They seed each year and new ones keep on sprouting all over. That particular capacity is great, since they're not only pretty, but excellent ground cover plants too. They help me keep the weeds at bay...

I absolutely fell in love with the elegant lines of the poppy stalks this spring, I just had to do a shot like that for the calendar. Finding the perfect subject wasn't hard (we have a lot of poppies) and playing around with the shots in post-ed was a lot of fun. I've done quite a lot work to enhance the textures and bring out the different shades of green, yellow and turquoise. The end result makes this one my favorite of the series this far. A picture of three buddies, hanging out :)

/MrsHjort

Sunday, July 10, 2016

CCC - April: Fresh


Back in April, I wen't out shooting the budding trees without high hopes of getting anything I would like. I've tried my hand at buds many times before you see, and it has always ended in disappointment. Trees are complex things, and it's hard to get that perfect shot without too many distracting elements. Wind is a huge pain in the trigger finger. The smallest gust can move everything around which makes composing difficult, and it has the added bonus of motion blur, and moving stuff out of the depth of field, ah whooptidoo! That day however, my attempts turned out different. The light really worked with me, and the wind wasn't blowing at all (I live in a windy city, so those days are rare) which made things so much easier! Also, the bright blue sky turned out to be a gorgeous backdrop. The outcome exceed my expectations that day. YEY!

/MrsHjort

Friday, July 8, 2016

CCC - March: Light


I wanted March to be all about new buds springing from the ground. I was quite worried at first - nature didn't exactly cooperate and it wasn't until the end of the month that the buds actually started to pop up. You see, we live on the slopes of a hill, facing north, so spring is usually late here, this year however, it was a bit later than normal. Thankfully I finally got my shot. The name I chose is very typical of how it is here up north that time of year - light finally returns and we crawl out of our homes, like bears waking after a long winter :)

/MrsHjort


Wednesday, July 6, 2016

CCC - February: Diamond Dust


It's been a while again, real life keeps getting in the way of me blogging I'm afraid. But anyway... February's shot turned out more "wintery" than the one I used for January. I wanted snow, but just snow is a bit too boring, or wouldn't you say? So I went out in the garden and started looking for the perfect blades of grass. Now that's a much harder task than you'd think - either there were too many of them, the background didn't work, the depth of field wouldn't work because the grass was too twisted, the light conditions were bad or the grass was just plain ugly. It took me a while to find something I was satisfied with, and even then it would probably had been better to do some focus stacking - it's a bit rough around the edges. I really like the effect of the glittery snow though, which is why I decided on this one. I hope you like it too.

/MrsHjort

My Father, a Tribute to a Kind Man

This blog post is going to be longer than usual, and even so, how can one summarize one's feelings and memories of a person within the p...