Dangerous Spouse Pics

[Dangerspouse]

Figured it was time I started a Member's Folder, since I'm both a member and a folder.

First up....

This week's photo contest theme was "Wood Grain". There is a LOT of wood around my place, both inside and out. I had trouble deciding between these:











My favorite shot may be the second one, of the antique silk spools. But I ultimately chose to enter the Alligator tree (first pic), just because it makes me laugh every time I look at it (although it's kinda sad to see in real life - that ice storm did some serious damage to that, and several other of our trees).

My wife strongly suggested I enter the antique spools on the antique sewing machine desk (the next to last shot) because she says it shows grain the best. But I'm not thrilled with the composition, and the mottled wall in the back bothers me a bit. So that was a no go.

And I love the tree seen through the old post hole, but PS left some funky artifacts around the inner rim of the hole (it's a 5-shot stack). So that was no good either.

Hey looky that, I finally got a folder underway! I feel like a real member now. Wheeeee!

 

[TwistedThrottle]

Too bad about the post hole. Is there any way to clean it up? It caught my eye right away. Nice shots.

 

[Marilynne]

Off to a good start DS.

 

[Dangerspouse]

Too bad about the post hole. Is there any way to clean it up? It caught my eye right away. Nice shots.

Thanks very much, TT. You know, it seems like I get those PS artifacts almost every time I stack shots that are not macro. And so far I haven't been able to figure out how to clean them up when they appear. Credit my lack of PS experience here. I've only just started dipping my toe in that program's waters after finally getting comfortable with Lightroom. Perhaps I'll post a request for help in the relevant folder here soon...

 

[Dangerspouse]

Thank you Marilynne, I appreciate it!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Shortly before the snow comes down, and just prior to the winter light displays going up, our local arboretum is usually deserted. I like that time, because even though there are no flowers in bloom or trees in blazing colors you can still find interesting things to photograph. And there's no tourists! Best of both worlds

Turns out they have a Japanese "torii" with devotional bell erected, appropriately enough, near the Japanese water feature and garden. I never noticed it before, so either it's new or I just couldn't see it previously through the thick foliage. With all the flowers and trees around it dead, it looked pretty dull:



But by wriggling my fat carcass between the branches of a nearby fir so the branches could frame the shot with the sun just peaking through on the upper right:



There's a statue of Pan looking down a long promodade:



But by sneaking under the "DO NOT SNEAK UNDER ROPES" sign (no tourists OR groundskeepers!) and lying down on a pile of similar colored leaves some distance away, I got what I thought was a much more interesting picture:



There wasn't much else there, other than a lot of construction equipment which would soon be used to assemble the winter light extravaganza. I assume it's all up by now, and I hope to get there sometime during the holidays. If only to see my wife wear her face warmer again:

 

[NestorStura]

Hi DS. Congratulations!!! For your pictures first and for the courage of starting your own page... I wish I have your "guts" (I hope this is not offensive, sometimes I forget I am not writing in Spanish)

Keep on moving.

 

[Dangerspouse]

Hi DS. Congratulations!!! For your pictures first and for the courage of starting your own page... I wish I have your "guts" (I hope this is not offensive, sometimes I forget I am not writing in Spanish)

Keep on moving.

Wow, thank you very much for all that, Nestor! That was very nice of you, I appreciate it all.

LOL! Don't worry. 1. "Guts" is not offensive. and 2. I don't get offended by anything anyway

All the best, amigo!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'm at work (of course I am) so I don't have access to my stored pictures...other than these from several years ago which for some reason are on my work computer:



My wife being typically charming while we were looking at the Christmas windows in Manhattan.

This was my favorite window:



That was my very first outing with my very first DSLR! It was a Merry Christmas then indeed

 

[Marilynne]

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Thank you Marilynne, the same to you and yours!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Our Christmas table this year, panorama.

One of the lights in the chandelier is blown, but I used the adjustment brush in Lightroom to make it look as luminous as the others. I'm inordinately proud of that, as I'm still learning PP....

 

[Dangerspouse]

So for this week's photo competition the theme was "night", and I submitted this view of lower Manhattan from my workplace window:



Honestly, I really don't like that shot. The composition is meh, for one thing. But mostly I don't like it because I tried a new technique in PhotoShop that was supposed to remove high ISO noise. I guess it did, a bit. But it also made the entire shot less sharp, almost like it was out of focus.

I took a number of other pictures as morning turned into day, and as my work overlooks pretty much all of Manhattan from uptown to the Battery, I panned around as the sun came up. I actually think these two pictures of midtown with the Empire State Building came out better than the one I submitted, despite only being lightly worked with Lightroom:

 

[Chris@sabor]

I hope this is not an intrusion. If it is, I'll happily remove it.

It would make a huge difference in the image quality (of the night shots) to use a tripod. Use iso 100 and whatever the shutter speed needed. It will look rich, 3 dimensional and almost noise free.

Here is one of mine, from a tripod...

 

[hark]

Since you allow image editing, I want to point out something. The color red is more difficult to edit than some of the other colors. When you edit, be sure you turn on your clipping masks (which you already turned on).

I took the liberty of opening your photo in Camera RAW (which has the same features available as Lightroom). Photoshop also has the same option to display what I am going to explain. I just happen to prefer working in Camera RAW for this type of editing.

Please notice the 2 circled triangles in the upper right. Those are your clipping masks. If either/both triangles are illuminated with various colors (red, black, white, blue, etc), it means the blacks and/or whites are being clipped. And when clipping occurs, details in the blacks and/or whites isn't visible. The blacks/whites are simply too underexposed or over exposed to display details. Some photos have a huge dynamic range (which is when bracketing multiple images can be helpful).

To view how much of the blacks are being clipped, I held down the ALT button then clicked on the black slider (where arrow is pointing). Notice how your image changes. All those colored areas in your image are being clipped - meaning details within the blacks are missing.

And I did the same thing with the white slider to show the areas being clipped in the whites.

Here is a video that goes into a little more detail on clipping. There is more than one way to display the clipped areas. In the video, she mentions hitting the J key (shortcut) or even clicking on the triangles. Lynda.com is one of several sources that offers excellent information. Anyway, I'm just giving you a gentle push towards being aware during editing. Just take it one step at a time!

 

[Marilynne]

So for this week's photo competition the theme was "night", ...



Honestly, I really don't like that shot. The composition is meh, for one thing. But mostly I don't like it because I tried a new technique in PhotoShop that was supposed to remove high ISO noise. I guess it did, a bit. But it also made the entire shot less sharp, almost like it was out of focus.

...

Nothing in the rules about deleting an entry and submitting a new shot.

 

[Dangerspouse]

I hope this is not an intrusion. If it is, I'll happily remove it.

It would make a huge difference in the image quality (of the night shots) to use a tripod. Use iso 100 and whatever the shutter speed needed. It will look rich, 3 dimensional and almost noise free.

Here is one of mine, from a tripod...

View attachment 327384

An intrusion? Lol. Not at all. I'm new to this, and I'm in it for fun. I have no ego

Thanks for the advice, actually! I did take all my photos that morning (about 45 in total) from a tripod, including these. The problem I had was that our studios are just off a major highway. And even though it was before dawn on Christmas morning, there was still enough truck traffic that you could discern very small vibrations in the floor almost constantly. So I was constantly taking test shots as the sun came more and more over the horizon, trying to get the fastest shutter speed I could to knock out the motion blur from those vibrations. That meant a higher ISO than I would have liked, particularly for the pre-dawn shots. It was a real balancing act! It also doesn't help that my tripod is over 35 years old, and will wobble if I breathe too hard in the same room

But I understand what you're saying, and I'll keep that in mind for when I'm shooting low light in very stable conditions. Thanks so much (and your boat pic is GORGEOUS)!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Nothing in the rules about deleting an entry and submitting a new shot.

Really? Huh, I didn't know that.

But no, I made the wrong choice and I'll take my lumps. Code of honor, and all that Besides, this is all for fun and learning for me. Winning or losing, it's just as fun.

Thanks Marilynne!

 

[Dangerspouse]

Since you allow image editing, I want to point out something......

Wow, that was amazing! And here I was all proud of myself that I was "getting the hang of Lightroom after only a couple of months!", lol. That'll teach me not to be humble

Yeah, so thank you TONS for throwing together that tutorial for me, and for embedding that video. I can't wait to learn this one, it looks like it's super useful. And I had no idea that reds were problematic in PP - I'll keep an eye on that in the future.

Thanks so much Cindy, that was really kind of you! :cheerful:

 

[Dawg Pics]

Really? Huh, I didn't know that.

But no, I made the wrong choice and I'll take my lumps. Code of honor, and all that Besides, this is all for fun and learning for me. Winning or losing, it's just as fun.

Thanks Marilynne!

I have posted stuff, and re-edited and reposted before. I usually just make a note if people already liked the image. If i had no likes yet, I just delete and start over. No biggie.