All about cars Day 255

Toy car pretending to be the real thing hahaha

SOOC + not perfectly applied license / registration plate (PS).
Fun.

Love the colours of the outtake, golden hour indeed (below).

Into the sun Day 254

I dragged him out to practice shooting into the light. After he liked the attitude pic (below) he was happy to pose. Nope, not showing you the unhappy ones prior to that - deleted them already :-)

DPS: I wanted a high key look. Lightened and de-yellowed his skin, brightened and vibranced (is that a verb?! hahaha) his eyes.

Kitchen Day 253

I wanted an architectural / interior mag shot, loved the light and pressed the shutter. I adore the rays of light on the cupboards on the left. Sharpened & lifted shadows a tad.

Shooting with an ultra wide is a pain, I'm always fighting with the distortion. This went well, no need for adjustment, so I'm happy. Eventually I'll learn to point it right ;-P

Evenings in Kilyos Day 252

Snap of the view cos I liked it. SOOC + minimum crop and minuscule sharpening on the vessel.

Return to the (temporary) paradise Day 251

365_251 I'm way behind on uploading my 365s, so still in August when it was still summer. Gone are those days now... So long - until next year.

SOOC

Mission accomplished, bragging rights in his pocket... Day 250

... he drove a (small) tractor for the 1st time...

For green greens click on pic.

"I'm youth. I'm joy. I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg." James Matthew Barrie Day 249

Teenage shopping. The girl (smiling with sunglasses in the reflection) and the boy are friends. Same ones that bought All Stairs here:

I wanted a funky feeling so I tinted the shadows (black point) slightly magenta in Aperture.

James Matthew Barrie? He created Peter Pan.

Click on pic for vibrant colours.

Chasing pavements Day 248

He's happily uploading this to his FB profile ;-D

I took this for two reasons - he was finally home (i.e. we met up after 5 weeks apart) Ups, I took rather a lot of pix of him in the days following. Ah, love him, what can I say?!?!!

The second reason was the reflection in his sunglasses. It adds the missing dimension - the other side of the crossroads.

I like it in colour but I was somehow itching for more feeling, so I tried BW conversion. I am absolutely in awe of Nik Silver Efex Pro. I went for a faded look, made it resemble an Ilford film, added toning, colour filter... it let's you do all that!

Baby you can light my fire ;-P Day 247

Just abstracting fire (my dad was barbecuing). I like how alive it has become and how unthreatening it seems.

Are we there yet?!? Day 246

2 hour train ride. He did have all the electronics with him but then again he did experience boredom. I love how the steel insert in the window brought catchlights to his eyes :-D

I chose this image to test a technique for reducing colour cast I picked up in a webinar by Vincent Versace. Learned a lot. He is so right: warmer (*colours*) seems closer, colder further away therefore the person gets separated from the background i.e. comes forward. Essentially, the image needs to be adjusted for colour cast on black, mid and white point separately (kind of complicated technique of using colour picker on curves) and then combined using layers. He uses different layer blending modes (plus masking) to lighten and darken parts of the image. Works wonders but requires PS and at least an intermediate knowledge. I'm interested in his book, will try to find it. The link to his website: versacephotography.com

I needed to eliminate colour cast anyway (obviously just changing WB was no good). Still not completely happy, but I should not obsess...I spend hours and I give up for today :;-D

I used skin smoothing on problem areas as well.

Before below.

Click on pic for real colours.

A moment not unlike any other moment yet special in it's mundane form ;-D Day 245

Ah, I owe a bug's life pic. Went for a rather extreme BW here. Somehow I like it. Quite unorthodox ;-P

Finally I'm back on my stream. Sincere apologies, I was traveling with almost no access to internet. I had my laptop with me but something had gone wrong during the calibration - I ended up looking at acid green grass and acid yellow sun :-( All sorted now, will try to catch up ASAP.