"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.

The thing with sun rays... Day 244

Love the feeling of this.

Sorry I only had 50mm lens on and obviously I was sitting on the passenger seat trying to squeeze myself away from him to get as much as possible in. Nope, the other lenses were in the trunk.

I always loved golden hour sunburst images. I just could never quite manage it. Gullible as I am sometimes, I thought those were SOOC. Yeah right! Well obviously warming up the image by choosing cloudy WB setting helps. The tricky part is the transition of midtones towards shadows to give that smooth feel. So there I was happy with the image yet unhappy with it. I just got PhotoTools, so I ran it through that and managed to achieve the same look I observed so often here on Flickr.

OnOne's PhotoTools are fun but let's see how much I'm actually going to use them on daily basis, since the process takes way too much time. The good thing are the presets I can create and then run straight from my Aperture... Oh well, lets see.

So: framing here is too tight, but I like how the arch of the car runs through the pic. I've ended up with too much yellow in the fields but it gives me a better feeling that the original cooler tones. Still, I have to find a way to control that better. I still need a lot of practice with my golden hour images. I want the realistic yet warm and fuzzy SOOC!!! :-D

The SOOC is below. I normally do not touch WB since I shoot in RAW but for this type of images I'll have to, if I want that SOOC ace ;-P

Have a warm, loving day!

For the real colours click on pic!

Motion on highway Day 234

Should I confess that I was bored during a long drive back home (we drove, slept over in Izmir and then drove some more ;-D)? Anyhow, this comes out of boredom. Let's do some motion blur pics, popped into my head. So I did. Roads are full of bumps and ridges so the result was rather fun. Pushed a bit in PP for sharpness, contrast and the blue sky...

What I noticed 1st hand is that motion blur is a tricky fellow, closer object display a lot of it, further object remain practically sharp even when you speed by... I'll keep this in mind and try it with some people some day. Should be fun. ups, need to find volunteers 1st. Blast! ;-P

Ah, yes, yet again, for the real colours click on pic!!