Week 17 by Becky

CHICKADEE

Went to Michigan for my husband's 30th High School Class Reunion over the weekend. I was looking out my mother-in-law's kitchen window and saw this little guy.

Week 17 by Robin

The art show was great and had lots of tents filled with all kinds of art this year, including some great photography. They had birds out for some sort of bird show as we were leaving. These two parrots seem to me to have humble body language and I thought they were cute. The background colors were very distracting so I tried Topaz B&W Effects to remove most of the color. I used the very cool, new "Edge Aware" feature under the Local Adjustment, Color. It enables you to touch only the parts you want to keep in color and doesn't bleed out into the surrounding areas. Topaz has a another winner! Love playing with B&W Effects.

Week 17 by Judy

Glass Nuggets

Went to an Art and Craft Show today with Robin. This is a bowlful of colorful little glass paperweights that caught my eye. Applied one of the Topaz Detail filters, but forget which one :-). That was the only editing applied, though. Didn't even do any cropping.

Week 16 by Robin

Since both of you lucky gals just got shiny new macro lenses, I got a longing to hook mine up to the 7D with an extender like Roz (from DP Challenge) does to get her breathtaking macros. I also brought out the Gary Fong "Puffer" diffuser and my 430EX off the camera as a slave. These are tiny iridescent long legged flies (Condylostylus) that flit around on the hibiscus bushes. You can't get them with the flash from the front (unless you are Roz)...they are THAT fast, but I got this one from behind! :) No tripod today. I did some color adjustments and sharpening in Topaz Detail, then used Topaz adjust and a bit of Noise Ninja to smooth it out the background area.

Week 16 by Judy

Mosquito Hawk

Went to Viera Wetlands this afternoon for the first time. Neat place. I took this photo from my car. Actually, I'm surprised how well it came out considering the distance I was from the dragonfly. My husband calls dragonflies, mosquito hawks, because they love to eat mosquitoes, which is a wonderful thing. This is a Halloween Pennant dragonfly. I took this with my 18-250mm zoom. Cropped, sharpened the dragonfly, and applied Topaz mild detail filter.

Week 16 by Becky

We See You

Playing around with my new Nikon Macro 105mm lens. Took a variety of photos this morning which caused me to have a hard time determining what to enter for the blog this week. Came across these nasty things in the garden and decided to post them for the blog. Especially since tomorrow they are going bye bye. Don't like the blurry plant in the foreground, but I was not about to clip it away. These guys are really nasty and they were watching my every movement. I moved, they moved. Pretty weird. Tried to clone part of the plant out, but it just didn't look right. Very happy with the lens. My settings were f9.0, ISO 160, 1/6 sec. Opened in Adobe Raw and did some tweaking. Did Topaz Adjust, but don't remember what I did. Really need to get better about documenting that stuff. Unsharp Mask, crop, smart sharpened, then saved for web.

Week 15 by Robin

Our camera club went to the Ag Museum and it was a great place to see Florida history come alive! I wanted to try to make a photo that looks like it was taken from that era. This is my beginner attempt! Hope it's OK Judy. You make a great shopkeeper! ;) This was in the general store. I decided to purchase Topaz B&W and played with it some to get this photo. I also added an overlay to make it look worn. Topaz B&W has a lot to play with! I hope to use it to finally get some beautiful black and white images someday.

Week 15 by Judy

Glass Menagerie

Went to the Florida Agriculture Museum this past Saturday for our monthly Camera Club field trip. They had a restored 1890 General Store on the grounds. These were some of the oil lamps that were "for sale" at the store. The store had a lot of interesting old time items. Applied Topaz mild detail filter, did a little cropping, and clone stamp to get rid of some distracting items on the floor.

Week 15 by Becky

Do you mind?

Playing around with my 33 year old Nikon MF 50MM f1.4 lens on my Nikon D300s DSLR. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could do it. I still have my first Nikon that my father bought in Korea back in 1978. It is a Nikon FM. I love that camera just as much as my latest Nikon. Well anyway, this is a butterfly in my front garden. The settings are ISO 200, f1.4 and 1/2500. I sharpened in CS5, plus made the colors richer. Also cropped it down a bit since this is not a macro lens I couldn't get too close. I really like the DOF this lens produced. It seems to have really isolated the flower and the butterfly. Looking forward to playing with this lens some more.

Week 14 by Robin

A drop after the rain today on a vine tendril. Meh... not much else to say. :) 

Week 14 by Becky

Incoming

Nothing too exciting. Caught this bumble bee coming into the flower. Went with the Silhouette processing since I couldn't get a good focus or exposure on the bee. They move to quick for me.

Week 14 by Judy

Close Encounters

I had three more flowers from my Christ in the Manger cactus bloom last night. I posted a photo of the blooming flowers of this same cactus on Week 8, but decided to shoot the buds this time. I think the bud is also very pretty and unusual looking. It almost looks like some sort of alien creature to me. The flower opened up just a few hours after I took this photo. Very little editing done; just some cropping and a little bit of lightening of the bud. It was shot using a black velvet background.