Week 44 by Becky

Hogwarts

I would love to say I went to a country with castles.  Instead, I went to Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida for the kid's spring break. This is the Harry Potter ride. Took this with my son's Nikon Coolpix S3000. I just love how it all looked so real. This was a very popular area of the park. The lines for the Butterbeer were ridiculous. But, I had to have one which turned out to be Vernors and cream. Very tasty. The ride was also very neat. Opened in Photoshop CS5, created a B/W layer using Topaz B/W, then changed the blending mode to luminosity to boost the contrast, then Topaz Adjust 5 Spicify, content aware to remove the tourists from the scene, cropped it down, then applied Topaz B/W Opalotype Collection White Chocolate, resized and saved for web.

Week 43 by Robin

Brahma Hooligans

Love these cows! Taken during my drive home from work. I enjoy the cows on my journey every day and they always seem so curious when I stop and take their photos. I mostly used Topaz B&W.

Week 43 by Judy

 Cruisin' Home

This is looking down at the Lido Deck from our cabin's balcony on the 9th Deck of the cruise ship. It was taken at dusk on the last evening of our cruise while heading back to Port Canaveral, FL. I think it was the only time I never saw any people on the Lido Deck. Looks very peaceful. No editing applied, but I took several shots in camera while playing with the EV compensation dial and this was the one I liked the best.

Week 43 by Becky

Caught!

I am always walking around my yard looking for things to shoot that I have not shot before. Started out trying to take a photo of two Mockingbird eggs in a nest.  Couldn't get the angle right to focus on the eggs. Plus, I didn't want to piss the mommy off too much. I will try again when the eggs hatch which will be real tricky since Mockingbirds are very mean when it comes to their babies. Then I took a photo of my Shih Tzu. Nope, didn't feel like submitting my dog again. Saw this web so I photographed it. It was very tricky since it was windy. I was not too thrilled  by just the web alone. I had no idea where the spider was. As I was about to leave, I saw this fly struggling in the corner of the web and I knew I had the photo for my No Wimpy Girls Photography blog.

Week 42 by Judy

Viva Cozumel!

I went on a 7-day cruise this past week to the Western Caribbean with seven of my crazy female relatives. We had a great time! This is a photo, taken from the ship, of the port in Cozumel, Mexico which was our first port-of-call on the trip. It looks like Ron Jon's surf shops are everywhere! The original Ron Jon's started in a town near where I grew up. I applied a low strength of Topaz Detail filter and some cropping.

Week 42 by Robin

Young Yawning Gator

Took an afternoon drive to Viera and captured this little guy at the wetlands. I edited with Topaz Lens effects to get a selective focus as he was lost in the complicated background. I have a bit to learn. I like editing my photos as much as taking them, but probably spend to much time with one photo. 

Week 42 by Becky

Ford

Went to an Antique car show over the weekend.  I just love old classic cars.  The lines on these beauties are awesome.  Really hard to get full car shots due to the amount of people so I always try to find an angle on the car that looks neat.  They make for wonderful abstracts. I have tons more that I will upload on my other blog soon.

Week 41 by Robin

Classic Florida Sunset

Every afternoon, while driving home from work, I see a pretty sunset over the cow pastures. Sometimes I stop and take some photos with my Canon G10. I liked this one, but the shot was very grainy and the grass was boring. So, after a bit of Topaz Adjust (Photo Pop, I think) and color adjustment, I used a flood filter to turn this into a water sunset. Noise Ninja wasn't doing the trick this time, so I applied a Gaussian Blur over the whole thing and a layer mask to keep some of the details in the trees. 

Week 41 by Judy

 Good Looking Red-head

We went camping again this weekend at Moss Park in Narcoossee, FL. I was hoping to get some photos of baby Sandhill Cranes. The Park Ranger said they had four babies born late last month; but, unfortunately something had gotten them all, probably a raccoon. I did manage to capture this guy while on a bike ride thru the Park. He was alone, which is unusual for Sandhill Cranes, as they are usually seen in pairs, so either he's a juvenile that hasn't found a mate yet, or his mate has been killed. I hope he just hasn't found a mate yet. BTW, the photo (Week 26)  I took of a turtle laying her eggs also lost all her eggs to a raccoon. Sad, but that's Nature's way.