Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Wintry goldfinches from the archives

  Just a small post before eventual long brake from blogging. Dug my archives and found this image of goldfinches feeding. From time to time it's good to go back to those old images which never were post processed, you never know what treasures you may find.



   

Monday, December 29, 2014

Photography, animals and Ikea

Our soon 10 year old Ikea chairs make a fantastic backdrop for pet photography. I've probably shot all of our cats in these chairs. I love the olive green color, the simple stripes and even our cats seem to enjoy these old, soft furniture. Cats tend to be small, and if they are kittens there is place for at least six pieces of animals. It's not uncommon to see two grownup cats enjoying a nap on the same chair. It seems though, that not only our feline friends like soft, olive green Ikea furniture. Our big boy, who most of the time dwells outside, decided a couple of days ago that it's enough. He wanted to come inside the house, were all the other of his friends are. And guess where he hauled his large, furry and smelly bottom?   



Sunday, December 28, 2014

A lesson learned...

When you go out, and it's raining snow, you need to be ready to get wet and freeze. It's not an big issue if you prepare well. Warm clothes, suitable pants and a pair of long johns under, warm coat, a pair of gloves and a warm hat, a combination that will help you to tolerate the bad weather conditions and this way you will most likely enjoy the outdoor experience a lot more than if you were wearing something less suitable. Yesterday it was a bit cold and even a couple of snowflakes fell down, when me and a friend of mine decided to head out and make a few wintry landscape images. Practically it meant that we were wading in snow. My buddy was wearing a pair of rubber boots, but in no time he had hes boots full of snow. When you get snow in your shoes you start to freeze. When you start to freeze you feel bad, and when feeling bad you don't enjoy what you are doing. He's a brave guy, so he continued the walk with me, even if it meant more snow in the boots and walking in cold water. Finally we decided to return to the car. One thing nice with a car is that there is a heater, and when your legs are freezing, nothing is more pleasing than a car fan blowing some warm air on your legs. Tight and wet boots of... and yes, it feels so good. Can't say we made too many images on that trip, but when we were returning home we saw how the clouds in front of us started to brake up and a bit of sun and a piece of blue sky was appearing. And just on the road on the way home is my favorite hill. A short stop, my buddy stayed in the car, and I took a walk to the nearest horses... Always wear good and warm shoes when it's bad weather.        


Saturday, December 27, 2014

One gone

  It's always sad when your pet dies. Not that cats can't be a big pain in the... you know where, but you still get used to them hanging around, wanting in, wanting out, meowing around here and there and clawing and scratching things they shouldn't. Some are more annoying than others, and Tassu, the one on the right in the image for sure was one of those more annoying ones. But still, you get affected to them and they become like family members, at least in our small family of two human beings, one dog and a bunch of cats. Animals do have only one life, so please take good care of them...

               Moses on the left, and Tassu who were hit by a car two days ago, on the right.

Friday, December 26, 2014

About my workflow

  My workflow, to finish an image, is pretty straight forward and simple. Open the image, if necessary do the exposure correction, fix the white balance, brush away any eventual dust spots and finally do some work with levels and curves. All this I'll do in Nikon Capture NX2. I tried Light room, but didn't like it, so I'll stick with what I like and have, even if there won't be any updates for Capture NX2 (sadly). Try the new Capture NX-D, it might work for you, but in my opinion there's missing, some for my workflow, important tools and thus I use it very little (It's free, so...). Other tool I use is GIMP, a free, photoshop kind of a program, which I use mainly to ad the stupid watermark thingy in my images just to annoy the viewers. The newest tool I'm now learning to use is ON1 software's perfect effects 8, a filter program which lets you to do some nice things to your images, just to make them pop. Mainly it's about filters that you can ad in post to your images. The next image was good, but in my opinion need something, so I added a warming sunlight filter. First some basic adjustments in Nikon Capture NX2, then a added a filter in Perfect effects 8, and finally the water mark in Gimp...

Monday, December 22, 2014

Walking the dog

  It was pretty cold outside yesterday, but I still thought it would be nice to try to make a couple of images when walking our dog. Choosing the subject was easy, and even the backdrop were on my mind from the beginning. Then just add  a little bit of strobe light and shutter dragging, and that's it.


Friday, December 19, 2014

December :-(

  Not that I don't love new places, but the good thing with old ones is that you know them. When you know were you go, it's a bit easier to plan what you will eventually shoot. Then there's always the chance that you feel that everything is done, that there's nothing to photograph, and then you stand there wondering what to do. That's what happened to me a couple of days ago. I asked a friend of mine to follow me to one of my favorite landscape places. As it's already mid December the light is vanishing pretty fast, so you should try to be at the spot were you plan too shoot enough early. We didn't, so we were working in very bad lighting conditions. And just to mention, a forest in December, in a dull cloudy weather in the evening, how would I define it..? Yes, BORING! That's when it's all up to you the photographer. You can go home, or you could try to make at least one image. I made a few. One of my favorites is this image shown in here. Murky, brown water from a small stream mixing up with the clean and clear water in the main stream flowing down to the lake Bebresh.

  

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Finally a couple of sunny days

  After it has been quite many cloudy and cold days, the sun is finally shining. Even if we were quite busy today, I decided to take my camera whit me and see if I could make at least one frame. I managed to make a few, and here's one of those. My favorite hill lit by nice warm afternoon winter sun...