Sunday, February 10, 2013
A few photos from New Mexico Photo Contest
It was a fun photo contest. I know I wasted more gas than I should, but I had such a fun time sightseeing and exploring. Many times my daughter accompanied me, and I even talked my husband into coming with us to a few of the New Mexico ruins. Here are some highlights.
Christmas 2012 in RAW
My next big photography improvement: Shooting in raw. Since I had shot some photos in raw but didn't have a lot of time on my hands, my pictures have just been sitting around since Christmas. Finally I did something about it. I use Gimp (free!), it's like photoshop, and I used the plug-in UFRaw that you can download from SourceForge. Love that place.
Then I played around with UFRaw and my raw photos, and tried to figure things out. My friend Ashley has been giving me some good "raw" advice. You can look at her work and/or hire her through her website, Ashley Shaw Photography. Tell her I sent 'cha!
However, I am having some serious color issues with my first batch. I don't know if my camera settings were somehow way off or what happened, but my colors need major adjusting and they still seem way off. My reds and my greens on the histogram are not lining up, and I vaguely remember Ashley showing me an example where it was just given that they would line up. I was trying to find the best adjustment, but it looked slightly off. I still made the most of the lemons, made some lemonade, and I'm pretty pleased. I know the colors are kind of crazy. My auto corrects were just giving me gibberish. When I took the photos, they were looking fine on my camera. I might need to load some presets about my camera into UFRaw. I don't know. Or be better about doing a white balance check in the moment. Another thing to add to my list of homework.
Other things I was able to successfully accomplish were making a duplicate layer and using a cool tool on it to make an "unsharpening mask," which actually helps to sharpen things. Seems like a misnomer though, huh? I took the opacity down because full blast usually looks like crap. But I bet there could be some instances where it could give a good artsy look.
Here are some of the photos I got. I love taking pictures of my daughter, and we were having a fun day at this cool little spot that used to be a Halloween pumpkin patch turned Santa's Village.
"Christmas for Cowboys (and Cowgirls)"
"Christmas Awe B/W"
"Wistful and Angelic"
"Christmas Golfing"
Then I played around with UFRaw and my raw photos, and tried to figure things out. My friend Ashley has been giving me some good "raw" advice. You can look at her work and/or hire her through her website, Ashley Shaw Photography. Tell her I sent 'cha!
However, I am having some serious color issues with my first batch. I don't know if my camera settings were somehow way off or what happened, but my colors need major adjusting and they still seem way off. My reds and my greens on the histogram are not lining up, and I vaguely remember Ashley showing me an example where it was just given that they would line up. I was trying to find the best adjustment, but it looked slightly off. I still made the most of the lemons, made some lemonade, and I'm pretty pleased. I know the colors are kind of crazy. My auto corrects were just giving me gibberish. When I took the photos, they were looking fine on my camera. I might need to load some presets about my camera into UFRaw. I don't know. Or be better about doing a white balance check in the moment. Another thing to add to my list of homework.
Other things I was able to successfully accomplish were making a duplicate layer and using a cool tool on it to make an "unsharpening mask," which actually helps to sharpen things. Seems like a misnomer though, huh? I took the opacity down because full blast usually looks like crap. But I bet there could be some instances where it could give a good artsy look.
Here are some of the photos I got. I love taking pictures of my daughter, and we were having a fun day at this cool little spot that used to be a Halloween pumpkin patch turned Santa's Village.
"Christmas for Cowboys (and Cowgirls)"
"Christmas Awe B/W"
"Wistful and Angelic"
"Christmas Golfing"
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Launching
Launching "Photography Through My Eyes." I know I have a lot to learn. Join me on my journey.
My first task is to post my better pictures from the New Mexico Centennial "Get The Picture" $10,000 Photo Contest. I didn't win, but I sure had a fun time exploring and photographing New Mexico and Albuquerque.
Thanks for checking out my site!
Danelle
Danelle Rowley Photography
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