Trying again with a yellow rose photo different than the one posted yesterday. I think this one is a bit better; I like the golden glow...

   

Happy Hump Day.

This morning I finally took a few new photos. A house at the east end of my street has some healthy looking yellow roses. Here's a shot of one...

   

Good day Foto Friends! High heat and thunderstorm watch today and tonight. Going to be close to 100!

I don't recall if I posted the new designs on the Palace yet. This is the edition for our 250th Birthday.

Have a good day!

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A hot week coming up for us with temps in the 90-100F range. Not looking forward to that.
Here is one from our recent car show on Main.

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Good day, friends.

No new photos from me, so here's an old one (between 10 and 20 years ago) that I've never posted before...

   

Good windy (as usual here) Wednesday friends. I have lots of neat car photos from our recent car show. 

Here is a 2005 Dodge Magnum, Mortician Edition. Called that by the owner as the first owner was a mortician. The new owner also did his own air brush art. Very talented. 
Can you figure out what the license plate says?

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I hope all are having a good weekend.

No shots from me lately that seem print-worthy, so I decided to show my process of taking a less than mediocre photo and trying to give it some hint of interest.

A) The original shot with no adjustments by me...

   

B) What I ended up with (still not very impressive, but I hope an improvement)...

   

1) First I flipped it horizontally because I wanted the tall greenish stem to act as an eye-stopper at right edge.
2) Cropping, then Content-Aware Fill to remove or minimize distracting bits in the background.
3) Some lightening of the entire area, using Brightness & Contrast and Levels adjustment layers.
4) Additional lightening here and there in an attempt to create a COI.
5) Darkening some selected areas to further define the COI.
6) Increasing color saturation in the emerging COI.
7) Sharpening of the COI.
8) Resizing image and adding simulated mat and frame
(steps 4 through 6 were revisited & tweaked, some multiple times.)

A rather laborious process only to end up with a final image that is average at best, but it was fun and I learned some things that may be helpful in the future.

Two days ago on one of my walks I went into a different neighborhood than usual and noted these small blue flowers.

I tried to make a decent composition out of it, but I think the photo turned out average.

   

Maybe the flowers would look better under different lighting conditions.

Good day or evening.

Here's another oldie: an Allen's Hummingbird taken in my backyard in 2014...

   

Some may have heard of the chemical leak in SoCal. Around 50,000 people are under mandatory evacuation, but even though it's only about 6 miles from my home, we're probably not at risk. Still, it's a pretty scary situation.

Memorial day festivities today on Main Street USA in my town.
Caught three 55 Chevy's all lined up! Sweet

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