Sat & Sun, June 24 & 25

[Don]

Good morning to all - hope you are having a great weekend so far. Looks like we may have another day without rain, at least for a bit. I think I will take the motorcycle out for a spin in a bit. I am going motorcycle camping next Thursday, just for one night at a nearby Corps of Engineer campground.

I think I have our passport renewal sorted now. At least the State Department has the forms (and fee) so if everything checks out we should get our new passports in about 10 weeks or so.

Glad to see Patty back and hopefully she will share some of her north Georgia photos with us.

No recent photos so here are some more from Iceland. The boat we went out on for the whale watch. Kind of rough with 10 to 12 foot swells. Never got to see a whale breach, but I did get some photos of it diving. Lots of competition for a spot at the railing. And a Great Northern Loon photo which was new for us. We ended up with 25 new birds.

[Dave]

Thanks for starting our Weekender, Don. It's always a treat to see more photos of your travels.

Being out of new photos that seemed worthy of posting, I looked at a few taken late yesterday and selected one to play with.

Wall needing some work (95% unedited)...

   

You can see that it has some deficiencies; most notably strong vignetting and it's simply a not very interesting subject.

I tried various adjustments at random, pushing them to extremes. Finally, one resulted in an image that made me decide on a look that I wanted to try for - that of hot sun striking the wall in the thin air of a mountain somewhere in the southwest US (in my mind I placed it in New Mexico).

A couple of hours of work that involved 5 Brightness/Contrast adjustment layers (4 with manually drawn white, black, and gray to control what areas I wanted each adjustment layer to apply to and how strong I wanted the adjustment's effect to be), I ended up with this...

   

I think the sense of thin air is there, but a hot midday sun, not so much. At least I eliminated the vignetting. Maybe I should have made the red letters a bit less intense. Probably not an image that's print-worthy, but I had two hours of fun seeing what I could come up with.

[Luv2shoot]

Good morning guys and hopefully gals.
I agree with Dave, it is nice to see your photos from your trips.  I like the ship and a whale's tale is better than nothing.  We have lots of loons up on the lakes where are trailer is located.  They are an interesting and attractive bird.

Dave, I think you succeeded in applying your adjustments to make it look hot and dry.

I came across this technique that I want to try with my camera and post work with layers in Photoshop (or I like to use INFINITY).  After further research, I found examples of how you can even use it for STILLL LIFE photography.  I have attached several links for the tutorials.  Dave, you could even see this up in your house and have hours of fun afterward in Photoshop creating this effect.  It is call PEP VENTOSA.  It is ironic that so many of the software now have created or improved SHARPENING features in their software and this effect is just the opposite. However, I like different.  I like the unexpected.  I like this and thought I would share it with you. 

I hope you have a great start to your weekend and if you have time, you can take a peek at the Pep Ventosa Effect and maybe even try to create one of your own.  I am already thinking of where I would go to find subjects that I could use for this effect.

So here are some links that I think explain the technique and process well with lots of examples besides the ones that I have attached below:
https://www.leavesnbloom.com/2017/04/pep...nique.html
https://digital-photography-school.com/p...till-life/



https://ayearwithmycamera.com/blog/the-p...-technique (this is a less blurred result using fewer images by a different photographer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jmrI1gY4VI

THESE ARE NOT MY IMAGES.  I HAVE BORROWED THEM FROM THE INTERNET.

[Man From Ironbark]

Well it went from a whale of a tale to a wall that with a few scratchings could look like a map of the known world and thence to vibrant vibrating flowers and things.
I do sometimes find a single days postings to be most rewarding reading. You are all on top form today.
Maybe I'll take some new photos today but for now, here's something from my archives.

[Luv2shoot]

omg, PETER, the red plant looks like an underwater sea plant. It was the plant that NEMO would hide in the movie, FINDING NEMO. I think they are called SEA ANEMONES.

ONLY in Australia do you have such interesting Plant life species.

[Man From Ironbark]

They do resemble anenomes.

[Adamphotoman]

Peter,
What is the perfectly round circle on the red flower?

[Adamphotoman]

The kitchen is waiting for baseboards. But here it is non the less.

   

[Man From Ironbark]

Peter,
What is the perfectly round circle on the red flower?

The yellow centre? is the stigma. The red ones are the anthers.
The flower is from Eucalyptus leucoxylon, which translated to English = White iron wood/bark.
The seed I collected and planted over 40 years ago gave me trees with various flower colours from creamy to pink to red/crimson and oddly some pure yellow.
In this image you can see one healthy tree and one that was on the way out at the time which was in the middle of a 20 year dry spell. 2011. By the end of 2012, that tree was a dead stump. The dead tree was one of two that I had managed to plant either side of that side driveway/firebreak. Both had the deep crimson flowers but only the one now remains.







leaf shadow on bark.



Don's loon was very vibrant and Grant's renovations are spick and span.