This last week our three tulip plants (red, yellow and white) started flowering. This afternoon, the sun lit up the flowers. I waited until the sun started setting before making images. Here is a selection of some of the images that I made.
Tulips No 1
Tulips No 2
Tulips No 3
Tulips No 4
Tulips No 5
Tulips No 6
Tulips No 7
This weekend I was hoping to visit Doors Open Denver. Yesterday it was overcast and windy so it was shelved til today. After leaving the house today, the rain came. Change of plan — I returned and decided to try out some studio shots of flowers. Whilst shooting these lilies, I found that the best composition was the following image of two lilies. This angle makes also shows the orange stamens against the dark gray background.
Two Lilies
Most of the flowers were either fully open or completely closed. There was a single lily that was half-open.
Single Lily
We also had a bunch of alstroemeria flowers. All those small flowers, disappeared among the green leaves. This is an ideal candidate for black and white image. The flowers now contrast nicely against the surrounding greenery.
Alstroemeria Flowers
These images were made with a speedlight. This light was softened by reflecting into an umbrella. Doors Open will have to wait until another time.
Last night, I attended a night photoshoot with the Illuminate Workshops Meetup group. We met at the parking lot for a briefing. Soon after we got to work. Here are the shadows of other photographers at work!
Photographer Shadows, Denver
Visit the Meetup website, where you may see some other images that have been posted by the photographers, myself included. As we made our way to the Highland Bridge, I passed near these parking meters.
Green Parking Meters
It is always fun to shoot at night, when I set a white balance for incandescent (tungsten) lights to compensate for the yellow light. The buildings in the background behind Highland Bridge are lit by a mixture of tungsten and sodium lights. The twilight sky becomes more blue. Also, Highland Bridge is lit by lights that have a daylight color. This give a nice blue light for the walkway. Also, the bridge that crosses I-25, is also lit by passing cars.
Highland Bridge Twilight
At the bottom of the steps to the bridge is an art work “National Velvet”, that is red and is lit internally. I like the contrast of the blue steps with red of the velvet in the following image.
National Velvet And Blue Steps
Here is another image of the bridge, with the red velvet and some of the photographers at work.
Highland Bridge And National Velvet
Having setup on the bridge, I made several images, with an 8 second exposure. There was a constant stream of people, on foot and on bikes, making their way across the bridge. I like this image, where there there is ghosting of the approaching people in the blue light.
Highland Bridge, With Ghosts
Efrain made several group shots of the participating photographers. After shooting the images, I made my way towards the concrete terrace that surrounds National Velvet. I had noticed that someone had abandoned a styrofoam cup on the steps.
Abandoned Cup In Blue
Later I crossed to the other side of the bridge, where I made another image looking back towards the Denver skyline.
Highland Bridge And Denver Skyline
I have included National Velvet in the image. In the distance is another Denver landmark, the Millennium Bridge, that crosses railroad tracks.
Yesterday evening, we took a walk along the Platte River. It was a toasty weekend with temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s; too warm for spring weather! With the blue skies, this was a great time of day for making images of reflections in the water. During the last week, many of the trees started sprouting fresh green leaves. Here they are reflected in the river.
Spring Greenery
One the bridges crossing the river was painted in green, that reflected pastel shades in the river.
Platte River Bridge Reflection
As sunset approached, the rocks reflected the warmer oranges in the river.
River Bank Reflections
One final image of reflections in the river.
Platte River Reflections
Today was a totally different day. The skies were overcast, with temperatures dropping by 40 degrees. A forecast for snow and rain to follow.
On Monday March 26, I gave a presentation on “iPhoneography” at the Denver Digital Photo Club. Presentation notes may be found on the “Files” page. During and after the presentation, I got lots of questions that I could not answer due to limited time, so I will attempt to answer them here.
The iPhone (and iPad) has a “Photos” application which is a photo library that has several albums. When making images with the default camera app, all images are saved to an album called “Camera Roll”. Ok. So now that we have images on the camera roll, how to we transfer images to our desktop computers?
As a Mac user, I use the “Image Capture” app to transfer images to a hard drive; later I import manually into Lightroom. Also, Lightroom is able to import images from an iPhone or iPad to the hard drive and import into a catalog. For Windows, there are probably several ways of doing this. At least Lightroom should be able to do the job.
The iPad has a camera connection kit, that includes a card reader. Note that this an SD reader. So this is not an option for most of us with CF cards. There are several apps that transfer images from iPhone to iPad.
The easy way to do this is to create a folder on your computer. Copy all the images into this folder. iTunes can be used to transfer images to your iPhone. Note that the images will be resized to fit the iPhone screen size before transfer. You may also create sub-folders below the image folder. When you transfer to the iPhone, each folder becomes a photo album.
For those who want to get into iPhone photography, here are my app recommendations. Choose one or both of the following camera apps (I like both):
Both apps save images to a lightbox. After reviewing images, they can be save to the Camera Roll.
For post processing, I suggest that you start with Snapseed. This is a really amazing app from Nik Software. You can try some of the following apps:
Finally, if you are out in the field. Get Focalware. This app will calculate sunrise and sunset at different locations. The app links to the iPhone compass, so it shows where the sun (and also the moon) will rise and set.
Many of the images that I printed and displayed at the club meeting may be found on this web site. Follow this link for a sample of blog posts that have iPhone images.
Last week, waiting for the train, I looked down at my shoes. The morning sun cast some shadows of my shoes across the concrete. So I pointed my iPhone down towards my shoes, and turned around until I found interesting shadows. Later I processed the file with Dynamic Light. The default settings opened up the shadow areas nicely.
My Two Shoes
Returning from work, I pass the exit from the underground parking garage. I was drawn to the curves drawing the eye into the top right of the image. The image was converted to black and white with Snapseed.
Garage Sweeping Curved Wall
Exiting from light rail at University of Denver, the setting sun shone through the back of the station benches. This image looked great with the bright colors of the seat backs. After opening the image with Simply HDR, I picked a black and white rendition. This brought out the texture of the concrete with low setting sun.
Light Rail Bench In Sepia
At the end of the week, I left work along a different route. Along the sidewalk were these footprints embedded in the concrete. Concrete boots?
Concrete Footprints
Are the footprints embedded into the concrete? Or are they raised above the concrete? An optical illusion. This image was processed with Snapseed. This is one of the few that I have included a frame.
Waterton Canyon has been closed for the last 15 months for pumping of sludge that had accumulated in Strontia Springs dam. This operation was completed recently and the canyon was re-opened a couple of weeks ago. This afternoon, we decided to head down to the canyon. Soon after entering the canyon, we encountered about a dozen mule deer. I noticed this herd of 9 deer lying at the side of the trail. The white tips of their ears were very distinctive, making them easy to spot.
Herd Of Mule Deer
As we got closer, several deer proceeded to get up — they must have become wary of me and the camera!
Mule Deer, Waterton Canyon
A cold front started moving through the Front Range earlier in the day. The high wind speeds kicked up plenty of dust into the air. As we continued into the canyon, the wind started pumping really hard, so we turned back. By the time we got back, the deer had moved on.
We did manage to see some bird life in the canyon. Several Mergansers were swimming in the Platte River. A few dozen Tree Swallows had also returned to the metro area for the breeding season. We also spotted an Eagle, a Kestrel and a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks.
This week we had a variety of weather conditions. The week started with a clear day. Passing by this pond at Tuscany Plaza, I was captivated by the watery reflections on the sunset shining on the buildings.
Tuscany Plaza Sunset
Crossing over to Samson Park, the setting sun shone through the dome. The glow of the setting sun was enhanced in this image.
Sunlit Dome
The following morning was overcast. The overcast sky was a perfect backdrop to apply a textured background.
Overcast Streelight
Later that day, the clouds cleared. The Mangia Streetlight was lit for the evening. This was a striking contrast against the deep blue sky after sunset.
Mangia Streetlight
On Friday, I took an alternate route to light rail. Passing the Triad building, there were some interesting reflections from buildings on the far side of the interstate.
Triad Builiding Reflections
With the iPhone, I would need to get much closer to fill the image with reflections. However, as I approached the building, but the reflections changed and lost their interest due to a change in perspective.