Today it’s supposed to be my picture. But we did some small in house contest. We tried different lighting setups, color gels, diffusers and reflectors. At the end it turned out that Iza won with her minimalistic photo shot in completely dark room. So you’ll get her photo instead. To sweeten my defeat I can say that I carved this pumpkin myself. And it’s the very first and so far the only one pumpkin I’ve ever made (both carving and design). So I’m still quite proud of myself.

I just love this image so much, I cannot resist sharing it on blog. It is one of the completely unexpected images coming out of “I have no creative idea” afternoon. I hit the town to get some photos for a contest, and was just driving around (yeah, I know. But it is Midwest), clueless, stopping here and there, taking images without giving it a second thought. I was quite surprised what I saw when I opened them at home, and this was my all day favorite. I wanted to take an image of the particularly colorful tree from behind it up, and it turned out that shooting from inside the crown out was better idea .

It seems like orange colors of pumpkin is now everywhere. On Saturday, I was photographing a pile of pumpkins on the airfield. Yes, I got it right- on a local airport! Of course it is a part of a longer story, but the bottom line is- they are ubiquitous now. First I thought that photographing it as HDR is an overkill, but I do like the effect.

There seem to be one thing I can photograph with Lensbaby- airplanes. That probably has something to do with my favorite subjects vs technical limitations. Somehow, the landscapes do not look that appealing when I photograph them with Lensbaby, and airplanes are just about the only “solid” item I tend to photograph. Probably because Tomasz is fascinated with flying, and we are spending more time on assorted flying events then foe example car events.
In either case- the blog photo I took last weekend during Pumpkin Splat on Green Castle airfield. Looks like a have a theme this week .

Last week, we have been flying back here from Europe. It was an atypical flight, unusually late for flying West. We departed Poland about 5 pm, and we could see the sun setting in front of us. It stayed this way most of the trip! It was beautiful. An shaky, because of the weather, but very “landscape flight” nevertheless. At one point, when I was so upset with turbulence and couldn’t sleep anymore, I looked through the window and saw this view. I am not 100% sure it is Greenland, but it is my best bet. I used two iPhone apps to work it up, first Photogene to do some typical, Lightroom like adjustments of Exposure, Colors, Sharpness, and then- CameraKit to add watermark, before adding image to my draft in WordPress app .

Since my husband got his pilot license just before our trip home, I am getting used to idea of us flying somewhere. Or around. Flying as means of transport or flying as another way to photograph world. Or both. Sounds great, right? Well, not exactly, as I am very uncomfortable on board. So to start working on getting used to, we took a short trip around home airport this weekend. I did it once before, but this time I think images are much sharper and also clearer. It has to do with weather, and the humidity in the air. In either case, check out a gallery of Iowa from above. I think it gives a different view on fall foliage.

I am finding myself taking more and more HDR images. Yesterday, when I hit the town to gather some material for yet another Rec Center contest, about half of the scenes I photographed were HDR images. Some more successful than others, but it seems I am slowly pinpointing the technique, especially the Photomatix sliders .

Recently I find myself experimenting more and more with situations where you can shoot your subject by it’s reflection. Sometimes it’s just face in the mirror, sometimes it’s flower bouquet. Using mirror allows me to get some nice depth of field effects. This photo shows the car my brother went in to church for his wedding last week. It’s nice vintage British automobile with side mirrors mounted way ahead on the fenders. Today such thing probably wouldn’t pass pedestrian safety test, but back then nobody really cared.

I took this Orton-effect style image several weeks ago in Reiman Gardens. It is in fact a combination of two images, one sharp and the other blurred by defocusing the image. The photos were combined in Photoshop to create that dreamy, moody effect.

I almost forgot how to blog. Yeah, I know, my blog have been updated last two weeks, but the truth is I set it up before we took off for a trip to visit family back in Europe. I was not blogging for a week and a half. It was rather photographs trip, and I will soon start blogging about my  new experience gained in the field of image taking with serious business potential . But before I have time to organize all the photographs, a simple food and fall related image- wild mushroom. This character was growing on my parents property in the woods. The image is unprocessed and was taken, not surprisingly, with my iPhone.