Sometimes, when I have no good idea for a Friday special something, I would just pick a decent photo and go through all the presets I have in my Ligtroom. And I am quite a colector, basically downloading everything what is free and thinking about the use later. I have rather disorganized 220 presets (can you believe it?). From time to time, I will go and try and make subfolders and stuff, but with new version coming of old presets it probably makes more mess then help. Where do I take all the presets from? Lightroom Killer Tips is one of pages worth checking, and X-Equals has some free presets as well. But sometimes I see a link on somebody’s blog or on Twitter, and just add to my collection and forget where it was from.
Anyway, one of those no-idea day is today. I had this image of a single soldier, right in the middle of the frame, and wanted to do something interesting with it. Don’t get me wrong- I really think the composition works for this image, I like it overall. The soldier is in Napoleon-era outfit, an actor in the reconstruction of the Fort of Srebrna Gora battle from 1807. It is just asking for an aging treatment. I tried several different sepias, and it was just not doing it for me. So I went through my presets one by one, watching if something catches my eye. I “aged” the photo with Matt’s Old Fashioned Look, and through just for fun Matt’s Sin City on it, which added back reds to black-and white image. It is far more interesting now, and tells the story better. Don’t you think?

We finally managed to get some snowboarding this season, with weekends being mostly too cold so far. It was a great time off everything, just snow and me. But on the lift and when we were packing the car, I grabbed several shots with my iPhone. This is my favorite. We were taking some snaps of sunset with silhouettes of group of people, and we were happy with the results, when this girl came in the picture.

When you have model like Jack you simply can’t make bad shot. This particular one was taken at the Foothold users conference. Jack is one of my coworkers. I shoot tons of pictures of them, and Jack looks great on any of them.

The simple, outpatient surgery knocked me out of use for last few days. As I am spending days sitting upright anyway, I decided to get back to my desk, external hard drive with photos, and post something from last weekend hike. It was a very windy day, and I was trying to show the movement of prairie grass, when I caught my husband photographing. Although there is nothing in focus, I still like how the colors interact and show whole situation clearly enough. It reminds me a lot of impressionist paintings.

I am learning something new every day. I had a great day on the slope yesterday, so when I remembered I have to take some photos for my Lensbaby class last assignment, it was already too dark. Great. Earlier, it was too bright (well, I still don’t have any filters for this lens, and it was a gorgeous day, sunny and cloudless). After four tries, I thought I had what I wanted for a panning exercise, but ISO 1600 is not very smooth looking. So, only one solution- noise reduction software. As I have policy of taking photos at ISO 100 to make my life easier, which is not too complicated when you can plan your photo sessions, I never used any soft like it before. I am also not planning to do it in near future, so I went and downloaded 15-days demo of NikSoftware Dfine. No time for in-depth playing with it today (who is not going to Super Bowl party?), so just Automatic settings applied and here it goes.

This was a photographically busy weekend, and I shouldn’t have any problems filling pages on a blog for a few days now.
I have a luck of living close to few good bike trails, including Sugar Bottom, which seems to be THE mountain biking destination. Maybe I am not much of a mountain biker, but water is my element, and the trail is located close to Coralville Lake. Great views, and I was posting photographs from there many times. Today, we planned a longer photo session, and the weather turned warmer then during the week. It was sunny, at least to the point when we got there, so I was regretting we didn’t come earlier- I wanted to shoot closer to sunset, but when I was expecting working in the sun. When it got cloudy, it didn’t matter that much, did it? But it turned out just fine, I think I have keepers from all locations we visited. Today’s photo was taken on Novice Loop, an easy trail winding close to the lake shore.

Lonely biker

New construction of landing gear?

They say, take a camera, start shooting and you will get the chance to catch something cool. Well, my luck today.

I had a break in blogging, as we went out of town for weekend, and I decided to leave my computer behind. But not camera, of course. We went to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. For those who don’t know what was happening in Oshkosh last week and this weekend- I guess this photo is a good summary. I have never seen so many planes in one place, and not that many peoples running around like crazy with cameras, shooting just about everything.

Once again, Quad City Airshow. This time, something other than “plain planes”.

I saw this scene walking around exibitions before the shaw, and found it interesting and somehow humorous. I was also very surprised by large Amish population (Mennonite denomination, I suppose) and presence at the show.

Few weeks ago, my husband bough me a bike, an addition to the one he has for few months. We are biking on weekends, but it is also a great photo-taking opportunity for me. I was trying to make photos showing movement, and this one showed up. I like it, even if the tire is not as much in focus as I think it is, it is still a very interesting photograph.