Photo 2118 is one of my favorite. It’s an owl hiding in a tree, with only one eye in sharp focus. It was a “happy accident”.
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On the main gallery page I have added a Featured folder that will have new and favorite photos. Also there is a new Crystal sub-folder in the Nature folder. This will hold photos using a crystal prop at the beach.

For many years I have been trying to photograph lightning and rainbows. Usually I dont have my camera, or it’s not safe, or some other reason prevents me from getting the shot. Last week I was on vacation and was able to capture both. No, not at the same time.
I was staying at a cabin in Lake Louisa State Park when a thunder storm came through in the evening. I set up my camera on the porch and made several 30 second exposures of an active part of the sky.

A few days later I was at another park when a storm came through. This one produced a nice rainbow.

It was an enjoyable vacation.

I made a new subfolder in the Nature folder called Shelly.
These are photos of a conch shell I used as a prop on the beach. I have used it before with the 20D, and some of those shots are in the Nature folder. The new ones in the Shelly folder were shot with the 5D, except for one that I reprocessed from the 20D.
Some of these shots were made from two shots with different focus, and then combined to get large depth.

Velvia Vision is a Photoshop plug-in by Fred Miranda. It can be used to mimic Velvia film, and gives controls to boost contrast, dynamic range, and saturation. It is not free, and there are free Photoshop actions elsewhere that can do the same thing, but Velvia Vision is easier to use. I recently reprocessed some of my photos because it made a nice difference.
You can read more about it at- FredMiranda.com.

I’ve added a fireworks sub-gallery to the Night Gallery.
They were shot during on New Years Eve.
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I recently tried night photography, mostly using the 50mm f1.4, so I added a new Night Gallery. I hope you enjoy viewing them.

I finally did it. I got a DSLR, a Canon 20D.
After spending a day with it at the beach, I’m very impressed. The lens I used is a wide angle 17-40mm f4L.
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Panasonic’s FZ30 for the most part builds upon the success of the FZ20.

It looks and handles much like a DSLR and is frequently compared to them. That is where the similarity ends however. Read the rest of this entry »

Many digital cameras lack dynamic range. This can be seen when you take a photo but the sky is over or under exposed while another part is correct. The camera can not expose both correctly, as the eye can. I usually do very little, if any, post processing with my photos but this come in handy.
Here is how to fix dynamic range using Paint Shop Pro, or Photoshop.
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