This was taken a year ago, in March. It caught my eye last night, so putzing a bit in LR I used VSCO 02, Polaroid 690 warm. In PPS9 I replaced the sky and used various effects. This is the final result.
Tag: VSCO
Between the Cars
Postcard from the Garden of the Gods
This is another photo, taken last year at the Garden of the Gods Park outside of Colorado Springs. The rock formations are wonderful; at times, the drama of the sky is amazing as the Garden abut the Rocky Mountains. The day I took this picture, though, the sky was flat and colorless. Thus . . . I used a sky out of extras in PPS9, and refined the edges using the Perfect Brush, the Refine Brush, and the Chisel tool. Once done, back to LR and a VSCO preset with adjustments to reduce color and work until the colors worked together. For me, the best results were somewhat odd, but in looking at them, they became to resemble post cards from the 50s and 60s because of the colors – not quite right, but expressive of the environment. Rather pleased with this one.
The Beauty of Color
The natural world is endlessly variable and surprising in what it brings to our eyes.  In photography, much can be done to manipulate color, contrast, detail, and so on; this imparts mood and emotion vial tonality, shading, nuance.  Playing with post-processing software is time-consuming (because it becomes so fascinating at times) and can lead to fun and interesting results.  A palette of presets in software can be a blessing, or a curse.
Below are some pictures I took yesterday at the local botanical garden. Â Some trees were alight with color, others were wonderfully subtle when backlit by the setting sun.
The first group is the same image, processed four ways. Â I used Photomatix Pro, LR 5.7, and VSCO presets for LR.
These next images were of the colored leaves. Here in SoCal, colored leaves don’t exist in abundance! The leaves of native plants tend to be somewhat pale and small. Many are fragrant from resin, which makes for terrifying fires. The local botanical garden has brought in plants from different parts of the world, some of which put on a beautiful display in the fall. Lucky me to catch them!
At times I wish I lived someplace else. I miss the hardwood woods that change color in the fall and the rush of excitement when bulbs peep out through the snow. I don’t miss the snow, though – having lived near Buffalo, NY, I remember those winters, as I do the damp, miserable cold of Chicago in the winter. While SoCal is sometimes too monochrome, the beauty is there, too, if you look for it.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 