Haven't had much time or energy to work on pictures lately, but thought I'd take a stab at a couple this evening. Not sure if I'm happy with the results or not, but if I wait until I've made a decision nothing will get posted at all, so here we go.

This (apparently) abandoned gas station is on the road out to Cultus Lake. Although taken in fairly early morning light which is normally good, in this case it didn't work out so well as the sun is behind the station rather than in front of it. I don't think I`d do any better at any other time of the day though, so I'll have to live with this lighting.

Played around with a few different ideas for processing. The first and third pictures we processed similarly, while the middle one was actually processed about two weeks ago and has been sitting waiting for some attention since.

As always, let me know what you think.

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Texture Fun

I'm going to post this quickly before I change my mind...

I took this shot last weekend at Finn Slough (South Richmond). Originally processed as a fairly straight black & white but it was lacking something, and there were a few bits about the photo that I didn't like much. I've just spent a bunch more time working on it, with this result. I think I like it, but if I let it sit for a while I'll probably change my mind and then it won't get posted, so here it is, before that can happen.

There are multiple texture layers applied, along with some vignetting and a few other things. It started out just as a texture-application exercise but probably turned out a little better than just a workbook result. The textures are a little heavy-handed, but that's okay - the end result looks a lot like a pretty old, abused picture.

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Word Processor of another Era

Most of the train cars that you could wander through at the museum had some sort of a display set up in them. Some where very traditional, semi-informative item/picture with placard, others were extremely anachronistic (modern-day ball caps and toy electric trains), and others were simply decorated with items that might typically have been found aboard in the days the coach was operating. Those ones, by and large, were the best.

This shot was taken in the Royal Hudson coach car (the Royal Hudson itself was not available/on display), and I must say that I had a lot of fun processing it. This is the shot I was working on the other night that didn't come out the way I'd expected; I took another shot at it tonight and figured out what I was doing wrong, and I like this result quite a bit, certainly better than the two earlier versions.

I think it's fair to say, though, that this one is much more heavily Photoshopped than most of the other pictures that I post here. I imagine that Dennis, my fellow photographer on this trip, would call this an illustration, rather than a photo due to the amount of processing involved.

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The Fading Colours of Fall

Although I said that the last post would be the only one from last Sunday's set, I felt that this one deserved posting as well, and since I don't have anything else new to post at the moment I figured why the heck not and so here it is...

I've actually been fiddling with it for much of the past week, trying a few different things. It's my impression that the eyes are still a little too much, but if I tone them down at all they pretty much drop right out. On balance, I like the shot better with the colour in the eye than not, even if I haven't managed to get it quite right. Having said that, I've done a print of this that I'm very happy with.

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Boardwalk

The boardwalk and beach at Fraser River Park on Sunday afternoon weren't very busy - it was too cold. Nothing compared to the weather back east or up north to be sure, but the brilliant sunshine was doing it's best to lull everyone into believing that it was warmer than it really was. There were people around - it is a dog park and it's rarely totally empty during daylight hours - just not when I took this picture. I suppose I could have waited for someone to walk into frame, but like I said - it was too cold!

There was a real surf on the river that day - when I first got there the swells were up to 4 feet - a combination of change of tide direction and the high wind I suppose. It was the roughest I've ever seen it in the 3 or 4 years that I've been going there. It had settled down considerably by the time this shot was taken, though you can still see some of the whitecaps.

I've been more and more intrigued by some of the black and white pictures that other photographers are posting, and still not sure how to get the same result with my shots. This one, although it's not a true black and white (it's a slightly translucent black and white layer on top of the original colour image, allowing just a hint of the original colour to show through), isn't too bad, but there's still some quality that I can't identify that I'm not getting quite right when processing for black and white. But that's the beauty - I can always try again tomorrow...

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4 Sale - Cheap!

This was taken back in November - I've had to resort to archive raiding as I haven't managed anything new to speak of for the past couple of weeks and felt that it was time I posted something.

In the interim since my last post I've had to deal with a sick computer that eventually failed pretty much completely and required a complete rebuild; and then getting sick myself. Both the computer and I are now fully recovered. And in the case of the computer, I'm very glad that I'd taken the time to create and have a good back-up plan in place; while I lost a couple of days worth of photos from just prior to the crash (including the originals of 3 of the last 4 posts) I came through largely unscathed. Damn though, I had a couple of nice shots there...

Of course rebuilding a computer is a pretty tedious job, but that's almost all done now. Finally I can start thinking about getting out and shooting something new!

In the meantime, I hope you like this. I had a bit of fun processing it - learning something new about preserving the colour in the "4 Sale" while converting everything else to monotone and then applying a colour overlay...

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A Stream Runs Through It

Although I'd thought I might post another picture or two from up around the Cleveland Dam, and indeed it's always possible, I confess I find myself getting tired of looking at that particular batch of photos at the moment, so I'm going to put them aside for now and post this, which was taken a week earlier and sat in the camera for most of that week and had mostly been -unfairly- ignored.

This is the Woods Island Marsh which seems to me oddly named for several reasons as it's located within MacDonald Beach Park which in turn is located on Sea Island. Although I've wandered around MacDonald Beach a few times I don't recall ever having noticed it before. It's a no-go area of the park - a part of the ecological reserve, so this is one of the few views that one can conveniently get, dependant on the tides.

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CN Rail

This was taken at the same time as the last post. This is the CN Rail bridge which runs alongside the Iron Workers Bridge. I'm still not happy with this product, but I've spent enough time fiddling around with it (this is version 2 of 3) that it's time to move on to other things, which I'll only do if I post it, so here it is.

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Steel Wheeled Contraption

Whilst I was visiting my parent this past weekend they were kind enough to indulge my need to take pictures and, on a cold grey day, drove me around the outskirts of Nanaimo in search of interesting subject matter, perhaps something farm-related.

Hence this shot. I think that this piece of machinery was once a plough, though it's not clear what provided the forward motion. Given it's age, I've tried to process it appropriately.

Let me know if you think I was successful.

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Things Left Behind

Haven't posted a monochrome image in a while (lets face it, I haven't posted much of anything), thought that this image was well suited to this treatment.

No idea how long the mug had been there. Surprisingly, I didn't look inside the mug to see how much rain water had accumulated. I'd be nice to think, though, that it'll sit there, undisturbed until the person who left it there comes back.

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Burnin' Up

When I was out at Boundary Bay beach almost two weeks ago I spent a little time watching this farmer burning one section of his field. It was a pretty warm day already, and this guy is riding around on the tractor amidst the smoke and additional heat from the process. Crazy.

I've processed several of the images I took of the farmer doin' his thing, treating each a little differently, but I can't seem to quite get them to look the way I want. D'oh. So you'll have to settle for this. I'm posting it as-is so that I stop spending any more time working on it!

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Grasshopper Greyscale

As promised/threatened, here's the second grasshopper shot. I worked on this one for quite a while, and I suppose that I'm fairly happy with the result.

I got out with the camera again today, and actually had a good day - with at least five candidates for posting, three of which are bugs, and, thankfully, two of which are not. Not all of these images will be posted, but it's nice to have something a little better to pick from for a change.

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Blue-Tip Q-Tip

It's really the end of a pussywillow, with lots of post-processing. I actually prepared 3 different versions, not sure why I picked this one... Taken today near Iona Beach.

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Growth

One of the reasons for the paucity of posts lately is that I've been trying to learn (familiarize myself with) some new equipment, and some new processing techniques as well.

The new equipment is coming along at a satisfactory pace. The new techniques - not so much.

After many other attempts, with other images, I finally have one that I'm reasonably satisfied with.

I'm really interested in knowing what everyone thinks of this image...

[Credit where it belongs... The process used to create this image was based on Diane Varner's very helpful list of steps that she uses to create her fantastic images.]

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A Place to Sit in the Shade

It's been a real spring-like week for weather (i.e. all over the place), even though it's not spring yet. This afternoon was quite wonderful, maybe better than Sunday was, while much of the period between has see-sawed between cold, windy, rainy and sun.

Decided to have a little fun with this shot, taken after work today - there are all sorts of tools and techniques available in Photoshop that I've never really explored and thought this would be a good image on which to try a few things. Not sure that I could duplicate it again if I had to, but I'm not going to worry about that. I'm satisfied with the way this came out this time around.

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