Jamie Senior Shoot II

Well I am still working on a composite they will like, but I thought I'd take a break from that and work on some possible wallets. I came up with this top shot. The school colors are green and white.



I thought it made for a decent Black and White. I am still working on this process but I am liking what I am seeing.

Halloween Photoshop Magic

My son Tony and his girlfriend Ashley posed for this Halloween shot. I had to use flash and even bouncing it off the ceiling still made for an ugly wall. So I thought I'd use the Gradient tool to clean it up and give it a more dramatic look.

Senior Composite II

Well the client (mom) wanted color instead of B&W. This made blending more difficult and I am not totally happy with my solution, but it is colorful. The red background fairly matches the color of her truck. I used the blue from her jacket for the color of the font.

My First Senior Composite

In this composite I brought in as many elements that pertained to the senior as I could. The silhouette of the horse is from the graphic on her truck. The cowboy boots and hat in the corner are also hers. I used a rope font using a color from her boots.



After it was all said and done, I wish I had moved the picture on the right just a little more to the left. Oh well, I had no idea how to do any of this when I started and have a better feel for how I will approach the next one.

Betty Page Comes To Town

A fellow co-worker was dressing up this year as Betty Page for Halloween and wanted me to take some pictures. These are my favorites from the photo session. It was cold and windy so as luck would have it we were able to make use of the local Spectrum Tattoo Parlor.





This one and the one below were my two favorite shots.

More Fun with Photoshop Filters

I've been playing around with the Artistic Filters in PhotoShop. The coolest thing I have found so far is that after applying the filter you can then fade the effect all the way back to Zero.



This is the original I picture I took at the Temple of Tolerance in Wapakonetta. There are several of these Ringed Globs in various places. The shadows and lighting caught my eye.



Just for fun I tried a few filters in PhotoShop and decided I like the Chrome Filter faded back to about 30%.

Reflections of Fall II

Jason and Jane suggested that I try using just the reflected trees. I think it looks really COOL. Thanks guys.

Reflections of Fall

I stopped by Tawawa Park on my way home from work today to snag a few quick Fall pics. I have taken several pictures over the years of the trees reflected in the water. This time the water was slightly choppy giving me this awesome shot.



This is my favorite Fall picture to date.

Vintage Photo Restoration 3

This one came out closer to what I am striving for. It helped that the original photo wasn't in that bad of shape.



The photo was also large enough that you can see texture in the face. The photographer used a wide aperture as you can see the hair and ear going out of focus.

This is what the back of the card looked like.



I just love the bargain of 6 prints for 50 cents or 12 for a dollar. The photo had been cut at the top, probably to fit in a frame. I restored the top to what it would have looked like originally.



And of course the Side-By-Side.

Vintage Photo Restoration 2

This one has a sad story. I was told that this is a death photo. The person who gave me the picture didn't know anymore than that.



I was not too happy with the final outcome on this one. Too much detail was lost in the whites. It looks like the photo was a 4x6 cut and mounted on a 4.5 x 6.5 placard. I have two more photos with this type of mounting and they have additional studio information on the back. This one was blank.

My ultimate goal is to go beyond the obvious repairs and get something that looks close to the original print. As you can see by this edit I have quite a ways to go.



If you look close you will see the boy has deformed hands. I am not sure what the bar is on the left but I think the photographer could of put a little more thought in to the composition.

The white linens, blouse, bow tie and the fact that a picture was taken leads me to believe the parents were of some influence.

For comparison here is a Side-By-Side.

Vintage Photo Restoration 1

I enjoy looking at and restoring old black and white photos. I look for them every time I am in one of those second hand stores you seem to find in every town.



The original of this photo was a small 2.5 by 4 inch print. This is the scan of the original cropped 4x6.

The one thing I find interesting in this photo is the pose. They must be husband and wife but look at how they are totally separated in the picture. The photographer was clever with the hands, hers resting on something and his with an open book.

Well after working with it for a bit, this is what I came up with.



Here is a side by side comparison of both photos.



If I worked on this some more I think I would try and clean up the wall in the background a bit more. I hope to post some more of these over the weekend.

Fast Pitch Softball

My one granddaughter Hannah joined a Fast pitch softball league that was started this year. It was no small transition as she went from Coach slow pitch to machine fast pitch (40mph).



Besides the speed of the pitch the other major difference was that every batter got up to 5 pitches. The only way to strike out was not get a hit with one of your 5 pitches.



Much to my surprise there were quite a few hits in the game I attended.

Study in Bronze (Joseph and Child Jesus)

I posted a winter picture of this statue of Joseph playing with a very young Jesus before. This time I thought I'd come back and spend some more time with it.



This next one is my favorite of the bunch.



The statue is located outside of St. Joseph Catholic church in Wapakonetta.











For some reason I have trouble capturing the color of bronze consistently through all the images.

Applefest 2009 People Pics

While attending this years Applefest, I took a few people pictures some candid and some not so candid. Pictured above are my son Tony and his girlfriend Ashley.



Here's another one of Tony helping out at the Dunk-Tank.



I just love the blue eyes of Trinity, My nephews daughter, peaking out from behind the mask she made.

I missed the contest but caught this young man still hula-hooping afterwards.



I thought this picture of the vendor standing in her sea of mums made for colorful shot.



This one I will simply title King of the Skateboard.



I'm not sure what this guys story is, but I guess he didn't what his picture taken in all his fancy dress.



My favorite picture of the day was this one I captured of a UC Bearcat Fan.



The crops are little tighter than I like on some of these but I was walking around with my Canon 100mm lens.

Flag Football

Here are a few shots from my Grandson's Flag Football game.



That's my grandson Evan chasing down the runner.



Their QB was poised in the pocket.



And had a good throwing stance.

This last picture of one of the staff was a candid shot that would have benefited greatly from some fill flash from my speadlite had I had it on.



Every time I go to something like this it makes me wish I was a kid again.

HDR Crucifixion Statue St. Bernard

I took this picture quite sometime ago with the thought of seeing what I could do with HDR in PhotoShop CS3.

I used these four exposures to create the above image. I had to tweak the overall exposure a little afterwords but this is pretty much what I got on auto pilot.






I shot these in RAW. I really didn't have a shot that was slightly overexposed so I am going to try again using one Raw Image to create one over and one underexposed and try and combined them.

This is the result of that process. It was a more involved process than the first but I got a little more detail out of the window.



But the picture looks grainy. Oh well I guess I will just have to practice some more.