Before and After

The owner of sweetrun.blogspot.com had asked me a question about some my pictures.  Such as, what kind of lenses I use and do I use filters.   I listed a couple of my lenses and told her that in my opinion a polarizing filter was essential to a camera kit.  I also said that Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop play a part in the final look of an image and that I would post a before and after of a photo from a previous post.

The top photo is the raw image straight out of the camera.  I developed it in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and sent it to Photoshop for some final touches to get the "after" on the bottom photo.  I know that probably sounds like a lot of work, but it only took me a couple of minutes to get the final look I remembered seeing that evening.

The main things I did to the photo were to add some clarity, sharpening, contrast and saturation and work on the sky exposure a little.  All that took was moving some sliders and working with a brush on the sky 'til I got it to where I wanted it.  Learning to use Lightroom and Photoshop is far harder than actually using them.  Once you have the basics figured out you can really buzz through some photos.

As an aside, the photos in this post were shot in jpeg format and looked like that straight out of the camera.  The camera did the processing for me.  The raw file is like the camera saying, "here's your photo, I'm not going to mess with it.  You can do whatever you want to with it".

Around The Water

A few more shots from our trip to Beaufort over Thanksgiving.  The top photo is at Gray's Hill Landing on the Whale Branch river.  The other two photos are from the Marsh Boardwalk on Hunting Island.

Angles and Blue

These photos kinda remind me of some of Pete Turner's photos, where color is the subject.

Run Forrest, Run!

Friday afternoon exploring.  It looks like the Forrest Gump road but it's not.  I talked to the caretaker of this plantation a few years ago (he was from Beckley, WV) and I asked him if this was the road in the movie and he said it wasn't.  I think I remember him saying it was in Beaufort County, but I can't remember where.

Port Royal Cement Company

We did a little Thanksgiving afternoon exploring.

Six People...

There are actually six people (including my shadow) and a dog in this photo.  The other three was just a family walking by during the long exposure.  This was shot with a 10 stop neutral density filter at f / 16 for 41 seconds and iso 100.

The Chapel of Ease

Saint Helena Island, SC.  Click here to read a scary story about this area.

Hunting Island

The light was too gold for my taste, so I had to go black & white.

City Java and News

I got the strongest and sweetest coffee they had.  It was gooood!

Sacred Heart

I liked the way the light was hitting the steeple.

Big City Buildings

For some reason, when I was a little kid and my grandmother and I would drive by the now Huntington Bank building on Lee St, I got the feeling that I was in some large city other than Charleston.  I can't explain it.  I can still remember one day we went by there, I was probably about 9 or 10 and it was overcast, snowing and cold.  There was a little bit of snow on the sculpture making it stand out even more to me.  It's funny what you remember and how it seems just like yesterday sometimes.

The building poking out on the right side of the frame is the windowless Verizon building.  My mom worked in that building some during her 30 years with the phone company.

The tiny building is for the parking lot attendant at one of many of Spyros lots around town.  Spyros Stanley passed away recently.  He was a downtown Charleston icon.

All Crane

It looks like All Crane got a new, super cool, awesomely tall crane.  Frank and I saw it in their lot Tuesday evening, but it wasn't extended all the way.  On the way to school this morning it was extended so I had to stop on the way home and get a picture of it.  I'm not sure if it was out all the way or not, but it sure is tall.

New River Rock

We were all off again yesterday for Veteran's Day.   It was a real nice warm day, so we thought we'd take advantage of it and head to New River to do some more rock climbing.  Molly was taking all the pictures yesterday (except the one of her hands) and she got some cool shots.  I even thought the picture of me was pretty good.  When she showed it to me I didn't have my glasses on, so I asked her if my gut was in or out.   She said, "in, I think".  Pretty funny.

Saturday Afternoon

The gals dropped me off downtown this afternoon while they went out to South Ridge to do a little Christmas shopping.  It was super nice out today so I messed around downtown for a while then walked up  the boulevard to the Capitol where they picked me up.

121 Summers St. is a very photogenic building.  I've got a few photos of it.  I liked the way the light was hitting the little tree out front today.

The Municipal Auditorium, with it's Art Deco style, never gets tired of getting it's picture taken either.

48 Year Olds

I personally don't know any other 48 year old women that like to be outside doin' different stuff like Kim does (that's her in the top picture).  I think that's pretty cool.  That's Molly in the middle picture about halfway up Easily Flakey.  We were all off yesterday so we went to New River to rock climb a little bit.  On the way home we stopped at Frank's Pizza in Montgomery and then visited our cousins in Cannelton Hollow.  It was a great day, other than....  :-(

Cabriole

A cast bronze sculpture by Jimilu Mason.

Saint Albans Snow

This is from last Tuesday.  If I remember correctly, we were only forecast to get a coating to an inch on the grassy areas in the Charleston area.  ;-)

Saint Albans / Nitro Bridge

In 67 days I'll have to become an actual commuter because the bridge is gonna close on January 7th.  Right now I'm 1.2 miles from work.  When the bridge closes it'll be around 10 miles.  Booooo!  Not only is Saint Albans where I work, it's where we go to the store, church, vet, auto parts, hardware, prescriptions and lots of other stuff.

Oh well, it'll only be closed for 10 months and we'll have a nice, new, three lane wide bridge.  I think we'll survive.  Click here for an artists rendering of what the new one will look like.