G2W: 17 (Edits) Growth

Another week of Good to Wow, where Jill of Jill Samter Photography guides us to take better SOOC photos and Ashley of Ramblings and Photos teaches us how to be better photo editors.

This week's prompt:  Growth.

My fella and I have been outside as much as possible lately, hiking through the woods and enjoying the beginning of spring.  I've been admiring all the photos that other bloggers take of buds, branches, trees and flowers, and keep trying to master them.  And so I've been taking a ton of these photos!

My edits this week are sweet and simple:  I ran all of Ashley's recommendations, and then played with some of the actions I have in PS.  Rats, and I don't remember what I did on the first one.  Hmm, see, this is why I don't write tutorials (and have all the admiration in the world for you all who do, thank you!)

G2W: 17 (SOOC) Growth

Aw man (and yes, I just wrote aw man!), I haven't been able to do all of the photography challenges I've been following along with - I think I've missed three weeks.  What have I been up to?  I have no clue:  maybe trying to keep ahead of everything, catching up at work (why are there times when I fall so far behind but nothing has really changed?), and maybe just taking a general creative break.

I've started to make some minor changes to my blog, and hope for bigger ones soon.  Its past time to pretty it up, and I'd like to make the site more welcoming to those of you who are kind enough to stop in.  As always, thank you.

G2W: 13 (Edit) Up

So I was supposed to do this like three weeks ago.  The truth is, I wasn't really into the photo.  And then life took over, and now I've missed three weeks of challenges.  Unfortunately, that's just how that had to be. 

And frankly, I hate my edit.  But that's the way it is with art making and learning, right?  Sometimes we make things that are awesome accidents that turn out beautifully simply because of the process of art making.  And sometimes, not so much.  I read recently that we are often afraid of trying new skills or incorporating new ways of doing things because for a period of time, we fall back.  It takes longer to do what we want to do, or the product is not as good.  But then we stick with it, and the new skill is incorporated.

Sometimes I get incredibly frustrated because that learning curve always seems steeper for me.  Other people seem to pick up skills fast, post amazing photos, start their photography businesses and show off their incredible skills.  I feel like I've been learning photography for years and years, and the science of it just does not click in my brain.  The more I think about it, the more I seem to mess it up.  That seems to be applicable to a lot of things for me, now that I think about it!  Maybe I just need to stop thinking so much, and enjoy the process a bit more.  If only it were that easy... 

Here is my edit.  I'll hopefully be able to pick up again soon.  I'm visualizing it like a game of double dutch - I'm just watching the rhythm until I'm ready to jump in again. 

G2W: 13 (SOOC) Up

This is my "good" shot.

But this is the one I want to edit:

G2W: 12 (Edits) Green

I chose this one to edit this week:

My edits: I did quick edits in Lightroom before exporting to Photoshop, where I ran Ashley's Nice and Easy action.  I audibly said "wow" after I ran it -- you could reach out and touch the stones on the wall.  And then I went a little fancy (for me) - I added a duplicate layer of the background, blurred the background and erased the foreground.  I decreased the exposure in the background, burned a little on the post, and did my favorite edge burn.  And somewhere in there, I played with the colors to up the green a bit.  I did all the fancy shrinking and unsharp masking and saving in flikr, and here you go! 

G2W: 12 (SOOC) Green

I think I could do a whole year of Green.  My favorite color, my whole life is filled with green.  Here are some from a photo adventure taken this weekend...

I will probably do my edit on this one, I think it has potential even if its over exposed.

Thoughts?  Secret code on suburban mailboxes?

I realized my camera was slightly overexposing shots.  So I intentionally underexposed this by one notch.

G2W: 11 (Edits) Flower

SOOC

I always forget to throw a little intro in the beginning of my posts to let folks know what I'm doing!  That's totally me, just jumping into a thought with no preparation.

I've been following along with Good to Wow, a online teaching collaboration between Jill Samter Photography and Ashley Sisk of Ramblings and Photos.  Each week, we are given a prompt and two tutorials:  one to improve our straight out of the camera (SOOC) photography and one to improve our editing.  I'm using Photoshop CS3 to do my edits.

Over these past eleven weeks (wow!), I've already learned a lot.  Its almost hard to keep up with the learning, because once I get something down, I realized I have ten more things to learn.  But totally worth it.  This week's suggestion was Flower.  I have a confession:  I rescued this bud out of the trash, and my husband was deeply embarrassed by me.  Too bad, because I feel ridiculously proud of this one.  Besides, it was sticking out all gorgeous and perfectly faded.

And, as testimony that I am actually learning, I didn't have to do too much to my edits.  I downloaded and ran Ashley's action that performs all the clean edits, and tweaked as necessary.  I decreased the image resize, ran the unsharp mask and saved to flikr.  I did mess around with other actions, and did all sorts of gorgeous things, but I'm starting to feel out my "style."   I like things easy and simple, I'm trying for strong colors and rich blacks.  I don't know if I achieve it, but that's what I like.

I went back to last week's tutorial on sun flares, and played around with it.  Edits below!

W/Edits + Sun Flare

W/Edits

G2W: 10 (Edits) Yellow

So very very behind. Here are my quickie edits to two of my yellow images. This won't go down as my best week, but they are done. I wanted to do the Scavenger Hunt but fell short on one or two things. Maybe I'll try to get it posted....

SOOC

w/all the edits, and a resize

SOOC

All the edits

G2W: 11 (SOOC) Flower

Falling so far behind on all my projects!  I claimed that there were no flowers here at all, although my husband pointed out a hundred opportunities that I missed.  Oh well, these turned out simply lovely.

G2W: 10 (SOOC) Yellow

Another week of Good to Wow!  I also just realized that I've been calling it Now to Wow or Shoot and Edit, I don't know why, so many apologies for that.  Our fearless leaders lead us through technique tutorials every week, and I am learning so much on a subtle level and I want to try new things.

I had so much fun this week!  I kept spotting yellow everywhere, and wanted to take pictures all week.  I could make a whole project out of yellow.  Who knew?

We adventured around town on Saturday, with me stopping every two seconds to grab another shot.  Does anyone else find they have a frustrated husband in tow?  I'm trying to get gutsier about taking images on the street - its what I like, and I'm constantly seeing amazing opportunities but chickening out.  Here are some of my shots...Which one to edit?

S&E: 9 (PS) Spring

Okay here goes...a lot of images!  Please tell me if you see differences, feedback is really appreciated.   The lesson for the week was how to resize and sharpen for the web, and recommended hosting outside of Blogger.  See?  Things I don't know.  I was infinitely thankful for this tutorial because I have noticed that the image that shows up on this blog is never the same as the one that I worked on in Photoshop.  So frustrating!  I need to learn more!  And I can't quite get my brain around unsharpening.  But I'll keep trying it.

SOOC, Uploaded through Blogger

Edits:  I did the usual, and then did a Gaussian blur to the background and added a little bit of texture.
Hosted on Flikr.

The above photo re-sized for the Web.  Hosted on Flikr.

With Edits, Resized for Web + Unsharp Mask at 30% Opacity, hosted on Flikr

Final, uploaded through Blogger - I'm a believer.

S&E: 9 (SOOC) Spring

Not much in the way of spring here.  The snow is almost melted, but the roads are a sandy, muddy mess.  Things have not quite started to sprout yet, everything is still in hibernation.  This is the trickiest time of the year here; it feels like it could be and should be spring but it is not.  It takes work to dig deep and cultivate enough hope to make it through the end of winter.  And then there are moments that bring to life the possibility of a change of season, warmth in the air, more sunlight, and maybe, maybe, far away, summer.

S&E: 8 (PS) Self Portrait

"Blurred" from the Scavenger Hunt

SOOC - Self Portrait

This was pure play.  I got lots of great comments that recommended creative edits, so I went for it!  When I was taking the photos I took a bunch of ones with my husband wandering in the background, rapidly losing his patience...  I pulled in each of those photos into Photoshop as a layer, resizing with me as the center; erased me and the mirror but kept everything else in the background.  This kept his skulking form visible, and created this awesome, off kilter background.  All those straight lines became slightly crooked and slightly rotated.  Loved that.  I put all the layers in a folder, and did basic edits.  Not so sure about how all that worked but liked the results.  And then I pulled in a texture:  my first one!  I found this here.  I lowered the opacity and erased just me, so I stayed primary in the picture.  Wish I had gotten him wandering around the other side, far in the background or closer to the mirror. 

Talk about a self-portrait:  I can't help but admit that this is how I feel sometimes!  That aside, pure fun.

S&E: 8 (SOOC) Self Portrait

Not a huge fan of self portraits.  I usually look terrible and feel embarrassed to share them.  Plus, still internally debating how much identifying information I want to post out in the great big blog world... 

But - I wanted to give it a go and see what I could come up with.  A handful of self-conscious images, and then this:

SOOC

This is where we park, thank goodness because I never have to shovel snow.  I love you underground parking.  I realized I have pretty tight posture when I'm taking photos:  it was also dark in the garage, and so I was being like a statue to decrease camera shake.  I was trying to experiment with layout, rule of threes and visual lines.

So that's me.  In my brown winter coat, wearing jeans and carrying my camera bag.  A little bit of a cop-out - er, compromise?  I do promise to practice self portraits, and maybe one day I'll get gutsy enough to post an image.  Kudos to all of you who did!

S&E: 7 (Edit) Pink

Another week of shooting and editing, led by our fearless leaders.  This week's prompt, pink.  That's my original to the left. 

I went a little action cah-rae-zee.  I like clicking the action, watching it happen, and not knowing what the heck just went down, but gleefully choosing save each time I do it. 

My hard drive, however, does not like it so much.  Which is good because these edits begin to stack up.  How do you all choose just one?  What do you do with them all?

And then I answered my own question.  I started to post all my many edits, but I kept staring at one.  I like it.  It feels just right.  

Actually, I can't believe that I did that.  Yay.

S&E: 7 (SOOC) Pink

Pink.  Hmm.  Actually not so easy to find.  And, finally, I spotted those super sharp, pink handled scissors that I love so much, standing tall in my terra cotta pencil holder.  I'm curious how the edit will work on this.  There are so many colors in this image, I want to bring the brightness down a notch while keeping true to the pink. 

S&E: 6 (Edit) Love/Romance

Its interesting how much can change in a week...last week we were enjoying our romantic valentine's dinner.  This week, he's taking good care of me while I fight off the flu.  Its always a good time when toilet paper doubles as kleenex.  Here's my edits this week:

Original, SOOiPhone

 Did all the typical edits.  I tried to play with curves, but I need to spend more time learning how to actually do it.  The image has a lot of noise, but when I tried to reduce it, the spots of light all over the image were gone.  I chose to keep the noise and the spots of light because that's what I love about it.