I was working through my Lightroom catalog this morning trying to find some shots that I had edited recently. I wanted to export them so I could print them. As I was working through the catalog, I came across an image of two trains that I had taken in the summer of 2007. I had produced a final image that I liked at the time, but when I saw it today I thought I might tweak it a little to come up with something different.

Following up yesterdays post, I wanted to post a couple more variations that I did of the same tree. The first variation is from the same raw image used for yesterdays shot (and shown down below), the second variation is of the same tree at the same location, but from a slightly different composition. I didn’t include the raw shot because it was virtually identical to the other raw shot with the only difference being how the shot was framed.

I’m still experimenting with applying textures to images and trying to figure out what works with regards to base image, blend modes, texture images, etc. Last night while watching some TV, I played around with a few images on my laptop to see if I could come up with some images that I liked. This particular image resulted from a ‘I wonder what would happen if…’ sort of moment. I took this shot a few weeks ago during a foggy/snowy day. I’ve always been attracted to the graphical look of bare trees against a monochromatic background. The fog/snow created a perfect opportunity.

I’ve been wanting to try doing some texture processing on my images for some time and I finally went ahead and downloaded the Flypaper textures to give them a try. I picked an image I had taken a couple of years ago of a stalk of wheat from a nearby field. I remember the day being windy and it was a challenge to get the grain portion in focus while keeping the DOF to a minimum. This was one of those images that I sort of liked, but couldn’t come up with a final image that I really liked. This time I decided to try adding some texture to the image and do some more playing around and I like what I came up with.

I haven’t had a lot of spare time recently to go out and do a lot of shooting, so I’ve been spending some time going over my Lightroom catalog and looking at images that I may have overlooked before, or for ones that I might want to try some different processing on. This image is one of the former. The shot shows the Rackham Building and the newly constructed North Quad dormitory on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I took this picture last May on a bright, sunny Sunday morning. I had wanted to get some shots of the new dorm as well as see what other interesting things I could find. This picture was taken right after I got out of my car. The sun was behind me and creating some nice hard light on the Rackham Building. I also liked the bit of North Quad which was in the frame. Since North Quad was still under construction, there was a fence around the building and the angle on this shot pretty much hides all of the construction related things surrounding the building at that time.

his image is another one from my personal snowstorm photowalk that I took a couple of weeks ago. The picture was taken in the University of Michigan Law Quadrangle during a brief, but intense snowstorm which lasted a few hours. The building in the background is one of the buildings which comprise the buildings known as the Lawyers Club. The Law Quad has an interesting history. The buildings were all funded from a law school alumuns, William Cook, who requested that the school be built in a design reminiscent of Cambridge University. Construction of the Law Quad took place between 1924 and 1933. Mr Cook never saw the completed school.

his picture was taken during a recent walk around Ann Arbor, Michigan. We were having a period of heavy snow and I wanted to go out and see what kind of pictures I could get. This shot shows the gate of a local fraternity building known as the Shant. I shot this with my 50mm with the intention of getting a closeup with some hopefully nice blurring in the background. I deliberately selected a portion of the gate that I thought captured some interesting shapes.

This image is not my usual style, I sort of took it on a whim. I had gone out to shoot some shots of the University of Michigan campus during a snowstorm and I had just parked my car and was getting my gear ready. I popped my lens on and decided to fire off a quick shot looking out the windshield of my car. Just a quick grab shot and that I wasn’t really expecting much from. A few weeks after I too this, I noticed it in my Lightroom catalog and I thought it looked sort of interesting. Given the somewhat abstract nature of the shot, I knew this had to be black and white. A simple conversion using Silver Efex Pro and a bit of sharpening and I ended up with my final image.

This past weekend we had a brief but intense snowstorm. I thought it might be fun to go shoot in the snow so I packed up my camera and drove into Ann Arbor. I ended up parking the car right in front of this store. Actually the Red Shoes store is really out of frame and what you are seeing in the background is Lexi’s Toy Box, a local toy store. I’ve always liked the exteriors of these two stores and I liked the way they looked in the snow so I grabbed a quick shot before walking around town to get some more pictures.

I recently received an e-mail from Gary Grobson, a photographer and retired architect who had some nice comments about my web site. Of course I had to check out his web site as well and I was quite impressed by his work. One of the areas I really found fascinating was his Circles gallery. I really liked the interesting shapes and forms found in these images. I asked him how these image were created and he sent me a Photoshop action which he uses to create these images. If you haven’t seen these before, the images are created by taking a square crop and using the Photoshop Polar Coordinates filter a couple of times to create the circular image. Naturally I had to play around with some of my images to see what I could come up with.