I would explain to you what is going on in this series of pictures from the folder 03-11-07, but you wouldn’t believe me.
I’ll probably combine a bunch of folders for next Saturday’s walk down memory lane, but I bet there will be a picture of a Gra Lab timer in there. I know! I’m excited too!
I might have processed this image to within an inch of its life. However, it turned out pretty much exactly as I wanted it so. Everybody wins!
It feels like I should show you what the original image looked like. But I’m not going to.
PARTICULARS
CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
ISO: 100
FOCAL LENGTH: 22mm
APERTURE: f/8
EXPOSURE: 1/320
DATE: 04/03/2016 – 10:46
LATITUDE: 38.39540°
LONGITUDE: -96.53952°
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Nate Miller
A couple weekends back I went up to Minnesota with Nate and Laura to visit Bethany, Dae Hee, Nora, and Colleen.
Here are a couple photos from that weekend.
I’m sure you’ll get exposed to many more Nora pictures. You lucky dogs!
On Nate and I’s jaunt from Wichita back to Manhattan we made a stop in Strong City so I could photograph a surprisingly photogenic town.
Here is a photo of some rusty goodness:
You can take it to the bank, there is more Strong City coming your way!
PARTICULARS
CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
ISO: 100
FOCAL LENGTH: 35mm
APERTURE: f/8
EXPOSURE: 1/125
DATE: 04/03/2016 – 10:39
LATITUDE: 36.9505°
LONGITUDE: -96.53696°
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Nate Miller
This last weekend I made a trip up with Nate and Laura to visit Bethany, Dae Hee, Nora, and Colleen. On Saturday night we made our way to Long Lake to eat at Primo. Dae Hee and I left early so we could swing by Paisley Park to see the Prince Memorial.
Below are some pictures.
So part of the reason I went to Paisley Park is because it was history. It was like going to Graceland after Elvis died. However, it wasn’t the majority of the reason that I went.
I don’t normally get too caught up in celebrity deaths. It is usually a time when people flock to social media to overstate their “relationship” with the deceased celebrity.
However Prince’s death to have an effect on me. I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Prince’s music, although I did enjoy it. I also admired his musicality and he was without a doubt one of the foremost musical geniuses of the last 50 years. He produced an album a year for over a decade. There are rumors that he has well over a thousand unreleased songs that he has recorded and not released. On some of his biggest hits he played every instrument on the recording. Often recording the song in one day. Often recording more than one song in a day in this manner.
One of my favorite Prince stories is when he played the Super Bowl halftime show in the pouring rain. The producers of the halftime show were worried that he would want to pull out. When they called him and asked him about the rain he gave a great response.
“Can you make it rain harder?”
The rain didn’t stop until he played his final song of the night, Purple Rain. Despite this fact, he gave what was easily the best Super Bowl Halftime show in history. A show that will stand the test of time for its pure virtuosity alone.
I’ll miss Prince because one of my fondest memories of my childhood was my eldest sister Teresa’s friends infatuation with Prince (even though I think Teresa was more into Phil Collins). One even dressed like Prince and his license plates matched Prince’s from PURPLE RAIN. It is up there with listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 on family road trips. Or Dad telling Teresa that if she wanted to go Hall some Oates, he could take her to a farm.
Prince dying is like a piece of my childhood dying.
I may have to become an adult yet.
There is an old timey hamburger joint in Manhattan (Kansas) that I want to photograph at night at some point. On my recent trip to visit Nate, I was never in Manhattan at night. So it didn’t happen.
However, I did scout the area out and took a few test photos. Maybe a few months down the road I’ll post the photo that this scouting trip helped make possible.
Here are some scouting photos:
A Kansas State area restaurant that calls their desserts Cyclones? I get your subliminal message Vista Drive In. Loud and clear!
These are the SHAPES pictures that didn’t make the cut. All eerily similar to the one that did make the cut. Almost like they were all taken in the same place. Interesting Richard. Yes provocative.
When I stopped to photograph all of these magnificent SHAPES, I got quite the history lesson about them. The lady at the information booth was very passionate. I like passion.
I felt before I went into the HDR Nik Plugin, I should cover the HDR Toning features that are built into Photoshop.
So here is a quick look at the High Dynamic Range toning options in Photoshop.
Now that we have established a good baseline, you’ll be ready when we hit up the HDR EFEX PRO 2 Photoshop Plug in some point soon.
Recently my WB Joe stumbled across an article that Google had made their Nik Plugins free.
I rushed to the website and downloaded this collection of 7 plugins to play with immediately.
I thought I would give you a quick overview of some of the settings of these plugins, starting with the Analog Efex Pro plugin.
The description of this plugin from the website is as follows:
Get the photo you’re looking for, even if you don’t own the equipment. Let effects inspired by traditional cameras bring you back to the vintage age of photo development.
There are 9 default classic cameras you can start from and I’ll show you what those look like.
Let’s start with the original image from a gas station in tourist hot spot Cottonwood Falls, Kansas (photo assistant – Nate Miller).
When I took this photo, this was my original vision.
Here is a look at the 9 default Classic Camera settings in the Plugin.
Classic Camera 2
Classic Camera 3
Classic Camera 4
Classic Camera 5
Classic Camera 6
Classic Camera 7
Classic Camera 8
Classic Camera 9
But these Classic Cameras are just a jumping off point. Within this plugin you can play with roughly 50 different DIRT & SCRATCHES settings, 3 different LENS VIGNETTE settings, and roughly 50 different FILM TYPE settings.
I played with it a bit and came up with this image that feels like Cottonwood Falls, Kansas to me:
It is a cool FREE plugin to grab and add to your arsenal. Especially if you’re like me and love old and vintage photography.
Works with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements (more or less), and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
There are several more plugins in this collection. We’ll be taking a look at those as well.
On my recent trip to Kansas I stopped and took a few photos here and there.
Kansans were burning their prairie, which made for interesting views. I missed a golden opportunity to get a pretty sweet fire picture. So I did stop to get a picture of the aftermath of a prairie fire.
This scene was right across the highway from a Scenic View. I found it to be scenic.
PARTICULARS
CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
ISO: 100
FOCAL LENGTH: 22mm
APERTURE: f/8
EXPOSURE: 1/250
DATE: 04/03/2016 – 10:10
LATITUDE: 38.32089°
LONGITUDE: -96.54260°
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Nate Miller
