Longwood Gardens Christmas

Today I made a trip to Longwood Gardens. I always enjoy seeing their holiday display in the conservatory. I packed in my bag with the Lensbaby Composer fitted with the star aperture insert. I just love the way that lens ~ aperture combo creates stars from the out of focus lights. I tried getting some good compositions while also finding the sharp or sweet spot on an ornament. The light was low, so I was also using my tripod. When I processed these I also used the software program from Alien Skin called SnapArt3 which is tons of fun and offers many processing choices from oil paint to pastel.

In the music room the displays have cabinets full of apothecary jars filled with Christmas candy. I made a couple bracketed shots there for HDR processing later, but the aisle in the music room was very narrow and folks started passing through so I collapsed my tripod and headed out. Maybe one of these shots will find its way on to my Christmas card this year.

After the Storm....Shoreline Abstracts in Black and White..Converted using Nik SIlver Efex Pro2

Wow almost two weeks have past since my beach workshop when I made these images after it ended. I went back to this location I had found the day before the workshop started to make more images. It was an awesome landscape on that Thursday and it was eve more awesome on Sunday after the shore had been battered by 25 - 40 MPH winds. The sand that had been washed into amazing patterns had been blown off the top of the soil and into crevices the waves of the high tide had created. Nature can't be beat for its beauty and amazing shaping of the shoreline. I even found some Coyote tracks.
I could have stayed here for hours making abstract shots using the designs in the shore, but I had to head home.

Beach Workshop Ends.....High Waves Big winds....

High winds, big waves, and cool temps greeted us Saturday morning when we headed out before dawn to get on the beach. The waves were so high that the horizon line was not flat....you could see the height of the waves out to sea...pretty wild. After getting everyone set with their bulb mode and making sure they were checking histograms and horizon lines I made a few shots. Choosing shutter speed changes dramatically as light comes on and at certain moments there is one awesome wave that works with your settings...it is very hard to select a perfect setting because every wave is different and moving at different speeds...these waves were busting to the shore....but as the sun rose the surf shoreline picked up some wonderful color from the sky and the waves broke perfectly.  I cropped a few of these shots to emphasize the waves and water. I try to teach my participants to keep shooting....for just this reason...It was a super weekend with some really great folks. I will be doing another beach workshop in April 2012, if you want to sign up. Shoot me an e-mail and I will add you to my mailing list or keep an eye on the sidebar of the blog for updates to my workshop offerings.