New England Blogs

Saturday, June 21, 2014

WAS THIS PHOTOSHOPPED OR NOT??

Hello!!!! I miss you. I hope you miss me too!!!! I miss a lot of things in my life. I miss driving. I miss sleeping in my bed. I miss going to work soooooo much. Okay. I must be honest. I do not miss getting up at 4:30 AM for work. BUT, I miss my friends at work. I miss feeling like I have accomplished something in my day other than watching HGTV and The Food Network.

I really miss taking pictures. I miss post processing my pictures. I love the whole photographic process. I love being out in the field.....I miss the exciting feeling I get when I know I nailed the shot. I also really enjoy the time spent in front of the computer using Photoshop and NIK software to process the images. Some photographers hate post processing, but not me. I love it!!!

Which brings me to show you the following image which I took at Nantasket Beach in Hull MA several years ago.

Do you think this seagull was Photoshopped into this picture, or was it in the scene as it was shot??


Hmmmmm........What do you think?????

Ready for the answer????????

Okay. This image was how it was shot. I was shooting at 200 mm's, and the only thing I did to it besides the normal things I do........adjust levels, contrast, saturation, and sharpen etc......was that I cropped it. After it was cropped and the lighthouse and land across the water looked closer, the gull looked like it could have been added into the scene to me.

Perhaps I have too much time on my hands...........Oh wait a minute.........I really do have too much time on my hands!!!!!!!!

Which brings me to an update on my fractured humerus recovery. It is sloooowly healing. Like really slow. It has been six weeks since the fracture and xray and exam show that it is still in the early stages of healing.

UGH!!!!

Work needed a return to work date and Dr says not before July 30th. That will bring me to twelve weeks out of work. I still can not sleep in my bed. Mr. S is on vacation next week and we may be putting the recliner on the trailer and bring it up to Vermont with us for me to sleep on. He says I can sit in the recliner on the drive up just like Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies!!!

I'm a lucky girl!!!!!!!

Honestly, could be so much worse and I'm still counting my blessings.

3 comments:

  1. Carol, that is a very cool picture! Glad to hear your healing, it is hard to be patient. Your humerus may be aling, but your humor is just fine! ;)

    Al put me on to a great deal on LR5 last Feb., and after a series of unfortunate events, I finally got it up and running about a month ago. It is sooo much fun and very addictive. I have limit myself, or I could spend hours at it! Enjoy your trip to Vermont!

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  2. Hi Janice!!!! I love to hear from you!!!! I'm so glad you are enjoying Lightroom. I know what you mean about processing being addictive! Glad Al helped you out. He's such a great guy and such a good teacher. He has helped me a lot with Photoshop stuff. I just wish I could remember everything he taught me.;-)

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  3. Carol, I too am glad your arm is healing. I agree with Janice that your humor is just fine.

    When I looked at your photo and answered your question, I concluded that that the gull was Photoshopped into the picture. When you gave the answer, I needed to figure out why I thought what I did. Here's what I came up with: Everything is in focus. I would have expected the gull to be sharp and the background to have a nice bokeh. If you were shooting at 200mm, you should have been using a shutter speed of at least 1/250th second. That means you would be using a wide aperture or high ISO, but here is no reason to use a high ISO. Shooting at f-4 would have rendered a blurred background. What's more, since the gull was flying, I would expect some motion blur in the background as you followed the gull with your camera. If the gull wasn't Photoshopped, I assume you were not shooting the gull but he appeared in your photo quite by accident. Cropping then, rendered everything in focus.

    I really enjoy post processing too, and I especially enjoy using Nik Color Efex Pro. It is an amazing program.

    Thanks for the compliments, although I'm not a great guy; just a regular, ordinary one. And I must not be such a great teacher, if you can't remember what I taught you.! : ) I find that using Nik's filters eliminates the need for a lot of stuff I used to try to do in Photoshop.

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