Reply To: Bring it on

[timmyschick]

Thank you all for your helpful responses.. I will work on a flickr set tonight when I get home.

I was going to get rid of ‘Alternate Reality’ anyway as it wasn’t making sense to me anymore either.

@nairbynairb I put the black and white separately as I originally thought there would be more going in there than there has been.  The painted are photoshopped – and as soon as I posted the link to my site here I thought to myself “oh gawd that is SO faux, it needs to GO..”)  Although I do have a canvas of one of them hanging in my house, and I do really like it (as I couldn’t paint something like that for real to save my life).

@cameraclicker thanks so much for taking time out of your day for some great critique!  I agree with so much of what you said..

I actually find train tracks interesting – although I have a different shot that I do like better from a later shoot that I finally got around to processing.  Will post in flickr set tonight.

That arch.  We had mediocre weather almost that whole two week vacation.  The skies were maddening and I knew we wouldn’t be back out west for a looooong time.  The other memory card of this location was stolen (or rather, my purse was stolen and the full, 16gb card was in there –  ALL of Bryce Canyon shots, gone.. ACK).  So there is a lot of emotion wrapped up with this pic.  I can see now that doesn’t mean it belongs in my ‘portfolio’.

Will try the additional crop – perhaps I am too obsessed with rule of thirds?  As I recall this was taken in traffic, out the car window and may already have significant crop on the bottom.. can’t remember right at the moment.

I have to be honest, I never saw that stick until you mentioned it!  I had to edit out some yellow spray paint on one of the rocks.. that must have drained my focus.  I should have taken this horizontal, from farther down the hill – but didn’t.  May be too obsessed with vertical shots… and thinking it would be a cool line.

On the cross-eyed waterfall – I guess I am sick of every single water fall now being so smooth with virtually no detail.  But after your comment – I can also see the ‘cross-eyed’ effect.

This is about as light as I could make it without problems.  Might be able to go a little more as I have been learning and getting better in PS.

As far as the flowers go – I was kind of going for a ‘there can be beauty in imperfection’ idea (am an avid gardener so most of the flowers I shoot, I grow – and they are some of my fav subjects).. but I get what Kelby is saying also.  The more I look at the rose the more I agree.

I love black & white.  I love the contrast.  I will try a few things with the power line shot.  I may have gone way overboard on the noise reduction initially (done in lightroom so reversible thank goodness) as again, continuously learning and I processed this one quite a while ago.  If that doesn’t work I will try the layer mask.

Will post the color Niagara shot in the flickr set later.

Good point about the lack of focal point.  For some reason I find bare trees fascinating.  Will need to explore that in a different way.

The last shot is in Petrified Forest NP.  I have the color one on flickr as well, will add it to the set.

I have neglected the website for a while, and clearly have lots of work to do!  Again thank you for the time and honest comments – they are appreciated more than you know.