A Little Winter To Cool Things Down

With our recent run of days with temps topping 90 degrees and a heat index over 100, I thought it appropriate to offer a few images to help cool you out. Understandably, we all like to complain when the weather is too hot or too cold. Fortunately here in Michigan we receive a pretty even dose of both and more than a few days somewhere in between that we can truly enjoy.

Do You See a Pattern Here?

Here is a link to a gallery of 7 images taken from patterns in nature. Patterns are everywhere, it is simply a matter of focusing your attention on the world around you in order to pick them out. Once you have trained your eye, you will see patterns everywhere.

Patterns gallery

I particularly like the second image of a pond in Acadia National Park, that on first view has a truly bizarre appearance, like hieroglyphics scratched out by aliens on a shimmering surface not of this earth.

A Fabulous Fury

I really liked the look of the front fender and logo on this Fifties Plymouth Fury, photographed at the 2010 Autorama, but the background and numerous reflections from the hall lights were too distracting for my taste. Photoshop to the rescue! I retouched out some of the reflections, de-saturated and blurred the background while adding saturation to the car itself. The final step was to crop in tight to further emphasize the golden logo. I had to sacrifice those great "dog dish" wheel covers but you can't have everything.

Best Places on Earth

The link below features a series of 25 photos of "The best places on Earth to photograph". When you talk about "the best" of anything it is certainly subjective, but these are some awesome sights. The article tells you where they are and what to look for in case you happen to be doing a bit of globe trekking.

Best Places on Earth

It is certainly worth checking out the locations - some may be familiar while others are relatively obscure.

Our Fine Feathered Friends

If a survey is ever done on which profession has the most patient practitioners, nature photographers would have to rank at or near the top of the list. Numerous times I have read about nature photographers laying for hours on end out in the woods or jungle land waiting for a wild animal to enter their frame of view for the shot that viewers will marvel over. Or the people that produce those awesome nature shows on TV who shoot for weeks or even months to have just one hour of usable material.

Me, I'm not quite that patient a person, but I did make an effort to capture a few shots of our fine, feathered friends as they visited our backyard. Keeping my camera with long lens at hand and ready to go for just the right moment, only to have the bird fly away before I could snap the shutter. End result - lots of empty frames, lots of blurry images and a few pictures that are keepers.

Beware!

Just added this image to my "Cruising" store on Zazzle . Originally photographed at a car show during the Dream Cruise in 2009, I did some heavy Photoshop work to create a custom car in the spirit of 1960's show cars from the likes of George Barris, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and others. I may never have the chance to fabricate a custom car of my own out of sheet metal, but it is possible to create a virtual one with a bit of digital magic.

Publish A Book Of Your Own

Viewing your images on paper or computer screen are fine, but have you ever had the desire to see your photos in the pages of a book? Nikon offers up a few suggestions for publishing a photo-book of your own on this link -
Self Publishing

The beauty of the internet and digital technology is that an individual is now able to produce a one of kind, personalized publication of this sort which would have been nearly impossible - to say nothing of being extremely expensive - just a few years ago.