Fireworks for Independence Day

 Artist's Playshop  No Responses »
Jul 052018
 

I love to see fireworks, but I don’t like loud noises and traffic jams. Last night we had a treat of seeing them from about a mile away at our friends’ home. I experimented with a technique called live composite. The camera makes a base shot then only adds incremental light. This way I could capture multiple bursts without overexposing the surrounding scene. In some cases the subsequent bursts were in the same place, so the light built up in that concentrated area. Other times the bursts were in different places that made magical compositions, in my humble opinion.

Early thunderstorms left a rainbow and cooler temperatures

Boat docks and the waterway made an interesting foreground

Up Close

 Studio Window  No Responses »
Jul 022018
 

A friend gave me a bromeliad pup a few years ago. It has grown, blossomed and created more pups. I keep them in pots in the garden under trees to give them mid-day shade. One has created an efflorescence, so I brought it into the lanai and posed it for a few photos. I used a technique called focus bracketing. I put the camera on a tripod, waited for the breeze to die down, and took about five shots with each one focusing farther away. I experimented with how much change to make on each shot, to keep the background out of focus. Then I ran them through a Photoshop program to stack and mask them based on what is in focus and make a composite. It increases the depth of field, which is especially helpful on closeups. They remind me of feather dusters and fireworks.