New York City

Welcome to New York City! This picture and tomorrow's picture are going to be unedited and as I took them. These first two are to introduce you to what New York City is. This picture is from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. I went up to observe pre, during, and post, sunset. I wanted to capture the sunset, downtown, and the bars that held us back.

Spray

I was outside cleaning my bike one day and I that about how interesting it would be to capture a long exposure of the water going around the wheel. It was challenging to capture this because a camera and water do not mix. I positioned my camera just slightly out of the spray zone and captured the motion. 

Waiting

Out of the Photoshoping to redo picture and into long exposures at a pond. I decided I wanted to show the fall environment, but also the objects around the park. Using a park bench, I set up leaves on top of it for the fall feel, then started taking pictures. I wanted to showcase the bright colors of the leaves and trees.

Looking Off

This picture was one of the most fun to take for this photoshoot. I set up the settings (shutter speed, aperture, ISO), started a two-second timer, ran to this bench, then took the picture. I wanted to capture the fall colors and bench. I liked the last picture but felt it was lacking something. I wanted to add something more to the picture, something that would give the viewer something else to look at.

Split

Even taking this picture 4 months ago, I still remember how much fun it was to take it. I had the earlier pictures (which I posted), but they were from the shore and on the sand. For this picture, I wanted to have the sunset go all the way to the camera. I wanted to be standing in water and have the reflection of the sunset go all the way to the camera. I walked out 100 yards into the water and was able to capture the ripples of the water and the reflection of the sunset.

Oranges

While there are many variations of the color red, primarily the only two colors are orange and black. Looking at the original picture, there is not much color, you can barely see the seagull, and the sun resembles a dot in the sky. Like many of the other pictures, I brightened this one up and increased the contrast. I then darkened just the sky to showcase the rich colors.

Rainbow of Colors

Originally, this picture was incredibly dark with little colors. First, I brightened up the whole image. I wanted to make sure the sunset colors were visible and you could see the oyster farm in the bottom right. After the picture was bright, I wanted to brighten the sunset even more. By increasing the brightness and contrast all of the colors started to show. What used to be a dull pink now turned into a bright pink.

 

Watching

This sunset picture is one of my favorites. The bright colors in the sky and reflecting on the water, and the people standing on the sand watching it. I wanted to brighten up the original pictures and make the sunset colors and people stand out. I had a slight problem brightening the entire picture, because of the highlights in the sunset. It wasn't a hard fix, and now the picture looks colorful and bright.  

Miles Upon Miles

Welcome back to Boston! If you remember, I was posting these pictures just a few months ago. These sunset pictures were some of my favorites, this was before the editing. After finishing the Chama pictures, I wondered which I should do next. I decided on the Boston sunsets. This picture is one that wasn't too hard to fix. I just increased the contrast, saturation, and vibrance, among other small edits.

Rising

The spot where this house was, was perfect for sunrises and sunsets. There were mountains to the east, more to the west, and low hills to the south (the front porch faced south). For this picture, I wanted to eliminate the distractions like the bush in the bottom left and outline of a second mountain in the middle right. Once again, I increased the colors to make them brighter and more visible. I wanted to keep the mountains in silhouette, because I like the outline and feel that the mountain would distract from the sunset.

Morning Drink

When I first opened this picture, I didn't know what definition I had of the sunrise. After dramatically increasing the contrast, vibrance, and saturation, I was able to showcase the colors in the background. I had another picture of a hummingbird flapping its wings on the feeder, but the sunset wasn't as strong. It would have been a better picture, but I couldn't make the colors seem as incredible.

Looking Off

This picture comes from the 2019 Summer and Chama, New Mexico. I took this when we were driving back to the place we were staying after fly fishing in New Mexico. After retouching this, I think it might be one of my best pictures. I love the vibrant colors in the trees and sky, the shadow of the first mountain casing onto the others, and the valley with the stream and everything else in it. This definitely is a top 5 of my greatest pictures. 

Vibrant Colors

This is the first picture of this new series. I am taking pictures I took a while ago, and editing them in Photoshop, then reposting them. I think it will be interesting to see the things I can do with editing both the pictures and how much better Photoshop can make a picture.

Optimism

This homeowner decided to have a little sign outside their damaged house. It reads, "House Sale to blow you away! New ventilation. Open sky views. May need landscaping." First, when I biked by I just stopped and stared. I thought it funny how this homeowner, whose house was just destroyed, made this sign. I thought it showed that she was both optimistic and humored at what happened. And that even though there was a tornado, she still could have some fun.

Dirt Road

For this picture, I wanted the focus to be on the dirt road. I wanted to show how many vehicles have been on this road trying to clean up and rebuild. This was a paved road, but now it looks more like a dirt road. Also, many of the roofs have been covered by white or blue tarps. From these four houses in the picture, three are completely covered, and one had only sections covered.

Clear Skies

From this picture, it is much easier to see the loss of trees. I wanted to showcase the 'Road Closed' sign and show what this neighborhood has been through. For about a week after the tornado, police were stationed at every entrance to the areas where the tornado hit. They were there to ward off looters and people trying to take advantage of those the tornado hit.

Ripped Apart

The winds from the tornado just ripped everything. The main problem was because there were a lot of trees in the area, once those trees broke their branches were just flying around damaging houses. While this house wasn't damaged that much, I believe it's yard was the most destroyed. There were multiple trees either already cut down or laying down from being broken. For these pictures, I don't want to edit or change anything about them. Unfortunately, this also means that any bad shot that I take I can't change. So, the dark spot in the bottom left, I can't change.

Trees

The first thing I noticed when biking through the neighborhood was the lack of trees. All of the trees either had their leaves ripped off, or the whole tree itself had been removed. You can clearly see from this picture that there is a tree leaning down and trees in the background have no leaves on them. I continued to have a higher aperture to make sure the objects in the back were in focus. This is why you can see the trees in the back and they are not out of focus.

Leaning

This next theme is not going to be about fall (that's next!), but about the tornado. On October 21st, nearly one month ago, an EF-3 tornado damaged structures in Dallas. Two weeks after the tornado hit, I decided to take some pictures of it. This first picture is a simple one. It is just of a fence leaning. I wanted to contrast it against the wall of the other houses around it and how it is not perpendicular to the concrete floor.

Fall's Foliage 

I'm back! After taking a few weeks off to take more pictures and to focus on schoolwork, I'm back to posting. This picture is looking out the tree trunk for a fall colored tree. I think it is one of the best fall pictures I have taken. I love the colors of the leaves, the different colors of the leaves (green/yellow fading into red), and the focus. The focus is sharp with an aperture of 11. I could have made it sharper by using a 3.8 but wanted to also be able to see the leaves in the background.