Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Autumn Run


I've managed to catch a cold. And whenever I have a cold, my motivation plummets to negative twenty no matter what. But today I'm going to soldier on and work on riding clinic photos.

I worked with this image a bit more than usual in Lightroom. I tweaked the exposure to be more of a silhouette (the export lost some black, but as I've mentioned, I have negative motivation to do anything about it right now). Then I peeled things back and worked with the colors. I wish the export color space wasn't being particularly party-pooper-ing because the colors looked amazing in Lightroom and I just don't love them here. But, if you click on it and view it larger, the effect is still there.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Stoic


The lighting and sky was perfect when I was out taking photos of the filly, so of course I photographed Toler when I went to get him from the paddock. He was rather unenthusiastic at the prospect of going in--he and his buddies were in the far corner flirting with the mares.

I did very little with this image in Lightroom--I desaturated it and burned in the corners a little, and punched up the contrast just a hair. Sadly, photos like this lose quite a bit of vibrancy once I export them. I'm sure it's because Lightroom's in-program color space is a custom model of a color space that is not offered in the export options, which gets annoying. Besides all that, though, this image is really starting to grow on me. I was also surprised that despite the huge amount of dust out there (it's really awful, actually), you can't really tell in the photos, which is nothing short of awesome.

Andromeda Skies


A snapshot of the filly I took and wound up really liking. I think it's the combination of her mother falling asleep behind her and the small lens flair by her eye, but there's just something about it.

This is what Andromeda wanted to do while I was trying to photograph her. She was much too friendly and sweet, so I had to half-heartedly scare her a little, after which she started galloping. And then she realized that she wanted to gallop and really got moving.

There was a moment that I almost smashed my camera on purpose, though. So in the paddock they're in, there's a "mountain range" of fill that just never got smoothed out before the grass came in, I guess. Anyway, I was standing next to it looking towards the trees in the background, and Andromeda came running up from behind me and jumped the fill. It was the PERFECT shot. The perfect angle, the perfect baby jump, the perfect background and lighting. I was following her with everything in focus, I had the shot lined up, and the second I released the shutter, my camera chose that second to inform me that the battery was low (not out) and thus DID NOT TAKE THE PHOTO. I was absolutely infuriated. There I am, standing in the middle of the horse paddock with the filly galloping around, swearing at my camera at the top of my lungs. Haha, oh, man.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Cloud Atlas


Taken yesterday at the stable. I went out to take some photos of the youngest filly because it occurred to me that I haven't taken any photos of her. Obviously needed to be remedied. Anyway, the sky was so gorgeous I couldn't help but do a skyscape. (Cloudscape?) I pushed the blue saturation levels on this so you could see the levels of feathered cloud better.

Back to working on riding clinic photos!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Big Falls


It has been a while since my last post. I went up North for a fabulous week and forgot to post before I left. That's becoming a trend, I think. Oh well!

I took about 1200 photos up North! (Though a generous amount of those are fun doggie pics.) We also went to Big Falls, so I took quite a few photos there, too. That place is beyond gorgeous. I have to work on some photos from a riding clinic before I can get to my vacation photos, so I thought I'd better post a teaser!

Taken at Big Falls, this image kind of begged to be HDR. I think I could process it in Lightroom for an equally catching non-HDR shot, but I didn't have time to fire up Lightroom this morning (only because I knew I would start fiddling with a bunch of photos that really need to wait their turn).

In conclusion, I am very much alive and well! More soon!