Friday, February 02, 2007

Do Overs

Last night I played with a few of the very first images I took with my Nikon D70s in Photoshop Elements.

Since June, I have used Elements on thousands of photographs and I wanted to go back and revisit some of my early efforts and see if I could do better.

I'm putting a few photos here from my work that I hope I haven't already posted on the blog. I guess it doesn't really matter, even if I have posted one or more already, nobody would know unless they've gone back through my posts from this past summer.

All were taken in either Palm Bay, or Melobourne, Florida, in June or July of 2006. Well, except for the last one, of the bridge, it was in Wabasso near Vero Beach.

I know y'all don't know any different, but I can see now that I'm better at getting the "look" I want with Photoshop Elements than I was when I first bought the camera.





Give 'em a click to see them in all of their glory.

Later 'Gator.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

these a wicked photos! I use elements at home as well. Its a pretty good program I reckon. Havent done much lately though and I use it more for digiscrapping.

Carina said...

Must be a great program. (And you must be a great photographer as well, of course.) You could sell these for postcards. =)

We use Jasc Photo Shop. I don't like is at all.

Julie said...

Whoa! Jam, imagine my surprise (I'm a new reader, via Travis) too see pictures of where my son is staying! He's at Vero Beach doing his interning for the ball club down there. (oh, I'm in Ohio approaching sub-0 weather for the weekend).

I'm so glad I know your site and God Bless YOU!

JAM said...

Thanks everyone.

Hails, Babystepper, Elements is good, I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars on the "real" Photoshop. Scott Kelby's book on Photoshop Elements has been worth it's weight in gold to me.

Julie, although these were taken during last summer, we're far enough south here that it pretty much looks like this year 'round. Vero Beach and Indian River County are VERY nice. More upscale than Brevard, but I'm not complaining. We sometimes go down there to the beach because their parks are nicer.

Travis Cody said...

Those first three are stunning! I'm definitely going to look into that software.

JAM said...

Travis, Photoshop Elements works great for me.

The shots are pretty much as taken, but with the first and fourth photos, I applied an Elements tool called gaussian blur. It gives a dreamy like look that I like sometimes.

In the print film or slide film world it's called the Orton process. One sharply focused and one out of focus frame of the same scene are sandwiched together and either projected on the wall or onto photo paper in the darkroom. The combo of the two frames gives a sharp yet hazy image on the wall or in the print. I just used the digital version of that. Thought I haven't quite got the hang of it yet. I like my results, but "real" Orton process slides look even better.

On all of them, I adjust the brightness and contrast and use the unsharp mask tool to sharpen them up a bit.

We might not have mountains to look at down here, but we have killer colors in the sunrises and sunsets.