These are a few of my favorite
photos, posted here for viewing mainly by folks in the fledgling New Bern
Newcomer's Club Photography Interest Group. Please click on any of the
thumbnails below to open up the larger photos.
All of these photos have been resized
downward from their original size (generally 250KB to 900KB in size). I
used Paint Shop Pro 7 to accomplish that, generally choosing a resize ratio
between 35 and 60% depending on original size. I also used PSP to enhance
the photos in several ways: crop, sharpen, brighten, and adjust contrast.
I have not yet learned to layer photos, nor have I made any histogram
adjustments. PSP is currently in version 8. It is published by
JASC software and sells at retail for about $90.
Photos were taken with a Canon S30
3-megapixel camera with 3X optical zoom. I never use digital zoom, as all
it seems to do is pixelize things.
These first three photos were
taken in Jan. of 2002, in Sedona, AZ, at a place called (I think) Red Rock Creek
Canyon. Now that may not be exactly right, but it's close. The
Sedona area is something to behold.
Next we're off
to Disney World in FL, where photo ops were part of the landscape in order to
sell film. So far Michael Eisner hasn't figured out how to keep us
non-film-users from enjoying the same sights. We have a night shot of
Spaceship Earth that came out surprisingly well after some digital lightening.
We add a shot taken in a dark room in The Seas, with the subject a jellyfish
under black light. I think I got lucky with this one, and I also
mistakenly captured a short, amazing AVI file of the creature in action (the S30
does have limited video capability). This photo was also digitally
lightened, and the contrast ratio played with. Then it's onto the boat in
The Land, where I took a colorful shot of some cherry tomatoes cascading over
the boat. And finally, we have the obligatory topiary of Lady and the
Tramp sucking down a piece of pasta as a prelude to a kiss.
Still in FL,
but moving up-state to Ocala, we visit a retirement development called The
Villages. I was struck by the plethora of golf cars that served as
secondary transportation devices. The 'happenin' place' at the Villages is
the town square. This photo was taken just off the town square, and was
intended as a whimsical look at the golf car infestation.
And finally,
closer to home, are two shots taken pre-Isabel in August, 2003 at Jockey Ridge
State Park between Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills on NC's Outer Banks. The
first shot shows the walkway to the dunes, and the second shot tries to depict
the relative size of man versus sand. Climbing that dune just about
over-tested this man's heart pumping capability. Whew!
Hope you
enjoyed! If you'd like to suggest a way to improve any of these photos
using digital techniques (other than DEL), I'd love to hear from you.
Again, I'm just a novice, so any advice is welcome.
