Start Me Up!

Welcome back.  Seems like last year.  Yeah the jokes do not improve as we go so get used to it.  I am back at work and happy to say have made it to the halfway point of another week.  Yeah!  I had a great break, two weeks to enjoy myself and do whatever I wanted for the most part.  I must say despite the sinus cold I managed to get things moving in lot of areas.  I had a really great time with my better half, we sat around talked, she read and really just flat out decompressed and relaxed.  I managed a few slurpee's on the holidays as a treat.  I love them so much and it was sort my reward for getting to the break.  Have a slurpee in the middle of the week.

So what did I manage to get done or do?  I spent a lot of time looking into converting negatives into digital images.  I am quite happy at this point with the first results.  I think there is still a little fine tuning to get things where I want them.  I have learned a few tricks and such to get the colours looking good.  See my earlier posts if you are interested in the setup of the camera and such.  I also took a bunch of photos of the kids.  Very happy with what I got out of the photos.  There are some really great pics and have begun doing some editing on them to create a few different photos for the frame.  The kids are so good about it.  I would have been a real pain if it was me.  Probably why my parents refrained from taking my picture a lot.

I expanded some areas that I was working on in photoshop.  I spent a lot time learning composition techniques and also post production.  Predominately I ended up with some great actions from Phlearn.  If you are interested check them out, they have the phlearn method actions which I find to be a great help.  I also started to watch some videos by Serge Ramelli a french photographer, he gets to photograph the types of stuff I enjoy.  I have since gone back and started to edit some of my NYC photos using his processes.  Let me say I am amazed at the finishes I get despite not really photographing the images quite in the right way.   I have learned about exposing for the highlights and have since made a minor change to setup on my camera.  I think it has made a big change in the images I take and how I post process.  Finally I have also started looking at luminosity masks and frequency separation these are much more challenging for me to work through but I will probably put them into use a little more as I work through my photos.  I think luminosity masks may come in handy as I try and convert negatives into digital.

That is about it a great time had by all at Christmas and I learned a bunch did a bunch with my camera.  Oh speaking of that, I almost went and got a new camera.  I think I posted about it the other week, but later decided to wait a little longer and save up a few more pennies.  We have some other stuff to look after first around the house and I think we should keep that going in the right direction.

So as a bit of a treat the photo I took out the front door on New Years Eve, if you saw the original it was very bland but using some of the things I learned on my vacation you get the image below!