Florida 2011

Do a trip report here....go to another city and want to relate it to what KC is doing right or could do better? Give us a summary in here.
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Roanoker
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Re: Florida 2011

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Interesting bark. The background is a small piece of the image with a filter applied. I forget which one.
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I'll always look for any flowers.
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We left the Corkscrew Swamp and made our way to Sanibel Island. I took this shot from the car. I rotated the image and got rid of the green cast.
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Same thing with this one. I also covered the sky with a subtle blend to eradicate all the smudges on the windshield.
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We've made it to our favorite lodging place, The Blue Dolphin. Of course, flowers take precedence. :)
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Here's the view of the place from our front door. We were mere steps away from the beautiful beach, which contained thousands of shells.
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My son is checking out the living room. The background filter is an embossed version of the window view behind the bed.
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Nice kitchen.
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Here is our bedroom. My son slept on a hide-a-bed in the front-room couch.
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And the bathroom.
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One more. The background is a small piece of the cabinet door.
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Back to the living room. The background is a piece of the couch cushion. I highlighted a few items to counter the low, inside light.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We have arrived at our favorite place to stay at Sanibel Island: The Blue Dolphin. It is late in the day, but we have already begun to collect shells.
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Unfortunately, the beautiful blue color disappears when the shell dries out.
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What better container can there be for small shells.
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The setting sun provides wonderful light for wonderful flowers.
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My son found a horseshoe crab. The underside.
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The topside.
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Comin' atcha.
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Here is what we could see a few short steps from our cottage.
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This is a great place for great sunsets.
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We learned that we had arrived at just the right time to see these burrows. They are made by Olivella biplicata, or Olive Shells.
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Looking out to sea again…
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One last look.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We got to watch a beautiful sunset on the beach.
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A few others enjoyed it, too.
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It is the next day, May 4, 2011, and we have just had breakfast that magically appeared on the tables outside. Flowers come first.
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Then we walked to the beach. Not sure what this is.
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Looking to the left. Hm. Clouds.
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A sandpiper, allowing the waves to deliver breakfast.
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This is that whats-it thing previously shown, up close.
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Looking to the right. This view looks brighter, only six minutes later. (My camera knows these things.)
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I called this a sand dollar, but it's really a starfish.
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I felt guilty walking on all those shells and listening to them crunch.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We are strolling along the beach in the morning. I love all the shells. I used a drop-shadow feature in Photoshop, which I sort of learned
in the online Intermediate Photoshop CS5 course I'm currently taking. But I haven't learned how to control it. I may revert back to my old
way of doing it. I think I would prefer not to have any shadow on the top and left sides, but maybe this is better.
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You can see ibis all over Florida. I guess they are fearless. The bright red mask and legs don't hide them very well.
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Other birds. I also learned about bevels in my class.
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A shell that has seen better days. Still pretty.
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I turned the camera in the other direction to show some of the nice houses on the beach. You cannot see them from the front because of
all the foliage. I understand that many celebrities have vacation homes on Sanibel Island.
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Favorite subjects to photograph. (Collecting shells here.)
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So we'll do it again.
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This one has seen better days, too.
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I got hot and needed to find shade, so I wandered onto someone's property where I found a large umbrella. This is the path on the way
back out.
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I used crossing-down lighting effects to show the top of this sea urchin better, as it was too dark.
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Here are some of the shells we collected. They await their bath.
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And a few, parting flowers for good measure.
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Re: Florida 2011

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This is where we stayed on Sanibel Island. It is a portrait-oriented picture within itself.
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This is a path leading away from our cottage. It is also a vertical picture within itself.
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Don't these flowers look like dancing hearts? Valentine's Day came too early. Or the picture came too late.
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I love this picture of my husband and son. Months ago I printed it (without the Photoshopped frame), put it into a real frame and set it
on my bedside table.
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Another ho-hum sunset. :)
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Here's an olive, but no martini. This one is alive!
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His underside. Like a snail.
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What Florida beach would not have pelicans?
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Just a clam. But a live one.
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This pretty shell is occupied!
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More to see.
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Here is another olive, doing his thing in the sand. We were fortunate to see all this activity.
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After I took a gazillion pictures of this poor little creature, my son released him.
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Re: Florida 2011

Post by sailey »

These are a bunch of great pictures, thanks for sharing them. Am I allowed to ask you which camera you've used? Because the photos are so clear, it must be a good and more expensive one! I especially like the pictures of Disney World- it's such a great place to spend the free time! And the floral decoration there is stunning! Somehow it reminds me of a friend of mine who was buying flowers from online serenata and sent it to me as a present. Flowers always make me happy, this must be the reason why I enjoy looking at these pics so much!
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Re: Florida 2011

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Thank you. I use a NikonD70. The images you see here have been reduced and cropped from 3000x2000 pixels at 300dpi to 800x600 at 72dpi, for online display.

We're walking on the beach, late in the day. My son is holding a sand dollar.
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Nice little shell.
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This one's sticking his foot out.
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Well, we had so many shots of the sun setting. As you can see, I am experimenting with things I learned in my online Photoshop classes.
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Another shell with an extended foot. I spent a lot of time on this one, trying to get the lighting right and removing one finger tip.
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The beach is getting dark.
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My son was trying to get a picture of the green flash, and this dog kept getting in the way. But he was kinda fun.
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Here's another one I spent way too much time on. The horizon was at a 45-degree angle, so it had to go.
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We kept the beautiful blue shell (Southern Quahog clam), but the color soon faded. We're not sure why that happened or what we could do about it.
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My favorite beachcombers.
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Horseshoe crab.
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What a terrible way to end the day--and this post. :)
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Re: Florida 2011

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It is the morning of 5/5/11 and we are leaving The Blue Dolphin and Sanibel Island. (I experimented with filling type with a blend.)
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We are visiting the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. My son is viewing a sign picturing all the birds we might see.
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Another view, with the walls blended out.
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In context.
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We're there! (Along with Photoshop experimentation.)
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Anyone want to go crabbing?
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There's a crab! And my son's shadow.
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See the little school of fish? And the boring circles?
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Tried to make the lake's edge interesting. Didn't. Just more experimentation.
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See the variety of birds on the sandbar?
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Here they are up close. (I think my son put a telephoto lens on my camera and took this one.)
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Like a side road.
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Re: Florida 2011

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This is as close as I could get to flowers on this trek.
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This platform allowed people to see up and over better.
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My son, up where he can see better. This is a portrait-oriented picture shoved over to the right. The left part is a fake sky.
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View of the lake.
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While preparing these pictures, I noticed that #061 and #070 were of two sides of the same scene. So I sort of merged them together.
Sort of. I liked that bird's mirror reflection, so I stuck it in a larger form on the bottom.
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I cloned out the no-parking sign. You can see where it was in the second picture.
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Black birds.
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Water's edge.
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This area is called a mangrove. It had little islands like this. And I'm still experimenting with Photoshop.
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I like the way this one turned out. I applied a "Find Edges" filter and then faded it 50% with the original image underneath. The background
is simply a blown-up section of the altered image. Finished off with three strokes and a drop shadow. You'd think I'd do something better
with my time.
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This should have been just a normal, cropped image. But I didn't want to cut anything off the sides. So I just added sky to the top.
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The kayak was there, so I had to take its picture.
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Re: Florida 2011

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These will be the last pictures from May 5, 2011, at the Darling National Reserve.

My son is walking along a typical path.
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This is an image within a larger, filtered version of itself.
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Finally, some flowers! And a Photoshop experiment.
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We left the reserve and stopped along the shoreline.
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Ah, more flowers. These are a hardy lot.
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Not a great experiment, but the horizons line up!
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I enhanced the blooms a bit, as they were too dark.
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Re: Florida 2011

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It is the next day, 5/6/11, and we are in Lehigh Acres, Florida. (I tried to remove the gazillion smudges on the windshield.)
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Condos.
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I didn't try to remove the windshield stains this time. Not a great picture, but it shows our destination for the day.
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Here is a statue of Edison, standing next to his Banyan tree.
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My husband is standing in front of the Edison statue (seen in the previous pic). The size of the Banyan is more obvious.
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After buying tickets, we had to cross the street to visit the houses, lab, and surrounding grounds.
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Edison was interested in all kinds of plants and flowers. So was I! (It takes me a lot longer to prepare these pictures every week because of
all the Photoshop experimentation. In this one, I extruded the background.)
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House. The background is the roof with a filter of some sort.
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Another house.
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Waxy flower (my term).
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The picture on the right is a larger portion of the one on the left, with a feathered edge.
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Another house.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We are still walking around the Edison/Ford estate grounds in Lehigh Acres, Florida.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We're still on the Edison/Ford Winter Estate grounds.

I probably should have cloned out the sign. You can't read it, anyway.
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I walked around this house and took pictures through windows. This is the game room.
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Dining room.
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Same room from a side window.
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Kitchen.
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Another view of the kitchen. I like what we have today better.
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Back to the dining room, from another window.
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A sitting room, I guess.
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Back outside.
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Must be Fords.
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Another view.
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Re: Florida 2011

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We're walking around the Edison/Ford Winter Estate, and I'm still experimenting with Photoshop. The background is the grass at the bottom.
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Just a simple crop here.
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The background is a section of the hotel with a sketch filter applied.
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Simple crop and levels.
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I flipped a copy of a picture and pasted it next to the original. Almost creepy.
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I filtered the bamboo picture to get an artistic feel and placed the result on a glass-filtered section.
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This is a portrait-oriented picture pasted within itself for a frame.
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The background is a filtered section of the image. I concocted the see-through frame myself.
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For this frame, I copied a section of the left-most dock post and pasted it top and bottom, rotated it and pasted it on the sides. I then
applied a Bevel and Emboss Layer Style.
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I guess I like using small sections of pictures to use as their backgrounds. I made the main picture smaller than usual in this case.
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Just a simple crop this time.
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Ditto for the mangos. Sometimes simpler is better.
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Re: Florida 2011

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I didn't mess with the picture other than cropping it to 4:3. It looked surreal enough by itself.
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I did apply an artistic filter to this bamboo picture.
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Simple crop on this one.
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Whatever.
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Just a tree-lined path to the water.
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Zoomed in and cropped this one.
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Husband, checking out the estate.
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Nice breezeway.
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Garden.
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I darkened the too-bright, white structure in the background.
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Complex blossom up close.
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I tried to apply an artistic filter to this one, but the leaves seemed to have their own artistic quality, so I left it alone, other than cropping to 4:3.
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Re: Florida 2011

Post by mean »

Your photoshop skills are really coming along! Cool stuff.
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Re: Florida 2011

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mean wrote:Your photoshop skills are really coming along! Cool stuff.
Thank you, Mean. When I got a new MacBook Pro, my old Photoshop would not run on it and I had to get a newer version. The old version
was not upgradable, so I needed a new one. I took a $99 online Photoshop CS5 course so I could get a student discount. Not only did I
pay only $200 for the $1000 software, I learned a lot in the online class. When an Intermediate Photoshop CS5 class became available,
I took that one, too. I couldn't walk for six weeks following an ankle operation and not all that well for the following twelve weeks because
of the leg cast. So everything turned out really well.

Now for this week's fare.

As you can see, I took some liberties with this photo. I applied an artistic filter to a reduced version of the original and a glass filter to a
portion of the full-sized image. Added a frame.
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I spent a lot of time on this one. I liked the exotic flower, but the background almost overwhelmed it. I cut around the flower and a few
leaves and put them on a separate portion of the background, which I filtered and softened. Now the pretty flower stands out.
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Just a simple crop of flower buds hiding in their protective leaves.
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I applied several filters to these bananas. Notice how the background lifts up in a negative sort of 3D.
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This is a portrait-oriented image pasted within a larger section of itself and the sides cut away to help hide the sharp edges.
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Just a simple crop here.
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And here. These tree trunks look like big shoes to me.
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Not a great picture, but it needs to be here for context. It's a not-so-great portrait-oriented image pasted within a larger version of itself.
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The background is a blown-up, tiny section of the back pot before I rotated the image. I have no idea how I made the frame. I just keep
fussing with things until I like the result. Sometimes I just give up and go with whatever is left.
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This is one where I spent too much time and just gave up with a "good enough."
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This one is not quite good enough.
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Ending with a simple crop. Incidentally, I did not enhance the color. The camera mercifully focused on the tiny "flowers," allowing the
pinkish red to over bloom.
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Re: Florida 2011

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I wish I had a place like this in my back yard.
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A portrait-oriented image is on the right, with a larger section of itself on the left. I cut a bit from the right picture to allow the big tree
to stand clear.
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I love these "tree feet."
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Here's another portrait-oriented image (on the right) with a larger portion of itself on the left. Again, I cut away the sharp edge.
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Simple crop here.
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This picture is actually a small portion of the original, where most of the flowers were blurry. The focus still isn't all that great.
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The background on the original included unattractive swimming pool clutter. I retained the aqua pool color because I like it with the purple.
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Still at the pool.
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We're going back across the street, leaving the estate grounds.
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Flowers growing on the side of a big tree.
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Ditto.
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I guess the estate continued on the other side of the big street.
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Re: Florida 2011

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This installment will be the last of the Florida 2011 pictures.

Here is a shot of a display in the Edison museum.
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Phonograph.
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I took several pictures of this flower. The first one is pretty much the way it turned out, I think with a flash. The other two were taken
without a flash, and the originals were way too dark. I used Photoshop's Levels on the next two and then put all three in one composite.
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This is Edison when he was fourteen years old.
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Edison family photo. I cut out the important parts of the picture and pasted them in an enlarged, smaller section.
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At the end of the day, I made a stop in the ladies' room and hung my Nikon D70 camera on a stall hook by its strap. I turned around and
heard a hideous crash, accompanied by my equally hideous scream. The battery door was damaged, and I wasn't sure sure what all
else. I was heartsick. I later discovered that quite a few pictures on the memory card were destroyed. The card had hit the hard floor and
bounced across the room, along with other bits and pieces. Amazingly, the camera seemed to work, and the lens seemed to be okay.
After I returned from this vacation, I followed Nikon's instructions to get the camera repaired. After an appropriate portion of time and
money, I got it back.

Following the camera mishap, we drove back to Kansas City. On 5/8/12, I took a bunch of pictures of the St. Louis Arch. Here are a few.
Notice the Admiral in the first one. I remember riding on that thing up and down the river nearly every year when I was a little girl back in
the early 1950s. What a wonderful treat. I think it probably stays put now. Sad.
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Portrait-oriented picture pasted into a section of itself.
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Context.
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The end.
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Re: Florida 2011

Post by KCKev »

Thanks for the ride along! I really enjoy peoples travels.

When are you going to do a Downtown KC shoot?
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