240

The observatory at twilight, HDR style.

It took a few tries to get the layering right on this one, but I am really pleased with the outcome. Yay science. Yay photography.

239 - inverted color

Part of the process of creating the HDR images from yesterday involves making "masks". This one is from (and for) the lightest of the three images I combined, which was used to show the proper colors for the branches and blossoms. I actually really liked this image on its own, which was made by first desaturating it and then inverted the colors.

238 - a sad attempt at HDR

This is what happens when you try to make an HDR (high dynamic range) photo on a windy day without using a tripod.

Two photos in one post as well! I figure two sad photos makes it worth blogging about? I did learn from this that the Gimp edits for combining photos in this way is really not terribly time consuming or challenging. So at least now I have the motivation of knowing I'll be able to do that part of it, in order to take the time to take the photos properly. Unfortunately, now is not the time for carefully taking photos, so until then, you get this. Oh and one cool photo that I'll post tomorrow.

235

Matt vs. slanted ceiling

234

These are the doors to the AQ chapel. I actually took this photo awhile ago, but never got around to posting it. I Gimped it up a bit: boosting the contrast slightly, and adding a light feather border.

Exposure time: 1/250 s
Aperture: f/4.8
ISO:500

233

I really like this photo, but had to fix the white balance issue. It was actually easier than I expected. I just used Gimp to reduce the saturation of yellow to 50%.

Exposure time: 1/100 s
Aperture: f/5.0
ISO:500

231

A birch tree in Nathan's garden. Also with boosted contrast, thanks to gimp.

230

This was also taken in Nathan's Garden. This is Greg walking down the path (if you couldn't tell). The gimping of this photo included boosting the contrast ever-so-slightly and adding a bit of a feather border to the edges.

229

I really do love gimp. I didn't change this photo too too much. Just made it more pink, because it makes the blurred background look more neat and abstract-art-like. I took this photo this past weekend at Nathan's Garden in Hanover.

228

This old Getty sign is on the road near Greg's house. I had always been meaning to take a photo of it. One day, after a nice snow, I took this photo, from a moving vehicle (don't worry, I was the passenger). This photo is also gimped. I think boosting the contrast made it look more like it does in real life. Add a nice border, and I'm sold!

227

Another photo from the physics hike. And another photo edited with gimp.

226

This was a photo I took on the physics department hike up to Holt's Ledge. This leaf was actually on one of the ski slopes which we took down the mountain. This was quite a bit of snow to have in October, but it certainly made for some beautiful photos. I also edited this photo with gimp. surprise surprise.

two twenty five

You might think this is Arrett Memorial Hall, but it is really Barrett Memorial Hall. A fine hall, if you ask me.

Exposure time: 1/4000 s
Aperture: f/1.8
ISO: 640

I also edited this photo in Gimp a bit, using "colorize" to give it the sepia tone, and also desaturate it. And then I boosted the contrast a bit.

214

This photo was Gimped! I saturated the blue and green slightly. And then upped the lightness & saturation of the entire photo. And then added a feather border. This one was a little more subtle than the last I think.

Exposure time: 1/400 s
Aperture: f/1.8
ISO: 400

213

The tree again, looking up from underneath. I also added a feather border to this photo. I always like how photos that are darkened at the edges look, but I'm not sure I've mastered the skill. I also don't know how to save the GIMP settings so that I can just apply the option to future photos. So much to learn!

Exposure time: 1/125 s
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO:320

148 - gimp week

So I wanted to do some gimping that did not involve color boosting as the main fix. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get to that this time around. I really like photos that have an antique-look to them. Or photos that have a prairie-look to them. I haven't yet taken a photo that I've been able to properly prairie-ize, so I present to you the last photo for this gimp week series.



It is, once again, of the color boost variety. This is a self portrait, as seen through Ian's sunglasses, when I was in Santa Fe for a conference recently.

147 - gimp week

This is another photo re-do. The original made an appearance on the blog exactly one month ago. It was published to the blog at a time when I was really seeing the advantage of boosting colors and contrast. I saw the original, and it just looked so dull, especially since I wanted to depict the awesomeness of what happened to this tree after being struck by lightening!

So here you have it. The photo re-do.

This tree was struck by LIGHTENING!

146 - gimp week

Welcome to the barn, where I live. We have the greenest grass and trees in the entire world. Or at least Gimp will make you think so.

For this photo I adjusted the color curve to resemble the one below.



I don't even know what is on each scale, but I know that this new color curve makes me happy. The curve started as the straight diagonal line through the center. I pulled the left end low and that seemed to majorly increase all of the saturation, which made the barn a bit more red and the grass and trees Very green. Then I pulled the right end high and that made the sky turn a very nice cyan, along with softening up the color of the roof of the barn.

145 - gimp week

For day 2 of Gimp week, I present to you this lovely photo of a dumpster. I had my polarizer on for this photo, so the blue sky was about as blue as it could be. Then I did some Gimp magic. I selected a small box just around the dumpster and made it extra-red. Then I selected a rectangle at the top that included all of the blue sky and made it slightly more blue, but I couldn't go too crazy or the trees that cut into the rectangle would have been all messed up. Then I just boosted the saturation to a really high amount. I think I might have lessened the lightness (thereby making it slightly darker) just a tad too.

Ta. Daa.
I actually took this photo specifically for using it in Gimp and playing with the color saturation since the blue and red were so great to start with. The edited version is SO much more vibrant, and I love it!

144 - gimp week

Hello all. I'm trying something new for this week. Lately I have been editing a lot of photos using Gimp which is basically a free equivalent of photoshop. It wasn't super easy to start using, but after playing around with it for months, things are going more smoothly. I didn't want to be one of those people who was always editing photos. In fact, I even refused to crop photos until I got to my seventy-first photo. But now I am starting to learn to use edits as more of an extension to the camera. I still strive to get exactly the photo I see with my eye, but sometimes I like to edit the photos in ways that are totally not possible to do with a camera alone.

So for this week (and possibly times in the future as well) I present to you all photos that have been edited in ways in which I prefer the result over the original photo.

For today, I present to you a better version of the tulip from last month.


This is how bright these tulips actually looked. However, they were located in a sort of median, and so, with cars on all sides of me, I ended up being careless and not paying attention to the fact that I was over exposing my photos. But alas, Gimp saves the day, and returns my photo to what I had envisioned.