Monday, December 19, 2011

Revisiting a Day in May

I could spend a lot of words on explaining this journey.  It would be colorful, to say the least.  Bad words directed at Adobe, references to feeling like an ignored stepchild because I shoot Sony and not Canikon, etc.

Never mind all of that.  The new camera pretty much forced me into upgrading Adobe’s Lightroom on my computer… up from version 2 to 3.

And suddenly all of the woes that made me stop using it two years ago were forgotten.  It works as it’s supposed to, and it never did before.

And, it allows… no, it encourages me… to go back and review hundreds (probably thousands, though I haven’t gone that far yet) of frames shot in the last couple of years with new eyes.

All of the images below were made while skirting a May storm in Wasco County, Oregon.

Approaching Storm

New Wheat

Abandoned House 1

Storm Boiling

Power Line Road

Howling Power Lines

S-Curve

Sculpted

Stubble Field

Rain on the Horizon

While some of these have been uploaded to Facebook before, previous versions were processed in Photoshop CS4 and required substantial effort to get the RAW file to look the way I had “seen” the frame.  All of these were revisited in Lightroom 3, using PS only for final web optimization.

All were shot with the A100.  It’s outdated, but it’s fully capable of capturing good images!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Another Sunny December Day

Saturday was too nice to stay inside and do the chores that I knew I needed to do.

I set out in search of reflections and calm and found myself in the shadow of a Chinook on approach to Astoria Regional. 

OK, I’ll follow that!

ChinookWide

Having spent a few years in aviation maintenance, I respected the flightline and shot from near the FBO until the aircraft commander walked up and said “Get as close as you like!”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

ParkedChinook

That was cool but the crew was off to socialize with the Coasties, and there was a Jayhawk preparing for launch, so my attention was divided.

The differences between the two aircraft types is almost startling.  The Coast Guard helos are newer, of course, but even if they weren’t, there’s always been a difference in the way that the Army treats the exterior of its birds.  The Jayhawks look like hot rods, the Chinook looks like a farm truck.

Touchdown

JayhawkTaxiing