water magic     

reflections and distortions     

"if there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water" - Loren Eisely

a sunny day in the city, the quiet water in the canal reflects the buildings in the street

a bit of wind disturbs the tranquil surface and creates long, slow ripples in the mirror

zooming in on the colorful distortions. all context disappears, what is left is an abstract interplay of color, shape and light

photo-heart-connection january 2013     

adding texture and text to an image

inspired by Kim Klassen's Round Trip

used Kim's 'unleashed' texture with soft light blending mode at 77%

this image is a 'lucky shot'.... the swans were winging past just as i was holding my camera to photograph something else. i heard them flapping, swung my lens upwards and...bingo!

lightroom love pt 3    
experimenting with the graduated filter, spot removal tool  and presets

this photograph was taken on a cold, grey snowy winter's day. the raw image looks desaturated and has an ugly color cast. i did some basic color and contrast correction, applied the creamtone LR preset, decreased the overall clarity, boosted the foreground sharpness and contrast with a graduated filter and got rid of some of the dark specks in that area with the spot removal tool. quite a dramatic overall improvement i think.

lightroom love pt 2     

pushing the sliders further

lightroom can do more than just apply subtle changes. you can use it to achieve all kinds of dramatic and artistic effects

here's another photograph i took at the beach, using intentional camera movement to achieve a painterly effect

first creative lightroom experiment. stronger painterly effect but still figurative, you can clearly recognize the waves in the sea.

second creative lightroom experiment, pushing the sliders even further.... into abstraction.  color and shape do no longer evoke the sea or its waves.

awesome!

lightroom love     
getting creative with sliders
the second week of Kim Klassen's Round Trip ecourse is all about Lightroom's develop module. 
here's an example of the subtle but powerful changes you can make in an image using Lightroom. this photograph was taken at the beach yesterday afternoon 

straightened and cropped and then played around with the sliders in most of the develop panels. 

it was great fun! can't wait till the next of this week's lessons!!!

sanctuary     

december's photo-heart-connection 

this is a scene i see almost every day. it is my sacred place. 
the light falling through the leaves, illuminating the reeds and rushes along the path, magically turns the wet asphalt into a pool of silver. 

this is not a wedding     

my november photo-heart connection

this photograph is part of my 'exposing the layers of life' project, a collection of multi-layered images that reflect different realities converging in one single moment in time. 

i always shoot RAW and then post-process in Lightroom. i love 'exposing' the different layers by playing around with the tools in the develop module, trying to coax the hidden story out of the RAW material. sometimes the result is so stunning it takes my breath away

i especially love this shot because it reminds me of the paintings of Rene Magritte (hence the title)