Jasonisms

Great sunset tonight that I almost missed if not for trying to get a photo of a rainbow to the east. Glad I had a chance to see this sky spectical in all its glory. These are straight out of the camera, no post editing at all. 

I woke up this morning to the internet not working. Not just the wifi, but a CAT5 connection wasn't working, either. Just another reason why I disagree with this whole "move to the cloud" movement we've been in for a couple of years now. So, I tried writing in Libre Office, I had problems sitting still long enough to complete a thought. Having only a handful of hours sleep will do that to you. So, I decided to open up some old unprocessed RAW images and convert them to JPGs since I still have actual software natively installed on my computer. Then I chose an image and ran it through NIK Software Silver Efex Pro. While the image turned out fantastic, when I went to save it, Nik overwrote the original JPG. That sucked. Anywho, here's a waterfall from a few months ago. Waterfall in Black and White

Found this little toy car at the dog park this morning while out walking the dummies. So, being who I am, I decided to take a picture of the little thing. Now, I should mention, this car is about the size of a Monopoly piece. The first image is the original; the second being edited with the Snapseed app on my phone; the third is the Snapseed edit run through the Tsu photo editor powered by  Aviary ; and the final, edited by the Flickr mobile app. Original: Straight Out of the Camera Edited With Snapseed Snapseed Edit Through Tsu Flickr App Edit As you can seen, each image has it's own merits. Well, except for the first one, that one's just terrible. I'm still trying to get used to the new camera on the new phone.

Did you know I got a new phone the other day? Yeah. I did. And naturally, my first photo with the new phone is of my dog, Rufus. Here he is edited with Snapseed and then filtered through EyeEm's filters.

You know, it occurred to me the other day that I hadn't written or posted anything here for far too long. I guess that's the price of trying to keep up with four different blogs. Anywho, last weekend I took some pictures while out riding motorcycles with some friends. The trip was an overnighter and I didn't bring my dSLR because I didn't think we'd be stopping as much as we did, but I did have my handy-dandy Note II and GoPro. If you want to read about the ride, click this link This was our group at the top of Independence Pass between Leadville and Aspen, CO. This was actually one of those happy accidents that seem to pop up now and again and bring some unexpected joy into our lives. I had the GoPro mounted to the front of the motorcycle to record the winding twisties up and down the pass only to have it take this still instead of recording video. I still don't know what caused that since the camera is set to default to video, but it happened and it turned out...

Came down to Florida for a funeral and haven't been taking too many pictures. Luckily I had my phone on me when we went out to dinner at a waterfront restaurant in Sebastian, FL. The first is the full color version and the second is the sepia styled image. I know it's not fashionable but I really love how the sepia one came out.

Haven't been taking too many photos lately. I don't know why, maybe its the heat or the rain or just my being too tired. Or, maybe I'm just being lazy. Who really knows? Anywho, here are two pictures from yesterday. Once again I failed to bring my dSLR and once again the lighting was perfect. These two I grabbed with my Android. One, a sunflower from behind because the light was better that way. The other, a number of flowers with a wire fence given a vintage look and feel (I hope).

Took the Pentax out for a while today and filled the memory card (a couple of times). That is, I didn't start off with an empty one, made some space by deleting a bunch of images, took a bunch of photos and then had to delete some more, etc. The image below, however, was captured and uploaded from mobile. The sky had some great texture tonight and I happened to be at the base of Plaza Tower One. Unfortunately, my dSLR was full so I grabbed this little gem with my Note II. I wish I'd left a bit more sky at the top, but what are you gonna do? As always, edited (not much) with Snapseed and uploaded on the go.

I keep forgetting to post my images on here. I'd been without editing software for my dSLR (Pentax K5) for a couple of months and sort of got out if the posting habit. However, with mobile photography there were still gazillions of options. My most commonly used is Google's Snapseed by Nik Software. Anywho, here's a flower from this morning while out walking the dog.

I know I've been neglecting this blog for a month or more and there's no one to blame but myself. Not only have I been very busy, but I've also had, and recovered from, a cold as well as ending up on some sort of weird sleep cycle where I'm tired all day, sleeping all night and tired again the next day. To be honest, I think it's the cold that upset my sleep cycle. Last night seemed to be the first night in weeks where I slept through the entire night and woke up feeling refreshed. Anywho, about a week ago it snowed in Denver (again). I mean, it's winter and snow isn't uncommon during this time of year. Naturally, I took Rufus to the dog park. He loves the snow and has a blast running around in the icy cold goodness. I think he agrees with the cooler weather and the snow just makes everything smell new and wonderful. Could you imaging being a dog? Science says they're sense of smell is hundreds or thousands of times more sensitive than a human being...

While out at the Sand Dunes in November I was able to capture this image of a man pointing his camera at the setting sun. The image was a last minute one that I hadn't planned on shooting, but the man's silhouette just sold the scene for me. Instead of merely a darkening sky and the reflections of the creek breaking up the blackened foreground, I have a man enjoying one of the country's great wonders at dusk. I didn't catch his name, or if I did, I can't recall his name, but I did give him the address to this blog, so perhaps he'll peruse on by one day and see himself the way my camera saw him. Dusk at the Dunes

Google decided to roll out new old features to their cloud photo editing options. To be honest, I'm not sure if they retired PicNik or just buried it somewhere else, but the new features are desktop (well, Chrome-top) versions of their popular on-the-go Android app, Snapseed. Why Chrome-top? Apparently the feature is not available unless you're using the Chrome web browser, or presumably the ChromeOS.  Maybe the Picnik features are still available to other browser users? I'll have to check and update this post. To find this feature, using Chrome, log into your Google+ account. On the left hand side, choose Photos  and then a photo. Once the individual image is open in the lightbox, there should be an Edit  option on the top row above the picture. Then edit away... just like Snapseed. Here's the first image I decided to test this feature on and below I'll post the image from when I edited this with Snapseed on the go many, many, many moons ago: Originally, I edite...

I went out to catch something completely different from this, but once I saw the rays of light shooting up under the dark clouds, I couldn't help but turn the camera towards the mountains. That darker straight line is the Cherry Creek Dam and those mountains are more than 30 miles away. Where the dam meets the water, off to the left of the image, is the Cherry Creek marina and if you zoom into the image you can see the boats floating there as they spend another night tethered to the piers. I really wish I would have known the sunset was going to be this magnificent as I would have sought out a better view. As it was, this was a happy accident. My only wish was the dam wasn't in the image. However, the walk back to the truck plus drive time, would not have given me enough time to catch this with the rays shooting up and out like they are and that made all the difference between this sunset and hundreds of others.

While out walking the dogs this morning I ran across this old Chevy truck. Well, not really a  truck so much as station wagon.  Since I've never seen it before I decided to go ahead and grab a couple Android shots while it was there. I treated the picture and two separate ways both using Snapseed. One is basic black and white and the other I added a sepia style tint to give it an older feel.

Update : Google has been going through and labeling all my old posts as a violation of the community rules when there are broken links to services. This is incredibly dumb on on their part and annoying on mine. This is the problem with allowing an alogorithm to pick and choose for you. Yes, some of these sites no longer exist, like Streamzoo (which Google seems to have a great disdain for as nearly every psost I created and shared a Streamzoo link to a photo has been flagged. It used to be a photosharing app competing with Instagram and now it's just a trigger for Google's algorithm. I swear, the more I use Google the more I don't want to.  Lists! Lists are great, aren't they? There are lists just about everywhere, for just about everything. There are lists of psychological disorders , lists of comic book characters  and lists of yellow flowers . Right now we're going to list photo-editing software that aren't Photoshop. Why? Because I saw an article recently th...

Had a chance to grab a couple of (android) shots of the Denver skyline. The images were edited with Snapseed and then two of them -- one of each -- were given some extra treatment. You know, for fun. Unfortunately,  I didn't know we were going to be allowed on the 7th floor garden terrace or I would have brought my tripod and Pentax.

HDR Gone Wrong I know a lot of photographers are using HDR these days to add a little more "art" to their photography and while there are plenty of HDR gone right , there's a whole lot of HDR Gone Wrong out there as well. Don't get me wrong, if the HDR is done right, it can be a great way to present a photo -- however I hope HDR is a photog-fad that's heading on it's way out.