First things first: Before you are wonder how I managed to get such an awesome picture of an orca when I already said I live in the landlocked state of Colorado, know that I did not take this picture. It’s Thursday so I get to post whatever I want – including pictures I didn’t take. But whoa… let’s slow down and discuss the picture because after all, that is the point of a photoblog!
This picture was taken by Michael Cunningham, a photographer for New Zealand’s Northern Advocate. Apparently he was out body surfing last week when the orcas decided to join in on the fun! Cunningham jumped out of the water and grabbed his camera to take a few shots. Awesome! As you may or may not know, I have a special place in my heart for orcas (read: I love them) so I think this picture is amazing… I would love love love love to just be chillin’ at a beach somewhere and see an orca swimming around in the waves… Stupid Colorado and its lack of oceans…
Here is a link to the article where I found today’s picture if you want to read more.
If you want to see a gallery of surfing orcas (seriously… how could you say no?!), it is here on the Northern Advocate’s website.
Author: iampotassium
Black and White: Something’s Coming…
For today’s black and white picture, I am posting a picture of a church I used to see every day on my way to and from work when I lived in New Mexico. One day, there were all these ominous clouds lurking over the top of the church and I decided to snap a picture. So ominous… I also think this picture is appropriate for today because yesterday around 3 pm, it got PITCH BLACK outside and then proceeded to rain/snow/be windy like crazy for the next 10 minutes. So something did come… No worries though, when something does attack, it usually takes off eventually… I also realized that my black and white pictures tend to be creepy. I should post a non creepy black and white picture one day…
As far as editing goes, I took this picture sometime in 2008 and used Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop so I actually don’t remember what I did to this picture. Sad days… but at least it looks cool!
Raise a Toast
Happy Tuesday everyone! I’ve been trying to get better at taking action shots of people so today’s picture features my friend Amanda dancing! On Halloween, Cobalt and I went to a bar with Amanda and some of her friends. Everyone was dancing and I snapped this picture of Amanda! I think it looks pretty neat that her hand is out of focus but the rest of her is in focus!
Portrait: First Snow
Welcome back to another week! I hope you all had lovely weekends! I know I did… Anyway, today’s portrait is a picture of my friend Meghana showing off all the snow we got last week. Yeah yeah, I know… it’s not very much snow but run with it! It was our first real snow of the season! So we thought we’d celebrate it by taking a few pictures! Meghana was worried she wouldn’t look good in the snow but I disagree… :)
Behind the Scenes
Happy Veterans’ Day! When I was in high school band, we used to have a concert for veterans on Veterans’ Day to celebrate them. Well, I am no longer in band but I still wanted to acknowledge all veterans today.
Leaf Week concludes today (special surprise tomorrow) with this crazy leaf picture. I really like this picture because the leaves in the foreground are actually not in focus and the leaves in the background are in focus. Good times. I like to give all leaves a chance to be in focus, you know? And sometimes the leaves in the background just feel a little left out! Well, now’s your time to shine, guys!
Black and White: Riding out the Storm
For today’s black and white picture, I decided to post this semi creepy picture of what happens when all the leaves fall off the tree! I took this picture in May 2008 when I was visiting Fort Collins, CO with my family to get my sister settled into a summer program at CSU. That means I took this picture on my old old old point and shoot, my trusty Canon Powershot A75 probably about a month or so before it bit the dust. Man, that was the best and most loyal digital point and shoot I ever had; it hung around through three years of college insanity and then one year of fun in New Mexico. So A75, I salute you!
Anyway, I really like that the branches of the tree kind of look like a claw and that the bird is just sitting on this creepy claw being like “Yeah… just chillin’…”
Happy Wednesday everyone!
Berries for dessert?
(or death…)
Wooooo Leaf Week is in full swing now… So as I was saying yesterday, I took a bunch of pictures around campus last week trying to find the perfect leaf pictures to enter into a leaf picture contest. That means that I have a ton of awesome leaf pictures that are sitting around thinking they are not good enough now because I didn’t use them as my contest entries. You can feel better now, leaf pictures, because now you are on my blog! Wow… that was a long explanation. Anyway, this was actually one of my favorite pictures that I took in my leaf picture quest but I decided not to enter it because well, it has berries, not leaves as its focus.
Photoshop
I didn’t do much to this picture. I just edited out some random dots in the sky and then cropped it.
Portrait: Do You Like My Leaf?
I have decided that this week is going to be Leaf Week in honor of all the gorgeous trees out there right now. Also, I took some leaf pictures to submit to a photo contest and was so inspired by it that I decided to post (other) leaf pictures in my blog too! So starting out this week is my friend Janet, who works in my lab with me and who is also awesome. Janet has been crazy stressed lately writing her thesis so that she can graduate. It’s due today so yay Janet for getting it done! *round of applause for Janet* Anyway, on Friday, she took a break from writing and went outside in the gorgeous fall weather (it was 70 degrees outside… in November!!!!) to take leaf pictures with me! This one was my favorite.
Photoshop
First a note: (I have had a suggestion that this photoshop section takes away from the magic of my pictures… Do other people feel like that? Should I just include a brief summary of the picture and that is all? I have been posting the photoshop section because it is kind of a record keeper of what I actually did do to each picture and I thought people might be curious about how I process my pictures… but discuss!)
Today’s Photo: When I take pictures on my DSLR, it saves the picture both as a JPG and as a raw NEF file so that I can have multiple ways of editing my pictures. I’ve been working on learning how to edit the JPGs on their own since I can apply those skills to any picture taken on any camera but for Janet’s picture, I actually used both NEF and JPG editing techniques. Janet’s face was a little underexposed so I fixed the exposure and the white balance of the NEF photo. Then I switched to editing it as a JPG. I cropped it and darkened those bright leaves above Janet’s head because let’s face it, they were outta control!. That’s it! :)
Cell Phone Picture: Desk Friends
Welp… nothing totally super awesome happened in Cell Phone world this week so you get a picture of all the friends on my desk in lab! What a collection! :) Each animal has its own story as to how it got there. Don’t get too excited; the stories range from “Yay! I bought him at Target!” to “Yay! I got him at a HUGE truck stop on I40 in New Mexico” and everything in between (alligator farm, present, pub quiz prize, etc). Names: Starting with the creepy Freud in the right hand corner, we have Pico the green monster with no arms, Pedro Armadillovar (guess where his name is from…), Eduardo the walrus, Percy the winking alligator, Pablo the shark in the egg, and two dinosaurs which actually don’t have names… Sad days! Anyway, they certainly make me happy every day. I should note that Freddy the mitochondrion lives on my desk too but he wasn’t made at the time this picture was taken… Poor Freddy…
Photoshop
I actually did photoshop this picture but mostly because that certificate on the wall had my name on it and such. Ahhhhh Clone stamp. What a friendly tool you are… :) I also cropped the picture a bit to get rid of any unwanted/boring shadows. Yay!
I have to give lab meeting today! Yikes! Hope it goes well… I hope you guys are having good Fridays and are planning exciting weekends! :D Look forward to some more AWESOME pictures next week! I am already excited! :)
Sometimes all it takes is a walk around the lake
(my title is from a song by Lost in the Trees)
This past weekend, before all the Halloween craziness, Cobalt and I went away to Dillon, CO for our anniversary. There had been a giant snow storm on Monday and Tuesday last week and they got 18 inches of snow in Dillon! So, even though it was 50 degrees during the day, there was still a bit of snow left for us. It was incredibly beautiful and Cobalt and I spent some of our time wandering around this epic lake taking pictures to try to capture the beauty. This is as good as I can get but I think really, you’d need to be able to smell the fresh mountain air and feel the cool breeze on your skin to really appreciate the beauty of Dillon. I was very impressed (also they had this restaurant called The Mint where you get to cook your own steak… also impressive… and delicious…)!
Photoshop
There were some random spots on the right of the picture so I edited those out and… that’s it!
Potassium Photography 