About a week or so ago I was just getting ready to go to work when I looked out our back picture window to see what looked like a deer grazing in our pasture.  Living out in the country, this is really no unusual event.  However, after looking closer, I realized that this wasn’t a deer grazing at all, but a mother deer nursing her fawn.  The fawn looked no more than a week old and after quickly getting my wife, we simply stood there and watched nature for a while.

After a bit, mother and fawn moved off a few more yards and she proceeded to try to clean the fawn.

After a while, both mother and fawn passed over the hill in the background to graze some more.

Yet one more reason I love living in the country!

We walked a few laps of enclosure and I just kept snapping away.  I particularly enjoy this series due to the bright colors on the butterfly, and the fact that you can see the Proboscis as the butterfly eats.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/readers-9/?hp

Apparently, the NY Times is encouraging as many people as possible to take a photo on May 15th at 15:00 GMT (11:00 am for those on the East coast).  Their goal?  To make a “Moment in Time”.

You will be able to submit your photo to the New York Times website and they will be publishing a selection.  I’m not sure exactly what this will turn into, but it could be a really neat project!

After we finished chores, I tried to get a few photos.  At my wife’s suggestion, I took a few of an old, well worn, pair of gloves.  While they may not be the prettiest things to look at, they really speak to the hard work that goes into any physical trade.

While I liked the original photo (shown below), I really felt that it didn’t do justice to the subject matter.  It looked a bit washed out directly out of camera (which isn’t unusual) and so I thought I’d give it a go and try my hand at some post processing in Lightroom.

I really wanted to accent the aged / weathered look of the glove, so I dragged the Lightroom Clarity slider to +100.  This accentuated all the cracks and other textures of the glove.

This looked better, but I really wanted to make it look aged.  Usually, age yellows things.  So I changed the temperature to make the whole photo warmer and messed with the fill light and vibrance settings until I was happy.

I intentionally made things a bit too warm and yellow.  This was done because the next step was to desaturate the photo by dragging the saturation slider to around -25.  This isn’t so much as to create a greyscale photo, but enough to make it look antique.  I also did a little cropping to straighten the photo.

I’m happy with the outcome and used this version in my Daily Photo #60.  I never had to leave Lightroom and it took under 5 minutes!

Just as a note, the easiest way to view all the steps is to click on the first photo in this post.  Once it’s loaded in a larger format, hovering your mouse over the right and left sides will bring up next / previous buttons.

Let me know what you think!

So, if you’re enjoying my work, or just want to go see other really good photography, check out the above link and either vote for me, or look around!

The event took place at the Black Lotus Brewing Company in Clawson, Michigan. The venue was a pretty good size but was completely packed with people! The way things were set up, the stage was probably only about 5 or six feet deep which must have been really hard for the dancers.

With the low light, my shutter speeds were too slow to stop motion. So I was constantly trying to anticipate when the dancer’s head would be stationary for long enough to get their face in focus. In the end, I feel that some of these shots turned out really fun with the motion blur around the arms.

It was really an amazing experience. The dancers were fantastic (not that I’m really knowledgeable about these things) and they really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Since I derive the greatest peace in nature, I started looking through my Lightroom library and came up with a decent list. Many of these photos have more meaning behind them than what they picture, so whenever possible, I’ll try to give a brief description of what makes the shot special to me.

This weeks photo is from a vacation that we took to a small town in Ohio to visit some close friends from Michigan.

Driving across New York to get there, we met up with a horrible blizzard. But we made it safely and after checking in to the lodge, we spent a wonderful weekend relaxing with friends. The rest of the weekend was cold, but the sun came out our last day there and I took the opportunity to snap a few photos. I’m sure this view would have been equally as beautiful in the summer since this lodge was right up against a lake. For some reason, I really like the winter image with the white gazebo blending in to the frozen lake beyond.

Therefore, I figured I’d attempt to start a series of posts here featuring photos that bring me a sense of peace and calm.

This photo was taken in Juneau, Alaska after we had spent a few hours on a small whale-watching boat — my first ever photography tour. I wouldn’t say it was cold out, but it was definitely not warm, and it had been raining off and on all day. While walking up the wharf towards our waiting tour bus, I turned around and saw this unique colored fishing boat. I’m not sure if it was the orange color of the boat, or the simplicity of such a boat bobbing up and down in the gentle waves, but this scene will remain engraved in my brain as one of those truly unique experiences.

Enjoy!

It’s times like this that I’m glad we live on the top of a hill. However, as we neared the bottom of the road leading up to our house, I looked over and saw that. While it may look like a nice river, it’s normally just a trickle of water. Further down this creek it was possible to see more erosion.

As we drove through town, I saw this bridge which normally leads to a retirement home. Again, this is normally just a drainage culvert with minimal water. What’s more, the sidewalk on the other side usually doesn’t lead into a pond.

Here’s a wider view of the same area. The sun kept going behind the clouds so this gives a bit of a deary felling to the photo. I suppose a flooded backyard is a bit of a dreary thing, so perhaps it’s not all bad.

A nearby parking lot had a solitary drain in the middle of it which I assume led to some sort of drainage ditch somewhere. It was a bit overwhelmed which created a pretty neat whirlpool in the middle of the parking lot. Not something you see every day.

I think this is my favorite shot of the day. While the topic is still a bit dire since we’re in a flood after all, the light coming through the trees is just really interesting. At the same point, it’s clear that there is a lot of extra water trying to make its way downstream — wherever that my be. Regardless, I really like this shot.

This is another of my favorites. I really like how it tells the story of what’s going on. This is just a large quantity of standing water in someones backyard. Again, I count my blessings that we live on the top of a hill.

After driving around shooting these shots it had been about a half hour. From what I could tell, things were actually getting worse.

There is simply too much water for too small a drain pipe. Water was also covering the main intersection in town on our way home — the same intersection that was clear on our way down to town. Hopefully, there isn’t too much damage caused here. I know that the flooding we got a few years ago left many families homeless, some of whom are still struggling to get back on their feet.