Below is a new edit of a photo that I took back on Sept 27, 2013. It’s a photo of the Thumbnail Pinnacle in the McDowell Mountains.
This is the original edit from that hike:
Category: Uncategorized (page 5 of 6)
We started off hiking part of the Pemberton and then the Scenic Trail for last Friday’s hike. When we got to the Cinch Trail, several of us went on, eventually making it over to Stoneman Wash, returning by way of the Pemberton. Amy continued on the Scenic Trail with the rest of the group. Total distance for those of us doing the long hike was 9.5 miles. The short hike was roughly 4.5 miles.
This is a view of Four Peaks from the Scenic Trail.
The Brittlebush is starting to bloom.
We took this photo at the intersection of the Cinch and Scenic Trails. Nancy, Janet, Norm, and Hiungi hiked the Cinch Trail with me. Amy lead the rest back to the Trailhead Staging Area via the Scenic Trail and then a short section of Pemberton.
From left to right are: Janet, Norm, Christina, Siw, Hiungi, Sten, Amy, Per, Michael, Joanne, Jill, Nancy, and George.
Nancy stands at the end of a tunnel on Shallmo Wash.
A view of some of the hills in the Competitive Track Area.
The poppies are in bloom too, and have been for several weeks now.
A view of Red Mountain framed by a pair of ocotillos.
On our way to Stoneman Wash…
Sections of Stoneman Wash have steep banks that seem break off vertically as shown here.
Other banks of Stoneman Wash are also steep, but not vertical. The two barrel cacti growing together near the top caught my eye.
Other parts of Stoneman wash are very wide. We hiked several miles in Stoneman Wash. This section was unusually firm due to clay underneath a thin layer of rocks and sand.
A decaying piece of wood.
We saw this tree where Stoneman Wash crosses the Long Loop. You can see the trail at the bottom of the photo.
Lots of new buds on this saguaro:
Still in Stoneman Wash, but nearing the Pemberton…
This is a small feeder wash just off the Pemberton. (It feeds into Stoneman Wash.)
Fairy Duster:
Hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day!
Janet, Allen, Nick, Bob, Marilyn, Marie, and I hiked down to Fossil Creek on New Year’s Day. The hike was a little over nine miles long with 1500 feet of total ascent.
Below is a newly edited photo of the impending storm taken during a hike on September 7, 2012. Those of us on the hike got very wet that day! I was new to editing RAW files back then. I don’t think my initial effort was very good.
This is a re-edit of one of the photos from the Long Canyon post. I used Luminosity masks in Photoshop while editing this photo to help increase contrast and saturation. I had been using them for a while in GIMP too, but not as extensively. Also, GIMP doesn’t have adjustment layers, making it more tedious to go back and tweak a setting. (Basically, you have to delete everything above the layer upon which you want to make the adjustment, then make that adjustment and then recreate all of the layers that you had above. I would sometimes do this, but often times, I would make some other adjustment higher up to try to address problems in lower layers.)
For reference, here is the link to my earlier edit. (I think these will both come up in the lightbox if you click on the image below.) The earlier edit was made using Lightroom alone. The new edit used Lightroom for setting the color temperature and basic exposure settings, but photoshop was used for the heavy lifting.
Here’s another re-edited image from the same photo set (along with a link to the original edit.)
This sculpture, by Brian Schader, is called Waves & Windows. It was donated by Tom and Tina Duffy. (See photo below of entire plaque.)
A close-up, looking through a part of one of the windows. This photo was taken a few minutes after the first photo. The sky had turned a nice rosy pink.
The plaque:
I took these photos on Sunday, Sept 1 from the Pine Creek Loop Trail. I went out late in the afternoon and stayed out until well after sunset when I took the photo of the Beeline Highway Traffic. All photos were taken using a tripod and, in some instances, I used focus stacking to try to get both near and far subjects all in focus.
This photo was taken from the parking area for the Ballantine Trailhead. (The Pine Creek Loop starts from the Ballantine Trailhead. The Ballantine Trail doesn’t actually start until you’re about 1.5 miles in on the Pine Creek Loop.
This photo, below, was taken from a short way up the trail.
The photo below is the only one in this group where focus stacking really paid off. I used the technique on several others too, but did not see as much of a benefit with those photos. Note that both the saguaros and the cacti and rocks in the foreground are all sharp. I composed this photo from three different shots where different elements were in focus.
One of the issues with employing this technique is that the magnification changes slightly as the focal point changes, causing the various exposures to be slightly misaligned. There is a technique called image registration which can be used to align several similar images. It turns out that there’s a GIMP Image Registration Plug-in that works very well. When I first tried it though, it didn’t appear to give good results at all. The trick to making it work for my photos were to change the Transformation Model from Shift and Rotate to Affine Transformation.
Once I had the three layers aligned, I then masked two of the layers to show only the in-focus elements from that layer.
Sunset:
These last three were all taken after sunset.
Another Teen Zine entry.
The picture was actually drawn last summer during the Olympics. It is based on one of the rhythmic gymnasts. Regrettably it was drawn on lined paper, so I did quite a lot of editing to take the lines out, and to color out the white paper. On one the edges, there is still some white visible.