The Power of B & W

I've wanted to get a good picture of Long's Peak, one of Colorado's 8 or 9 most difficult peaks, ever since I climbed it four years ago, but I never found a view that showed its real grandeur among the rest of the Rockies, until Susan and I and Addy and Julie hiked to a lookout spot in Garden Gate Canyon State Park a bit south of Boulder in the Front Range. Below is what I got on my first attempt. Below that, from a slightly different spot, is the Photoshopped view (think Ansel Adams!).

Back to Photoshop - The Levels Command

This is Monument Rocks, just south of Oakley, KS. Although when we got there I was immensely pleased with the light, particularly the sky, I felt the pictures were a little washed out (the heat made us feel, indeed, washed out). But a little help from the Photoshop "Levels" command produced what you see below, which is what I saw in my "mind's eye" when I took the picture with my Nikon D200). I find the middle "slider" in the Levels window particularly useful - just play with it.

This is a wide-angle shot, by the way, with my zoom lens set at 18 mm, giving the sky that "Kansas Bowl" look which characterizes the Great Plains.

The Three Basic Elements

This picture, that I took of the great Mayan ruins at Palenque, deep in the heart of the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico, in 1996, combines what I consider the three basic elements of good photography:
1. creative use of Depth of Field (notice that the jungle itself in the background is out of focus, thus pushing the ruins towards the viewer);
2. side lighting
3. the rule of three (you can actually see a diagonal from the bottom right to the top left that cuts the picture into 1/3/and 2/3; plus, the picture has just three elements - the temple at the top left, the stone terraces in the middle, and the jungle in the background.

Fun with DOF

Here are two pics from Chain o' Lakes State Park over Memorial Day that illustrate creative use of Depth of Field.