Donna's Week 4 - At the end of the week, all you need is a little "YIP"

Hello again, another full week at work.  I am actually enjoying the conversations and complex thinking.  Some things have moved along nicely, while some things are like I never left.  I have made it out to scrapbooking two weeks in a row and we started puppy training sessions yesterday.  Nothing like jumping back into life, with both feet.  I have likely spoken and interacted with more people in the last 2 weeks, than I did in all of 2016!  My coach and I are doing our best to keep me focused on what matters, balanced and in control.   Honour your strengths and what you need to do to get the job done.  Now, onto this weeks photo challenges.

Church Window

This is the lovely window of the Irving Memorial Chapel located in the Irving Arboretum in Bouctouche,  New Bruinswick.   Rob and I spent some time here in 2015.  Not the best picture, but the only one of a church window that I had.  As you know my goal for this project is to learn what I can do in Lightroom.  The first picture in this series is the original JPG.   The second picture has been cropped, turned to make it square in the frame, corrected for keystone distortion, dehazed, increased exposure, decreased highlights, increased shadows, and yellow luminance highlighted.  The third photo has been cropped further, shadows lightened more and clarity increased. Now that I look at it,  I could have rotated it a bit more to straighten.   What did I learn.  There are endless possibilities and you can get lost in your computer for hours.  I like the 2 final pictures... do you?

Happy Feet

Blake has always liked and been drawn to animals.  I always wondered if it was because we gave him more animal toys and books than car and truck toys and books!  I believe we gave him both as a baby, but since he liked the animal ones more, he got more of them over time. When animals are your thing, then the African Lion Safari is your place.  I cannot even begin to count how many times we have been there and every time the elephants are a big hit.  This little guy was in his glory surrounded by his sisters and mothers feet.   

Night

These moon pictures were taken during the Sept 27, 2015 lunar eclipse.  In the original photos the moon was just a little dot, even with my 250mm lens.  This is why we take pictures in large raw format.  Each picture is 12-14000Kb, but when you crop into them, you can still maintain the details.  You just need lots and lots of computer storage and RAM!

Oil and Water

I do not know if it was my lack of creativity, or the fact that it was time to take some pictures, but I could not find a single picture on my computer that would fit this category.  So, out came the tripod, my white foam core backdrop and a glass jar with water and oil.  Now, I don't have a nice macro lens, like Sharon, so I had to again, take a high resolution shot and crop in.  The oil and water pics on their own were quite boring, so I added little drops of food colouring to the top of the oil.  It wouldn't happen right away, but eventually the food colouring would break the surface tension of the oil and travel across the oil layer to the water and oil boundary.  With my new super cool remote shutter and my camera on fast continuous photo, I captured this awesome image of a drop just as it is about to reach the water and oil barrier.  The red in the water you see is from a previous food colouring drop and in the background you can see a blue drop that is just about to break the water tension.  

Starts with W

For this topic I went with a warm Waterfall picture.  Sharon lent me her neutral density filter, for a few shots at this waterfall, somewhere in the U.P. in Michigan.   Every time I look at it I have to pee!!

Barn

I chose this shot for a number of reasons.  One, I am tired of the pastoral farm pictures..really these are multi-million dollar family run businesses.  Two, the two bunker silo's in the front are what most farmers actually use to create and store feed in.  Their presence in front of the old tower silo's shows the gap between perception and reality.  And three,  I love the contract between the orderly black tires and white plastic versus, the fall leaves and hazy sky.

Wild Card

This one is for Sharon.  I'll bet that between the two of us, we took over 500 pictures of prairie dogs.  Some in Custer State Park, some in Badlands Park and some at the Devil's Tower National Monument.  The goal with animal pictures is always to get behaviours and these little guys have an amazing "Yip" warning behaviour.  I don't know how they decide who is on guard and who gets to eat, I guess if Sharon or I knew this it may have been easier to get the "YIP PIC".  As it was, getting the "YIP PIC" was just sheer luck!  Sharon, here is my best shot.

Whoa, sorry that was a long one.  Have a great week.