Take one dreamy Lensbaby shot, import it into Photoshop and then add a couple of layers that are pictures of a texture such as fabric, concrete, or plastic. Play around with the blend mode of the texture layers ’til you see something you like. These look great printed on heavy duty matte or fine art paper.

Sunset is a special time. Unfortunately the dynamic range found in a sunset is much more than a digital camera can handle. Fortunately there are programs like Photomatix that enable you to combine multiple exposures of the same scene and combine them to increase the dynamic range, giving you a result similar to what you see with the naked eye. You can shoot three images at different exposures with the camera securely mounted on a tripod, or shoot a single image in your camera’s RAW format, and then export three different exposures from Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop. For the sunset image you see below, I exported three versions of the same image, one at -2.o EV, one as captured by the camera, and another at +2.o EV.

Sunset in Sarasota Harbor

The City of Venice recently held a Christmas parade. Roxanne and I went downtown with the sole purpose of taking pictures and not watching the parade. Of course it was dark, which meant high ISO Speeds, in my case very high, some as high as ISO 6400. However, Noise Ninja made small work of removing the noise and giving me usable images. Stir in some fun with filters from Nik Multimedia, and I ended up with some interesting stuff. Oh yeah, I also used the Lensbaby Creative Aperture Kit on the Christmas tree, which turned out of focus lights into cool star shapes. Too much fun…

Photographers are always looking for new things and new places to photograph. Sometimes all it takes is driving down a road you’ve never been on before to discover a wonderful place full of photo opportunities. That’s exactly what happened to Roxanne and I today. Originally, we were going to go to Spanish Point: a historic site in Sarasota. Of course they had the audacity to be closed on Thanksgiving Day. So we drove down to Englewood. Our first stop was in a shopping district full of quaint shops and restaurants. After an hour or so, we were on the road again. Our goal was to find an interesting marina. On the way I spotted a derelict house with weathered wood, vines, and photogenic debris. We spent half an hour exploring the relic and moved on. In a few minutes, we meandered down a road we’ve never been on before and found a wonderful spot with boats, birds, and bait shops. Sometimes you can discover great photo opportunities by going someplace you’ve never been before. Next time you go on a photo shoot, take the long way home. You never know what you’ll find.  Here are some of the images I captured on Thanksgiving Day:

Roxanne and I found an awesome art district in Sarasota. This section of town is crawling with cool little shops and restaurants. Add a Lensbaby and you have a recipe for some interesting images. The following image was captured with the Lensbaby Soft Focus optic. In Lightroom I added a vignette. To finalize the image, I opened it in Silver Efex Pro to convert it to black and white.

I saw this mannequin in a shop window. The red feathers intrigued me. I shot the image from below so I could capture the eyes. I tweaked the image in Lightroom and applied the Nik Color Efex Pro Bleach Bypass filter to the image, which made the reds pop.

The splash of vibrant colors from this outdoor cafe caught my eye. I walked around until I found a vantage point I liked and took the picture. In Lightroom I used the HSL/Color/Grayscale tab to increase the luminance of the primary colors to make the image pop.

Here’s a picture of a Golden Orb Spider shot with a Lensbaby Composer. I tweaked the image in Photoshop using the Nik Multimedia Tonal Contrast filter and the Alien Skin Exposure 2 filter using the Velvia 50 preset.

Take a perfectly good image, add a couple of layers with pictures of textures, play with the blend modes, and you may end up with something very painterly.

Macro photography is lots of fun. Lensbaby has Macro attachments for their lenses.  You get the Lensbaby look, up close and personal like. I photographed these images using the Lensbaby Composer with the Single Glass optic and a +10 Macro attachment. I used the Direct Positive preset, plus Clarity, Saturation, and Vibrance  in Lightroom to enhance the images.

Even when you live close to the ocean, it gets hot in August. And lately I’ve been getting a bad case of cabin fever. Early afternoon is just too hot to shoot, and the light is too harsh. Then come the late afternoon thunderstorms which make shooting in the afternoon a dicey proposition. When I saw the forecast called for a fifty percent chance of rain in the afternoon, I grabbed my camera and a couple of lenses, and left the house at 9:30 in the morning. When I got to Sharky’s Pier, it was already overcast. The following image was shot using my 15mm fish-eye lens. I tweaked the image using Photomatix, Nik filters, and Alien Skin Exposure 2.