Capitol Hill Police
Published on 9 October 2008

If you've been following my recent bloggeries, you probably know that I tend to post images in trends. A couple weeks ago, it was images edited using Corel Painter X. Now, it'll be photos edited in Lightroom to bring out detail and tonal depth. The image above was taken during a protest in Washington D.C. back in April of this year. I initially rejected the source photograph because the composition seemed off, but I was drawn back to it by the contrast between the center officer's bright orange sunglasses, and the greys of the surrounding men. Ironically, halfway through the editing process, I converted the image to black and white. Nonetheless, I think this photograph shows great depth of field and decent visual focus. Oh, and it was shot using a 70-300mm lens I picked up on eBay for $5. That's always a plus!

Denver Alley
Published on 8 October 2008

The photograph above was taken in Denver, Colorado back in July. I saw this alley and, without even thinking, snapped a photo of it. The original photograph was left on the cutting room floor, but was rescued the other day when I decided to do some creative editing on it. I won't go into details, as there are thousands of photoshop tutorial blogs out there for this specific purpose, but I will say that all edits were made in Adobe Lightroom 2. What I like about the resulting image is the immense amount of unpleasant detail. Let's make one thing clear: This alley was not a clean place. Not all photography is "pretty," yet photos that are "unpleasant" can still be visually appealing. The dirt and grime of the ground and walls are what makes this photo work.

Night Thunderstorm
Published on 7 October 2008

I wish this photo hadn't initially slipped past my radar. I found it marked "rejected" in Lightroom in one of my folders from my Colorado trip this summer. This shot was taken from the back porch of the house I stayed in while a thunderstorm rolled in from the prairies. It was the test shot from a series of lightning photographs that I've previously posted. I disregarded it at first because of the wide angle, which captured the suburbs and a passing car as well as the thunderstorm. What I failed to originally notice was the starry night sky hidden behind the swirling mass of clouds in the sky. And while I also failed to catch any specific lightning bolts hitting the ground in this shot, lightning in the cloud lit it up in a majestic manner. All of the adjustments in this image were performed from within Adobe Lightroom.

Personal Collection: Vintage Organ
Published on 5 October 2008

This past Monday, I had the opportunity to sing at a Rosh Hashanah service down at Heritage Park in Old Town San Diego, California. While setting up chairs in the second level of the Jewish temple at the park, I came across two of these fantastic old reed organs. You could tell they were worn down and old, but they still played fine. The lighting up there was fantastic due to the setting sun and a series of small circular stained-glass windows, so I took as many pictures as I could. In the post-processing stage, I realized that I could emphasize the level of deterioration in the organ's finish by (once again) running the image through a single-file HDR plugin. The resulting image, though grainy, really brings out the age of this beautiful instrument. I only wish I had snooped around a little more and found a manufacture date on one of these organs.