This challenge is all about processing in these days of digital. The good shot is really the starting line … and it can be a long way to the finish. That said, a good shot is really where it all begins.

For this week, I decided I wanted to play a lot with the different ways to covert to black and white. I decided that I wanted to start with a picture of a building that, if photographed when built, would have been photographed in black and white. I took a short tour of a nearby town and shot this. This was my original shot.

I processed these in Photoshop Elements using standard tools … except for the last. On the final shot I used a free brush to get the marks and scratches. The first thing I did was straighten the shot using the straightening tool. Then the fun began.

desaturated color using hue/saturation tool

adjusted color using remove color tool

color removed with convert to black and white tool - scenic landscape

color removed using tonal adjustment

removed color with convert to black and white tool - newspaper

If you want, you can see an actual black and white shot of St. Mary’s Catholic Church from a local historical society. If I was going for realism, this newspaper setting seems to be the closest!

But, “real” isn’t necessarily part of the challenge so…

aged photo

To age my photo, I started with a black and white created with the convert to black and white tool set to scenic landscape. I added a border, noise, and scratches to make it appear old and well looked at. Then I adjusted the black and white tones one last time. I also find a nice handwriting font to “write” on the border … just for fun!

So, here’s what I learned/confirmed.

1. The way that you convert a color digi shot to black and white matters – a lot.
2. It’s helpful to know what look (purpose) you are going for before you convert.
3. It’s not difficult to make a photo look old but it helps to envision in your mind what type of environment “the photo living in” so that you can scratch and mark it realistically.

Strangely enough, my favorite from this set is the one that’s technically not black and white. I really like this shot desaturated. I also really like how the aging turned out. Although, when I do it again, I’ll start with a lighter black and white shot.

In the process, I discovered about 4 more processes related to black and white processing that can make my photos look better at the end of the day. Now, I just have to practice!

Head on over to Beth’s to see how other folks stepped up to this challenge!

Yes, I know, it’s a recurring theme nightmare. As usual (and blessedly, I might add), life intervened and the plan for the challenge started to take shape. [Oh, sorry, really bad pun. I actually groaned out loud as I typed it.]

So here we go. My sweet husband bought me some glass art to hang in our bathroom windows and I just love them. They make beautiful rainbows in the morning sun. [He also hung them for me on demand after changing the filter in my van so that the AC would work decently ... and when I'm certain he would have rather been doing anything else!!!] I heart him. Very much.

glass art from eisenart inovations

My second photo op came out of the blue, or rather, out of the blacklight. After a night of fun with some folks from church, our pastor pulled out a blacklight and announced that he was going to go scorpion hunting. He’d not seen any since moving here and really wanted to. Well, it just so happens that we currently have a plethora of scorpions living in our backyard. I don’t heart these. Someone has been called!

mama scorpion and her two babies under blacklight

When I first looked at his creepy critter, I thought it was dead – it looked a bit flat and skeletal to me. Upon closer examination, I noticed the tiny shapes of two baby scorpions on her back. This shot really needed a tripod and some play with lighting, but it was well after midnight and these guys are CREEPY! I was afraid (um, hoping) that she’d scurry away so I just took the shot. It’s cropped, but otherwise straight out of the camera.

Scorpion fact: The babies are more poisonous than their mama and they don’t glow yet because they lack a protein buildup in their exoskeleton. I learned something this week! I also found myself wishing that we had the kinds of critters Shell gets to photograph!!!

When Husband heard that “shapes” were the in thing this week, he suggested that I get up-close-and-personal with our very blockish pavers. So, I got the wide angle lens out and captured these. [I checked the ground for scorpions first!] I think I’ll be trying out some more shots like this. The perspective is really fun.

These were just begging for a quick shot. I snapped a very organized stack of kindling on a whim and then played with the black and white conversion setting. The landscape setting was the most realistic for sure, but I’ve been doing ancestry research and the newspaper setting gave this kindling a sort of “old treasured artifact” feel that I liked. It also really made the wood jump out!

old plant stakes waiting for winter fireplace use

I’ll end this where I started, I think. You see, my first plan of action was to make a picture using shapes … a mosaic picture of the photos I’ve taken. While I tossed the idea aside as too complicated for me to pull off, I couldn’t help doing a search for some software that might do it for me! Lo and behold … Mosaic Creator. [OK, the page this takes you to is horribly, sickeningly busy. The software is pretty cool.]

This is my first attempt using the software. If you look closely, you’ll see Little Man and BK in there … and a clock I shot for one of these challenges is in the lower right. The tree is made from a lot of beach shots. It’s like a seek and find! I’m going to play with it some more as it looks like it’ll do some pretty cool stuff.

me and a sycamore tree - first try using mosaic creator

Here are my “5 Things” about Sedona.

1. Peace

There is something about Sedona and the Red Rock area that puts me at peace. I’m not sure what it is. I just know that when I’m there, the stupid self talk stops and the still,quiet voice inside gets heard.  Also, I think I’m just generally a much nicer, happier person when I’m there. That self talk can do a real number on your disposition.

The Sedona area is said to be the location of some spiritual vortexes and there are certainly quite a few folks making money selling tours and what I’ll call “vortex paraphernalia”.

Depending on your beliefs, you can chalk it up to the vortexes supposedly there, I guess. My personal beliefs don’t necessarily run that way, but I can’t deny that there is something different about the place. I just know that when I can use a little peace in my life, I’ll find it in Sedona.

2. Diversity

Sedona is a place where everyone can find something. For such a small town, that’s pretty amazing. And the diversity is everywhere in everything!

• You can tent camp next to Oak Creek or find a posh $250+ a night bed and breakfast. [We splurged one year ... if you are going to splurge on a B&B in Sedona, I can recommend this one!]
• You can find a quick deli snack or a $50+ a plate meal.
• You can be in the desert one minute and in a riparian area – so green you can’t imagine – it in the next.

I’ve not been there yet with someone who didn’t find something to like about the place. You can go to shop, hike, visit galleries, mountain bike, ride horses, or just hang out. In the times I’ve visited, I’m not sure that we’ve ever done the same thing twice. It’s all good!

3. Umm …  Red Rocks

OK, seriously. There is no place on earth like Red Rock country. I actually think it’s better than the Grand Canyon – although that might be because it’s more accessible.

The colors are just stunning everywhere you turn and the formations are just awesome. Most pictures don’t do the area justice … although on our recent trip, I certainly tried! [It's an amazing place to practice your photography habit!]

One of my favorite places to visit is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. The architecture is just amazing and the church itself is so simple. The simplicity makes it a perfect match for the amazing “cathedral” of rocks around it. I just love it!

There are hikes and tours to just about anywhere you would want to go want to go – and you can find something suitable for all ages and abilities. [I don't hike, normally. I will here. It didn't/doesn't kill me.]

At the end of the day, however you get wherever you get, a good long sit and stare is necessary and appropriate!

4. Water

When you are surrounded by desert, water is important – and interesting – and wonderful. Oak Creek is life to the areas around Sedona. The area gets about 10 inches of rain each year and depends on the run off from the Flagstaff area. But, no matter what the season, water is a main attraction.

In the summer, Slide Rock State Park is packed with folks trying to cool off in the cold waters of Oak Creek. I must tell you that it’s not my cup of tea … but clearly it works for a lot of people!

I think I prefer to experience the life of the canyons here in other ways. I love to sit and eat at The Hideaway where you can thoroughly enjoy a great pizza and cream soda (or whatever you like) on a terrace overlooking Oak Creek. And I’ve recently ventured into the canyon itself … the hikes into the Oak Creek area – West Fork Oak Creek Trail and Huckaby Trail were two that got us “waterside” and allowed us to see the area from a different perspective!

5. Tlaquepaque

OK … this may be a stretch, but I have to put Tlaquepaque (pronounced Tla-keh-pah-keh) in the mix just because it’s a fun word to say!

Seriously though, you can watch artists sculpt in clay as they prepare the models for amazing bronze sculptures. You can get a great meal. [Can I get a WOOT for beer-battered fries prepared in the local brew?] You can sit and listen to musicians play in the courtyards. It’s an amazing place … and one of the many places to see artists of all kinds in the Sedona area.

Oh, and the flowers, fountains, and sycamore trees in this place are just wonderful! And, at Christmastime? Forget it. You just want to stay!

For me Tlaquepaque represents all of the cool places to discover in the Sedona area. It’s a place where you can see/get things you just can’t anywhere else – some are pretty pricey (fantastic art usually is) and some are perfect for taking a bit of Sedona home with you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you get a chance to visit Sedona, don’t turn it down. Whether for the day or for the week, it’s worth it. Yep, everyone goes there – it’s not off of the vacation radar. There’s a reason for that – embrace it!

Oh, and while you’re there? Don’t be afraid to “go off-road” a bit. There is a lot to see and do … and learn!

[Wow. I may have just sounded like your mother there. Sorry about that! Now, go book your ticket! What are you waiting for???]

See, Husband and I were truly experiencing independence this Independence Day. Little Man and BK are spending a few weeks at their Gram’s house and we found ourselves on our own for the long holiday weekend! What to do?

We headed to one of my favorite places on the planet – Sedona, AZ – for a get-away and it was a wonderful weekend full of exploring Red Rock country. [Also, we got to eat many meals in restaurants without worrying about meltdowns and kids' menus.]

I must confess before we get to the pics. I don’t hike – well, not normally. But, you really can’t experience all of Sedona without going off-road at least a little. So, like all sensible people, I decided that I could do two hikes a day – one in the morning and one in the evening. [Um, suffering for art? Nah, I'll blame the heat!]

So, without further ado, we’ll start with nature’s red, white, and blue and then move on a sampling of nature in northern Arizona!

red rock state park - believe it or not this is straight from the camera

It’s monsoon time in the desert so it’s quite common to get late day rains. We thought we were going to get rained out of a sunset hike in Red Rock State Park. Instead, we got treated to a lightening show followed by this rainbow (which actually ended up being a double). Then it passed and we were able to hike away!

cathedral rock shot from red rock state park - slightly modified the shadows/highlights

Oak Creek supplies water to the area and it’s truly a life giving thing. There are quite a few riparian areas in Sedona and they are just stunning in their colors and creatures – so different from the high desert that surrounds them. Amazing!

running water in oak creek canyon - straight out of camera

I had my polarizing filter on almost the whole time we were out and about. I love the green of this funky old tree against the blue sky.

red rock state park - used a polarizing filter

This guy. Oh my word! He was just hanging out when we walked by on our sunset hike. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get my camera to focus so that I could capture him. He stayed still for something like 20 attempts – just posed. He finally moved when the guide with us moved his hand to show us the petroglyphs that were above him!

red rock state park - adjusted color slightly to bring out his green

I have no idea what these are, but they just begged for a picture. They were the only plants like this and were surrounded by a field of green!

oak creek canyon - used polarizing filter

OK … this next one is funky and I like it. We went up to the airport to watch the sunset (popular place to watch the sunset, by the way). We’d been out hiking in Fay Canyon until right up to sunset and we were tired! I wasn’t even going to take a picture because the sunset wasn’t all that pretty. But, we’d driven up there, so I took a shot just after the sun sunk behind the mountain.

I forgot that I had the polarizing filter on and this is what the sunset looked like to my camera. The shadows in the black are the layers of the mountains west of town.

sunset from the airport - polarizing filter and some shadow/highlight adjustment

Did I mention that Sedona is one of my favorite places on the planet??? Yeh, I get kind of carried away. These are seven of the almost 500 pictures I shot in four days! (More pictures will be coming in my 5 Things – Sedona post.)

I hope you enjoyed and if you get a chance to visit Sedona? Do it!

I spent a bunch of time thinking about this one night when I couldn’t sleep and then, through the miracle of RSS, I got inspired!

A couple of weeks ago, Stephen the Novel Doctor posted a writing contest and Robin tweeted that she’d been working on an entry. Writing contests interest me a lot so I went to check it out! The contest involved writing a scene where a wristwatch played a key role. Interesting.

I’ve been following the results of the contest and reading the entries – some of which are very good, by the way. [The aforementioned Robin was in the top 10! You should go check out the results and read the scenes!!]

Then, it hit me! Wristwatches = time. I don’t have enough of that particular commodity right now. It’s fleeting. My challenge this week should be about capturing time.

And so it was.

I started out complicated (which is insane given that whole lack-of-time thing I just mentioned). I planned a series of progressions over time. None of them came out as I had envisioned, but this one certainly shows that all daylight is not the same when it comes to photography.

All four pictures in this “progression” were taken at different times of the day, in natural light, and using the same camera settings. They are straight from the camera with regard to “touch up” … I only pieced them together.

8am ... 11am ... 2pm ...4pm

When complicated got, well, complicated, I decided to punt. I carried my camera around for a couple of days and took shots of things that I ran into as I raced around.

I just loved the sun and shadow on our fireplace one night this week. It was catching the light just right. Not a huge fan of the UGLY red pot sitting there, but meh.

6pm

When I took my eye from the viewfinder and looked up, I saw the moon against the blue sky. I’m a sucker for the moon against a blue sky! It’s kind of hard to believe that these two shots were taken at the same time of day by the same person standing in the same spot!

6pm

One morning on the way to work, I spent a few minutes watching them work the ground for a new tire shop (ironic, right?). The earth mover was right up by the road. I couldn’t resist. We’re quite smitten with really big earth-moving and construction equipment in our family!

8am

The earth mover got stuck while I was snapping shots. I couldn’t imagine that it would actually get stuck, but it appeared to be! [The guys on the job looked extremely pleased that I was capturing it on film. Oy, the looks!]

8am

The thing I like about this shot is that, after a little touch up, it looks like something I’d expect to see in a 1970s CAT catalog. It’s not what I intended … it’s a happy little accident!

And there it is. Time well spent?

Summer in our neck of the woods is hot. There are no two ways about it. It’s our least favorite season. It’s just too stinkin’ hot to do much of anything outside.

For the computer nerds in my family (uh, that would be me), it’s not really a huge deal. For the outdoor addicts in my family (yep, that would be everyone else), it’s a very long stretch.

So, all week I’ve been thinking of how to capture “hotter than sin” on film and even thinking about it made me hot. Blech.

I asked Little Man what he thought about when he thought about summer. He just giggled and then asked me when fall was going to get here. [OK, I may have taken creative license on the timing of those reactions, but...]

Like most weeks, the pictures planned in my head didn’t make it into the camera.

Some of my shots worked pretty well, I thought.

this great pitcher of sangria was just screaming summer to me

But, then, I got stuck. I carried my camera around for days … nothing!

Today, with no additional pictures to add, I figured out why! My “pictures” of summer were captured last weekend … by Husband [OK, mostly.]!!!

So, I’m cheating a little bit – wait, let’s call it a guest post. Na, it’s cheating.  [I was going to make a bad joke about us living in a community property state ... thus sort of making all of these mine ... but decided against it.] But these two were having such fun and they are so cute that it’s really worth it! So, I’ll start with one I took.

bk has slurped up an insane amount of water from this pump

OK … let the fun begin! These are Husband’s!

One of the only ways to be outside in the summer here is to be in the water. And, what better way to be in the water than to slip and slide! These pictures are just, well, summer.

little man in an action shot ... he's really good at this!

when you're too small to slide ... crawl!!!

one of our favs ... both kids having fun together in their own way

This is what summer should be about, don’t you think?

By the way, Husband is a lurker so if you like these, let him know!!! Thanks!!!

I really wanted to do something that asked me to challenge myself. I wanted to think in ways that would either push my photography skills – lighting and subject and composition, oh my – or my photo editing skills.

What to do? What to do?

Of course, the first thing that came to mind was that it would be fairly easy to catch emotion on film for this little challenge – the kids offer up heaps and loads of emotional outbursts daily. So, I started there.

joy, zest, enthusiasm, zeal, excitement, thrill, exhilaration

Then, I had the idea of finding inanimate (or at least non-human) subjects that would serve to represent – or perhaps be a metaphor for – different emotions. So, I started with the definition of emotion and see where that might take me. [I really love Wikipedia, by the way. I know many educators don't ... but I think it's fantastic!] Then, I looked for other lists and found this one. Yep, got pretty cerebral about all of this. But, these little rabbit trails took me all over my community! And, I’m so glad that they did!!!

I live in a place where there is a lot of new. New homes, businesses, roads … everything. But all of that new encroached on a very old farm community. Driving around, I found that there’s not a lot of emotion to be found in the new … but the old? That’s a completely different story.

Here’s some of the emotion I found today while I was out on the dusty roads [OK, literally ... you should see my van.] with my eyes open!

loneliness

ambition

lost, resignation

despair, hopelessness

defiance ... caution ... pride

I have a greater respect for what was here before all of the subdivided neighborhoods that we call home. I love our community and I love the sense of the past that I found as I was driving around. It made me love my community even more than I did before!

I’ve plunked these into this post in order from least to most favorite – picture of BK all excited about playing in the water aside! [The burrowing owls win partly because they are so dang cute and I was shocked to see them just hanging out.] In looking at the actual photographs and comparing them to last week’s shots … these are not as vivid and “alive” to me. Yet, in so many ways, they are more … ahh, hard to explain. So, we’ll just let them marinate for a tad and see!

Oh, and before I sign off … Andrea over at Prairie Lady posted her capture for this week early and it’s stunning. Seriously. If you’ve not gone to take a look yet, you should!

This week the challenge was “nature” and I was mulling it around and around for much of the end of last week and the weekend. I thought I’d go for something cerebral and try to capture something of human nature. Good, right? Unique and thought provoking … and lives up to the word challenge!

But, then, the aforementioned human nature reared it’s ugly head and all of the best creative intentions got sucked up in work, the book I’m enjoying, and my family. So, it was looking like another week of NGH. [For those of you playing at home, that's Not Gonna Happen.]

Enter serendipity. Saturday, Little Man decided we needed to go on an adventure to the zoo. [... and friends, I'd be lying to you if I told you that I immediately hatched a plan to save my You Capture intentions. Yeh ... didn't happen that way. Never even crossed my mind as I was trying to figure out what we needed to take for our big day out ... we don't pack light!]

We had a great time! The weather was darn near perfect and the kids were really well-behaved. [ I can't say the same for some of the other park visitors, by the way.] And … as we made our way through the zoo, several very natural things caught my eye and, of course, I snapped a few shots. [Although I still wasn't thinking about the challenge.]

So, here they are … my unplanned acceptance to a challenge.

in bloom

complicated

texture

dramatic

In the end, I’m happy with my shots here – especially the lily pad. They are better than my usual suspects – even before I edited them for the challenge. I still hope to take a crack at capturing the elements of human nature, but that’s a challenge for another time!