Church doors

Church doors, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Downtown Columbus, Ohio - so many interesting things to explore. Why did it take us so long to do this?

Monochrome leaf study

leaf study, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Staghorn Fern at Franklin Park Conservatory. I used Silver Efex Pro 2 for this black and white conversion. What I was aiming to do was to include the whole range of tones from black to white, while mainting the softness of the fern frond.

Flamingo

Flamingo, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another flamingo from the archives of 2009.

Agave leaf detail

Agave leaf detail, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another trip to the archives of 2009. This is a macro of the spines of an Agave leaf. Photograph from Franklin Park Conservatory.

Flamingo

Flamingo, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

I've been browsing through my archive of photos from 2009 and realized I have not processed a lot of them. So, I'm posting a few that I've been working on. What's interesting to me is that my skill at post-processing has dramatically improved since 2009, which is a good thing, I suppose.

Here's a portrait of a flamingo that I took November 29, 2009, but processed for the first time yesterday.

Fifth Third Center

Fifth Third Center, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Downtown Columbus, Ohio during the blue hour (the hour after sunset). Looking up at the Fifth Third Center. It's really a shame about the scaffolding up on top, which is for advertising 5/3 bank.

LeVeque Tower

LeVeque Tower, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Steve and I are exploring downtown Columbus for photography. We visited yesterday for an hour before sunset and about half an hour afterwards. One of my favorite downtown landmarks is the LeVeque Tower - especially at night with the interesting lighting. Sometimes there's a theme to the lighting scheme, but I don't know if this light pattern has additional meaning other than being pretty cool.

CMC at the Southern Theatre

CMC at the Southern, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Last night the Johannes Quartet played a wonderful concert at the Southern Theatre. As usual, children from the Chamber Music Connection program did the preconcert. This time around, two of the youngest quartets played on stage and they did very, very well.

Leaf detail

Leaf detail, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another reprocessed photo from the archives. From Inniswood Metro Garden.

Zinnia

Zinnia, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Learning how to process digital negatives is such an important factor in photography these days. I've been going back through some earlier work and noticed that my images were missing the "pop" necessary to bring them to life. So, I'm going to be reprocessing some of my favorite photos with my new skill set. Here's the first one, which was taken in August 2009.




Here's the original photo I posted in 2009.  It's a nice photo, but it's not as vibrant as the reprocessed image.  The details are not as crisp and the color is not as rich. So, practice does make a difference in the quality of the final product.

Sawhet Owl

Sawhet Owl, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Seems like an owl kind of day. This is from May 2010, during a trip to Whitefish Point Bird Observatory; Upper Peninsula, Michigan.

Sunset on Lake Superior

Sunset on Lake Superior, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

I've found a few sets of photos I've not spent time processing and realized I still have some gems to work on. This one is from May 2010, on a birding trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This is sunset as seen from Whitefish Point Bird Observatory.

Winter ICM

Winter ICM, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another winter abstract. This one is from February 12, 2012 - in the ravine at Whetstone Park of Roses. Late afternoon sun on fresh snow.

Hockey fans

Hockey fans, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Steve and I were downtown yesterday morning to take some photos of the bus stops that have posters based on his photo of Columbus. These fans were on their way to the Blue Jackets game at the hockey arena. I loved how they mugged for the camera.

Jesse Smith and Ryan McGiver at Tara Hall

A nice concert February 15, 2012 at Tara Hall featured Jesse Smith (fiddle) and Ryan McGiver (vocals and guitar). Here are a few images from the night.

Jesse told the audience what tunes would be played and where he learned them.

The pace of the tunes were very comfortable, which gave me a chance to really hear the tune and the variations Jesse played.

Tara Hall is now located on the south side of town, in a somewhat shady neighborhood.  However, the setting is now more akin to being in a house concert, which is actually a very nice change from your usual pub concert venues.

 

The main room is divided into the concert corner and a pub.  Tara Hall is the home of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Columbus, Ohio.

Jesse Smith

I didn't want to use a flash during the concert, so I had to push the ISO up to 6400. That results in a lot of noise in low-light settings such as this venue, so I decided to play with a bit of processing techniques to accentuate the noise by featuring some grain. Here's one of those processing experiments.

Ryan McGiver

Here's another portrait using my grain technique.

"Half the concert is tuning, the other half playing out of tune."

Jesse uses a C tuning (DADGAD tuned down), which was really a nice sound.

As a musician, I'm glad Ryan took time to tune, and it was certainly worth the wait. He's an excellent musician and it was a pleasure to hear him play.

Ryan sings with great feeling and passion.

I tried to capture that passion by doing a monochrome processing on this portrait of him.

This portrait sums up the thoughtfulness with which Jesse plays. I really enjoyed the style and nuances he brought to traditional Irish music.

 Jesse looks so relaxed while he's playing.

I find it a real challenge to get a photo of a fiddler in concert when there are so many mics and mic stands in the way. 

 

All-in-all a nice way to spend a Wednesday night.