Three planned trips this year—all cancelled because of the pandemic. I do most of my photography when I travel so it’s been disheartening. Of course there is plenty to photograph near home but frankly it was too darn hot this summer to go anywhere. I was able to capture the comet NEOWISE one night. That was a highlight. And there are always bugs, birds and flowers just outside my door so I was not totally divorced from my cameras. Yes I could have done some indoor shooting—was not inspired. And I could have spent oodles of time on webinars and tutorials. Somehow I didn’t get to those either. I did find a few photo-related things to do.


1] I went back into my files of thousands of images. Wow, some are really bad! But there were some gems among the drivel. Besides having a better sense of good imagery thanks to our critique meetings, numerous upgrades have been made to Lightroom since I made the images. So it was interesting to re-edit some of them. Some that were halfway decent were improved. So if you need a project, I recommend looking at your old images and reworking them using fresh eyes and more powerful software if you have it. If you are using Lightroom, be sure to update the Process for the image so you are working with the newest version. Old images retain the process they were originally made with. You never know what gems you might turn up. 


2] Another fun project was playing with manipulation—really drastic manipulation in Photoshop that changes a recognizable image to a colorful, totally abstract design. It began with a technique I blogged earlier—March 29th. (BTW, that began as an image of a butterfly). I expanded on the method by incorporating different steps and filters. Many of the resulting images are in the “Abstract Creations” gallery on my web site https://maryannflickphotography.weebly.com/abstract-creations.html  and the original tutorial that I used is here http://awakethelight.blogspot.com/2020/03/


3] I keep a Lightroom collection of my favorite images. I go to this for making prints and for competitions. One day I decided to single out the un-manipulated abstracts and noticed some similarities among them. It sparked another little project that I called “Pairs”. https://maryannflickphotography.weebly.com/pairs.html  
Some of my pairings are similar images and some are contrasting or complimentary images that I think have something in common. 
Here’s a quote from the Adorama 42 West web site about Abstract photography.
“Compared to more popular photography niches like product, outdoor, and wedding photography, abstract photography goes against many photography rules, giving you the freedom to take a photo of anything that grabs your attention and allows you to express your artistic nature.
Formally speaking, abstract photography is a method of expressing ideas and emotions with photographed image elements without the intention of creating a traditional or realistic image. By avoiding and going beyond the usual representations of an object, scene, or any particular element, it reveals details that are normally ignored and triggers the viewer’s imagination.” https://www.adorama.com/alc/abstract-photography-for-beginners-9-tips-for-capturing-stunning-abstract-images
Look through your images for ‘likeness’ and create pairs, triptychs or quads of images that go together. Doesn't have to be abstracts--anything you especially like to shoot is best. If you use Lightroom you can do this is the print module and use “print to file”. It's fun and can give you a better sense of your personal style.

Be well, Maryann

If you have a summer story to share send it to me and I will post it here. You can include images if you like.
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Title: Iris Macro 2
​Photographer: Rob Nardino





I was trying to take macro photos of the irises that just bloomed in our front yard.  I wanted only some of it in focus, so it would have an abstract feel to it.  I’ve cropped it different ways, and would love to have input about the two versions here.  Offset in-focus elements would adhere to traditional compositional rules, but the background on right is a little less blurred than I would like (I guess I could play around in Photoshop) where as the more centrally placed one could be viewed as more static but I think it appeals to me a little more.

Title: Blue Jay
Photographer: Janet Rathbun

I took this photo of a Blue Jay at my peanut feeder in my backyard after 5 pm. My camera settings were 300 mm focal length, with crop factor 450 mm, f/9, 1/500, ISO 400. I was trying to capture the texture of the feathers and sharpness of the bird, particularly the eye. I was also attracted to the blue color of the bird.
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This is a continuation of Things I learned during the Lock Down #3.

Make the selection of the plant per TILDLD#1.

Use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to change colors.  Use the sliders to change the hue, saturation and lightness until you are happy with the new color.  Add H/S adjustment layers to create other colors.

You will end up with many layers, each with the plant having only one color.

In order to have leaves with different colors I use a brush on the masks of each of the H/S layers to hide what I don't want.

Title: Untitled
Photographer: Anne Mele
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"I love the color blue.  I am fortunate to live on south cove in Old Saybrook which can provide beautiful blue sunrises in certain weather conditions.  I have photographed this view hundreds and hundreds of times now, trying to capture the most vivid blue hues that I can.  This is my latest.  I wish is was more clear.  I was using a tripod with a remote.  I tried cropping the left but I found I liked the lights and bit of sun coming thru on that side so I sized this to be a more panoramic view."

Title: AZ8A1920
Photographer: Mark Janke

​I was interested in this shot because of the the juxtaposition of the very multi-textured ice against the silky smooth flow of water.
I tried this one as a B&W but found to my surprise that I liked the subtle color in the rock, so I kept the color image.

With permission from Jeannine Smith

Addition content with the Crop tool in Photoshop

In Photoshop click on the Crop tool.  In the Option bar make sure the "Content Aware" box is checked.  Instead of cropping or removing some of the image's content I made the crop bigger or increased the image where I wanted to have new content.  Click the check box in the Option bar.  PS enlarged the image and added content to the new portion.

In this case the content is complex so PS did a poor job with the new content.  I used the clone stamp to to make the new content acceptable.  

To create the shadow under the headstone I use a exposure adjustment layer to darken the image to where I think the exposure of the shadow should be.  I inverted the adjustment layer mask from white to black- click on the layer mask + control/command I.  The layer mask turn black and the exposure adjustment is hidden.  With the layer mask as the active layer use a brush to paint on the image where I want the shadow it appeared.